Sit and Go Strategy

SNG Tournament Strategy

Sit and Go tournaments have really grown in popularity recently due to the fact that they’re so flexible. They allow players to turn up to their favorite poker room and get involved in a tournament within moments of logging in. They’re also a great way to earn loyalty points when you’re looking to clear your poker bonus.

However, SnGs are very different to your standard multi-table tournaments both in the way that they’re set up and in the strategies that should be employed in order to become successful at them.

Firstly, there is no set starting time for a Sit n Go tournament. Instead, play begins when the table is fully occupied. Secondly, the number of players involved in an SnG tournament will be considerably fewer than you would expect to find in a standard multi-table tournament. Most Sit n Go’s will have a field of nine players, with only the top three being paid. It’s also possible to find SnG’s with only six players involved and should you want to, you can also go straight in to a heads up battle.

It’s because of the short field involved in these sort of tournaments that a lot of players believe that they’re best chance of getting paid is to keep their head down and hope that they can sneak into the top three by quietly sitting at the table.

This is actually quite a dangerous strategy to employ because it’s very unlikely succeed unless you’re playing on a very loose and aggressive table … and (aside from PKR) there aren’t too many of those around!

So with that in mind, let’s have a look at a Sit and Go strategy that will give you a better chance of ending the tournament in the money. It’s important to note that your play will need to evolve as the tournament progresses and therefore, I have split this strategy up into three sections.

Early stages:

The beginning of an SnG tournament is an important time as it will hopefully give you a base to build on as play progresses. You need to be pretty relaxed about your starting hands. You want to see as many cheap flops as you can so if you find yourself looking at suited connectors, pocket pairs or just a couple of high cards then throw come chips into the middle of the table and see what comes up.

Should you find yourself being raised with one of these marginal hands, then I would seriously consider mucking your cards but while the blinds are still small, it’s worth risking a few chips to see a flop.

Secondary stages:

By the time the blinds have begun to increase, a few players will hopefully have dropped out of the running. Now is the time to become picky about which of your starting hands you want to play. Start only playing premium hands and when they arrive, make sure you raise pre-flop. You can be pretty sure you’ve got the best hand so protect it. There’s nothing more frustrating than letting someone into a hand cheaply and then watching them outdraw you on the flop.

You also want to begin thinking about trying to steal the blinds from time to time with a well thought out bluff. Stealing blinds will become very important from here on in and so it’s a good idea to get a march on your opponents.

The End Game:

Your strategy needs to be amended again when you get down to the last four or five players. With people starting to think about the prize money on offer, play will become a lot looser as players become desperate to add to their chip stack. If you’re in a comfortable position, then now is the time to keep your head down and stay out of danger unless you pick up a monster.

However if you find yourself trying to avoid the bubble, then you need to show a bit of aggression and bravery. Your closest competitors will be nervous about their own chip stacks and so I’d recommend raising the blinds when you get an opportunity.

This can obviously go one of two ways for you. If you end up being called, then you’re going to be keeping your fingers crossed and hoping for a good flop. If you’ve picked the right time to raise, then more often than not you should find your opponents folding, enabling you to pick up the blinds, which could be as much as 400 chips by this point.

Once you’ve made the top three positions, then let out a deep breath and relax. You’ve reached your main objective of being paid and so you have nothing to lose. Now’s the time to go for broke and make a real effort to get your hands on the remaining chips on the table.

It’s up to you how picky you want to be about your starting hands, but try to avoid just calling someone else’s bet. If you want to see the flop, raise the pot. If you don’t want to do that, then just fold.

Simply calling at this point is a “nothing-play” and will ultimately cost you chips in the long run. Instead, put the pressure on your opponents. Make them worry about you, rather than having things the other way round!