Let’s Look At Some Skills For Sit N Go Tournaments
Sit N Go poker tournaments are a unique animal. When the blinds are small you want try to avoid a big pot unless you have a big hand and are willing to risk your tourney. An example is a hand like 99. If you don’t hit a set you have to be ready to get away. These are dangerous hands to raise (or even get involved in) from early position early in a SNG.
In SNG’s a lot of players waste too many chips early with hands like small pocket pairs. However, these can be raised and make big profits in cash games. The way a single table event works, makes it better to play these hands in small preflop pots. You seldomly will hit your set post flop and it won’t cost you too many chips.
When the blinds are large compared to your stack, you have to play offensive poker. Stealing the blinds whenever possible is a must. In a sense it’s like, “I dare you” at this point. If you don’t steal some blinds you will find your stack too short to scare anyone off and you will lose the ability to steal extra chips.
When the blinds get real big compared to your stack, your two choices are to push all in or fold. You can make a normal raise if you want to, but you should be planning to put all your chips in.. You really can’t afford to bet and then fold.
When players are folding, you can go all in with more hands expecting to get no callers. How many chips you’re up against is important also. The big (has enough chips to risk) and small (desperate and looking for a spot) stacks will call more often. The middle sized stack folds more, protecting their chips.
With four players left and three cashing, a lot of play is controlled by stack size. A case in point; You might go all in with 55 versus a player without too many chips, and fold this hand to a big chip leader.
Now is when you look to go all in, but don’t think only about your cards when deciding. Anything is playable sometimes, especially if your stack will damage the others enough to scare them. When betting at a big stack you need better cards as you will get called more frequently.
When you have the chip lead, people will fear you and you should take their blinds often. The players with mid sized stacks are easy prey. They fear getting eliminated before the short stack goes out.
The problem here is you want to get to the money before losing your stack. The monster stack will knock you out, while the shorties will gamble with anything to survive. This is not an easy place to be in.
Equity value (EV) is the value of your hand when you push all of your chips in. EV helps determine which hands to play. Once you decide what that range is, then it is either better to put all your chips in or fold.
These ideas cover the basic thinking that goes into SNG play. All of these ideas can be analyzed in great detail. Creating an approach to the SNG games using these ideas can lead you to becoming a winning player. Good luck.