Sit & Go (or Single Table) tournaments have been extremely popular in the online poker world, ever since they were introduced quite a few years ago.  They fill a gap in the market for players who prefer to play tournaments as opposed to cash games, but also like the convenience of being able to play when they want, and who also prefer to play in a ‘final table’ environment – a point they may not reach too often in multi table tournaments.

SNG’s are also popular due to the changing dynamics of the game from start to finish.  As players gets eliminated the table shorter-handed, which essentially results in higher antes due to paying blinds more regularly.  At this point more aggressive play becomes the correct strategy, or you risk being blinded out of the game.  In fact a good strategy for single table tournaments is to play tight at the beginning, loosening up later on as the number of players is reduced are the blinds go up both in value and regularity.

This strategy is opposite that used by many players, who gamble early on hoping to double up their chip stack, and then play tighter to get into the money and hopefully move up into the top prize.  This is definitely the wrong way to play, when the game is new with a full table of players and low blinds the correct strategy is to play only conservative starting hands.  Doing so will also establish a tight table image if you are playing against players who don’t know you, allowing you to steal blinds and hands later in the game when it really matters.

Another reason to adopt the above strategy is related to the payout structure of these tournaments, whereby 1st place wins 50% of the combined buy-ins, 2nd takes 30% and 3rd takes 20%.  If the table gets down to 3 players with you still involved then essentially there is only 40% of the prize pool left to play for, meaning your strategy to play tight looking to get into 3rd place will have been correct.  At this point if you can take 2nd place you will only receive 10% of the prize pool extra, however if you manage to get 1st you will get an extra 30% of the pool.  As you can see this is the point where aggressive, ‘gambling’, play will pay off, especially when you may be up against players trying to sit tight and folding to your raises as they cling to the hope of picking up an extra place through luck more than anything else.

Tags: poker, SNG, strategy, STT, tournament

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 9:17 am and is filed under Poker Tips. Both comments and pings are currently closed.