In my last blog entry I shortly introduced a special form of tournament poker, namely Sit&Go tournaments (SNG). Today and in the following blog entries I want to talk about things you should consider when trying to win money in SNGs. My main goal is to help the typical poker rookie being successful as quickly as possible. Therefore my guide will be aimed at low limit SNGs.
Taking a look at the payment structure of a typical SNG with 9 participants we will see that only the first 3 places will be paid (1st place 50%, 2nd 30% and 3rd 20% of the total prize pool) while the remaining players will end up with nothing at all. Wanting to be a winning SNG player in the long term we will have to make it our primary goal to be among the remaining last 3 players on the table. While this sounds like a very obvious thing to do, my experience taught me that a lot of players in the micro limits do not heed that and very few players actually approach their SNG game accordingly. As a thoughtful poker player you will thus be able to gather experience without risking a lot of money at the micro limit SNGs and you will more than likely have success very soon and quite easily. The key to success lies in the choice of playing styles. Here is a quick listing of the 4 main categories of playing styles:
- Loose-Passive (lots of hands played – more calls than raises)
- Loose-Aggressive (lots of hands played – more raises than calls)
- Tight-Passive (hands played are well considered – more calls than raises)
- Tight-Aggressive (hands played are well considered – more raises than calls)
We will play the tight-aggressive style (TAG). This playing style is the safest for inexperienced players and also most likely to end up in the money.
The next decision we will have to make is whether we want to play a Turbo/Speed SNG which is a very popular variation in all online poker rooms. Turbo or Speed refers to the blinds being raised quicker in this SNG than in a regular SNG which means that it will come to an end sooner. A tight-aggressive player will have an additional advantage here as Turbo SNGs with a low buy-in tend to be infested by poker players who display a lack of skill paired with very low patience which equals money for others. Seeing as how the TAG playing style demands good pocket cards I would nonetheless skip the Turbo SNGs for the time being and focus on SNGs with blind levels of 10 minutes or more. The reason is simple: I don’t want you to become one of the impatient players simply because you didn’t get any decent hand for the whole last blind level. At normal SNGs you will have more time to wait for good pocket cards and nonetheless find enough players at the table who are willing to commit with mediocre hands. The advantage of micro limits is obvious – you will find weaker players and they will not bother to assess other players’ behaviour on the table or simply don’t know how to do so. We will try and take the opposite approach and make it a habit of watching other players closely right from the start regardless of whether we are involved in a hand or not.
This leads us to the final step of the preparation for SNGs. The playing style I suggested and that I will focus on more in the following blog entries demands patience and a certain amount of concentration to be able to observe your fellow players. If you are new to the game of poker I strongly recommend that you play at one table only instead of various at the same time. Turn off the TV even if it may be nice at times to have some additional source of entertainment at times. If you want to listen to music while playing, fine – but make sure you manage your playlist before the game so you don’t have to rummage through your mp3 directories looking for ‘that song’ during your poker game. You can see where I am getting at. If you play poker, you play poker. Your whole focus and attention should be directed at your game. Otherwise you give away a big advantage over your opponents on this table, an advantage that you didn’t even have to work for – and it is not often you will come across those so make the most of it when you can.
Now that we know what and how we want to play and managed to focus all our attention on the table we will jump right into the action in my next Sit&Go blog entry that will be all about the early phase of SNGs and the choice of pocket cards that we will play according to our tight-aggressive playing style. Until then I wish you a lot of fun on the Max Poker Bonus website and lots of pocket rockets!