Howard Lederer
March 14, 2005
The Sit N Go (SNG) is online poker's great gift to
the aspiring tournament player. Prior to the SNG,
final table experience was hard to come by. You
could enter a dozen multi-table tournaments and
never find yourself at a final table. Or you could
make one or two, only to get knocked out in 8th or
9th place. Adapting to an ever-diminishing number
of players at a single table is a crucial skill in
tournament poker, and it's a hard experience to
find offline without investing a lot of time and
money. Online, this experience is a mouse-click
away. The SNG's advantages are many. For starters,
it's low-cost, or even free. It's also fun, and
convenient: You don't need to schedule it -- a SNG
starts every time the table fills up -- and it's
usually over in less than an hour. It is the
flight simulator of Final Table play, and
mastering it should be considered mandatory
homework for the serious student.
Now that you know why you should play, let's look
at how:
The most obvious difference between a SNG and a
multi-table tournament is that when someone goes
broke in a SNG, there isn't someone waiting to
fill their spot. Multi-table play consists mostly
of full-table, ring game poker. But as players get
eliminated from a SNG, the table gets shorter- and
shorter-handed. This reduction in players
basically serves to artificially raise the antes.
For instance, say you are playing five-handed and
the blinds are 100-200: You are paying 300 in
blinds for every five hands, or 60 per hand. As
soon as someone gets knocked out, you're
four-handed. Now you're paying 75 per hand -- a
25% increase -- despite the fact that the blinds
have remained the same. Accordingly, you're forced
to gamble more, or risk getting blinded out.
Since the size of the blinds relative to your
stack size should always play a major role in you
hand selection, I recommend starting out with
pretty conservative starting hand requirements.
This serves two functions: First, the blinds
dictate that you play fairly tight early; the
blinds are small and you are nine-handed, so they
don't come around as often. Second, this helps you
establish a tight image, which you hope will pay
off later when the blinds are high and you might
really need a timely ante steal.
But there is another not-so-obvious reason to play
tighter earlier and looser later: The payout
structure rewards tight play. Most SNG's pay 50%
to first, 30% to second, and 20% to third. This
payout structure dictates that you play for third.
Why? Looking at the payout structure another way
might help. Basically, the payout means that 60%
gets awarded once you are down to three players,
20% gets awarded when you get down to two players,
and the final 20% gets awarded to the winner. If
you can just get to third, you get at least
one-third of 60% of the prize pool, or 20%. You've
locked up a profit, and you have a chance to win
up to 30% more. It's only now that you're in the
top three that your strategy should take an abrupt
turn. Now it pays to gamble for the win. Let's
look at the numbers again: 60% of the prize pool
is off the table, and moving up one spot is worth
only another 10%. But move up just one more spot
and it's worth a whopping 30% extra -- that's
three times more for first than it is for second.
And with the blinds going up, gambling for the win
is even more clearly the correct play.
I see many players employ a nearly opposite
strategy. They figure they have nothing to lose,
so they go for the quick double-up early. They
take chances too soon when, in their view, there's
"nothing on the line". Then, once
they're in the money, they tighten up, thinking
about that extra payout for moving up a spot. If
you start to rethink your SNG approach and adopt a
"slow early, fast late" strategy, you
will see an almost immediate improvement in your
results.
Best of luck and see you at the tables,
Howard Lederer
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