Part Two: Making the Money
written by BeatTheFish.com
...Fishy says, "It's tough to stack
those chips underwater."
This is Part Two of a three-part
strategy system on Sit and Go tournaments.
In the first part of this tutorial, I
covered
Sit and Go strategy during the early rounds of play when the
blinds are still low and you have plenty of chips left. Essentially,
I recommend a very conservative strategy during the first 3 rounds
while taking a few cheap flops with “double-up” hands.
Unfortunately, your strategy must change as the blinds increase both
to take advantage of your opponents’ weaknesses and to combat
getting blinded out of the tournament.
In this article, I will discuss Sit and Go strategy for the middle
rounds – the period between the start of 50/100 blinds and until 3
players are left battling for the money. The following tips, barring
excessive
bad beats, should allow you to navigate through the middle
rounds while still giving yourself a shot at winning once play gets
to 3-handed.
1. Don’t make major adjustments to your strategy. A common
mistake that I see from Sit and Go beginners is panicking when the
blinds reach the 50/100 level. Your strategy shouldn’t change too
much simply because the cost of doing business has increased. If you
began with 1,500 or 2,000 chips and have managed to stay about even,
you still have 15-20 big blinds left. In Dan Harrington’s language,
your “n” is still at 10-13 because you can pay to see that many more
rounds of blinds without playing a hand. While you don’t want to let
your stack get down to 3 or 4 n’s, that’s still a lot of poker left
to be played! If your natural Sit and Go strategy is a patient one,
don’t let the blinds take you off of your game.
2. At the same time, make the conscious effort to become more
aggressive. When the blinds increase the table naturally becomes
tighter overall with more players fearful of risking too many chips
on marginal hands. This is the time that you want to become more
aggressive. When you’re the first to open the pot, consider a raise
to 3-4x the big blind. Making larger raises at this stage without a
specific play in mind isn't wise
as you don’t need to risk an excessive amount of chips to make the
same statement. If you don’t feel that your hand is strong enough to
raise with then consider why you’re playing the hand at all. Trying
to see cheap flops with mediocre hands at this point will be a slow
leak of your valuable chips. Avoid weak Aces, baby pocket pairs, and
trap hands like Q-J and K-10. In the middle rounds of a Sit and Go
you want to be taking advantage of your opponents tight play,
seizing control pre-flop with your strong hands, and steal the
blinds around once per round or two when in position. If you aren't
accomplishing any of those goals you should probably just stay out
of the hand entirely.
3. Follow up your pre-flop raises with betting on the flop, even
if you didn’t connect. Also known as a “continuation bet”, a
common play is to bet anywhere between ½ of the pot to the size of
the pot following your pre-flop raise. This is done regardless of if
you improve or not on the flop. I also only recommend this against 1
or 2 opponents if you haven’t improved. With more opponents it's
highly unlikely that none of them improved their hand enough to stay
with you. The continuation bet is a great play for Sit
and Gos and works especially well on tighter sites. Although this
play makes you susceptible to check-raises when you’re in position,
it will induce your opponent to fold far more often. It is very
difficult for good players to bet into or reraise the pre-flop
raiser without a very strong hand. Because you raised pre-flop you’re
expected to have big face cards or a big pocket pair. Your opponents
know that sometimes you’ll have hit the flop and other times you
won’t have. The difficult part for other players is trying to decide
when you haven’t hit if you’re always betting into them.
4. Pre-flop calling is a weak play in the middle rounds and
beyond. Related to the above point, you don’t want to be doing a
lot of pre-flop calling with large blind levels. Even worse would be
limping pre-flop out of position as you’ll be faced with a difficult
decision if someone raises in later position: make a poor call and be out of position on the flop or
fold and lose a valuable big blind. Exceptions to this strategy
would be when you’re trapping opponents with a big hand. Your goal
here would be to limp from early or middle position, get raised, and
then come back over the top for a reraise.
5. If you have a lot of chips you don’t need to become the table
bully. I see a lot of chip leaders make an early exit from Sit
and Gos by taking on the role of table bully. Unlike multi-table
tournaments where a chip leader might have 3 or 4 times as many
chips as anyone else at the table, it is very rare to develop a
very large chip lead in single-table tournaments because of the lack
of players filling empty seats. Even if you make
an early double-up you’ll only be at about 3,000-4,000 chips at this
level. Trying to dominate your opponents with frequent raises will
tip them off to play patiently and reraise you when they have a
premium hand. Folding to enough reraises will put you back down to
the middle of the pack.
On the other extreme, it isn't uncommon to see players who double up
early sit out entirely until more players get knocked out! This is also
extremely poor strategy and
shows a true lack of confidence if your own abilities. As the chip
leader, I don’t recommend playing a lot of big pots unless you truly
have a monster hand. Try to slowly accumulate chips with blind steals and
small raises. This should both increase your intimidating table image and
set you up as the favorite when play becomes shorthanded.
6. Watch for players that you can steal blinds from. Perhaps
one of the most essential skills to have in Sit and Gos is knowing
how and when to steal the blinds. After all, if you can steal the
blinds just once per round you would always stay afloat in the
tournament. It also helps you stay patient by allowing you to have
fodder to pay the blinds while you wait for a powerful hand. To
steal the blinds you should be the first one into pot making a
standard 3 or 4x raise. This should also only be tried from about
position 6 or later or as the small blind as there will be
fewer players behind you that may have a good enough hand to play
back. Of course, you should target tighter players who haven’t been
defending their blinds and avoid aggressive players and maniacs in
the blinds.
What I’ve tried to outline with the above tips is a smart-aggressive
approach to the middle rounds of Sit and Gos. You should make an
effort to raise more often preflop, make continuation bets on the
flop, steal the blinds more often, and not be concerned with running
the table as the chip leader. Ideally, you will be able to play
“small ball”, win several pots uncontested, and build your chip
stack as a few more players get eliminated. The middle rounds are a
time of chip management: you cannot wait indefinitely to get
involved but at the same time you aren’t under huge pressure to
gamble.
One final point: any time you only have 5 or 6 big blinds left you
should look for any above-average hand and stick everything in. Any
pocket pair, Ace, or two face cards would qualify for this. If you
wait longer, there is a much greater chance that your bet will be
called in multiple places, which of course decreases your expected
win rate. Your goal with such a short stack is to
either pick up the blinds uncontested or isolate to a heads-up
situation where you still may have an advantage.
Back to
Poker Strategy
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