Playing the Middle Stages of a Sit-N-Go Poker Tournament

Playing the Middle Stages of a Sit-N-Go Poker Tournament


Anyone who plays sit-n-go poker tournaments
has probably read a zillion sit-n-go strategy articles. They typically tell you to play tight early and go pushbot late in the sit-n-go. Playing tight early is pretty self-explanatory. Pushbotting is also self-explanatory, although more complicated than most people believe. However, it’s the middle stages of a sit-n-go poker tournament where people seem to find the most ambiguity.

In this article I’m going to cover one aspect of playing the middle stages of a sit-n-go poker tournament: Playing Your Stack.

Getting to the late stages is all about recognizing the size of your stack relative to the blinds and understanding the things that stack size allows you to do. This basically has to do with fold equity, which simply refers to the value that your hand has simply by betting or raising such that all opposing hands fold. The more streets you can play with fold equity with your stack size, the better off you are. That is to say, the better your chance of getting to the late stages.

At the bottom are the very small stacks. These are anything smaller than 10bb. They’re already in pushbot mode so there’s not much to say about them. If you find a hand to play, you push. The reason is simple. If you decide not to push, say you open for 3.5bb, what do you do on the flop? You’ve bet 35% of your stack in already. If you have one caller, you’ve got 6.5bb left to bet into a 8.5bb pot so you can’t even make a full bet on the flop. You’re better off just putting it all in preflop where you still have some fold equity.

The next stage is a stack size that can still have fold equity in the turn. If you open for a standard 3.5bb raise, for example, you’ll need a stack of 12bb assuming one caller. This is because the pot size will be about 8.5bb after the flop (bb + sb + your 3.5bb + caller’s 3.5bb). So to make a pot-sized bet on the flop, you’d need to have started with 12bb.

Likewise, assuming you’re called, to make a pot-sized bet on the turn you’d need 25.5bb. By that point, a significantly smaller bet will probably still have some fold equity but you get the point. The possibility you can make another big bet on the next street is a large part of what gives you fold equity on early streets. The same logic applies to being able to effectively bet the river.

Now I’m not saying you should try to play to the river each hand, or advocating you should always bet the pot. I’m just using this as a yardstick for the amount of flexibility in your play that you’ll have for a given stack size.

Now that we’ve talked about this concept, consider that what will allow you to make it into the money is to not slip downward in terms of the number of streets where you have fold equity. You want to maintain fold equity over as many streets as possible. So before you start to make a bet, consider what happens if you lose the hand or are forced to fold the hand. Does making that bet mean that in the next hand you play you’ll be forced to push? Does it mean you’ll only be able to play one street?

Now I’m not advocating you play super tight, and never make a bet without the nuts. I’m just saying this should be your primary consideration. Before you make a bet, think about your stack and what the bet means to future hands.

This doesn’t just apply to making bets. It also applies to calling them. If you’re faced with a preflop raise, will you have fold equity on the flop? If you make the call and fold to a bet on the flop, what impact did the loss of those 3.5bb have on your stack for the next hand? This should be your biggest consideration when making loose calls.

Now if you have a very large stack, you can probably make a few loose preflop calls like this without an impact. If you’ve got a middle sized stack, you probably can’t. However, if you’ve got the big stack it’s easy to let this loosey goosey attitude carry over to the flop, and suddenly you’re calling a much bigger bet that WILL impact you.

In summary, it’s my belief that the fold equity and flexibility in your play that your stack size allows you is probably the most important consideration during the middle stages of a sit-n-go poker tournament when deciding to make or call a bet.

Sit-N-Go Poker Videos???

I had an idea to post free sit-n-go videos like this one on my poker blog. Potentially, they'd have some commentary with them. Each video would be about 10 minutes and probably go through all the interesting hands of a single sit-n-go or maybe a montage of interesting hands from various sit-n-gos. They would mostly be my own play, but probably occasionally I'd get hand histories from some better known "guest players". What does anyone think of this idea? Would you be interested in seeing something like this?



Note: This video isn't me. This is just a random video I used as a sample. I'd expect much better picture quality.


On another matter, the U.S. Senate is Seeking to Ban Online Poker
PPA Phone March on Capitol Hill Scheduled for Sept. 12 (Today!)

Dear PPA Member:

Your urgent action is needed! On September 12th the Poker Players Alliance with the support of leading poker blogs and forums, PocketFives.com, Wicked Chops Poker and others are organizing a "Phone March" on Capitol Hill. From 9:00 AM Eastern Time, until 5:30 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 12th, we are asking all PPA members and anyone interested in defending poker to call this toll free number, 800-289-1136 and be patched through to one of your two U.S. Senators in Washington D.C. When you call the 800 number you will hear a recording from fellow PPA member Greg "Fossilman" Raymer and then you will be prompted to enter your five digit zip code so you can be directed, free of charge, to your Senators office.

Note: The 800 number will only be active between 9:00 AM EST and 5:30 PM EST on Tuesday September 12.

Key points you should make:


I am voter in your state.
I strongly oppose any legislation that would prohibit online poker, and urge the Senator to vote against such legislation.
Poker is a skill game enjoyed by 70 Million Americans.
The Senator should seek to regulate online poker much like the government regulates other forms of gaming, like lotteries.
Prohibitions dont work. Any legislation that tries to ban online poker will only drive those players underground.
Again, I urge the Senator to oppose any attempts to prohibit me from playing the great American game of poker on the Internet.

The threat to poker is real. Please forward this information to everyone you know who cares about poker and an Americans freedom to use the Internet. We need everyone possible to make their voice heard on September 12th!

Sincerely,

Michael Bolcerek
President
Poker Players Alliance

Is PokerStars the new PartyPoker?

Is PokerStars the new PartyPoker?

I was really blown away by my experience at PokerStars last night.

When I started playing online poker, I played PokerStars. At that time it was the biggest and best known. Then about a year and a half ago I started playing PartyPoker pretty much exclusively. At that time I still preferred PokerStars software, and cashouts are always very fast. Also, at that time I was playing mostly limit poker, and PartyPoker had rebuy bonuses and the games were definitely fishier.

Recently I withdrew a bunch of cash from PartyPoker, as my bankroll there had gotten bigger than I like to keep in one place (shameless brag). So last night I’m fooling around with Neteller, and on a whim decided to deposit a little money at PokerStars. I only played four little $11 Sit-N-Gos, but I was blown away. First, the play was absolutely atrocious compared to what I’ve seen recently at PartyPoker. In two of my games we were down to six players in the first round. People were pushing half their stacks in to steal $20 blinds, and no one had any clue about bet sizing. There was also a tendency to severely overvalue hands with people calling all-ins early with things like KJo. I ended up with two wins and a third out of four games.

That was the good news. The bad news was that PokerStars formerly great software was horrendous. It seemed really unstable and I lost connection a couple of times. These were problems I used to have with PartyPoker but that they seem to have mostly fixed.

As I said, this was the first time I’ve played PokerStars in quite awhile so I’m not sure if my experience last night was normal or not with regard to either the software or fishy play, but if you’ve been playing sit-n-gos at PartyPoker awhile, you might give PokerStars a shot.

The 3 most important things to remember in Sit-N-Gos

Today’s post is about something we all know. But it probably costs more sit-n-go players more money than anything else. The three most important things in profiting from small buy-in sit-n-gos are patience, patience, patience. I really believe any mediocre player can profit up to the $11s (heck, maybe even $22s) if he just remembers that early in the sit-n-go tight is right. Most of the time I remember, but occasionally I have a bad night and the importance of sit-n-go patience gets pounded back into my head to the tune of four or five straight wasted buy-ins like it did last night.

I’m not sure why but occasionally I boot up my computer to play and there I am:



Remember the Quik Rabbit? At the start of every commercial he’d say something like, “Patience is a virtue.” Then he’d put that straw in his mouth and, before he could help himself, he’d slurp down all that sludgy chocolaty goodness and be left with nothing. I’m not sure what turns me into the rabbit. Maybe it’s like Wallace & Grommet -- It’s the Curse of the Wererabbit! But I digress.

Chinese Proverb: One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life. This is definitely true in sit-n-gos. Equally wise is Benjamin Franklin’s quote -- "He that can have patience can have what he will." Maybe old Ben played sit-n-gos when he wasn’t chasing women or flying kites.

One final cliché and I’ll finish this rant. I forget who said it first but, “A tournament is never won in the first round, but it sure can be lost.” This is even more important in sit-n-gos where half the table are usually gambooling donks eager to beat each other’s brains in while you sit back and wait.

So here’s my new wallpaper. Think it'll help?