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.