Written By: PokerSite.org
If you’re new to online poker, one of the best games to play are sit and go tournaments. Unlike a cash game, you can only lose your initial buy-in, and sit an go’s provide great experience that will help you as you start entering bigger tournaments. If you get good at sit and go tournaments you’ll be able to make some pretty consistent money, because there isn’t that much variation in sit and go’s. The structure is always the same, so if you have a system for the early stages, middle stages, and late stages, you’ll be in great shape. Here is some advice that will help you while playing sit and go’s:
|
SPECIAL POKERSTARS OFFER – 100% new player bonus up to $600 FREE! Bonus Code: Stars600 …..Marketing Code: PSP2175 |
.
Early Stage Sit and Go Strategy
The early stages of a sit and go entail the very start of the tournament until the blinds reach the fourth level. During the early stages, blinds really will have no effect on your starting stack, so it is a time to see a few cheap flops and try to make a big hand. I advocate playing a lot of suited connectors or small pocket pairs, especially if the pot isn’t raised preflop. If you can get in for only 20 chips when you have the potential to win 3,000, you need to take advantage of that opportunity. In these situations, you should only enter the pot if it’s very cheap (unraised or a 3x the blind raise) and there are a few other players involved. That gives you the best odds to make a big hand and get paid off on it.
When you have a solid hand preflop during the early stages, you have to play it fast. I recommend raising the blinds 5x-6x when you have a hand like KK or AQ suited because a 3x raise won’t scare anyone away. If the flop is favorable to your hand, make sure you fire out a continuation bet (1/2 the size of the pot to the full size of the pot) to protect your hand and force out weak draws. Basically, during the early stages you don’t want to take any big risks, and want to look for easy spots to double up.
Middle Stage Sit and Go Strategy
Once you reach the middle stages, a few players should already be eliminated, and there will probably be 6-8 players remaining. At this point blinds start to have a noticeable effect on your stack, but it’s not bad enough that you should feel pressured to steal blinds. You want to tighten up a little bit here, and not play so loose with the suited connectors and pocket pairs. However, when you have a big hand you need to stay aggressive, and really jam the pot preflop.
If you have a hand like KK and there is a preflop raise, you should definitely be re-raising here and not trying to slow play. Any big pots will put your whole stack at stake, so you don’t want to go out because you let someone come in with 67 suited and bust your big pair. Also, the continuation bet is still a solid move on the flop after you made a preflop raise, so stick with that.
During the middle stages, the only thing that really changes is that you should throw out the suited connectors and small pairs preflop unless there are multiple players in for only the big blind. Also, since the blinds are bigger your standard raise with a big pocket pair should be more like 4x instead of the 5x-6x I mentioned before.
Late Stage Sit and Go Strategy
At this point there should only be 3-5 players remaining, and the blinds are big enough that they’re taking a sizeable part of your stack every round. Also, antes are now in effect, which is another reason you need to loosen up. During the late stages your best weapons are the steal and re-steal, which are both preflop plays used to take advantage of passive players. Since you’re very near the money, players will be tightening up to try to squeak in, and that is a bad decision.
Whenever you’re on the button or the cutoff (the seat on the right of the button) you should be considering stealing if the hand is folded to you. Make a steal attempt by making a small raise (about 2.5x) when everyone has folded to you while you’re on the button or cutoff. The reason we make the raise so small is because if players are going to fold to a raise, 2.5x should accomplish it, but if they are going to re-raise, you only lose 2.5x as opposed to 4x.
Also, make sure that you realize other players will be doing the same thing. If you’re in the big blind, and one player continually makes raises on the button when the hand folds to him/her, you should re-steal once in a while to defend your blind. To re-steal, just make a re-raise of 3x-4x the initial raise. Good luck!
Mike Wittmeyer is the owner of PokerSite.org, which ranks the best online poker sites and offers a great bonus for Aced.com Poker.