Turbo Sit N Go Strategy 101

Part one of an ongoing series by guest contributor Phillip Wheaton

Today I’m going to begin writing down my thoughts as I reflect over the last few years of my personal experience playing Sit N Go’s at various sites such as Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars. I started out, like most players, participating in standard SNG tournaments but within a year found myself frustrated. What was I frustrated with? A few things actually:

• The pace of the game was simply too slow (duh)

• My hourly win rate was suffering

• There were always a few rocks at the table that I honestly had trouble playing with

So back in 2005 I began playing Turbo Sit N Go tournaments almost exclusively. In fact, taking a look at my Poker Crusher stats I’ve only played 19 standard SNG’s while playing 1,844 Turbo SNG’s ranging from $11 to $33 this year. My reasons for sticking with this format are pretty much what you’d expect after reading my reasons for leaving the old format SNG’s in the dust:

• The pace of the game was much quicker

• My hourly win rate is much more in line with expectations

• Far more players make mistakes at Turbo tables than standard tables

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So let’s talk about these last three points and break down the advantages of being a solid Turbo SNG player.

The pace of the game

The word turbo (for those that aren’t car savvy types) as it applies to Sit N Go tournaments means faster. More speed. More power. When I say “more power” I’m referring to the fact that as a Turbo Sit N Go expert (which you’ll soon be, right?) you have a LOT of power at the table. By working on the adjustments to your game in order to be a good Turbo SNG player, you’ll find that you wield quite a bit of power at the table. We’ll talk more about this in the third point.

With the faster pace of a Turbo table, you’ll complete more games per hour. Simple math, right? Yes and no. If you dive into these quicker events with no preparations you may just go broke just as quickly. With the quicker clock and the blinds rising accordingly you have to ensure you have made the proper adjustments for this game. As this series goes on, I’ll talk about these adjustments a fair bit.

Increasing your hourly win rate in Turbo Sit N Go’s

In a cash game, you can calculate an hourly win rate in terms of BB/Hour or “Big Blinds won per hour”. There are a few ways you can track winnings in a Sit N Go but we’ll dive into that later. What I want to emphasize here is that regardless of whether you break it down by hour, by number of buy ins, or just by watching your bankroll grow (I do hope you’re more scientific than that), you can earn more dollars more efficiently by focusing on Turbo tables.

When you add multi-tabling to the mix and are able to play 4, 8, or more tables simultaneously, you can really “turbo charge” things (like the play on words there?). We will also dive in the strategies and benefits of playing multiple tables in a later article.

Quicker pace means more mistakes

This is the double-edged sword of playing Turbo Sit N Go’s. With the rapid pace of the game you will see more players make more fundamental mistakes more often. So make sure that you don’t fall into this trap! Things such as playing too many hands, over betting pots, and chasing draws are magnified in a Turbo tournament because you will have less time to recover from these mistakes. Lose too many Big Blinds early and you may find yourself having to push marginal hands and/or draws to get back into the game. This isn’t good for your tournament survival, your bankroll, and it’s certainly not good for your morale as a poker player.

Again, I’ll talk more about specific strategies and how to adjust for a Turbo SNG later in this series. My primary goal here is make aware at a high level of the differentiators and have you commit these to memory. As your game progresses and you find yourself facing tougher opponents and higher stakes, the strategy that I teach you here will become infinitely more valuable.

In the next article, I’m going to talk more about the mistakes that players make and how you can avoid making these errors yourself. I’ll also talk about how to spot the players that are prone to these mistakes and how to punish them for it when you’re in a hand against them. Till then, Good Luck in the Fast Lane!

Phillip Wheaton is a small stakes winning Sit N Go player that plays daily on several sites.