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.

Playing Out of Position in Sit N Go Tournaments

Sit N Go‘s provide a very unique situation in terms of tournament poker. For the most part everything in a Sit N Go takes place in about an hour or so, even quicker for a Turbo SNG. One thing you will notice is that you need to be well versed in how to handle a lot of situations. Because of the volatile nature of Sit N Go’s you must be able to deal with being in bad situations a lot. Sit N Go’s don’t really favor any one player and sometimes you’ll find your self in crappy situations all the time. One of the more common situations is being out of position. This article will address how to best handle situations where you are out of position and help you make the most of them.

Who are you up against?

If you find yourself out of position and with a lot of money on the line, or the potential to have a lot of money on the line, you have to seriously consider what players are remaining or who is contesting for the pot. Playing out of position against good or great players is very difficult and you should rarely, if ever, do it. The point then here is that you need to quickly try and identify your opponent’s style so you know how to handle them when you run into tough situations. Here are a few quick pointers:

· If you have a lot of chips and you find yourself out of position against what you perceive to be just a fair or poor player, then it is okay to take a chance and attempt to outplay them. Essentially eliminate position as a factor by making them put their chips at risk. I’ve found the starting chip structure at a new site called Aced is perfect for playing big stack poker.
· If you find yourself against a good player, or a hand that you are less than fond of, then this is clearly a bad situation and you again can eliminate position as a factor by simply folding the hand!
· Playing out of position with excellent hands is much easier to manage. The main considerations are as to how you can extract the most money from your opponents while taking the disadvantages of position into account. Check and raise is a viable strategy but don’t overdo it. Another alternative is an obvious over bet that a savvy opponent will respond to.

Starting hand selection is gravely important

When you are out of position it is critical that you enter the pot with only the best hands. Obviously late in the tournament you will need to be less selective and play more hands to win, but you need to keep all things relative. In early position or out of position, even though you are playing more hands late in the tournament, the speculative hands you play out of position should be less speculative than the hands you play in late position. For example, it would be okay to come in for a raise in late position with QT suited however if you were out of position, you would want to consider a stronger hand such as KQ suited. Remember, these are late tournament examples. In the beginning of a Sit N Go, its okay to generally play tight and especially tight when out of position.

The main thing to remember when playing out of position in a Sit N Go is how can you either minimize your losses or maximize your gains. Usually playing out of position can be fairly clear-cut in Sit N Go tournaments but you ultimately have to remember one thing. Unless you are playing against complete nincompoops you usually will be at a disadvantage when out of position and either your chips or cards are going to have to make up for the difference!

Try the great Sit N Go structure they offer at Aced, I’ve really enjoyed playing there for the last few weeks.

Short handed Turbo SNG strategy

As we know, Turbo Sit and Go tournaments are the same as your standard SNG, except for the fact that the time it takes for the blinds to move up is shorter. So aside from the fact that these games run a lot quicker than your average tournament, are there any other differences in the overall game play and strategy?

When it comes to strategy, the fact that the games run more quickly should make quite a big difference in your approach to the game. A lot less time is spent deep stacked, and so a lot of the tournament involves you having to play short-stack poker to survive.

When you are short-stacked in no limit Texas Hold em, it leaves you with a lot less room for maneuvering during hands. So whereas when you have a larger stack you can make a variety of plays to set yourself up for bigger wins further down the line, with a short stack you have to make every decision based on the most mathematically profitable factors in each individual situation. So basically, each hand is win or lose, and there is going to be very little in between.

To play successful short-stack poker, you have to stick to playing the big cards. You do not have enough chips to be able to play mediocre hands like suited connectors, as you are not going to have the winning hand enough times to make them profitable. By only playing premium hands, you are drastically increasing your chances of winning each hand, as opposed to pushing your money in and hoping to get lucky.

The sort of hands you want to play are big aces and high pocket pairs. Your starting hand requirements should loosen as your stack size decreases, but generally hands like AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK, AQ and AJ are primarily the ones that you are after. When things start to get a little desperate, you can start to play with other hands like KQ, AT, KJ and so on.

Another important point to remember is that you lose all ability to push your opponents off a hand when your stack becomes less than 5 times the size of the big blind. This because your opponents are going to have the odds to call you almost regardless of what they might be holding, so the chances are that you are going to need to get lucky to win. Therefore, you should avoid letting your stack to fall so low, and be prepared to push in and use the size of your stack to win pots, even though you might not be holding a big enough hand.

As far as short stack strategy goes, these are the basics in playing a profitable turbo Sit and Go tournament.

It is important to remember that due to the high speed nature of these tournaments, luck is going to play a much bigger factor than it would in your standard tournament. With each of the all-in races, you really need to have some luck on your side in order to win a turbo Sit and Go.

However, over a large enough time-scale, there is no reason why you can’t play these tournaments profitably. You will lose tournaments even if you play perfectly, but if you play enough of them you should be able to show a profit by the end of it. My advice is to play as many as you can, and to not let the losses dishearten you. The key to winning turbo poker tournaments is to get the basics right and play as many of them as you can.

Turbo SNG Tournament Short-Stack Strategy

In some of the turbo sit and go tournaments that you play you’re going to get burned in a hand in the early stages and you’re going to be the short stack at the table. Now if you’re playing at Poker Stars everyone starts with 1500 chips, so I consider myself to be short stacked when I’m around 800 chips. Once you get to 800 chips or less you need to start sitting and not playing any cards until you get an all-in hand.

The short stack isn’t where you want to be early in a tournament, but the good thing is there is plenty of time to recover your tournament still. You only need to come in the top three in a nine player sit and go tournament which means you can still do that from the short stack. A lot of the players will be prone to calling your all-in to try and get you out once you do go all-in as well which is why you need to wait for your monster hand.

If you’re playing on a tight table then you might be able to steal the blinds with your short stack all-ins for a little while as well to build your stack back up. When I’m short stacked I try and steal the blinds once every time around the table so that it pays for my blinds. Then I sit and wait until I get a monster hand and either slow play or push all-in and try to double up.

There are instances where you’ll get burned and lose with your monster hand, but this doesn’t happen the majority of the time so you can’t regret the play. As long as you’re winning the hand when you get the chips into the pot you should feel about the play you made. If you happen to get outdrawn then you basically got burned, which happens a lot in poker and you’ll need to get used to it. You aren’t going to win every tournament, but when you’re short stacked don’t give up. You shouldn’t give up until all your chips are gone and you’ve been eliminated.

Weird things can happen on the poker table and I’ve seen many people catch up from the short stacked position in the past and win the tournament. You’ll need to play a much firmer hand selection and you’ll also need to take some calculated risks when it’s time to steal blinds, but if you play the cards right you still have a chance of winning. Remember you don’t even need to win, you just need to hold off from being eliminated until the final three. Hopefully you don’t need to play the short stack position to often, but it will happen so make sure you’re prepared to play as needed for your position.

Tips for Playing Pocket Pairs

Pocket pairs are dealt to a player approximately once every eighteen hands in Texas Holdem, but when you do get them you need to know how to play them to maximize their value. Not all pocket pairs are great and some of them will usually cost you money rather then making you money. You need to play certain pocket pairs differently then other pocket pairs and we’ll look at which approach you should take for each one. You’re usually going to be a favorite when you have a pocket pair, but there is a potential for being behind in the hand before the flop so be careful with low pockets. We’ll now look at some tips you can use for playing certain pocket pairs.

Low Pocket Pairs – 2′s to 7′s

When you have low pocket pairs, which I consider to be anything from pocket twos to pocket sevens you need to be cautious. You usually won’t win these hands unless you win it before the flop, which is your best bet. If you’re in an early position then you should throw out a raise in hopes you take the pot down right now, if someone calls you then you want to hit a set. If you don’t hit a set and the board is all high then your opponent probably hit a higher pair. You could try bluffing at this point, but you might just want to see if your opponent comes out betting. Low pocket pairs are best to see the flop for cheap and then fold if you don’t hit your set. If you think the opponent is bluffing then you could go for it, but you’ll need to determine that based on how the player has been playing at the table.

Middle Pocket Pairs – 8′s to 10′s

Middle pairs are a lot more solid then low pairs and hold up a lot more times then low pockets do. You should play these little more aggressively than low pockets as sometimes the flop will be all cards lower then your pair. You might also hit a set on the flop or have straight options, which could assist you in winning the hand. When you’re low on chips you might want to decide to throw the rest of your chips in the pot before the flop with your middle pocket pair.

High Pocket Pairs – Jacks to Aces

When you’re blessed with high pocket pairs you need to determine whether you should slow play them or raise heavy. I tend to raise about four times the big blind so that the junk folds. Sometimes everyone will fold and you will win a small pot, but most times at least one player will call you. Once the flop comes, if you feel safe about being in the lead then you need to slow play and let your opponent bet into you. If they don’t then I would advise you to make a bet on the turn and either win the pot or find out where you stand. High pocket pairs can be broken and you need to remember that they aren’t guaranteed hands.

As you can see you need to play certain pocket pairs differently then other pocket pairs. It’s important that you don’t fall in love with every pocket pair you get because a lot of them can be broken easily by higher pairs, straights and flushes. So watch out when you do get your pocket pairs and try minimizing your risks and maximizing your value.