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.