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.

Day 4 update from the WPT Doyle Brunson Classic Championship

With a name suitable for a poker player, Benjamin Straate (pronounced “straight”) is the leader heading into day 5 of the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Classic Championship. The field started off with over 50 players and many big name professionals were still in the hunt when the cards hit the felt. One interesting match up earlier in the event saw just one seat separating Clonie Gowen and Howard Lederer at the same table. Since Clonie is suing Howard’s company, Full Tilt Poker, one may have expected fireworks. Fortunately, there were none as Howard hit the rail long before Clonie. In fact, Clonie is still very much in the hunt with just over a million chips.

Heading into Day 5 the chip counts are as follows:

1st: Benjamin Straate (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), 3,197,000
2nd: Brett Richey (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), 2,164,000
3rd: Justin Young (Morehead City, North Carolina), 1,807,000
4th: Evan McNiff (San Diego, California), 1,532,000
5th: Mike Matusow (Las Vegas, Nevada), 1,435,000
6th: Jack Wu (Palo Alto, California), 1,412,000
7th: Amnon Filippi (New York, New York), 1,374,000
8th: Steve Sung (Torrance, California), 1,359,000
9th: Robert Mizrachi (Las Vegas, Nevada), 1,266,000
10th: Hoyt Corkins (Glenwood, Alabama), 1,251,000
11th: Chino Rheem (Las Vegas, Nevada), 1,200,000
12th: Clonie Gowen (Dallas, Texas), 1,049,000
13th: Tom Pniak (Las Vegas, Nevada), 1,041,000
14th: Bill Klein (Laguna Hills, California), 999,000
15th: Ben Tollerene (Lubbock, Texas), 492,000
16th: Nick Schulman (Las Vegas, Nevada), 480,000
17th: Joe McGowan (Las Vegas, Nevada), 420,000
18th: Martin Deknijff (Las Vegas, Nevada), 298,000

WSOP Academy Announces Cash Game Academy

Despite popular public perception, poker players don’t make their living from paydays in tournaments, its typically earned over many grueling hours in cash games. A classic example is Bobby’s Room at Bellagio, which isn’t a tournament area at all, its strictly reserved for those participating in high stakes cash games only.

In light of this fact, the World Series of Poker Academy has announced a new style of poker camp, which it has named Cash Game Academy. The two day events will give players an intensive poker training focused solely on No Limit Hold’em cash game play. All levels of poker players are welcome and will give them the important foundation and tools they will need to be consistent, successful cash game players.

The first of these events will take place on January 24-25 at Harrah’s Atlantic City. Two weeks later the World Series of Poker Academy will make a stop in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace on February 7-8. Instruction at both events will come from poker pros Mark Seif, Paul Wasicka and Alex Outhred amongst other instructors at the Atlantic City event and Seif, Outhred and Michael Gracz lined up for the Las Vegas event.

The cash game curriculum will consist of in-depth seminars, live play workshops, video analysis and a cash game competition over the two days. A few of the topics being focused on is development of reading ability, transition from tournament play to cash game play, putting opponents on hand ranges, bankroll management and sophisticated plays and strategies specific to cash game play. Further driving the message home, each event will offer video analysis of cash game play with instructors dissecting players hands and situations then discussing alternative lines of play.

The grand finale of the Cash Game Academy will feature players competing against their fellow World Series of Poker Academy classmates to determine who made the most correct decisions as well as who managed their bankroll the best during the simulated cash game. The lucky winner will receive an all expense paid trip to Caesars Palace Las Vegas to participate in the World Series of Poker Academy Tournament of Champions, which is scheduled to take place just before the Main Event of the 2009 World Series of Poker.

Tuition for both of the Cash Game Academies is $1,899 and space is limited. Both events are expected to sell out in advance.

Full Tilt Poker Revealed as the Owner of Rival Domain Names

It has been recently revealed that Full Tilt Poker is the owner of many rival domain name variations as well as those of popular poker players. Two of the most notable rival domain names are those of Absolute Poker and Hollywood Poker. Full Tilt owns ansolutepoker.com which is a typo from the Absolute Poker domain name and in fact, the b and n keys are next to each other. Hits to the website have gone through the roof recently after stories of the UB/Absolute Poker cheating scandal was exposed by 60 Minutes and its associated newspaper article in the Washington Post.

Also on Full Tilt’s list of domain names is hallywoodpoker.com which is also one letter off from the popular domain, Hollywood Poker. The front man for the online poker site is World Poker Tour host Vince Van Patten and does not accept customers from the United States.

Several sponsored pros of other online poker rooms also have their domain names owned by Full Tilt. The domain name adamlevypoker.com is on Full Tilt’s list though Levy is a member of Ultimate Bet’s Star Players Team. Grant Hinkle, a member of Team Bodog and one half of only the second pair of brothers ever to win World Series of Poker bracelets has granthinklepoker.com owned by Full Tilt. Another domain that redirects to Full Tilt’s website is andreakkaripoker.com, Akkari is a member of Team PokerStars Pro along with Victor Ramdin who’s domain victorramdinpoker.com is a redirect to Full Tilt.

Several players are mentioned in the list and are not yet Full Tilt sponsored pros though their domain names are already taken. They are Joe “LatestLines2″ Ward, Terrence Chan (he finished second in a Six-Handed No Limit Hold’em event in the 2007 World Series of Poker), 2008 Poker Stars World Championship of Online Poker champ Carter “ckingusc” King and Matt Matros, who took home third place money in the 2004 WPT Championship and author of a popular Internet poker blog.

The depth of Full Tilt’s intentions is unknown at this time but it appears it’s simply a ploy to capitalize and perhaps “tap the glass” a little. Particularly in the case of some of their competitors such as Absolute Poker and Hollywood Poker.

Cereus Poker blocks Kentucky residents from sites

The CEREUS Poker Network, which was formed last week from Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, has opted to make a stunning move by blocking players in Kentucky from accessing either site. The state’s Governor, Steve Beshear, is seeking to seize 141 Internet gambling domain names which also includes both of the CEREUS rooms.

Early Monday morning, Kentucky players on Absolute Poker received an email stating,

“We regret to inform you that, effective immediately, AbsolutePoker.com is no longer available to Kentucky residents. This means that you will not be able to access our website and software from within the state boundaries of Kentucky.”

A link to the site’s cashier and email support were also provided. A similar email was also sent to Ultimate Bet players. At this time, online poker rooms such as PokerStars, Full Tilt and Bodog are still accepting business from players in the state of Kentucky.

CEREUS’ move to eliminate business from Kentucky follows a similar move by sites on the Merge Gaming Network as well as Cake Poker. The source of the issue comes from an ongoing legal battle between the Secretary of the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet and the owners of 141 Internet gambling domain names. Joe Brennan, CEO of the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association said, “Pulling out of the Kentucky market, especially in advance of the December 12th hearing, means that they are bowing to Kentucky’s demands without going to the hearing. The seizure hearing has been stayed by the Court of Appeals, so there’s no reason for them to leave. Doing anything in advance of the December 12th hearing is premature.”

A three judge Appeals Court panel will meet on that date to decide the fate of the 141 Internet gambling domain names. Judge Thomas Wingate, a circuit court judge, handed down a decision on October 16th stating, “Any of the 141 defendants… who, on or before 30 days from this Opinion and Order, installs the applicable software or device… which has the capability to block and deny access to their online gambling sites… shall be relieved of the effects of the Seizure order.” In layman’s terms, if a site disallows users from the State of Kentucky from playing online, they will be relieved of any wrongdoing.

A final forfeiture hearing was originally scheduled for December 3rd but that date has since been changed because the Court of Appeals will hear the case nine days later. When asked why Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, both owned by parent company Tokwiro, would opt to pull out of the market, Brennan said, “The only thing I can think of is that it’s an extreme reaction to the press that they’ve gotten from 60 Minutes and the Washington Post.”