6 handed SNG strategy

If you’ve played online poker for more than a few hours, then you’ve likely seen the “6 Max” or short handed tables available at sites such as Full Tilt Poker or PokerStars. While this format is rarely offered at live casinos, it’s common to see it available at many online poker sites. Everything about this format lends itself to action and speed. If your style is an aggressive one, then these types of tables may be the perfect fit for you. So in this article we’re going to discuss the primary strategies that you should employ if you’re playing at these tables. You can see a quick impact to your game by only adopting one of these Sit N Go tactics, master them all and the sky’s the limit.

Hit ‘em hard and fast

The blinds at a 6 Max table come at you at a very rapid pace so aggressiveness is definitely the correct play overall. For starters, you will often have the opportunity to “buy the button”. This means that even if you’re second to act in this situation, an aggressive raise may cause the players to your left to fold. If the blinds decide to call your raise and see a flop, you will still have the benefit of being last to act so you’ve essentially “bought the button”. If the blinds check to you, a continuation bet is mandatory here. If you’re check-raised then you will clearly need to evaluate where you are in the hand and react accordingly. In most cases however, you may well take down the pot in this situation. Being successful in these situations will have a tremendous impact on your long term results, especially if you’re a Turbo SNG player.

Tight is right - but not at this table

Many newer players will adopt a tight-aggressive style based on what they’re read in books, etc. This will almost certainly put a dent in your bankroll if you’re playing 6 Max tables. The blinds are coming at you much quicker than if you were seated at a full ring game with 9 or 10 players. If you were to sit and wait for premium hands and fold to small raises when you’re in the blinds, you’re going to look down soon and realize that you’ve lost 10 or more blinds in the process. This isn’t the way to manage a bankroll so to combat that you must play “smart - aggressive” poker. Smart meaning that, just as the example above illustrates, know when to fold’em and when to continue being aggressive. Aggressive is just that: bet, bet, and bet some more. Trusting your reads and playing accordingly is a vital piece of this puzzle, so make sure you’re able to adjust your style when you sit down at one of these tables.

Check-raising to show strength

The check-raise is a powerful weapon in poker; it signals that you wanted your opponent to bet so that you could punish him or her after they make a bet. At a short-handed table this will very often get an opponent off of a draw or small pair. Being selective as to when you use this move can pay big dividends. Make sure that you switch gears when using this move and you’ll keep your opponents guessing. Check-raise that four flush draw on the flop, check-raise that middle pair that you just hit, check-raise when you have complete air but feel that your opponent will fold their middle pair or ace high hand. These are all solid examples of how to make the check-raise work to your benefit.

Summary

These are only a few tips that you should begin to employ when you’re playing any short-handed game. If you’re a standard ring game type player then you should make sure that you’re able to switch gears when you sit down at this table. The biggest danger to your bankroll is thinking that a six-handed table is going to play the same as a 9-10 handed table. So take these tips and work on implementing them into your game, read more strategy articles on this topic and before long you should begin to see very solid results.

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.

Tracking your Sit n Go win rate

If you’re not currently tracking your win rate in tournament Sit and Go events, you should start. Today. Seriously, if you’re here reading our Sit n Go strategy articles and you’re looking to earn a decent long-term profit you have to track your win/loss rate somehow. Whether it’s a cool looking chart, a program such as Poker Office, or just a simple spreadsheet, you must track this important metric. The benefit to knowing “where you are” in terms of total winnings and cash out percentages will become a major part of your overall strategy. Even if you’re a casual player there are advantages to keeping track of this if you play more than a few SNG’s a week.

The benefits of using automated software such as Sit N Go Shark are numerous and run far beyond just tracking Sit n Go play. Both of these applications are capable of importing your complete hand histories from multiple sites and much more. From how well you play in middle position when holding pocket Jacks to how effective your steal attempts from the button are all tracked seamlessly. Both packages have their merits so if you’re interested, please visit their respective site and let us know what you think.

Back to tracking your win/loss rate - This is a no brainer once you start playing seriously. If you don’t have a good grasp on where you are at each buy-in level, type of game, and number of seats, then you’re going to have a hard time being successful. Take the time to review your play and analyze each win and each loss (perhaps more important than the wins). This information will help you choose the best game to play, whether 6 or 10 man events are your strong area, and what buy-in is appropriate for  your current level of play.

Most importantly, this will help you develop a habit of reviewing your play and making the small adjustments that are important as you mature as a player. Having this information on demand and up to date will become a vital part of your overall Sit and Go strategy. So take this information and soak it all up, take it in bits and pieces as it’s a lot to absorb at one time. As time passes, you may well see your win rate improve drastically. After all, you ARE tracking those win/loss rates by now, right?

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