Sit and Go Strategy Part I

By: Guy Downs
Netbettor.com

Here we’ll look at some of the basic concepts involved in proper Sit and Go tournament play. In the next installment of this two-part series we’ll explore some additional ideas that should help to improve your results.

One nice thing about Sit and Go’s—and, for that matter, all tournament play—is the fact that a player can usually expect strong results after only having mastered a couple critical ideas. Here we’ll look at three of those concepts, and explore how they should inform your play.

Concept 1—Don’t ‘gamble’ early on the tourney.

What we mean by this is that you shouldn’t go all in, or commit the majority of your chips, on those hands where you believe you only enjoy a marginal edge. This is because the best thing that can happen if you win is that you double up, while the worst thing that can happen is that you bust out. If you bust out, you’ve lost your buy-in. But if you double up, you haven’t guaranteed yourself of doubling your money (i.e., coming in third).

Consider this- we each put twenty bucks in the pot, and we agree to flip a coin for the full forty bucks. In a case like this we’ll both expect to break even over time, since half the time I’ll lose, and half the time I’ll double my money. Make sense? Of course it does. But now let’s extend this logic to a Sit and Go. For example, let’s say it’s the second hand of the tournament and you have 7c 7d. It’s folded to you, you raise to $50, and now the next guy goes all in. All fold to you. Now, because of some quirk in the software, your opponent’s cards are exposed and you see he has the As Ks. Even though you’re a mathematical favorite to win the hand, you’re only favored by a few percentage points. Thus, you’re basically in a ‘coin flip’ situation. Which means you should fold, even though you know you’re a favorite. Why? Because if you lose you’re guaranteed of losing your buy in, but if you win and double up you’re not guaranteed of doubling your money since you could still bust out before you finish third. Thus, even though you’ll win about half the time, you’re not getting ‘even money’ or better on your bet, which makes calling here a –EV play.

Situations like this come up all the time in these tourneys, and you’ll be doing yourself a huge favor if you learn to spot them. Another example would be flopping top pair with a good-but-not-great kicker (e.g., holding AJ on an A96 flop, or JT on a T75 flop) when an opponent who has at least almost as many chips as you moves all in. As long as you still have most of your original chips left in front of you it’s usually a good idea to get away from these hands and look for a better spot for your money.

Concept 2—So long as you have a decent sized stack, and the blinds haven’t yet escalated, don’t be afraid to take flops with some marginal hands—especially in late position.

One problem that winning limit players have in the tourneys is that they don’t take enough flops when the pot hasn’t been raised. In a normal ring game you wouldn’t limp in on the button with a hand like A7o, or Q6s or 74s, even if only a couple players have yet entered the pot. But in a no limit Sit and Go’s these types of hands are usually worth taking a flyer on if you’re in the cut off or on the button. The reason for this can be seen in the fact that you’re getting huge implied odds before the flop—which means you can get away from your hand if you miss the flop, but can often double through if you hit the flop hard. With a hand like 6h 3h, you’re only paying ten or fifteen bucks to see the flop. But if you get all the flop (by flopping two pair, a straight, or trips) you can frequently bust one of your opponents. Another bonus is that if everyone misses the flop you can often steal it with a small bet (by which we mean a bet that’s sized at about ½ to ¾ of the pot). To borrow from Vince Lombardi—‘in limit poker the button is everything; in no-limit it’s the only thing’. Position is so important in no limit that you can take flops with all kinds of wacky hands on the button provided that it doesn’t cost you much (relative to your stack size) to call.

Concept 3- Get aggressive in the middle stages of the tournament.

As the tournament progresses the size of the blinds begins to become significant. This means that it becomes essential to take some risks, since you simply can’t wait around for the nuts. So long as your stack is at least moderately sized, you should be making more than your share of blind-steal attempts, even with hands that wouldn’t appear to warrant it. Of course you can’t try this if someone else has already limped in, but so long as everyone has already folded you shouldn’t be afraid to take a shot at the blinds with some fairly weak hands (for example, hands like J8s, or 97s, or K9o). When the tournament gets into the middle and late stages, most players make the mistake of folding too much in the blinds. When the tournament gets into the late stages this phenomenon no longer exists, since you’re usually down to four handed (or less) and everyone is ‘on the lookout’ for blind steals. But in the middle stages most players are still entertaining dreams of sneaking into the money, which means they don’t want to lock horns with crappy hands. Obviously you’ll have to pattern you blind-steal play after your opponents—if they’re loose cannons, for example, you can often just wait around and break them once you catch a real hand. But the typical Sit and Go player starts getting real risk averse after about five orbits or so, which allows you to help yourself to their blinds.

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