sit and go poker strategy...

i don't agree with all the advice on what cards to play. you have to play cards according to what type of people are in ur SnG. for example, when playing with tight people i think it is more appropriate to play hands like suited conenctors and in a lot of cases call small raises with them

sit and gos are defiantly my downfall. they are so fun to play in yet i always seem to not be patient enogh. for some reason i just have to get all my chips in and thats when it hits, one spot out of the money.

ive bin playing online for a while now and what ive found is that everyone has their different strategies for sitngos and dependingn on how you use them they all seem to work....i have friends who i watch online and they all play different styles of poker but they all seem to win so my advice would be to play your game that you like to play and if you know what your doing you should be fine...

i believe the best sit and go strategy is to play tight and try to maximize your big hands.

pocket10s said:

ok, i've been playing low limit sit and go tournaments on party poker for alil over 2 years now and have my my fair share of money.

and i have to say, the "sit and go strategy" by Chris Moneymaker has to be the best system i have ever seen.

it incorperates every aspect of the game from the start of the game till there is only u and another left fighting for first and second place.

i saw this at http://pokervan.com/sng.htm .... a fairley new site (not all that great)

well jsut want to let you guys know about this strategy and u should try it out for urself.

if you choose to try this system.... REPLY WITH RESULTS PLEASE!!!

Click to expand...

good article man i have the same strat.

hi, ive been having trouble with sngos usually going out on the bubble.everyone gets so aggresive when its down to 4 i usually get a low stack waiting for a really good hand. i will start using this strategy hopefully it will help, thanks for posting it!

western_cj said:

ive bin playing online for a while now and what ive found is that everyone has their different strategies for sitngos and dependingn on how you use them they all seem to work....i have friends who i watch online and they all play different styles of poker but they all seem to win so my advice would be to play your game that you like to play and if you know what your doing you should be fine...

Click to expand...

western,

yea, sometimes it does not matter what
plan you play with; just that you have
a plan.
best,
donvci

Since I was asked to reply with results:

PokerStars, $6 (+$0.5), 9 player SNGs.
Place:
4
4
9
8
5
4
4
5
5
6
6
8

This strat isn't working for me, although I'm not sure why. I did suffer some seriously bad beats, but in general, I felt a lot of the times that I gave up good hands (AQs, etc) which could have made me money, and dumped tons of chips into having my QQ/KK beaten by a A-10-2 flop.

Or is a string of losses this long expected, and I should really just suck it up and keep at it?

Cheers,
-F

EDIT: "This" strat is the Chris Moneymaker one, linked at the top.

The Stars $6.50s are turbos if I remember rightly? You can't afford to be overly tight early on in these - with the blinds increasing so rapidly if you don't catch anything big you're just gonna get blinded out. I guess what's happening to you in most cases is you're not getting any premiums and you end up watching your stack slowly whittled away at until it gets ineffective and you have to make a move. What am I basing this on? The high number of 4ths/5ths. Anyway, #1 in that link doesn't really apply to turbos imo - play more drawing hands for cheap in late position if the table is loose, and focus on stealing blinds if the table is tight.

Also note that 12 SnGs is a really, really small sample size. It's possible you're just running bad I know I've had 12 out of money finishes in a row before, and I'm sure I've had close to 12 consecutive in the money finishes. That's luck and variance for you, (un)fortunately.

Yeah, I realize that 12 is a really small sample. True, these are turbos (I believe there are two regular 9-player SNGs among these), so perhaps I do need to be a bit more loose earlier on.

And, god, the 4 and 5s placements. I really wanted to safe it out to get in the money, but I decided to play more aggressively (for the win) to try it out. These consecutive losses took a decent bite in my bankroll. I'm usually in the money about 30% of the time (and win about 10% of the time), so maybe the way I play works as it does.

Anyway, maybe I'll take a few of the hands to the hand analysis forum and let you guys dig into me.

Something I did pick up from Moneymaker's strategy, though, is to not chicken out on post-flop raises and give opponents good pot odds on draws. That's something I need to work on. My other big weakness is getting enough money out of my winning hands, but that's a separate issue.

Btw, I'm new here - as you may have noticed. I've learned a lot from this site from the week that I've been here: Most importantly, that there's always more to learn.

Cheers,
-F

Okay, I looked through the big hands of these 12 tables, and invariably, I've overplayed a "weak" hand (KJo, A7s) or I've gone all-in with a mid pair (77, 99) and gotten beaten by QQ and TT.

Lesson learned: Don't overplay cards like KJ or Ax, and don't try to steal the pot with medium pairs unless I have the chips to afford getting called (keep in mind that these are all with 5-7 players at the table).

How's that?

Position is obviously important here. You can play KJ/77/etc aggressively on the button or cutoff if nobody's shown strength, but open raising with it UTG can be suicidal, as you have a much higher chance of running into a big hand with 8 people left to act than with 2 left. That said, as the table gets more shorthanded you have to increase the range of hands you'll play from any position. With 3-4 players, A3 UTG is a decent hand, with 9 players it's an instant fold.

One of the best pieces of advice I've heard regarding shorthanded play is, say if 5 people are left, you treat the game preflop as if it were a full 9 player game where the first 4 players to act have folded.

And yeah, post some hands if you want to - it's the easiest way to identify any obvious leaks. Don't post anything where you just got drawn out on, or where you had to push a decent hand with a shortstack and ran into a monster - that sort of stuff happens to us all and is unavoidable. Look for hands where you're not sure if your play was right, regardless of whether you won the pot or not.

It's hard to find a specific hand to deal with what I consider my largest problem: Playing short-handed (4-6 people left). The balance of being more aggressive vs. not overvaluing cards. I've played a few more SnGs now, and I'm starting to get a bit more comfortable with how to play them up until that point.

Here's a relatively typical example of what my problem is:

PokerStars Game #2533240589: Tournament #12332303, Hold'em No Limit - Level VI (100/200) - 2005/09/09 - 02:28:44 (ET)
Table '12332303 1' Seat #4 is the button
Seat 2: Player1 (3420 in chips)
Seat 4: Player2 (2360 in chips)
Seat 6: Me (3755 in chips)
Seat 8: Player3 (3965 in chips)
FPau: posts small blind 100
beaz1975: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Me [ ]
Player1: raises 400 to 600
Player2: folds
Me: raises 400 to 1000
Player3: folds
Player1: calls 400
*** FLOP *** [ ]

What actually happened was this:

Me: checks
Player1: bets 1000
Me: folds
Player1 collected 2200 from pot
Player1: doesn't show hand´

My fold once he bet felt like the right thing to do, but did I act somewhat correct pre-flop? How should I react to this particular flop? Blinds were being stolen left and right at this table, with the four of us left, otherwise I might have been more conservative in raising this particular hand. Perhaps I overraised it. Should I have folded preflop? Called?

Cheers,
--F

PS. Oh yeah, being that I'm new here, I'm not sure if there's an etiquette problem with posting hands outside of the hand analysis forum. I posted here because I wanted it in the context of what we were already talking about (and specifically how to continue where the Moneymaker strategy stops), but if that's rude, I apologize.

More conservative? I'd have gone all-in!

Certainly I think the fold after flop was correct. He may or may not have King, but you can be damn sure if you call him he will have. As I said, personally AQ I'd have gone all in. Player 1 raised, but that doesn't mean necessarily that he had better cards than you - there are a limited amount of hands that would come into that category and when table is down to 4, the likelihood decreases that someone will beat you. He'll either call or fold - if he calls and he's got KJ for example and hits King, then that's just bad luck.

Final stages of sit and go you cant construct hands, worry about pot odds etc. A call or raise is often so large you'll be pot committed so it's all-in time. AQ will be enough for me.

Maybe it's because of my 12-losses-streak that I'm a bit more careful than I should be when I risk being bubble boy. All-in does sound like the better option. I don't know, this really is the part of the game that I'm the most uncomfortable with.

On the topic of being careful and folding my way to being in the money, I was in chip lead with 5 remaining players three nights ago, when my WiFi-adapter died on me. I couldn't reconnect for over a day, but when I got back, sure enough, there in my inbox was an email from PokerStars congratulating me on my 3rd place.

F Paulsson said:

Maybe it's because of my 12-losses-streak that I'm a bit more careful than I should be when I risk being bubble boy. All-in does sound like the better option. I don't know, this really is the part of the game that I'm the most uncomfortable with.

On the topic of being careful and folding my way to being in the money, I was in chip lead with 5 remaining players three nights ago, when my WiFi-adapter died on me. I couldn't reconnect for over a day, but when I got back, sure enough, there in my inbox was an email from PokerStars congratulating me on my 3rd place.

Click to expand...

That is exactly the reason my notebook is hardwired to my router. My wife wanders the house with hers and checks mail, etc. I had a couple of disconnects as well when I played wireless so I do not any longer...

I'm on a business trip at the moment, and the hotel only offered wireless connections in the rooms. Disconnects are a bit too expensive, but in this case, I was amused that I managed to get in the money despite being disconnected with four other players still in the game.

FPaulsson, welcome to Cardschat and feel free to post any of these hands in the hand analyzation forum if you would like for some of us to go over them street by street and give advice. We really need to get that part of the forum going and new members like yourself who make dencent posts are always a welcome addition.

Thanks, Diablo, I appreciate it. I'll be sure to make good use of that forum, as I'm a big fan of analyzing and learning from my mistakes (and, heaven forbid, my good moves).

I'll get some hands posted when I get back home, I'm leaving Mexico in a few hours.

Cheers,
--F

Having given this strategy a few more nights of tests, I can now say fairly for sure that it isn't for me, or possibly isn't for the low buy-in SNGs that I play ($5 PokerStars). Early on, I can usually limp in with suited connectors for only the cost of the BB, and make a lot of money. Waiting for a top hand that may only come once before the blinds are chewing up 1/10th of my stack every round, only to have that hand do nothing but steal the blinds isn't working for me. I'm not sure where I go wrong, or if it's the room and crowd that aren't susceptible to this, but there you have it.

I did learn a lot from this thread, though, and I think trying this out has sharpened my play quite a bit. Especially when it comes to playing low-medium pairs and betting the flop when I have the best hand.

--F