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Lesson: 1
Sit N Goes Made Easy
Howard Lederer
March 14, 2005
The Sit N Go (SNG) is online poker's great gift to the aspiring
tournament player. Prior to the SNG, final table experience was
hard to come by. You could enter a dozen multi-table tournaments
and never find yourself at a final table. Or you could make one
or two, only to get knocked out in 8th or 9th place. Adapting to
an ever-diminishing number of players at a single table is a crucial
skill in tournament poker, and it's a hard experience to find offline
without investing a lot of time and money. Online, this experience
is a mouse-click away. The SNG's advantages are many. For starters,
it's low-cost, or even free. It's also fun, and convenient: You
don't need to schedule it -- a SNG starts every time the table fills
up -- and it's usually over in less than an hour. It is the flight
simulator of Final Table play, and mastering it should be considered
mandatory homework for the serious student.
Now that you know why you should play, let's look at how:
The most obvious difference between a SNG and a multi-table tournament
is that when someone goes broke in a SNG, there isn't someone waiting
to fill their spot. Multi-table play consists mostly of full-table,
ring game poker. But as players get eliminated from a SNG, the table
gets shorter- and shorter-handed. This reduction in players basically
serves to artificially raise the antes. For instance, say you are
playing five-handed and the blinds are 100-200: You are paying 300
in blinds for every five hands, or 60 per hand. As soon as someone
gets knocked out, you're four-handed. Now you're paying 75 per hand
-- a 25% increase -- despite the fact that the blinds have remained
the same. Accordingly, you're forced to gamble more, or risk getting
blinded out.
Since the size of the blinds relative to your stack size should
always play a major role in you hand selection, I recommend starting
out with pretty conservative starting hand requirements. This serves
two functions: First, the blinds dictate that you play fairly tight
early; the blinds are small and you are nine-handed, so they don't
come around as often. Second, this helps you establish a tight image,
which you hope will pay off later when the blinds are high and you
might really need a timely ante steal.
But there is another not-so-obvious reason to play tighter earlier
and looser later: The payout structure rewards tight play. Most
SNG's pay 50% to first, 30% to second, and 20% to third. This payout
structure dictates that you play for third. Why? Looking at the
payout structure another way might help. Basically, the payout means
that 60% gets awarded once you are down to three players, 20% gets
awarded when you get down to two players, and the final 20% gets
awarded to the winner. If you can just get to third, you get at
least one-third of 60% of the prize pool, or 20%. You've locked
up a profit, and you have a chance to win up to 30% more. It's only
now that you're in the top three that your strategy should take
an abrupt turn. Now it pays to gamble for the win. Let's look at
the numbers again: 60% of the prize pool is off the table, and moving
up one spot is worth only another 10%. But move up just one more
spot and it's worth a whopping 30% extra -- that's three times more
for first than it is for second. And with the blinds going up, gambling
for the win is even more clearly the correct play.
I see many players employ a nearly opposite strategy. They figure
they have nothing to lose, so they go for the quick double-up early.
They take chances too soon when, in their view, there's "nothing
on the line". Then, once they're in the money, they tighten
up, thinking about that extra payout for moving up a spot. If you
start to rethink your SNG approach and adopt a "slow early,
fast late" strategy, you will see an almost immediate improvement
in your results.
Best of luck and see you at the tables,
Howard Lederer
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