I’m going to let you all in on my secret on how I win, that’s right, here it is, if you want to win a “sit n go” you need to remember my mantra..

“LET THE IDIOTS KNOCK THEMSELVES OUT!”

That’s it, I’m serious, sng’s aren’t about outplaying everybody every durn hand, it’s about survival and table image..

I play solid starting hands and I play them hard. If by the 3rd round you’ve voluntarily entered over 20% of the pots, your playing too loose PERIOD. Any hand that’s worth playing in an unraised pot, is worth raising in an unraised pot, if you cant raise with that mediocre crap, don’t play it. If I ever come into a hand not raising, there’s a good reason for it, I’ve got a crap hand but one that’s priced into a call in the blind because of the 7-1 or 5-1 odds I’m getting, that’s when I’ll play a 7-9 os or something like that, or when I’m disguising the strength of my hand because I got a lag I’m targeting in position, the rest of the time, I’m putting in 3-4x the blind raises and I’m showing quality hands. I know what your thinking, Wow, that’s so weak man, I’d walk all over you in your blind, yep you might, but I’m willing to bet your going to bust yourself in the process, because when I do go into a pot with you, your probably not going to like how it ends up, because if I’m seeing a river card, I’m probably already ahead in the hand or priced into an easy call on the turn to make a monster. I play tight, I play aggressive and I fold. That’s the key. I have more credibility than you, so I can steal more than you can, I’m more patient than you, so I will often be around longer giving myself a chance to get lucky, and when I do start pushing the table around, it’s because the table is begging me too, I love the bubble, because while everyone else is worrying about busting out of the money, this is when I start cementing first place by opening up and stealing pots, (remember I’m the guy that’s been showing quality hands the entire game, so when I raise in the later rounds, people notice and tend to give me more credit than my cards may truly deserve) and once I accumulate chips in 4th, I’m arming myself to go to the next level, while everyone else is concerned about surviving I’m nibbling away at the blinds and picking up lots of chips that I’ll need to keep pushing later on. Now that said, you have to be selective aggressive and you can’t just keep hammering on the same guy, even slow people tend to notice this after a while. Yes, you have to go after the sheep, and the easy money, but you also have to remember we are representing strong hands and we are going to get them equally, in other words, nibble away at all of them, just not the weakest one that always lets you do it, some people might find this weird, but I don’t want to bust that 4th guy out, I want him to stay in as long as he can, and keep my other 3 opponents chips stacks about equal, because the longer everyone is playing to avoid going busted, my lead will increase, which means when the 4th guy finally does gets out, people will go nuts because they are all short stacked, and they’ll start pushing with any cards with a point value of 20, any Ace, any Suited King. I want to be ready for this with lots of chips so I can afford to make a slip and double somebody up and still have a nice chip lead. I want you to play like a rock in the beginning and a shark in the end. If you’re going to make a bet that involves close to half your stack with more betting rounds to come, say 4th street, you should just go ahead and push; it’s all going in anyway since you’re now pot committed that raise might be just the edge you needed to win the pot uncontested. Trying to blind yourself into the money is almost always a sure fire way of not getting there.

That’s it.

To summarize, Play top 20 hands only until its 4 handed and as a rule come in raising, do not call big raises unless you’ve got a big hand, then you probably should just push if you have a big bet in front of you. Open up just slightly as the table shrinks, but just slightly, stay aggressive, DO NOT GET CAUGHT BLUFFING EARLY, (I think bluffing early is probably one of the biggest if not the biggest mistake most players make in a sng) Unless your going to quit bluffing at all and just capitalize off of it by getting paid off with your nut hands later, good luck with that, because I've actually won a tournament and the best hand I had the whole tournament was a pair of nines. So your much better off just playing solid and picking up blinds here and there.

When the table tightens up, you loosen up and capitalize off your table image, not huge all in’s, just standard 3x the blind raising, if you get action, make your standard continuation bet, (around ½ the pot) if that bet get’s called, you slow down and quit the hand unless you improve with a good draw or big pair. You want to be selective aggressive, if you feel the table opening up, you need to gear it down and play slightly tighter and pick a solid hand and go with it. Scared money rarely wins. Get in there and take over that table when it gets to 4 or 5 handed, and make everyone else play for 2nd. The key here is SELECTIVE AGGRESSION, you can’t steal every blind, and if you try, you’ll be the bubble boy.

That’s how I win an online SitNG. Live SNG’s are another similar but not quite so mechanical, so I play them somewhat differently. You can play a little more poker now, as you have much more information to work with about your opponents as you can now pick out the lags and fish and isolate them. In other words you open up quite a bit, and play a just slightly more passive pre flop in position and see if you can turn a big hand cheap. Oh yea, and when you have a big hand, out of position. Try to end the hand right there unless you’ve got AA or KK. Then proceed from there. Always re-raise at least a pot size bet pre flop out of position with big hands like AK or JJ to try to end it right there, unless your in there with a rock that wouldn’t enter the pot unless they had a top 5 hand.
I wont get into Squeeze plays, re-squeeze, re-steals, etc. fold equity, ICM, etc. Just play tight and be aggresive, the payout structure absolutely demands it. For more resources on playing tourneys, sign up for our forum, we have an entire topic area dedicated to tournament strategy along with great resources to help your game.

Caveat: This is a gross oversimplification of what goes on in my mind during most games, but usually at the lower stakes, all this over thinking is not neccesary, you can do well in most of the smaller games by just playing solid and not do anything silly like trying to bluff the fish. I hope to see you at one of our local home games soon if you are a tampa poker player or anywhere in the bay area!
Cash Games are much different than Tourney Games and in my opinion cash poker games are more complicated. In tournaments, many of your decisions can be based on math based scenarios versus probably hand ranges vs your opponent, this is often called Independent Chip Modeling and Basically comes down to stack sizes and projected players ranges in shoving/calling situations.


Caveat: This is a gross oversimplification of what goes on in my mind during most games, but usually at the lower stakes, all this over thinking is not neccesary, you can do well in most of the smaller games by just playing solid and not do anything silly like trying to bluff the fish. I hope to see you at one of our local home games soon if you are a tampa poker player or anywhere in the bay area! We will also be starting up poker leagues soon too!