Complete SnG Strategy

The trick to consistently win 9-man Sit n Go games is to adjust your playing style as the tournament progresses. Due to the constantly changing structure in SnGs you will need to continually adapt to keep the edge over your opponents, but do this correctly and you will be finishing in the money over and over again.

Getting Through the Early Stages

Surrounded by fish going all-in every other hand?

At low stakes Sit and Go games this will happen very often, which is a great thing! The more players who knock each other – the closer you get to finishing in the money. So, what do you do?

Leave them to it.

The best strategy for the early stages of a Sit n Go tournament is to play tight, very tight! At this stage you will have many fish going all-in, often with very weak hands. These players normally have no strategy behind them and its best to stay back for now and let them knock each other out.

So for now, your main aim is simply to survive, fold 95% of your hands and only play premium hands.

When you do hit a premium hand (JJ, QQ, KK, KAs, AA) you need to play very aggressively. Pre-flop you should be raising by at least 6x the big blind. A lot of new players will slow play these hands by min-betting or even just calling these hands. Do NOT do this! In these situations you want to isolate your opponents and avoid multi-way pots so that you can minimise the risk of someone overtaking you with a weaker hand. Post-flop you should be looking to continue bet for value and get as many chips as possible out of your opponent.

As the blinds increase, this strategy will no longer be feasible and you will drastically have to change your starting hands range and betting patterns.

The Middle Stages

By now the table should be down to around 6 players, the skill level will be getting slightly higher and your getting ever closer to the money. This stage is often overlooked, but it is essential you make the correct decisions here to get yourself in a strong position ready for the late game.

In this stage we must start getting more aggressive as the blinds will be making more of an impact on our stack. You can no longer afford to sit back and wait for premium hands as the blinds will eat into your stack far too quickly. Instead you must make use of two main strategies.

• Steal the blinds.

Blind stealing is very important now that the blinds are getting larger in relation to your stack. At this point you need to make the most of your hands when you are in late position. Typically when your on the button you want to be raising 3BB or 4BB with a very wide range of hands to take the blinds without having to see the flop. A successful steal will then cover your costs for a whole cycle of the table and so providing you with more time to find a good hand to play.

Although, be very wary of a re-raise. Calling these will put you in a very tricky situation post flop and will have a large impact on your stack size.

• Double Up

Here the aim is to re-raise with a strong hand (preferably a high pair) after someone has already bet. By doing this you have two ways to win the pot. Either they will be trying to steal the blinds and will very likely fear your bet – leading them to fold or if they call, there’s a very strong chance of you having a stronger hand than them allowing you to take their stack.

The middle stages will normally be over very quickly, so don’t take too many risks.

Late Stages – Go For The Win!

There should be 4 or 5 players left by this point. Well done, your very close to the money! But your going to have to make a few adjustments to your game. First of all, your going to have to be even more aggressive. Most of the table is going to become more passive as they will be afraid to get knocked out so close to the money. Take advantage of this.

Make bets – big bets. Your main aim now is to steal the blinds and your stack will grow extremely quickly. Your main targets are the short stacked players, these will be the most likely to fold. Attack these regularly, but make sure to back off once their stacks get lower than 3 big blinds. At this point they will be close to being pot committed and so will likely call with any cards. You must have a strong hand to play against them at this stage.

Players should get knocked out very quickly at this stage, and you should soon be in the money.

The payout will be looking like this:

• 1st Place – 50%
• 2nd Place – 30%
• 3rd Place – 20%

There is only a 10% difference between 2nd and 3rd position, so you want to be taking risks to try and get 1st place. You will have to play most hands now and extremely aggressively. Your main aim here is too put as much pressure as possible onto your opponents and try to get all-in when you get a strong hand.

Best Poker Sites for Sit n Go Games

• For the softest Sit n Go tables we highly recommend Full Tilt Poker . They have an extremely high amount of tables to choose from and are known to contain a lot of weak players at the low stake games.

See you at the tables!

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