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One nice thing about Sit and Go's is the fact that a player can usually expect
strong results after only having mastered a couple critical ideas. Here I'll look
at three of those concepts.
Concept 1 - Don't 'gamble' early on the tourney.
What i mean by this is that you shouldn't go all in, or commit your chips
on those hands where you believe you only have 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.
Situations like this come up all the time in these internet tournaments, and
you'll be doing yourself a huge favor if you learn to spot them. An example
would be flopping top pair with a good but not great kicker when an opponent
who has 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 - If 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.
Remember in my Multi
table article where i explained the super aggressive style of play (seeing
alot of flops cheaply). Well, in the early stages of sit & go's this is
where you can put it into practice as long as the blinds haven't gone above
15/30. Then you should be willing to take a few chances on trash and see what
happens on the flop. Especially if you're on the button or in a late position.
You can also try this if you have a large stack and the blinds are low compared
to your stack. Just fold if you don't hit on the cheap flop with trash hands.
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 can't wait
around for the nuts. As long as your stack is moderately sized you should be
making more than your share of blind steal attempts. 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. 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 to blind steals. But
in the middle stages most players are still dreaming of sneaking into the money
which means they don't want to lock horns with crappy hands. Obviously you'll
have to pattern your blind steal play after your opponents. If they're loose
cannons you may have to watch out when trying to steal their blinds. However,
the push overs will fold them to you in hopes that they can wait it out for
other players to be knocked out so they can sneak into the cash. Stealing Blinds
means when you catch a real hand they might call you more often if they think
you're trying to steal and you can take them out straight away with your monster
hand.
Once nice place to practice your Sit and Go Tournament game is at Fortune
Poker, Paradise
Poker and Pokerroom.com.
These poker rooms offer a wider variety of buy ins and qualifiers. The competition
varies, but is generally weaker at lower buy in levels at all online rooms.
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