Tip #17: Introduction to Tier 1 and Tier 2 SNGs

Tier 1 and Tier 2 SNGs are a special type of tournament that works like a satellite, introduced by Full Tilt Poker. The idea is similar to double or nothing SNGs, with an extended prize-pool distribution. In the case of the tiers SNGs, there are 18 players per tournaments, and 6 of them are paid: the first five with a tournament token, and the sixth with a little less in money.

The tournaments have a fast structure, with blinds changing in 6 minutes for the regular ones, and 3 minutes for turbo ones.

Tier 1: 18 players, $8.8 buy-in, prize = $26 token for top 5, $14 to sixth place

Tier 2: 18 players, $26 buy-in, prize = $75 token to top 5, $57 to sixth place

For this introductory article, we will finish with some tips to play these tier tournaments on Full Tilt:

• Play tight aggressive – although the blinds go up fast, this game is not about finishing in first place, but finishing ITM! Save your chips!
• Avoid the chip leaders – why bluff against the ones that can eliminate you? Be careful with them.
• Find out who are the tight players – find out who are the ones not playing any hand. Pressure them, steal from them. But if they enter the pot hard, be careful.
• Exploit the bad players – if some player is playing a lot of pots, limping too much, he is probably a bad player in this format. Use it to your advantage. These players will usually play a loose-calling game, be sure to extract value when you have hands, and avoid bluffing them.
• Know when to change the pace – if you find yourself shortstacked, play the “all-in” game. No need to get fancy, unless it is bubble time.
• Understand the bubble play – you have to be careful when the bubble approaches. If you have average chips, simply don’t play. It may be right to fold AA pre-flop.

Tip #16: Rakeback for Sit and Go Poker Players

If you play poker regularly, you probably pay a good amount of rake to the poker rooms. That’s how they can operate, after all. But the truth is that online poker rooms need the regular players, that’s where most of their money comes from. Then you don’t know already you must learn what rakeback is and see how much money you can get from it. In this tip we begin explaining what is rake and rakeback, and then we go into rakeback options for sit and go players and how to choose a good room for rakeback.

What is rakeback

You do know what’s rake, right? Rake is the fee that poker rooms charge you. For example: in a $10+1 tourney, $10 go to the prize pool, and $1 is the fee. This means that you usually pay 5 to 20% in rake to enter a tournament. This is money lost, unless you have rakeback.

With a rakeback program, some of this fee is given back to you. Poker rooms offer this because they prefer to lose some of their profit if they can keep a good player for a long time. With rakeback you save 25-40% of the money you would pay in rake. And this may look small, but for regular players is really significant. Let say you play 7 sit and gos of $20+2 per day. That’s $100-150 you could get from rakeback at the end of one month.

Rakeback for sit and gos

You will need to sign-up to a rakeback portal to receive rakeback. There are many on the market, but we recommend SNG Rakeback, because they offer the best deals we could find on the Internet for SNG players. We actually have rakeback with them, as they don’t take any fees and their promotions are very good. You can check the percentages and offers on their site. They also offer rake races and special tournaments for their users, on top of what you get from rakeback.

Which are the best poker rooms with rakeback?

There are some factors you should consider before choosing your rakeback poker room for sit and gos. Let’s name some of them:

• SNG traffic – probably the most important one. How is the traffic for the type of SNG you usually play? If you play multiple tables at once this is even more important.
• Rooms you already have an account – you can only get rakeback for new accounts, so you should choose a poker room in which you still have not been registered before. There are some exceptions if you have never played for real money on your acount – check the support area on SNG rakeback for more details.
• Rakeback percentage – it usually range from 27 to 33% on the biggest poker rooms. The difference is usually small. Sometimes the best thing to do is to test some poker rooms and see which one gives you a better return. If you play hish stakes, the difference can be significant.
• Cash games – if you also play cash games regularly, you will also get rakeback from it. Check the SNG rakeback site for the differences between the rake calculation methods “dealt” and “contributed”.

You go and check the SNG Rakeback site for more details and see if this interests you. It probably will.