Tip #20: Another take on Double or Nothing Sit and Gos

Double up sit and go’s are a great way to build your bankroll with less effort than in normal sit n go’s. You just have to beat 50% of the field, so it is not a matter of winning but a matter of not losing. Playing tight aggressive is the only way to play double up sit and go’s.

What Hands To Play

In a double up sit and go you want to play very tight and let the loose players knock themselves out. With that being said, you need a strong hand selection and once you get these hands play them very aggressively to knock out any idiot still in the hand with you. Hands to play in any position: AA, KK, QQ. Hands to play on later positions: AK, AQ, JJ, TT, maybe AJ.

Problem hands

Problem hands are hands that look good but need some adjustments in DON tournaments. For example: AK, JJ and TT are hands that would be good to raise on normal SNGs, but are not that good in double up tourneys. The problem here is that players usually play tighter on DON, so these hands lose some value. If you raise and is called, do you c-bet on a high board? Because of these kind of doubts, some players even fold those hands while playing DONs.

What To Do During The Bubble

If you have been playing tight and aggressive, you should have a nice sized or average chip stack. This should allow you to fold most of your hands, sit back and watch other players trying to take each other out. By all means do not try to knock a player out with any cards you have in your hand because they are short stack and almost out. Don’t change your strategy, as you would on normal SNGs. The only reason to call an all-in with bad cards would be if you have a big stack and there are three or more players all-in in the hand with small-stacks.

Sit and Go Bankroll Management

It is very important to follow proper bankroll management. This is even more correct on double or nothing, since variance can be bigger than normal. To be on the safe side many players have a minimum of 40 buyins in their bankroll. For example, if you want to play the $10+$1 buyin sit and go’s you should have a minimum of $440 in your bankroll.

Rake and rakeback

Rake can also be a big issue on DONs. Prefer poker rooms that have at most 10% rake on each tournament. To reduce this problem, sign up to a good sit and go rakeback program and enjoy your extra profit.

Sit and Go Madness on Full Tilt Poker

One more excellent promotion on Full Tilt Poker for Sit and Go players, with multiples ways to win and lots of extra money for us that enjoy those games.

More than $125,000 will be distributed in 48h of promotions, from Friday, March 5th to Sunday, March 7th.

Groups

To participate in Sit & Go Madness, look for Sit & Gos highlighted in green. Buy-ins for these tournaments are broken into four separate groups, as shown below:

The 48 hours of Sit & Go Madness will be divided into 24, two-hour blocks (e.g., 16:00 ET to 18:00 ET, 18:00 ET to 20:00 ET, and so forth) throughout the weekend with a leaderboard for each of the four groups during every time period. The top seven players in each group will be paid at the end of every two-hour block.

Overall Leaderboards

There is also an Overall Leaderboard for each group over the entire 48-hour period. The Overall Leaderboard is determined by the best performance in one of the two-hour time periods. There is no cumulative calculation with the Overall Leaderboards.

The top two players in each group’s Overall Leaderboard will meet in a $5K Sit & Go Freeroll where the top three places will be paid.

The Madness Freeroll

Even if you don’t make it onto one of the Sit & Go Madness Leaderboards, you still have a chance with the $50K Madness Freeroll (March 13th). Earn your entry by winning at least two green Sit & Gos during the 48 hours of Sit & Go Madness. Once you’ve won two Sit & Gos, you’ll automatically be registered for the $50K Madness Freeroll, which can be found in the Tournaments lobby of Full Tilt Poker.

The Madness Raffle

For every qualifying green Sit & Go that you cash in during Sit & Go Madness (finish in the top three in a nine-player Sit & Go or the top two in a six-player Sit & Go), you’ll earn one raffle ticket good for entry into a drawing for some cool gear from the Full Tilt Store, Tournament Dollars and Satellite Tokens. There will be more than 1,000 prizes given away in the raffle.

If you still don’t have an account, don’t forget to create one with rakeback at sngrakeback.com

Titan Poker Restricted Freeroll: $900 in prizes to our players

Do you feel like playing a MTT for a change? I hope you like this one.

Our friends at Titan Poker got us on a good promotion, with a lot of value.

On March 7th 2010, there will be a restricted freeroll tournament with $500 in cash, plus $400 in online poker school memberships!

The details: Host: Titan Poker. Title of Event: GS Special Freeroll. Date and Time: March 7th at 20:00hrs GMT. Prizes: 20 memberships to Grinder School (online poker training site) (each worth $20); PLUS $500 in cash.

This is a restricted event, so you can expect a small field of players!

How to qualify:

Any player that did a deposit on Titan since January 2010 should do a re-deposit of minimum $20 USD and new players a new minimum deposit of $20USD, all of them no later than March 4th in order to qualify.

If you are creating a new account, don’t forget to use the bonus code TITANTIPS to be eligible!

Check below where you can find the tournament:

Tip #19: Early Stage SNG Strategy

SNGs (Sit’n Gos) are among the most popular poker game variants, especially among the short-stacked online crowd. The reason for their popularity is simple: SNGs offer one of the best ways to build up a fledgling bankroll in order to hit the higher buy-in MTTs or higher limit cash game tables later. A SNG, also called a STT (Single Table tournament – even though not all SNGs are single table ones), offers excellent individual odds to finish in the money (and thus to win some money) compared to MTTs. The initial investment/potential revenue ratio is nowhere near that offered by a MTT, but the better individual odds and the relatively short time SNGs take, make them excellent choices for short stacked players.

Since most beginners are short stacked, chances are, you’ll run into loads of fish at the SNG tables. Studying SNGs a little will offer you a nice edge over these guys and thus you’ll be able to increase your bankroll while literally having fun at the green felt.

The differences between cash games and SNG play are quite enormous. SNG play is more closely related to MTT play, but there are a few differences between these two too. Let’s start at the beginning though, at the low-blind play. The early stages of SNGs are called low-blind stages because the starting blinds are very small compared to the average player stack.

Early stage SNG strategy is simple and it can be summed up in two words: extreme tightness. There are absolutely no reasons for you to get jittery at the beginning of a SNG: your stack is large enough to allow you to wait for the absolute best hands (and I’m talking about K,K and A,A here) to do anything. Even so, decisive confrontations should be avoided. I remember I once picked up pocket rockets and 4 people shoved all-in in front of me. Now I do not suggest you do this, because I knew at that point I had the best hand at the table, but I folded. I figured my rockets didn’t stand a good enough chance against 4 drawing hands, and I didn’t want to be eliminated that early on so I got out of there. Sure enough, the guy who won that pot would’ve cracked my rockets. I went on to win that SNG afterwards.

I do not suggest this is the correct way to play, I just brought this up as an example to why possibly decisive confrontations should be avoided at all cost in the early stages of a SNG. Normally, strong hands should be played aggressively, but in that particular instance there was no room left for aggression and there was no fold equity left either. At this point, your objective is to stay in the game and to make it to later stages and possibly to add to your stack, if you can do it by “civilized” means. Make sure that while you’re tight all around, in early position you tighten up even more. Be on the lookout for trap hands there. A,T and K,Q may look like decent hands, but when they come coupled with a seat under the gun, you want no part of them. Top hands should be played aggressively from early position too though.

To sum it all up: early stage SNG play should be about good old tight aggressive poker. Even Dan Harrington points to this fact in his Harrington System for MTTs. He says something to the extent of: when your stack size is large enough compared to the blinds, you can afford to play optimal poker (read: be tight aggressive).

Don’t forget to sign up for rakeback either before you sign up to a site to play SNGs. Most rakeback deals (like the ones featured by Rakemeback) offer you rebate on the SNG tournament fees too. It’d be a shame to just give up on this excellent edge.

Tip #18: Continuation Bets Tips for SNGs

Continuation bets are crucial in all types of poker games. It’s an area where the best poker players make most their money; and where the worst players lose most of theirs.

The principles involved in a continuation bet are simple. With respect to maths, each opponent starting a game with an unpaired hand will miss the flop 65% of the time. This means if you raised the stakes preflop (3-4BB on average), the chances are the remaining players in the pot won’t have hit anything when the flop comes down. This means even if you missed the flop, you can make a continuation bet feigning a strong hand and you’ll take the pot down there most of the time. The recommended continuation bet acting in first position is around half the pot – notably this only has to work 1/3 of the time in order to break even.

Tips for Continuation Betting

Continuation bets work best against fewer opponents. I’d strongly recommend continuation betting only if there are two or less players in the hand. Anymore than this and the chances are your opponents will have hit something on the flop. Even if they haven’t top pair, they’re still likely to call your continuation bet if for pot value.

Continuation Bets Don’t Work Well on Drawing Flops. The problem with continuation betting on dangerous drawing flops such as J910 is that you’re opponents can call with a wide range of hands. The problem here is that you still don’t know whether you’re behind or ahead after being called. Another problem for Cbetting here is that you’re much more likely to get called for pot value. There will be more outs for your opponent to call to, so a normal cbet raise of half the pot isn’t likely to win you many hands on the spot.

Don’t Make Your Cbets Obvious. Any half decent player will be able to tell when you’re continuation betting for value. Once this happens, your continuation bets will lose their value, and you’ll find yourself open to re-raises and losing money. The Cbet should be maximized, not over-used.

Continuation Betting in SNGs is Very Important. Poker tournaments require a much more aggressive mentality than cash games. As such, you’ll find a high amount of cbetting occurring in SNGs. In MTT strategy the Cbet should be used much more than in cash games. The gains from it tend to be higher than cash games because of the size of the blinds in tournaments – and the value placed on blind stealing.

Fold to the Better Hand. Remember that continuation bets are a means of stealing the pot right there. Don’t let yourself be dragged into a pot with a hand you know won’t win at showdown. Be ready to fold your hand if you think your opponent has something better.

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