One of the biggest novelties that online poker brought to the game is the vast selection
of game formats available 🎉 to players. While live poker rooms usually only offer a
handful of choices to the players, online poker sites offer 🎉 a variety of stakes and
game types to pick from.
SNG poker became one of the most popular variants in the 🎉 early
days of online games, as operators pushed this format heavily, and players quickly fell
in love with it.
In this 🎉 guide to poker SNGs, we will take a look at what is sit and go
poker is, how to play 🎉 it, and how to think about these games compared to MTTs, cash
games, and other game formats.
If you are new 🎉 to online poker and looking to specialize
in one game type, keep reading and find out why SNG poker might 🎉 be the right choice and
how best to adapt to it.
What Is Sit and Go Poker?
The name sit and go 🎉 (SNG, sit ‘n go)
stands for a particular type of tournament poker that slightly differs from a classic
tournament you 🎉 might see in your local card room. Unlike such scheduled events, SNGs
don't start at a particular time but kick 🎉 off when enough players register for a
game.
The number of players needed for an SNG poker game to start can 🎉 be anywhere
between two and several hundred, but in each case, the game will only start when enough
players are 🎉 registered.
A sit-and-go tournament usually has a fixed prize pool as well,
although some poker sites have introduced "on demand" SNGs 🎉 where the prize pool can
grow when additional players register after the event starts.
A typical SNG features
fairly fast blind 🎉 levels and finishes in between one and two hours, making such games a
lot more convenient for recreational players or 🎉 part-time grinders.
Yet, SNGs retain
the traits of tournament poker, which means you will still benefit from understanding
concepts such as 🎉 ICM but will not have to play a single game for countless hours only
to receive a min-cash after a 🎉 brutal bust out.
Types of Poker SNG Games
If you open the
SNG lobby on any major online poker site, you will 🎉 notice many different types of SNGs
listed there.
For starters, you will find games at many buyin levels, ranging from
micro 🎉 stakes likeR$0.10 orR$0.50 all the way up toR$500 orR$1,000 entry fee. Beyond
that, SNGs can be played with different numbers 🎉 of players, and you will be offered
many options.
Some of the most popular single-table SNG variations include:
Heads-up
SNGs (two players),
6-max 🎉 SNGs (six players),
Full-ring SNGs (nine players)
Big online
poker sites like GGpoker also offer multi-table SNGs with multiple tables. These games
🎉 can require anywhere between 18 and 360 players to start and offer much bigger prize
pools.
Besides the number of players 🎉 in the SNG, different games will feature different
blind levels, with most sites typically offering hyper-turbo, turbo, normal, and slow
🎉 blinds.
The main difference between these SNG types will be their duration, with
hyper-turbo and turbo games finishing fast but allowing 🎉 you to see fewer hands
throughout the game.
As an SNG player, you will have an incredible amount of choice and
🎉 will be able to pick and choose the games you enjoy playing and have the biggest edge
in.
SNG Poker vs. 🎉 MTTs & Cash Games
More often than not, new poker players tend to
prefer playing poker SNGs to scheduled tournaments or 🎉 cash games, and there are several
reasons for that.
Compared to scheduled tournaments which can see thousands of players
register to 🎉 play, SNGs always have a limited number of players and tend to finish quite
quickly. This is an ideal setting 🎉 for a novice player just looking to play some poker
but not necessarily spend the entire night grinding it out.
What's 🎉 even more, there is
less pressure in SNGs, as even the final table of a multi-table SNG will not have
🎉 massive pay jumps as an MTT might have.
With this in mind, the skill required to play
SNGs effectively is also 🎉 lesser. Playing in SNGs, you will not be put to the test for a
lot of money often, and your 🎉 decisions will be relatively linear in value throughout
the game.
In comparison to cash games, SNGs offer more short-term rewards, as 🎉 winning a
game will win you several buyins for a single table and up to a few dozen buyins for 🎉 a
multi-table SNG.
Furthermore, SNG poker is much easier to master, as shorter average
stacks throughout the game allow for less 🎉 maneuvering space and make every play simpler
and clear cut.
While playing SNGs profitably is certainly not simple, it could be 🎉 said
that out of the three big poker variants, SNG poker requires a skill set that is
easiest and fastest 🎉 to learn, which makes it appealing to novice players who are
looking for a game type where they can quickly 🎉 hold their own against more experienced
opponents.
ROI, Hourly Win Rates, and Variance in SNGs
If you want to become a
sit-and-go 🎉 poker player, you will have to learn how to track your progress and winnings
and know whether you are winning 🎉 or losing in a particular game.
It is important to
understand that SNG poker is all about volume. The more games 🎉 you can play, the better,
provided you are playing at a high enough level to beat the games.
Due to their 🎉 fast
structure and limited winning potential in each game, SNGs are an extremely high
variance game where even the best 🎉 winning players cannot hope to win more than 10-15%
of their buyin per game.
Winnings in SNG tournaments are measured by 🎉 the same metric we
use for scheduled tournaments: return on investment (ROI).
ROI is the percentage of
your buyin you win 🎉 every time you play a particular game. Calculating this stat is easy
for the tournaments you have played already, but 🎉 you should also be able to predict
your future ROI once you play enough games.
For example, let’s imagine you are
🎉 playingR$10 single table SNGs. The first step will be to play at least a few hundred of
these quick games 🎉 to get a vague idea of how you are doing in them.
After 300 games,
you have paidR$3,000 in buyins and 🎉 cashed outR$3,300 in total. This would mean you are
winning at a 10% ROI, as yourR$300 profit represents 10% of 🎉 the overall money you
bought in for.
The next thing you should do is calculate your win rate per game (in
🎉 this case, it isR$0.30) and then calculate how many SNGs you can play in one hour to
get an idea 🎉 of your hourly win rate.
Keep in mind that 300 SNGs are actually not nearly
enough to calculate your actual win 🎉 rate, and you should probably play at least a few
thousand games before you can confidently determine your ROI.
What’s more, 🎉 an ROI of
10% in most SNG games these days is considered very high, and if you are winning at 🎉 3
or 4%, you are doing more than the majority of the field.
How to Play SNG Poker
If you
have decided 🎉 that SNGs are the game format you wish to try to master, you will need to
learn quite a few 🎉 skills and adapt to these tournaments before you can start
winning.
SNG tournaments are very fast in their nature, and there 🎉 are a few basic
stages, with major adjustments needed in each phase.
We will briefly cover each phase
of an SNG 🎉 tournament now and give you some key pointers that you should consider the
next time you play.
Early Stage SNG Play
In 🎉 its early stages, SNG tournaments resemble
MTTs in many ways. You will start with 100 big blinds in your stack, 🎉 often without an
ante in play, and well away from the money.
In this stage, you will want to play fairly
🎉 conservatively and straight-forward, as your incentive to steal the blinds is very
small. In early positions, you should only open 🎉 and play your strongest hands while
slightly expanding your range as you get into the later positions.
You should be
mindful 🎉 of playing easily dominated hands like AJ, KQ, or JT against raises and mostly
fold these hands when another player 🎉 opens the pot.
Also, consider that the amount of
chips you need to accumulate to win an SNG is much smaller 🎉 than in an MTT, which means
taking speculative lines and spots is less rewarding.
In the early stages, you will be
🎉 playing tight and aggressively while hoping that a recreational player will make a big
mistake and dump their chips your 🎉 way to double you up.
Middle Stage SNG Play
As the
blinds start to escalate and the ante kicks in, you will 🎉 need to expand your ranges and
start playing for the dead money more.
The chip stacks will quickly dwindle down to
🎉 20-30 big blinds on average, allowing you to take aggressive lines, such as shoving
over open raises from late positions, 🎉 and punish any potential limpers.
While you
should be quite reluctant to bust out with a hand like AQ or TT 🎉 in the early stages of
an SNG, the middle stages make such confrontations nearly inevitable.
Learning how to
play with short 🎉 and middling stacks will be key for this part of the game, and this may
just be the most difficult 🎉 period of an SNG to navigate properly.
Late Stage SNG
Play
This brings us to the late-stage play, which usually starts around 🎉 the bubble in
single-table SNGs and on the final table of multi-table SNGs.
In the late stage, the
average stack will 🎉 be very short, and your only play will often be to move all-in or
fold your cards, or call off 🎉 an all-in from another player.
Fortunately, this type of
short stack play is fairly easy to learn with some simple push/fold 🎉 charts, which you
should memorize by heart before you consider playing SNGs seriously.
You will also need
to learn as much 🎉 as possible about the independent chip model (ICM), a very useful
concept in late-game situations and tournament final tables.
Combining proper
🎉 short-stack play with the right ICM decisions will make you an SNG champion, but it may
take many hours of 🎉 practice before you get there.
The Swingy Nature of SNG
Poker
Perhaps the biggest discouraging factor for many new SNG players is 🎉 the extreme
swings they often encounter in these games. Upon signing up with a new poker site,
players often manage 🎉 to build up a bit of a bankroll in a good run and expect this run
to never stop.
However, SNGs 🎉 are extremely swingy, and the variance in these games is
massive, which means even the biggest winners go on huge 🎉 losing streaks.
If you want to
play SNGs for a living or grind them part-time, you must understand that long
downswings 🎉 that will cost you dozens of buyins are inevitable.
The real art is in
recognizing when you are running badly and 🎉 when you are playing badly and doing
everything you can to always play proper poker despite the way cards may 🎉 be
falling.
Start Your SNG Journey Today
There is no way to put everything you need to
know about SNG poker into 🎉 one article, which is why this guide serves only to point you
in the right direction.
If you want to get 🎉 serious about SNGs, we recommend signing up
for a more extensive course, practicing both in play and in the lab, 🎉 and dedicating
time to learning how to play each stage of an SNG correctly.
With enough effort, you
will be able 🎉 to reach a point where you are steadily beating low to mid-stakes SNG
games, and further progress will depend on 🎉 your continued dedication to the game.
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