Thinking ahead in SNG’s

Just like in any other form of poker then it is the act of thinking ahead that really determines the good players from the mediocre players in SNG’s. This is a side to the game that you miss when you play too many tables at the same time. I played nearly 1000 SNG’s a few years ago and so have quite a bit of experience at this form of poker. I also studied the game as well and so I can lend my experience if I can at this style of poker. There are clearly situations to pick up chips that you need to be aware of and I will look at an example here to show what I mean.

There are four players remaining in this ten man SNG and as per usual the top three players get paid a 50-30-20 percentage. You are the clear chip leader with around 9500 out of the 15,000 total chips in circulation. The two blinds to your right have around 2300 each and the short stack has T900. The blinds are 100-200 and the short stack who is UTG folds. Now it is on you and you have the button and you have the 6d-3d. Now here is where you need to look at the game dynamic to find the right play.

You have to know what your objective is at this stage of the game. Your objective is not to survive until the money. You could quite easily burn a couple of thousand in chips doing this. The short stack will likely bust out and the two other stacks will then have third place locked up. You need to prepare for this stage of the tournament and also a heads up duel and you need to make sure that you optimise your chances of winning. The difference between a good SNG player and a mediocre SNG player is on how many times they cash and how many times they win after they have locked up a cash. So you need to start amassing even more chips at this stage and here the two blinds will likely not want to get involved with you when there are three key factors at play.

Firstly your stack is far bigger than theirs and so you can easily bust them. Secondly the short stack is really short and will soon be all in. Thirdly they are both very close to the money seats. So it would take a very powerful hand for either of these two players to mess with you and there are T300 in chips probably waiting to be picked up. I would raise to something like 400-500 and this will take the blinds a very high percentage of the time. Soon the blinds will go up again and will be 150-300 and so winning those blinds will be key to really giving yourself a huge chip lead and a big edge when the three way and heads up action begins.