Texas Holdem Poker

The next few weeks will change your life and poker career. I will be taking you on a journey through the various forms of online poker: Ranging from Sit-n-Go Tournaments to Heads-Up Cash Games. I will be sharing with you my personal views and strategies on these various forms of poker, as well as sharing some of the thoughts and strategies of poker’s elite on each form. I assure you these next few weeks will develop you into a more effective and winning poker player.

Before our journey begins I must remind you, that as in every aspect of poker we can never solely rely on one particular strategy every time we play, as our play will then become predictable and unprofitable. Ok, now to the juicy information…let the journey begin!

Sit-n-Go Tournaments are an interesting poker animal. These mini-tournaments offer poker players an opportunity to make a decent return on money invested in a quick format. On paper, Sit-n-Go’s, or SNG, offer a statistically better opportunity to cash than Multi-Table Tournaments, MTT. Let’s look at some examples from Ultimate Bet:

Bounty $2K MTT: $6.60 Buy-In: 371 entries: 36 places paid:10.3% paid

Holdem 18 seat: $5.50 Buy-In: 18 entries: 4 places paid: 22% paid

Holdem 6 seat: $5.50 Buy-In: 6 entries: 2 places paid: 30% paid

Holdem 9 seat: $5.50 Buy-In: 9 entries: 3 places paid: 33% paid

Before you start debating and posting on the forum about the financial benefits of winning a MTT, which we will get to later, let’s first focus on the statistics that are present. Looking at the best opportunities to make a profit and cash in a tournament, the statistics show that the 9 seated SNG is our best option. If we can out last 6 other players, we will nearly double our money taking home $9. Seems easy enough to finish up in the top 33% right?

Let’s look at the statical benefits and profits we can expect to make from a normal session of SNG. Say, we play 10 times and we cash 40% of the time we enter, hopefully we can do better by the end of our journey, finishing twice as the champion, as well as 2nd and 3rd once each. Our 4 cashes make us $45.50 in profit from the wins. Subtracting the $5.50, we lose from the other 6 times entered, we would have a total profit of $12.50. This profit represents double our money invested, I think we can all agree that if we can double our money invested over the course of an hour or two we are pleased with the session.

Don’t get me wrong there are some downsides to these SNGs. On many sites, the structures of these tournaments turn the latter rounds into a shove fest, in which you have to hope for a little luck to survive. I would avoid Turbo SNG at all cost, as they end up rewarding who gets lucky at the right moments. The structure of these mini-tournaments directly effects our strategy and mentality when
approaching this form of poker. By implementing a well-planned and effective SNG strategy will can make a nice profit from this form of online poker.

Tomorrow, I will be detailing my exact plan I use for SNG tournaments, as well as some strategies from top professionals on SNG tournaments. I hope you are excited about developing your skills further and becoming a winning SNG player. After tomorrow’s blog you will be well on your way to achieving this goal.