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.

In the early stages of the tournament, we were able to avoid losing any chips in marginal situations, as well as doubling up our stack with a premium hand. The blinds are now becoming large enough that merely winning a few blinds, will help to increase our stack significantly. As a result, it is time to change gears from our early stage style, to a stealing style of play.

Our strategy is now to win as many blinds and antes as possible, as well as playing our premium hands strong and trying to double up if possible. The main difference in our change of gears, is that we are now going to be opening with raises with a large range of hands and rarely limping. With the suited connectors and small pocket pairs that we limped with in late position in the early stage, we are now going to be attacking the blinds.

A few things to remember and be aware of when attacking the blinds. You have a much better chance of stealing blinds without contention, when raising from late position. We must also take into account the stack sizes and playing styles of the players we are attacking. It is not ideal to attack a large stack poker player, who is loose and aggressive. These players will almost always defend their blinds, which is exactly what you do not want. Also, be sure that the players in the small blind or the big blind are not so small stacked, that they will be looking to move all-in in order to try and double up and survive in the tournament.

The ideal candidates for stealing blinds from are players with average chip stacks and are tight players. Also, if a player has just doubled up or won a big pot to get back to a good size stack, it is a good time to attack their blinds. They will not feel they need to defend with weak hands, as they have just increased their stack. The opposite goes for players who have just lost a big pot, they will be more willing to gamble and defend their blinds in order to increase their chip stack, so we want to avoid them.

The single most important aspect of our stealing strategy, is knowing when to slow down and change gears again. If you have just stolen three consecutive uncontested blinds, be aware that the players may be willing to make a stand against you. If you start getting played back at frequently and called with weak hands, it may be time to tighten up for a few rounds. Remember, we want to avoid playing pots with marginal hands, we just want to win the blinds.

As you develop your instincts in this strategy, you will begin to pick up on additional situations, where you can steal pots from the Big Blind and Small Blind positions as well. As the tournament progresses, many players will tighten up and some players will attempt to steal more and more blinds. This will give us situations, to re-steal from the blind positions, as well as from late positions. I must clarify, that this is a highly advanced strategy and should not be used until you are experienced in this gear and have developed a very good sense of reading situations in poker tournaments.

Stealing the blinds and antes helps us to continually increase our chip stack, without having any premium hands. It is essential that we continue to build our stack throughout the tournament and by using the strategy in this stage of the tournament we can put ourselves in position to make a deep run in the tournament. Remember, you want to steal as many blinds as possible without making it look like you are getting out of line. Make sure you come back tomorrow, as I will take us through our third gear and the tricky Bubble play section of tournaments.