50 50 Sit And Go Online Poker

Sit And Go Poker Definition
50 50 Sit And Go Online Poker Table

SNG Strategy

SNG Reviews & Comparisons

Sit N Go Game Variations

SNG Poker Tools & Widgets

SNG Bubble Play

Misc SNG Strategy Articles

Multi-Table SNGs Strategy

Heads-Up & 6-Max SNGs

SNG Bankroll Management

Why I Still Love SNG Tournaments In 2020

To this day Sit & Goes remain one of the best ways to build a poker bankroll while gaining valuable experience. These games have grown from being standard 1-table formats to a whole genre of their own – with a huge number of sizes, structures and game variations to choose from.

Sit N Goes are now both a means to an end and an entertaining way to enjoy poker. What I recommend readers do is to use these to build their poker funds, then use your skills and money to take a shot at multi-table tournaments – where the potential for a huge payout exists – or even cash games.

Here are some of the key types of Sit N Go games to look out for.

1-Table Tournaments: Sometimes known as STTs (Single Table Tournaments) this usually describes the 6 or 9 player standard Sit and Go tournaments. Nowadays you can choose from several different speeds and game variations. 1-table tournaments get a lot of traffic, making them ideal for multi-tabling. I teach you how to build a bankroll from these games in my free course ‘The $16 per hour SNG Blueprint’.

MTT Sit N Goes: These range from 12 players (2x 6-max tables) through to 20 tables and 180 players – at which the line between Sit N Go and tournament strategy becomes blurred. Popular variations include 18 players and 45 players, with 90 player games also gaining in popularity. Again the speed of these games varies.

Double Or Nothing / Fifty50: These are 10 handed SNGS which pay out half of the players each time. With DoN SNGs you are rewarded only for surviving, as it does not matter whether you have 10k chips or 1 chip when the 6th player is eliminated. PokerStars run Fifty50 games instead, which split half of the prize pool based on chips and the other half for suriving.

Jackpot SNGs: Win 5 or 6 of these in a row (depending on the game) to win jackpot prizes ranging from €2k to €35k. Titan Poker is the place to head for these games, I should warn that the fee is higher – the extra fee is what keeps the jackpots growing.

Steps SNGs: These are set up so that winning or coming 2nd in a small buy-in game wins you a ticket to the next level up, with 3rd / 4th giving you a ‘try again’. Great for building experience, these games often have exit points where you can swap your Steps ticket for entry into a big multi-table tournament – even the Sunday Million! Getting to the top of the ladder, which varies from site to site, will usually land you a huge prize.

Knockout Bounty SNGs: Here the prize pool is divided between the last finishing positions and a bounty on each players head. You knock out a player to win their bounty. A fun variation in which you should not expect to see any friendly ‘checking down’ when a player is all-in!

Hyper / Super-Turbo Sit N Goes: Starting with 300 or 500 chips, these games have 3 minute blind levels and put you into push / fold mode almost from the start. Great for getting a ton of volume into a short space of time.

Satellite Qualifiers: Games which offer seats in big events (or sub-qualifiers) are a category all of their own, you will need to adjust your strategy at the bubble in these games.

Lottery Sit N Goes: These games have a random prize pool, which is usually between 2x and 1000x the initial buy-in. Most are 3 handed, with super-turbo structures, averaging less than 10 minutes to play. The incentive of a huge win attracts recreational players – making the action crazy at times. There are already variations of this coming through, including the bounties of the ‘Sit & Go Hero’ games at Party and the live event qualifier ties in with the US friendly Lottery Sit N Goes at America’s Cardroom.

Looking for the best way to get started? I recommend you check out my free ‘Blueprint’ course, which will teach you how to crush SNGs over 4 e-mailed installments. Click here for a preview!

Some Great Reasons To Choose SNG Tournaments

With so many poker variations competing for your attention, I thought I would use this area to make the case for choosing SNGs! While this may not be the most glamorous area of poker, there is plenty of money to be made for players willing to learn the unique strategy and just a little of the math which applies to these games.

#1 – Consistent Bankroll Builders: This has been my number 1 reason to love SNGs for years now. You can use these easy-to-beat games to build your bankroll, then use that money to take a shot with cash games or tournaments. If you hit a rough patch, the *boom* back to the Sit n Goes to rebuild the money and your confidence.

#2 – Opponents Keep On Making Mistakes: With so many mistakes made, you can play a ‘defensive’ style until the bubble and make great profits at the same time. This tight style is ideal for multi-tabling several games at once, and more games = a bigger potential for profits!

#3 – Many Variations To Choose From: You can pick your favorite game, structure and speed and still find the games for you. With Steps, knockouts and satellite qualifiers on top the choice becomes even wider than before.

#4 – Skills Transfer To Bigger Tournaments: When you hit a final table in a bigger tournament event you will be very glad you played SNGs and are familiar with the push / fold game and short-handed play. 90 and 180 SNGs are similar enough to mini-tournaments that you will have more general strategy under your belt too.

Sit And Go Poker Definition

#5 – Bonuses And Loyalty Deals: With lower variance in results than either tournaments or cash games, SNGs are ideal for clearing those bonuses. I have detailed the clear-rates and bonus amounts from all the major sites here.

Sit-and-go tournaments are to this day one of the most popular formats of tournament poker. Thousands of such games are played at online poker sites every day all around the world thanks in part to how often they run and the fact it is possible to adopt an optimal sit-and-go strategy.

What is Sit-and-Go Poker?

Those of you new to poker may be wondering what a sit-and-go (or SNG) is, so we’ll fill you in with all of the details. SNGs are tournaments that unlike multi-table tournaments do not have a specific start time. Instead the action begins whenever enough players register and there are no more seats in the tournament to fill.

The most common sit-and-go tournaments are either played heads-up (action begins when two players register), six-max (kicking off once six players buy-in), or nine- or ten-handed or “full ring” (these start when nine or ten players have entered). These SNGs are often called single-table tournament sit-and-go (or STT SNGs).

Another popular variant of SNG is a multi-table tournament sit-and-go (MTT SNG). Like their single-table cousins, MTT SNGs begin when all of the seats in the tournament are full, and they pay the same number of players each time they run.

Blind levels are either standard speed, turbo, or hyper-turbo, with each format requiring a slightly different SNG strategy. Here CardRunners instructor Collin Moshman talks through various strategy issues while playing several SNGs at once:

Why are Sit-and-Go Tournaments Popular?

As touched upon earlier, one of the reasons for the popularity of sit-and-go tournaments is the fact they run so frequently. Mathematical variance has a major influence over poker players’ bottom lines, and one way to negate it is to play more poker. As sit-and-go poker tournaments run all day and they are relatively simple to play several at once — especially once you’ve learned basic sit-and-go strategy — it is possible to play dozens of SNGs in a single session.

Another reason for players liking SNGs is how they make it easy to plan how long a session will last, as well as to manage how much they could win or lose during that session. Sit-and-go tournaments that are similar in size and have the same blind structure usually take the same amount of time to complete, give or take a few minutes, which allows for a more structured session than is usually possible with regular multi-table tournaments.

What is a Winning Sit-and-Go Tournament Strategy?

Although one of the great features of poker is that a player can choose almost any playing style and still win, there is a very structured sit-and-go strategy to adhere to if you want to win consistently. With the number of payout places and amounts being the same for every SNG of the same size, it is possible to make a mathematically correct play based on what is known as Independent Chip Modeling, or ICM, when the tournament reaches the bubble stage.

The most common sit-and-go strategy is to play tight during the early stages when the blinds are small, then increasing the aggression as the blinds increase and the stack sizes become shallower, often with an all-in bet once the effective stack is down to around 10 big blinds. The act of folding most hands and then moving all in — leaving little room for postflop play — is known as “push-botting.”

While this sit-and-go strategy is employed by many SNG regulars, there are some players who prefer to play a loose-aggressive style in the early stages in an attempt to build a large stack in time for when the bubble approaches. This SNG strategy can lead to more outright victories, but comes with its own risks and pitfalls.

Sit-and-Go Strategy: ICM on the Bubble

Independent Chip Modeling (ICM) is one area you need to learn in order to perfect your sit-and-go poker strategy. ICM allows a player to assess the risk-versus-reward in certain spots of a SNG, namely on the bubble and once everyone is in the money, by calculating a player’s overall equity in a tournament.

By performing ICM calculations, it is possible to conclude whether or not it is correct to make an all-in bet or to call an all-in bet. If the stack sizes are set in a certain way, it can be correct — in terms of equity --- to fold a hand as strong as to an opponent’s shove even if calling would usually see you add more chips to you stack.

By the same token, there are some situations where the correct sit-and-go strategy is to move all in with any two cards, regardless of how weak they are.

ICM calculations can be quite complex, so it is best to do some research and study before or after you play poker. The good news is that similar situations arise all of the time in SNGs, so it is worth committing some of the more common scenarios to memory. Here Tony Dunst explains a little further the importance of ICM considerations in tournament poker:

Video: https://www.pokernews.com/video/strategy-tony-dunst-explains-icm-9003.htm

Practice Makes Perfect

When learning any skill, be it playing the violin or sit-and-go strategy, it is important to practice, practice, and practice some more. If you drive a car, cast your mind back to when you first started to learn how to drive and how you struggled to remember everything that you needed to do in order to drive down the road safely.

Now consider the last time you drove — I am willing to bet you didn’t consciously think about changing gears, checking your mirrors, and other nuances associated with driving. That’s because those things have all become second nature to you.

Practice enough at the poker tables and you’ll soon have a winning sit-and-go strategy similarly committed to memory, and will be able to draw upon it without really thinking about it.