One excellent way to get used to cash play from an SNG background, without worrying about pot control, is to ‘short-stack’. This means to buy into a cash game with the minimum buy-in, usually a 20 big blind stack. Deep-stack cash players often get upset at short-stackers, because you’re forcing them to play for shallower…
Depending on your opponent(s) and how strong your hand is, you want the pot to be somewhere between very small and stack-size. What hand strength is good enough to play for your entire stack? In a sit-n-go, the answer is often top pair or better. Suppose the blinds are 25-50 and you raise to 150…
The loose-aggressive players in your game may be winning opponents, where as they tend to be losers in SNGs. These players will be more concerned with the bigger pots. They enter with a wide range of starting hands and if they are good players, will play more carefully at the turn and river – trying to…
The strategy differences between cash and SNGs are therefore significant. You must play SNGs in a tight-aggressive style early, transitioning to loose-aggres sive when the blinds are high and fewer players remain. In a cash game, it is pos sible to win playing either a tight or loose style – as long as you are still aggressive….
The blinds are constant in cash, so there are no ‘game phases’ as there are in SNGs. The stacks tend to be much deeper stacks in cash than SNGs. This state ment is a generalization; you can fall to a 10 BB (big blind) stack in cash without rebuying, and some SNGs start with 100 BB…
EVEN IF no-limit sit-n-go tournaments (SNGs) are your specialty, it’s helpful to understand the basics of different poker variations and forms. Not only may you find yourself playing different games during your career as a poker player, but learning other variations will increase your understanding of SNGs as well. In a previous column, we discussed…
4 Both opponents check to you again, and you are sitting there with basically nothing. What is your play? A. Bet B. Check Many players would reason here that they couldn’t win this hand by checking, and they would be right. But the fact is that you couldn’t win this hand by bet ting either. You…
3 The turn card is the 24, giving you a flush draw. Both blinds check to you. What is your play? A. Bet B. Check In this instance it is prudent to check the hand back, as your continuation bet was called by both players and there are no possible draws out there except an…
2 The flop comes KV-96-3+ and both blinds check to you. What is your play? A. Bet B. check There are two cards in the playing zone of hands that either get played more often or create some kind of draw, and those cards are the king and the nine. As the preflop raiser, you…
STARTING THIS MONTH I would like to add a slightly different flavour to our month ly quiz. So far we have covered mostly limit hold’em, but from here on I would like to test you on other forms of poker, and this will include actual hands I have played on my sponsor’s site, Sportsbook Poker. The…
