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…
