SNG’s (sit and go) or single table tournaments are one of the most popular forms of poker on the internet at this time at sites like 888poker. They offer lightning fast action and a thrill a minute poker ride until you either bust out or get into the cash seats. The tournament structure itself is simple and the name of the event simply highlights the fact that you literally can sit and go. The blinds go up rapidly and you are soon reaching the money seats before long. The key to doing well in this form of poker is to carefully balance survival strategies with chip accumulation.
Experienced SNG players tend to play very tightly during the early levels in the hope that many lesser players will get impatient and make careless moves and bust out. This is a powerful strategy because if you fold a large percentage of the hands that you hold during the early stages then you can easily make up the chips that you have lost with one simple blind steal during the later levels. This strategy is then followed by experienced players becoming far more aggressive during the middle stages and beyond.
So you are clearly looking to survive and not do anything special during the early levels. But then you must switch into chip accumulation mode because you cannot win any SNG tournament without amassing all of the chips in play. However this needs to be done with a fair degree of thought because you will at some stage be looking to shove your remaining stack in the middle. There are a few tips to help you in this situation and the main one is to make sure that it is you that makes the first move.
Basically this means that you should shove all in rather than call all in unless you have a very powerful hand. This simple but effective strategy allows you to have two chances to win the pot. Your shove can elicit a fold from your opponents or you could be called and then double up by winning the pot. But if you call all in then you can only win the pot by winning the hand at showdown. In SNG’s then your ideal goal is to win chips without having to make a hand and the more that you can do that then the more chance you have of getting into the cash prizes and actually winning the event.
