Some more thoughts on Sit & Go tournaments

Over the years my Sit & Go strategies have changed very little, with basically the only changes being that I have loosened up a little bit in the Early Stages -mostly due to structure changes by the poker sites-and slightly upping my aggression during four and five-handed play. But overall my thinking on optimal Sit & Go strategy has changed very little over the years, and everything I’ve read, seen, heard, from top S&G players has backed up most of my thoughts on the format.

That said there are a few things that have changed, mostly the opposition becoming more patient, and the site’s making the structures a bit deeper, that have caused me to rethink one aspect of Sit & Go’s: The extremely early stages.

Basically I use to divide S&G’s into three phases: Early, Bubble, and End Game. But now I think there needs to be a fourth stage, especially at sites who start their tournaments with deeper stacks like UB, which I will call the Deep-Stack phase.

The Deep-Stack Phase of a Sit & Go is when you have over 100 Big Blinds in your stack. Basically anytime there can be a raise, a re-raise, and 4-bet without being committed to the hand you can consider yourself deep-stacked. At UB Poker you’ll definitely find yourself deep-stacked at the beginning of the tournament with 5/10 blinds and 1,500 chips in your starting stack, whereas at Full Tilt Poker you begin with 15/30 blinds and 1,500 chip-stacks.

For instance:

At UB Poker someone will raise to 30, another player will re-raise to 90, and the original player will 4-bet to 270 or so. In this instance neither player is committed to the hand despite a lot of pre-flop action.

On the other hand at Full Tilt Poker the first raise is to 90, the re-raise is to 270, and the 4-bet is to 800ish. In this case both players have ½ their stacks in the pot and would be committed to calling virtually any flop bet -considering you will be calling about 700 to win 2,300.

Because of this difference you have to be extremely careful when raising, and even more so re-raising, early on at Full Tilt Poker. On the flip-side you can 3-bet at UB Poker and simply fold losing only 90 chips -at FT you are losing a sizable chunk of your chips with a failed 3-bet.

Now, I’m not suggesting one site is better than the other, what I’m saying is that the early stages at UB Poker are vastly different from Full Tilt Poker, and have a fourth phase to the play.

The adjustments I personally make are as follows:

At Full Tilt I’m willing to set-mine from LP against a normal sized raise to 90 or less

At UB Poker I’m willing to play suited connectors, suited Aces and pocket pairs in these spots, because my implied odds are higher and a re-raise behind me -that I have to fold to-isn’t as devastating to my stack.