Online Poker Strategy Articles

Sit and Go Strategy Part 1: Jon Eaton

This is a topic that I have been meaning to write at length about but haven't got around to it. Before I begin, a little background, and an introduction to what sit and goes I am discussing.

When I began playing poker about three years ago-seriously approaching the game, as opposed to just for fun-I was playing no-limit cash games with friends. It was what we saw on TV. I then played in a tournament, my first ever mind you, and beat out about 25 drunks and took third. We were still playing but we had never structured a tournament before, and it was going to take hours to finish, so we chopped it up based on our current chip counts.

I then hopped online and started playing sit and go tournaments exclusively on TruePoker.com. It's a very small site with odd software, but it was the only site I knew of at the time. I started dominating those slowly, without even knowing what I was doing. I remember I was winning about twenty-percent of the tournaments I played, which was a good percent at the time.

In the past two years I've been playing online, I've logged probably 1,500 to 2,000 sit and goes. All from buy-ins as small as $10 and as big as $200. About eighty-percent of them have been from buy-ins under $50. So, I have a lot of knowledge of these games.

When I met Brett Jungblut, he got me started on Party Poker sit and goes. Their structure was similar to TruePoker's, and I immediately took off on them. I still maintain a fifty-percent cash rate at those little $10 sit and goes, and I hover around forty-five percent in the other buy-ins. Brett's advice on end-game play helped immensely and I was destroying these little $10 and $20 tournaments for about $1,000 a week!

Now the structure for any $30 and under sit and go on Party is pretty basic. 800 chips to begin, 10-15 blinds, and 10 hands per blind level. It's a fast structure and when it gets down to short-handed play, it's an all-in or fold situation generally. While it's a little more of a 'crapshoot' than say PokerStars sit and goes, it provides for easy competition. Plus, you can play 20-to-30 sit and goes in about a six-hour session easily.

Early on, the strategy is extremely simple: exceedingly tight. Brett Chen approached this topic in his last article, but I felt I needed to clarify a little. I think Brett might be losing too many chips early seeing too many flops. The strategy is to play really tight, simply because you're definitely getting action when you enter a pot. It's very rare to open a pot and not get at least one call at this level.

So, sit around and wait for a hand. In the first few positions and all the way until you get to the cut-off seat and button, don't even play anything but A K or big pairs. I will limp with A Q, and limp in on occasion with medium pairs (mostly during the first level, and after that, I tighten up and won't even limp with these). With J J, T T, etc, I will just limp and see a flop. You're goal is to flop a set or over-pair on a non-threatening board.

With a bettor in front, I will tighten up even more so and fold A Q and worse. A K I will re-raise regardless. At these levels, you can re-raise and still get action from worse hands. Big pairs I will play a little hard pre-flop in order to reduce the field, especially so if I have bad position.

In late position, early on you can limp with some hands for the minimum behind others, like suited aces, K Q suited, Q J suited, and maybe even other suited connectors. Small pairs are very playable here.

The goal is to let everyone else do the bidding for you. Get them to knock themselves out and get yourself short-handed, where you hold a bigger edge. When the blinds get ridiculously high, the game is simple: pure aggression. If you have a lot of chips, start putting pressure on the table when you're four-handed.

The best play you can make when it gets four-handed is the auto-steal. This occurs when there's a short-stack on the verge of being eliminated or all-in for the blind, and you're against two shorter stacks who have enough chips to wait for that other guy to be eliminated. When the short-stack player folds, you move in-no matter what. The blinds will often now be about 150-300 or higher, and the 450-plus chips to add to your stack is important. Pound the table while they can't call you unless they have aces, which happens rarely anyway.

When you yourself are short-stacked, start attacking the medium stacks. Let's say it folds to you in the small blind, and the big stack has about 3,000 chips, another guy has about 1,900, and the big blind has 1,800. You have the remaining 1,300 chips. Unless your hand is extremely weak, you should be moving all-in with regularity. If he calls, any two random cards aren't much worse than two-to-one against a calling hand. If he doesn't, you add a lot of chips to your stack.

My rule of thumb for when to start playing overly-aggressive is when the blinds equate to about one-fifth or greater of your stack. So if you have 1,500 chips and the blinds are 200-400, the blinds will increase your stack by forty-percent. I'd be moving all-in here with almost any two cards.

When you're the medium stack, I suggest sitting back and trying to fold into the money. Don't play anything but your better hands. The presence of a stack who can bust you, and leave you with $0 to show for your tournament, means you have to tighten up. They're liable to call with a big ace or any medium to big pair, so I wouldn't suggest pushing with just any two cards against them. Even when the blinds are really high, against the big stack, I'd be a little more selective.

When you're in the money, it's back to war. If you're the short-stack, start trying to steal the blinds quickly. If you are imminently short, then it doesn't matter what your cards are-just hope they fold, or you get lucky. When you're the big stack, put pressure on the number two man, if he has enough chips to wait out the short stack. You can steal his blind with regularity.

The best situations you can come across are those times when you're either three or four handed, and there's a stack with just enough to either post the blind, not enough to post the blind, or less than two blinds. In that case, if you're the big stack, you can put the second man all-in no matter what your hand is. The threat of being knocked out there, and the fact that he usually won't have a hand anyway, means his blind is for the taking.

Remember, tight is right early. Don't get involved unless you have a reason. Even if you double up on hand one, you can still make $0 for your efforts. When you get down to the end, start opening up and stealing the blinds you are so right to steal. Happy bluffing!

note by gank: Jon Eaton is an extremely talented online and real life poker pro living in Las Vegas. He has really come into his own the last couple years after I mentored him.