Sit N Go poker tourneys are very exciting. Strategy is key. Unless you have a monster hand that you will go all the way with, you want to try to keep the pots small. Mid pairs are a good case in point. From under the gun, or even 2nd or 3rd to act, it’s very easy to get punished.

In SNG’s a lot of players waste too many chips early with hands like small pocket pairs. However, these can be raised and make big profits in cash games. The way a single table event works, makes it better to play these hands in small preflop pots. You seldomly will hit your set post flop and it won’t cost you too many chips.

With the blinds are getting big you need to get your share of steals. Taking down the blinds is essential. It becomes a battle of nerves as you play weaker hands to keep winning the blinds. If you just keep folding, your stack will dwindle down to a few useless chips.

As the blinds get large, or are are big relative to your own stack, you need to consider going all in. If you think it might work out better to raise, that is fine providing you are going to push all in post flop. You have to be willing to risk it all to give yourself a chance to win.

If you know your opponent is tight, you can push more often, because you will get enough folds. Your opponents stack size is a factor here also. If he has a big stack and can afford it, he will make more calls. The middle stacks want to protect their chips more and can be “trusted” to fold often.

Bubble play has a lot to do with everyone’s stack size. With the same two cards, you might go all in versus a short stack, and fold to a medium or large stack. This will protect the remaining chips that you have.

Now is when you look to go all in, but don’t think only about your cards when deciding. Anything is playable sometimes, especially if your stack will damage the others enough to scare them. When betting at a big stack you need better cards as you will get called more frequently.

When you have a big stack late in the tournament, you should be stealing the blinds often. This is best done against the medium stacks. They will feel it’s too expensive to play against you and risk getting knocked out.

The problem here is you want to get to the money before losing your stack. The monster stack will knock you out, while the shorties will gamble with anything to survive. This is not an easy place to be in.

This involves learning which move is better in different situations. Do you go all in or forld? One part of the formula is predicting what your opponents will call you with. When that decision is made, it’s push or wait.

So these are most of the basics specifically for the SNG games. You could write an entire article on each of these ideas. Develop your knowledge and skills in these areas, and maybe you will be beating the Sit N Gos. Happy hunting.