31 Mar 09 Weekly Sit & Go Tip: 1st Place or Bust
For the past two months or so, I’ve found myself playing Sit & Go’s almost exclusively, in fact currently I am up to 11 straight cashes in S&G’s at the moment. Both recently and long before my current streak, I had the opportunity to both play and observe a lot of S&G action when all the remaining players at the table were in the money, which is normally the top three spots of a typical nine player single table freeze out. What I noticed from my time is that far too many players focus mainly on simply making it in the money, and then all but completely toss their strategy away after that. What happens is they become content to simply take 3rd place, which gives them their entry investment back plus a little profit, with emphasis on the word “little”.
If you’re playing Sit & Go’s competitively and looking to actually use these events as a way to build up your bankroll, you need to understand that the only way to truly be profitable at S&G’s is to always strive for 1st place. 3rd and even 2nd place money won’t be enough in the long run to sustain your roll if/when you go on a downward swing in your poker career, therefore once you get into the top three spots during a S&G, it’s now time to aim for the stars.
Despite no longer being on the money bubble, many players will continue to fold decent hands and wait for one of the other two players at the table to eliminate the other. While this will work once in awhile, often times this will put you at a large disadvantage in chips heads-up, greatly lowering your chances of a 1st place victory. Instead, you want to aggressively play medium strength hands like A-8 and better, hoping to either take down the blinds of weak/tight players, or to pressure them to move all-in with less than preferred cards.
As a final thought, in order to stay in contention for 1st place during the final round, you cannot let your chip stack stray too far below the equivalent of ten big blinds. At this point, doubling up won’t put you into a comfortable chip position and you’ll be forced to go all-in again before you’d like to. If you do start get near the ten big blind mark, you’re going to need to open up your hand selection fairly wide to include not just any A-X combo, but also probably K-X and even Q-X if the situation is dire enough. You simply can’t afford to just fold constantly and let your stack disappear; you need to make a stand. Remember, play for 1st or don’t play at all!
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