If there were only one thing I could tell you to make you a better SNG player, it would be to Stay Tight in the Early Rounds. Now when I say tight, I am talking about Rock of Gibraltar Tight. I rarely raise any hand except QQ-AA in the early rounds (usually the first 3 rounds) of SNG’s unless I am on the button or in the cutoff seat (one off the button). You may think this sounds weak, but when there is only 30 or 40 chips in the pot from the blinds, I am not gonna risk my whole stack to fight for it.

Now don’t get me wrong here, when I am in those two late-position spots that I said before, I will usually raise pocket pairs 77 and up and AQ or better. The reason I don’t like to raise an AK or AQ or even JJ or TT early in a tournament (while out of position) is that I am probably getting called and it may be by more than one player.

With the unpaired hands like AK and AQ, I don’t want to get called by someone that has position on me for a few reasons:

1. I have no reads on anyone yet
2. I don’t want to have to bet at a flop that misses me because if I get called or raised, I have to give up and I have wasted valuable chips that could have been played in a better spot later on
3. I hate playing out of position, especially at a full table
4. These are hands that look good, but can easily be overplayed, especially early in an SNG

With the medium pairs like 99-JJ, there are different reasons that I don’t want to get called if I raise pre-flop:

1. There is a very good chance that an overcard is going to flop
2. If I bet the flop and I get raised, I have to fold and have burned up valuable chips and tarnished my table image
3. If I flop an overpair with 99-JJ and someone is willing to risk all their chips by moving all in on me, there is a very good chance my overpair is beat

With these hands we have been talking about, I am looking to take a cheap flop for about the first three levels of the tournament or until 2 or 3 players have busted out. At a full table it is just not worth getting yourself into iffy situations that early on. The idea is to make it through the first levels with as many chips as possible so that when you do double up (and you will!), you gain the maximum amount of chips possible. If you lose a bunch of chips playing these hands too strongly early on, it can mean the difference in doubling up to 2000 instead of 3000 later on. That extra 1000 chips in your stack means a lot more as the blinds escalate. In addition, you will likely have a very tight table image that is cultivated by your tight play early on. This can allow you to steal the blinds more easily in the later rounds even if you don’t catch any hands because the people at your table will have you pegged as a tight player. Good Luck at the tables.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 12:28 am and is filed under SNG Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.