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$16 Per Hour SNG Blueprint – Part #1

The SNG Planet Guide To Building Your Poker Bankroll

Mark’s Course Introduction

Welcome to the $16 per hour SNG Blueprint, within just 30 days I will teach you a straight-forward system of playing online poker which can be used to build up your bankroll by $16+ per hour.

I strongly believe that anyone with average or better intelligence, a little discipline and willingness to move around to find the weakest games can quickly beat the $16 per hour in our headline… What it depends on is your willingness to understand and implement the concepts – and to focus on finding the most profitable games.

This 4-part course will focus on single-table SNG tournaments. It starts by giving you a solid understanding of where your profits come from – and then outlines how you can best adjust to benefit. We will gradually increase both the number of games you are comfortable playing simultaneously and the buy-ins levels that you play. At the same time we will sharpen your game with strategy insights that improve your returns from each stage of the game.

Remember, poker is about more just how you play the cards you are dealt – the most profitable players are those who take the time to find the games where their edge is greatest!

Good Luck At The Tables, Mark http://www.sitandgoplanet.com

Copyright Notice: The contents of the $16 / hour SNG Blueprint are copyright Planet Corporation Kft and may not be reproduced without express written permission. We proactively protect this text, and all associated websites using Copyscape TM, and have a “no exceptions” policy of always reporting infringements to ISPs, Search Engines and any 3rd party sites our material is used to commercially promote.

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$16 / Hr SNG Blueprint – List Of Contents

1) 30 Days From Now… Where You Can Be After Completing This Course

2) SNGs Introduction, Why These Games Are Great For Building A Bankroll

3) Bankroll Management, ROI Definition And The Effects Of Variance

4) Starting Bankroll, Get Off To A Flying Start By Finding The Most Profitable Games

5) Multi-Tabling, Introducing Hourly Rates + Strategy Changes

6) Strategy Introduction, Starting Hands And Position

7) Strategy Introduction, Objectives, Stages And Stack Sizes

8) Strategy Insights, Early Stages Strategy Tips For Multi-Tablers

9) Strategy Insights, Mid-Stages Strategy Tips For Multi-Tablers

10) Strategy Insights, The Bubble, Equity And Aggression!

11) Strategy Insights, In The Money + Heads-Up Play

12) Summing It Up – Key Take Away Points And Tasks For The Next 7 Days!

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Chapter #1 – 30 Days From Now

Where Will You Be After Completing This Course

With the skills and knowledge to earn an average of $16 per hour (or more!) from the tables your bankroll could be starting to grow very fat indeed after completing this course. Let us be more specific, by way of introducing the main concepts.

I expect that the average player will be logging on to their chosen poker site, firing up 6 to 8+ turbo SNG tournaments, following our guidelines to avoid having too many multi-tabling opponents. They will be making fairly ‘automatic’ decisions in most cases, based on a clearly defined strategy specifically designed to minimize difficult decisions without leaving too much ‘value’ on the table.

Our player will be cashing and winning at a rate which sees their bankroll move up and up and up with more games played. Busting out will not be a problem, you’ll simply fire up more games – focusing on the ‘bubble’ where the skills and knowledge to take advantage of opponents mistakes can be used again and again.

In 30 days time you will have the tools to grow your poker bankroll at will. Whether your objective is to move to the high-stakes tournaments, transition to cash games or even just to generate some useful extra money for non-poker uses – you’ll always have the ability to come back for more.

We have broken the course into 4 separate areas, each building on the last:

Part #1 – The SNG Blueprint:

This part of the course will give you the ‘big view’, showing you how SNGs can mean big profits and giving you a new perspective which will quickly boost your profits, along with strategy and profit-making advice and insights which we will build on as the course progresses. We outline the principles of push / fold poker and prize pool equity which you can use immediately, and also introduce the reasons why a disciplined early game is key to long term profitability.

Part #2 - Becoming A Bubble Ninja:

This part will arrive in 1 week; it will break down the bubble of a 1-table SNG tournament like you have never seen before. By the end of this section you will know exactly what mistakes your opponents are making at the bubble, and possess an effective counter-strategy for each one. You will also be provided with the ability to identify your own bubble leaks between sessions – and of course the ability to plug them!

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Part #3 – Turn Up The Volume:

Next we will teach you how to gradually increase the number of games you are playing – while maintaining that profitable edge. You will be amazed how quickly playing 6, 8 or more games can become as simple a routine as playing just 2!

Part #4 – SNG Profit Booster:

In many ways this is the most important part of the course, arriving a week after Part #3. While we would love to share the insights and advanced strategy tips with you earlier – they become even more valuable after you have a solid grasp of the principles from the earlier sections.

If you are prepared to put in effort to learn the key concepts and seek the most profitable sites and games then read on, mastering SNG tournaments is easier than many people think!

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Chapter #2 – SNGs Introduction,

Why These Games Are Great For Building A Bankroll

Sit And Go Tournaments are usually defined as a poker tournament with no fixed starting time. When enough players sit down, the game begins. These can range in size from 2 players to more than 300. This course focuses on 1 table tournaments (sometimes referred to as STTs or ‘Single Table Tournaments’ ) featuring 9 or 10 players, you can think of this as the ‘standard’ SNG, with the many size, structure and betting variations coming from this base.

Payouts for 1-table SNGs are usually for 3 places in a 50% / 30% / 20% of the prize pool format. This has a huge effect on the ‘correct’ strategy (from a mathematical perspective), which many of your opponents will not understand – this is a key reason that SNG tournaments are so profitable!

There are actually several reasons why SNG tournaments are a great choice for players looking to build their bankroll. Firstly, these games are attractive to inexperienced players. If you think about when you first discovered online poker, the 1 table games looked like a great way to learn without spending too much in one go…

A second reason these are good bankroll builders is the speed of the games make them ideal to divide up into short and sharp sessions. Add to this the fact that (with the right strategy) they are the easiest games of all to multi-table and you have a situation where you can increase the volume of games to turn on that ‘money tap’ any time you please!

My final reason is that your opponents simply have more opportunities to make mistakes in SNGs than in cash games. The shift in strategy from one stage of the game to another is not obvious, and errors can get expensive (we’ll explain these changes below!). Good players do not stay playing SNGs for long – the lure of cash game profits or the big-prize multi-table tournaments soon sees them leave, making these games a consistent profit source.

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Chapter #3 – Bankroll Management + Return On Investment

This is a critical chapter, so make sure you understand it!

‘Poker Bankroll Management’ is kind of dull, we know it, you know it, everyone knows it… but get this, those who do not use it are very unlikely indeed to ever be consistent winners in poker. Yep, it is that simple, use it or eventually you lose.

The reason is ‘Variance’ which describes the natural swings in the game due to the chance fall of cards. We are not going into the chance vs. skill debate in too much depth here. It should be enough to say that the result of one bubble ‘coin flip’ (for example a pair of Queens vs. Ace-King’) can make the difference between being $50 down or $50 up at the end of a session of SNGs. Add to this runs of missing the flop and you can see that it would make little sense to have too much money riding on a small set of games.

Pro SNG players often ensure that they have 100 (or more) buy-ins for the level they are playing at. While we are not going to be that strict, we do recommend starting with at least 20 buy-ins – and ensuring that you could replace this should the natural variance deplete your cash. It seems impossible to many newer players for a ‘proven winner’ to hit a 30 or 40 buy-in downswing – trust me, it is far more common than you think.

Return On Investment is known as ‘ROI’ and is how we measure our success in SNG tournaments. If you are playing the $5+50c games and have a 20% ROI then your profit is $1.10 per game. When you play many tables you give up some ROI in exchange for a bigger hourly rate – this is explained in chapter #5 below.

Bankroll Management is so important for SNG players that we created a dedicated section just for this subject at SNG Planet – you can reach it by clicking here.

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Chapter #4 – Starting Bankroll For This Course

+ Choosing The Easiest Games

Ideally I would like to see readers that you start with a minimum bankroll of around $100 to $150 to achieve the results within 30 days. If you can not raise this much then do not worry, you’ll just need to start at slightly lower levels and work your way up – if you have the time and inclination this should not be a long delay in reaching our goal!

This will involve starting at the $5.50c SNGs and working up as you win money and clear the great bonuses as I suggest below and in future parts of the course. While this is taking a bankroll management risk from the perspective of established pro players – I believe that the smaller games are profitable enough that you will be able to build a safety-zone into your bankroll reasonably fast! Remember; never play poker with money you can not afford to lose.

I mentioned bonuses for a good reason, you need to get to the $11 to $22 levels as quickly as possible, and grabbing a new bonus will make this significantly easier. Players outside of the US have the best possible choice and we have a specific recommendation which will really open your eyes as to how soft (and so profitable) SNG tournaments can be.

Titan Poker is the leading site on the iPoker Network and offer some significant advantages in addition to their 100% match first deposit bonus. Use the bonus code BLUEPRINT when you register for a free $20 cash on top (we will deposit it to your account, usually within 48 hours). In addition to the bonuses you will benefit from some great promotions, a generous player rewards system and (best of all) a huge amount of inexperienced opponents waiting to hand you profit at the SNG tables. I personally play at this site, really – if you are serious about profiting from poker then you have to see the SNGs here! Click the banner below now to check out Titan for yourself – you’ll be surprised!

Choosing the easiest games is huge when it comes to maximizing your profits and getting the full benefit of this course. I’ll confidently predict that the players who find the poker sites with the most inexperienced players (fewest ‘pro grinders’), and take the time to identify (then avoid) the winning regulars – will progress to financial freedom much faster than those who decide that ‘their current site will do’!

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Chapter #5 – Multi-Tabling, Affects Both Your ROI And Strategy

This course will teach you how to multi-table SNGs, as well as to ‘own the bubble’. Before you get that far, here is an explanation as to why multi-tabling is key, and some of the strategy adjustments you will have to make. The 3rd part of the course ‘Turn Up The Volume’ will go into more detail on this subject, and also include some killer tips and strategy ideas which will help you maximize your returns while feeling more and more relaxed playing multiple games.

Key to understanding the effect of playing many tables on your returns is this:

More tables will give you a lower profit per game played; at the same time as significantly increasing your hourly rate overall.

Let us take a simple example we’ll make the game cost $10 for simplicity with a 20% return, and take 10% from the ROI for each table added to account for faster decisions, less reads on opponents and requirement to fold some marginally profitable hands to focus on other games, each game will take 40 minutes (turbo SNGs) – so we get the hourly rate by multiplying the profit per game by 1.5

- 1 Table – $2 Per Game – 1.5 Games / Hour = $3 per hour

- 2 Tables - $1.80 Per Game - 3 Games / Hour = $5.40 per hour

- 3 Tables - $1.62 Per Game – 4.5 Games / Hour = $7.29 per hour

- 4 Tables - $1.46 Per Game – 6 Games / Hour = $8.76 per hour

- 5 Tables - $1.31 Per Game – 7.5 Games / Hour = $8.85 per hour

- 6 Tables - $1.18 Per Game – 9 Games / Hour = $10.61 per hour

- 7 Tables - $1.06 Per Game – 10.5 Games / Hour = $11.13 per hour

- 8 Tables - $0.95 Per Game – 12 Game / Hour = $11.40 per hour

Remember, this is just an illustration to explain the relationship between ROI and Multi-tabling. My personal belief is that the negative effect per table diminishes over time (once you have got used to 4 the jump to 6 and then 8 is actually comparatively small). We probably started too high with 20% too – though choose a soft site such as Titan and play during the evenings and weekends and this might well be achievable!

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You will have less decision time per hand when multi-tabling. I recommend that you treat hands which might have been marginally profitable when playing one table into 'folds', particularly easily dominated hands such as unsuited high cards – where your post flop action might have depended on knowing something about your opponents tendencies. Getting reads on opponents will be somewhat trickier while you get used to multi-tabling, with only the craziest of them becoming visible. This requires some adjustment to your strategy too – you’ll need to play in such a way as to maximize your advantages and make the most money from an ‘average’ opponent. The next part of the course explains the best way to do this – starting with the basics and going from there.

One of the exercises I want you to practice at the end of this part of the course is to add one more table to your current comfortable limit. If you play one table at a time then two is just fine. You will be surprised how fast this becomes ‘normal’ and how easy it is to watch multiple tables – and best of all, adding another table now will help you when it comes to the 3rd part of the course.

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Chapter #6 – Strategy Basics - Starting Hands And Position

I grouped starting hands and position together for a good reason – these two poker concepts can not be properly looked at separately. There are two more factors we need to consider, the blinds going up / player numbers going down as we run through the stages of the SNG – and the fact that we will be multi-tabling, and so want to avoid those hands which might require tricky post-flop decisions or specific opponent reads in order to play profitably. For now we will cover the early and middle stages, the charts you see below really do depend on what happens at the table before you act. I am a very strong believer in the ‘gap concept’, which states that you need a stronger hand to call a raise from another player than you need to open the betting with a raise yourself.

Understanding this concept is key you successful multi-tabling of 1-table SNGs. When you are the first to raise you take control of a hand, show strength and put yourself in the position of being able to win the pot either immediately or after the flop if your opponents miss. When you call a raise your hand no longer needs to be ‘better than average’ it needs to have solid chances against the much smaller group of hands your opponent might be raising with. For example, if this opponent only raises the top 10% of hands you need to be holding something which can win a big pot against this range, either a top 5% hand or something that could spike a well hidden ‘monster’ on the flop and win a big pot.

There are only a small percentage of hands which are good enough to call a raise, but not good enough to re-raise with. Get into the habit of folding marginal ‘raising hands’ when there is betting action ahead of you, or when you are one of the first to act at the table. This will save you a lot of chips over time!

New players often think that these starting hand requirements are unnecessarily tight, trust me they are not – learning to fold all but the best hands from early position at the table or when you see a raise ahead would make many marginal losing players profitable extremely fast, it really is that important.

EP = Early Position MP = Middle Position LP = Late Position at the table

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Yes, I really am saying you should fold a pair of 9’s when first to act, instantly muck ace-jack to any action ahead and re-raise with only the top few hands in the early stages. There are two linked reasons for this. Firstly your main profits will come from the later stages of SNGs, and secondly any chips you lose during the early stages are ‘worth’ far more than any chips you win – this will be covered below! I would only ever limp hands at those tables where raises are being called, while people are not re-raising often.

One more thought, if you are considering whether to call a raise, whether your call closes the betting should be one of the factors you assess. If you are last to act, and your call will ensure you see a flop – then you are sure of the price and can make a ‘good’ decision based the odds you are getting and hand you hold. If a limper entered the pot, someone raises and then you call then the betting is still open. In this case the limper could choose to re-raise. Here you can not be sure that calling the initial bet will get you to the flop, so you should be more cautious with the number of hands which you call with.

Starting Hands And Aggressive Opponents

It is not just the number of opponents yet to act that you need to take into account when selecting playable hands. If you have identified one or more ‘light raisers’ who have yet to act, this can change your strategy considerably. Of course, at a table where many players usually limp or are all ‘super-tight’ the opposite could be true. Aggressive re-raisers who will act after you for the remainder of the hand mean you have to tighten your own opening requirements. While this can be frustrating at times, bear in mind that you will often have the opportunity to build a big pot those times you do hold a premium hand against these types.

Starting Hands Are Not Rigid

I suggest any starting hand chart act as a guideline only. As you gain experience in SNG tournaments the appropriate times to play more hands or tighten up further will start to become clear. Once you feel comfortable that you are disciplined enough to fold that small pair if you miss your set then you might want to add a few more pairs to your range as one example.

Folding easily dominated hands such as Ace-Ten or King-Jack off suit is probably the fastest ‘win’ new players can achieve from starting hand discipline. With a tight range you will take full advantage of those opponents who can not fold their easily dominated hands when they do hit part of the flop!

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Finally for this chapter - position, that is acting last after the flop, is huge in all forms of poker. Simply by playing more hands when you act after your opponents than when you are first to act after the flop you will have a profitable edge against them. We will return to position again and again in this course – for now it is important only to understand that this simple concept is far more important than most beginning players believe. Stay tight when first to act and open up when last, with the dealer button being valuable enough to be worth protecting.

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Chapter 7 – Strategy Basics – Objectives, Stages And Stack Sizes

I need to be crystal clear in the overall objective for our strategy for the $16 per hour SNG Blueprint; it is to get to the bubble, preferably with enough chips to make some of our opponents fold. Of course, the more chips the better, however, if we play a game where we only break even in chips before arriving at the 4-players left stage then this can still be counted as a success, here is the reason why:

You can make good profit in SNG tournaments simply by taking advantage of the mistakes your opponents will make at the bubble.

Yep, you do not need to out-play, out-think or out-read your opponents, simply putting them on reasonable hand ranges (I will show you how) and then playing in a ‘mathematically unexploitable’ system will bring in the money. You do not even have to learn the math, simply understanding the ‘rules’ laid down by equity models such as ICM and how this applies to each situation is enough to make you a tidy profit at the lower limits.

Of course, if you can accumulate chips on your way to the bubble that is even better, in fact there are few things more pleasurable in SNG poker than being the big stack with 4 to go and picking up all those extra chips from opponents who are scared of busting out in 4th! Let me repeat one more time, our primary objective is always to get to the bubble with a reasonable stack, anything else is a bonus. I suggest playing Turbo SNGs for two reasons, firstly that you get to play more games per hour – but more importantly you get to reach the bubble fast!

SNG tournaments are usually divided into 4 stages, Early, Middle, Bubble and ‘In The Money’. I go through each stage below – complete with a list of mistakes your opponents will make for you to profit from. You must stay aware of where you stand and what stage your game is in, your opponents will make different mistakes as the game progresses.

Stack sizes are mentioned a lot below, in SNGs these are usually measured in terms of the number of Big Blinds you have. Poker is a betting game based on odds, you will need to be careful to account for ‘Implied Odds’ (again, this is explained fully later) as well as pot odds when you make those plays. Many of your opponents will make mistakes with these concepts; we will include stack size considerations and odds-errors as we go through the stages below.

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Chapter 8 - Strategy Insights, Early Stages Strategy Tips For Multi-Tablers

In my last SNG course, the eBook “A Comedy Of Errors” we coined the phrase ‘tight is right, but tighter is righter’ to sum up the early stages of SNG tournaments. This advice is as strong today as it was 3 years ago, with the added advice that we stay sharp enough to exploit those huge errors that our inexperienced opponents are likely to be making at these stages.

Remember our key objective when multi-tabling, it will be to get to as many ‘bubbles’ as possible – where we can maximize our profits by taking advantage of opponent errors.

At the same time some of the errors your opponents will be making during the early stages are just too big to ignore. These include:

Playing Too Many Hands, Especially ‘Easily Dominated’ Hands

Chasing Flushes And Straights Against The Odds

Over-Valuing Hands

Playing Passive, Horrible, ‘Calling’ Poker!

Let me start with an example of playing easily dominated hands, we will take the example of Ace-Seven off suit, in middle position, with a raise from an active player in front and several players left behind. In this example our player calls the raise, thinking that the hand is not good enough to re-raise with. One more player enters the pot, also by calling – note that if anyone had put in a further raise here then our player would have been forced to fold, a waste of chips!

Before we get to the flop, let us think about what our player hopes to see? An Ace? Well, this is potentially a problem, since two more players are in the pot and either of them could have a better ‘kicker’ with their own ace. How about a seven? This might work, but what if there are higher cards too, for example a king and a jack? Where will we stand, even if this is the highest card how can we be sure an opponent did not start with a higher pair such as Tens or Jacks?

This hand is easily ‘Dominated’, that is to say that the majority of hands which will willingly play against it are 70% or more favorites to win the pot. In this case this includes aces with better side cards (kickers) or pairs seven and above. Playing easily dominated hands without position in a situation where your opponents do not play predictably is a problem in poker – you will not know whether or not you are ahead without committing many more of those valuable chips to the pot.

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Back to our example - unless our player flops a big hand of 2-pairs or better, things are going to depend on guess work after the flop. In a low level SNG your opponents are going to play unpredictably at best, getting the information you need, will often cost chips that could have been saved for the all important mid-stages and bubble. Get into the habit of folding these marginal hands to a raise, especially with players still to act. A key part of our strategy is to seek easy decisions, and avoid ‘close things’ whenever possible.

This same scenario happens again and again in poker, players call with Ace-Nine, King-Jack, Queen-Five suited and all sorts of hands… only to find they have no idea where they stand after the flop comes…

Early Stages Tip: Choose hands which are unlikely to be dominated (big pairs or big aces) or hands which will give you instant feedback on the flop* – get in the habit of folding those tempting but expensive ‘in between’ hands.

*Hands like this include small pairs, with which you are basically trying to hit trips or fold to post-flop action is you miss.

Chasing Against The Odds is a common mistake, especially at the lower limits. Many of you will have suffered the horror of watching an opponent call half of their stack with only a flush draw, only to hit it on the river. Compounding this type of error is that many opponents will simply call-call-call with their draws, not raising until they hit their miracle card…

Learn those basic odds and outs (Click to see the article) before you play another game. Instead of calling you should often be making big raises if you find yourself with a strong draw – giving your opponent the chance to fold. If someone ‘chases’ then be thankful, offer them a good price to continue and think of it in terms of the chips you will make over time, and not the individual hand. Whether you opponent hits or misses if they take current odds of 2/1 from the pot on something that will happen only 1 in 4 times they will lose money… and actually lose it very fast. Without these type of players poker would be a more difficult game by far – so make sure you identify them and take their money gracefully.

Over Valuing Hands… I already covered this a little when talking about domination. However, over-valuing hands goes even further. Aces, Kings and Queens are seen by novice players as through-tickets to a double up, and are often horribly slow-played, allowing opponents with small pairs or drawing hands to catch up. This mistake is easy to counter, just wait until you can beat one pair and get those chips in.

An even bigger mistake when over-valuing hands is to be too stubborn after the flop. Some players treat a flopped middle pair like a certain winner and will resist all moves to get them to fold. Over

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playing one-pair hands is a killer in most forms of poker, make sure you keep a close eye on your own reaction to these hands and are capable of folding them when the action gets heavy – particularly if there is more than one opponent in the pot.

Playing Passive, Calling, Horrible Poker: Calling too much is often the single biggest ‘leak’ lower limit SNG players have in their games. The way to look at it is that you only have one way to win a hand when you call call call – you have to show your opponent the best poker hand at showdown. Now, more than half of hands never get to a showdown, someone wins the pot before any hole-cards are revealed. Think that passive callers prosper over time? Of course not, those rare times they do bet rather than everyone realizes that they have a monster and quickly folds.

Playing positive, aggressive poker not only gives you more ways to win, it saves you chips when you are beaten too. Raising that mid-strength hand and getting re-raised allows you to fold (or see a flop and then fold when you miss) for only the price of the initial bets. If you call with these hands you will never be sure if your opponent is bluffing, since you showed weakness which inspires many of your opponents to continue betting.

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Chapter #9 Strategy Insights, Mid-Stages Strategy Tips For Multi-Tablers

While the exact transition between the early stages and the middle stages of SNG tournaments are fuzzy, I like to define this as having 6 or so opponents where the stack sizes range between 10 and 25 times the big blind. Blind increases are going to be significant now, and you will need to fight just to keep ahead of them.

Of all the mistakes your opponents will make in the middle stages, failure to adjust to the smaller stack sizes compared to bets is the biggest. This significantly affects your starting hand selection. An example of a small pair will illustrate:

In the early stages we pointed out that small pairs were playable in SNGs, since you can potentially spike a big hand (a set of trips) and win a huge pot. In the middle stages you can not usually call a raise with those same cards. For example, we will give both you and an opponent 3000 chips with the blinds at 200 and 100. You have a pair of 4’s and see an opponent raise ahead to 600. Here you do not have the odds to call. You will only hit the flop one in eight times (odds of approximately 7-to-1 against doing so). This is not enough to justify the cost, looking at the math, you will lose 600 chips seven times (7 * 600 = 4200) and win 3000 chips (plus the blinds) once! A huge loss, even before we factor in the fact that you will sometimes hit and still lose (for example to a flush), and other times see your opponent fold on the flop when you bet! Whether you reraise all in or fold depends on your opponent and the situation, I will look at situational factors in the very last part of this course – which details how to fine tune your profits.

Now, this means there are very few hands which it is profitable to call with at all! In the middle stages it really is a ‘raise or fold’ game. Anyone re-raising is showing a lot of strength, unless you have been raising every hand, in which case they may be ‘making a stand’. If you follow this logic you should be opening a lot of pots with a raise, especially when there are comparatively few players left to act behind you. People will call you occasionally, and the pot will be big compared to your stack sizes – I advise keeping up the pressure unless you have a known slow-player on your hands. Most people will not be able to take the heat!

Mid Game Tip: You Should Not Generally Be Calling Raises, Get Into The Habit Of Re-Raising Or Folding When Someone Else Bets!

Limpers are another big source of revenue during the middle stages of SNG tournaments; I wrote an article in SNG Planet especially dedicated to a move called the ‘Push Over Limpers’, (click to open it up!)

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In the middle game the tendencies of your opponents are key, you must get aggressive when folded to and steal your share of blinds and antes. By noting who are the players more likely to call you (or raise back) and targeting the tighter and more cautious players you can add to your chip stack without taking on too much risk. Part #4 of this course contains many mid-game tips – for now playing positively when folded to and tight when there is action ahead will get you safely to the bubble more often than not! Click below to check out Titan now!

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Chapter #10 – Strategy Insights, The Bubble, Equity And Aggression!

Ah the bubble, we now come to the part of any SNG tournament which will make you the majority of your profit. In fact the bubble is so important that the next part of the course is totally dedicated to helping you become a bubble ninja. This next section brings strategy based on ‘prize pool equity’ into play – for now we will gently introduce the key concepts and give you some (extremely) important pieces of strategy advice you can start profiting from right away.

Play To Cash? Play To Win?

Before we start I’d like to address a debate which appears in forums and so called ‘strategy articles’ again and again – whether you ‘play to win’ or ‘play to cash’ in SNGs? While both strategies seem plausible, both are actually incorrect and understanding why will help you to profit!

At the bubble of a SNG decisions are not based on whether you are ‘going for’ first or 3rd and then first – they are based on the best way to maximize your equity – or ‘average’ return if the same game were played 1000’s of times.

If you take mathematically ‘correct’ decisions which increase your equity again and again it will not actually matter whether your intention is to play for 1st or not, you will simply take home more money. Unless there are extreme situations in terms of stack sizes or huge blinds the best decision is the one which will increase your average win the most, get into the habit of thinking in there terms instead of justifying expensive mistakes with ‘I was going for 1st’ and your profits will improve fast! We explain this fully in the next part of the course along with several examples – so do not worry if it is not yet completely clear.

All-in Or Fold – Why The ‘Poker’ Appears To Disappear At The Bubble

Many people unfamiliar with SNG tournaments think that the ‘skilled’ poker disappears at the bubble, and to an extent they are right! What they fail to notice is that there are good reasons why players push all-in instead of standard raising. These reasons are nothing to do with complex equity formulas or equilibrium models; they concern the simple concept of poker Pot-Odds.

Let me use an example of an ordinary enough bubble, blinds are 300 / 150 ante 25 and all 4 players happen to have a stack of 3300 chips, 11 times the big blind. Now if player A chooses to play a hand he pushes all-in every time… and here is why:

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If Player A were to raise 3 times the blind to 900 and player B were to re-raise all-in then the Pot-Odds Player A sees are huge. The total pot = 900 (the raise) + 550 (the blinds + antes) + 3300 (Player B’s call + re-raise all in) a total of 4750 and it costs A his remaining 2400 chips to call. This is just under 2-to-1 odds, meaning A only has to win the hand 35% of the time to show a profit. Let us be honest, how many hand combinations which legitimately raised here are less will win less than 1/3rd of the time against the entire range B could have re-raised with?? Not many! This example is with 11 blinds, as we get to 10, 8 or even less the logic for pushing all-in gets even stronger – were we considering raising 2.5 times the blind, continuation betting and then folding to resistance with 1500 chips left!!

Of course, with many of the hands A is legitimately raising he would be happy to pick up the blinds, so pushing all-in has the effect of getting many of the hands which might have re-raised to fold. The key is this:

If The Pot-Odds You Receive After Raising Mean That You Will Be Forced To Call Any Re-Raise, Then You Should Usually Push All-In To Start With.

I wrote a dedicated article explaining ‘Why All In?’ in SNG Planet explaining this concept with more examples, we will keep the number of links back to the site to a minimum – you can find it fast via our site search function on the top right hand side.

Bubble Mistakes, Where Your Cash Will Come From!

Now you understand the premise behind all-in poker I can start to cover at some of the major mistakes your opponents will make at the bubble of SNG tournaments. Again, these errors are covered in detail in Part #2 of the course, which will turn you into what is commonly known as a ‘Bubble Ninja’!

For the time being the concept I would like you to understand is that doubling your chips at the bubble will usually only increase your average win in dollars over 1000’s of tries by 50%... that is to say the relationship between your chip stack and your winnings is not linear.

Here is a simplified example – it is important that you understand the dynamic here.

There are 4 players left each with 3000 chips, we will ignore the effects of the blinds for now (they are 300 / 150 for the record!) and imagine that every player is equally skilled and experienced in the game. While in the short-term, chance will affect any individuals results, over 1000’s of games each player would end up winning an equal share of the pots. Again keeping things simple we can assume $25 of a $100 total prize goes to each player, on average and over the long run.

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Now we take an all-in confrontation between players A and B. Player A wins and her chips go to 6000 with player B getting nothing at all for busting in 4th place. Now, with a 20% / 30% / 50% prize pool payout each player is guaranteed at least $20 (the 3rd place prize money), and all have a chance of coming in 1st or 2nd too.

Having more chips always helps! Though to have doubled the $25 in average winnings to $50 player A would have to win every single time… and with the other players still having 3000 chips each that is simply not going to happen.

Incidentally, players C and D were not involved in the ‘All-In’ hand, yet their average win in this particular game just shot up, they are now guaranteed $20, one of them will definitely win $30 and both have a chance of $50!

If we look at the average winnings, we will see that if the situation with one 6000 chip stack and 2 * 3000 chip stacks were replayed 1000’s of times A would win an average of $38, while C and D will average $31 each (to choose approximate examples).

Key Point: Player A risked $25 in average winnings to win $13 more in average winnings by calling Player B’s All-In At The Bubble.

This has a bigger effect on bubble strategy than many players realize. Here is why:

When you call an all-in on the bubble your risk (in average winnings) is almost twice as big as your potential gain from winning the hand. This means you do not just need a ‘better hand’ than your opponent, you need to balance the risk / reward by having a hand which is better than a 2-to-1 favorite against the range of hands your opponent could be playing.

If your opponent has a reasonably tight range there are actually very few hands which make it worth risking $25 worth of equity to win an additional $13 – we are often talking in terms of premiums such as aces, kings and queens only. Even against a ‘loose’ raising range your King-Jack or Ace-Ten is not going to be a 2-to-1 favorite, if you take a 60% edge when you need 67% to show profit you will go broke over time… the fact that many of your opponents do not understand this is exactly where your profits will come from!

Instead of thinking about the bubble in terms of chips, start to think of how much ‘average winnings’ you are risking compared to how much more ‘average winnings’ you might gain – and then choose hands where you increase that average profit only.

Good players understand this and know the ranges of hands they can profitably push and call with at the bubble, bad players do not and will make horrible errors – such as the following:

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Calling too much, for example calling with Ace-Eight is a horror at the bubble in most circumstances using the logic explained above. While the caller feels smug when his opponent shows King-Ten, all he is doing is spewing average profits over to the players not in the hand at his own and the ‘pushers’ expense!

Not Pushing All-In Enough. You see, any opponent who understands prize pool equity will be reluctant to call all-ins. This creates situations in most games where your opponents will fold so often that you will win money just from the folds. Since those times you are called any hand has some winning chances there are often situations where it is correct to push ‘any 2’. We will teach you to spot them in part #2 of this course.

Not Accounting For Stack Sizes: A simple example is people who fail to use a big stack to their advantage, especially when the other players have ‘medium’ sized stacks. Since they are all trying to avoid busting 4th you can literally own the bubble in these circumstances. A great trick is to keep the bubble alive when a mini-stack is at the table while you steal from mid-sized stacks. We explain this one in the SNG Planet Article: Keep That Bubble Alive and will cover the concept later in this course.

Calling less and pushing all-in more will instantly improve your bubble results. Once you get a handle on the type of players who will call you and those who raise light you can use the math to your advantage. Again, part 2 of the $16 / Hour SNG Blueprint is dedicated to helping you become a master of the bubble. For now getting the ‘chips are not equal to average winnings’ concept straight, think of prize pool equity risked against prize pool equity gained - and start using this to your advantage.

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Chapter #11 – Strategy Insights, In The Money + Heads-Up Play

All the focus on bubble play can often lead to players not appreciating the significance of a solid strategy once you are in the money. Again we are playing to maximize equity, only this time the buffer of 3rd or 2nd places mean that the risk is lower, meaning we can play hands closer to the ranges of our opponents (though still ahead of them!).

You will often see players turn into Maniacs once the bubble bursts, pushing all-in with almost every hand in a wild bid to regain some of the chips they gave away desperately trying to get to the last 3! This creates profitable situations for those who are able to judge a profitable calling range against the crazies. While the exact math depends very much on stack sizes (not just your own, those of all the players in relation to the blinds), you can often profitably call with a range of top 33% of the cards your opponent is playing. For example if they are pushing all-in with the top 20% of hands you can call with top 6.7%, if they push the top 60% then you can call as wide as the top 20%.

Unexploitable Play And SAGE

Did you know that when you get heads-up it is possible to play in a style which is ‘Mathematically Unexploitable’, this means whatever your opponents do they will not be able to take advantage of you, if you hold 60% of the chips heads-up and play an unexploitable style then you will win 60% of the time, period. Once thing we should note is that the best players actually deviate a lot from an unexploitable style – in order to exploit the tendencies of their opponents and win more than their fair share.

What we are talking about is known as ‘Nash equilibrium’, I believe that the best way for a new player to take advantage of this is to learn a simple point-counting system called SAGE. This takes into account the size of the blinds, stacks and your cards and gives you clear push all-in / call / fold advice… it is simple enough to be memorized too.

Here is an adaptation of an article I originally posted over at SNG Planet on how to use SAGE. I strongly advise that you learn it!! When you are heads-up at the end of a SNG Tournament with just one prize on offer the SAGE poker system can be used to ensure that your play is ‘mathematically un-exploitable’. The system itself is very simple – it involves assigning ‘power rankings’ to hands and comparing them with a table showing your optimal push / fold ranges. SAGE works best with less than 15 Big Blind stacks; with more than this you have some room to play a little poker.

Before we get into the math and discuss whether using SAGE would be a good option a quick note on copyright. This is © 2005 Lee Jones and James Kittock. Lee Jones is former Pokerstars card-room manager and author of the best selling book ‘Winning Low Limit Holdem’.

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While this article is part of a course on SNGs, it can also be used for high blind play in normal Satellite tournaments or larger multi-table tournaments. SAGE works with a single prize, when you are heads up at the end of a SNG you are guaranteed 2nd prize as a minimum. You can thus think of SAGE as being for the difference between 2nd and 1st (usually an additional 20% of the prize pool). Adding a 3rd player would add complexity to this simple system – we point readers to our ICM articles for more information on this.

Introducing The 'Power Index' Score

The SAGE system’s benefit is simplicity. There are 2 key factors, both of which are very easy to work out – then a simple chart for deciding on your action. The keys factors are ‘PI’ which stands for the ‘Power Index’ of your current cards and ‘R’ which is the ratio of the smallest stack to the big blind. For each ‘R’ there are then numbers given for the SB to push all in and the BB to call based on PI.

Working out PI is done like this: Each card is given a ‘power number’ based on its rank. Ace= 15 / King = 13 / Queen = 12 / Jack = 11 and the others at face value. To get the PI of your hand take the highest card’s power number, double it – then add the number of the smaller card. For example – Queen-Eight would be (12*2)+8 = 30.

For suited cards you add 2 points to the total and for pairs you add 22 points. So the highest PI is for Ace-Ace (15*2) + (15+22) = 67 and the lowest PI is for 3-2 off-suit (3*2) +2 = 8.

So, based on the value of ‘R’ here is a list of what PI you can push and call with.

R Push from SB Call From BB

7 PI 26 PI 30

6 PI 25 PI 29

5 PI 24 PI 28

4 PI 23 PI 26

3 PI 22 PI 24

2 PI 21 PI 17

1 PI 17 ANY*

* One of you is all-in at this point in the chart.

Those who want an even more simple strategy to get them started with heads-up play with less than 10 times the big blind can simply call with the top 50% of the range of hands their opponents are pushing all-in with, and push all-in with just under double the range they believe their opponent will call with. Though you will need to be capable of adapting to very tight or crazy loose opponents! In Part #4 of this course I will show you how to move from an unexploitable heads-up game to one that can actively exploit the tendencies of your opponents.

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Chapter #12 – Summing It Up

Key Take Away Points And Tasks For The Next 7 Days!

You can be earning $16 per hour with SNG tournaments in 30 days, with the right approach, right attitude and the information in this course.

Here is a quick summary of what we have gone through so far. I have tried to summarize the key points into single short-statements. My advice is to go though your own games and see how these points can relate to you, with these as your foundation we can move on to the more advanced parts of the course soon!

In addition to the strategy adjustments I hope you have added 1 more table, switched to turbo-speed tournaments and found some easily beatable games (along with a new bonus!).

Key Points:

- Chips you lose are worth more than chips you win in a SNG tournament. This is due to the payout structure, and has an effect on your strategy at every stage of the game.

- We do not ‘play to win’ or ‘play to cash’, instead we play to have a greater average stake in the prize pool each time we make a decision.

- Your opponents will make huge errors at the bubble. Simply by playing to get to the bubble, then playing a solid ‘mathematically correct’ strategy, you can make a nice profit in SNG Poker.

- One of the biggest mistakes you will see is opponents who over-value hands such as ace-jack and unpaired picture cards during the early stages. Take advantage of these players with a tight and aggressive early stage strategy.

- Position at the table is extremely important, as is your position in relation to particularly active or aggressive opponents. Learn to fold reasonably good hands when out of position and loosen your raising requirements when you are in position after the flop.

- During the middle stages you should very rarely call raises, instead you re-raise or fold. If you have a chance to open a pot by raising yourself this is even better.

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- At the bubble chips you win will often only be worth half as much in terms of average winnings as chips you lose. Instead of asking whether your hand is better than that of your opponent – as whether your prize pool equity risked is adequately compensated by your potential gain.

- When heads-up at the end of the tournament, employing a simple system such as SAGE will make your play ‘unexploitable’, ensuring you get your fair share (or more!) of 1st places!

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