Concepts for the Small Stakes Sit and Go Player

Guest Article: Concepts for the Small Stakes Sit and Go Player
by kevin6651 on 9/3/2006 10:25


This article is designed to go over some common situations that arise in low to mid level sit and go’s. My limits have been anything up to and including $30 buy in events. I say this because I want to emphasize that these points may seem trivially easy to some. That’s fine. I don’t profess that these ideas are going to help you crack the $100 & $200 games. This article is for the player that’s wanting to start small and grind a bankroll at these small stakes games.

We’re going to focus on some post-flop play. Adam wrote a fantastic SnG article for what cards you should be playing pre-flop at what time during the game. I would highly advise anyone to read that article if you need help in that area. What I’m going to go over in this article is a couple basic ideas you can use to both earn and save some extra chips post flop.

Missed Draws:

Low level players love to play draws. Any draws! Yes, they will sometimes catch on you and ruin your hand, but you have to know how to capitalize when they don’t. Howard Lederer talked about this in one of his videos. I’m going to reconstruct his basic idea here: Let's imagine you are in the BB with the AT offsuit. There is one mid position limper in the pot, and it’s folded around to you. You check your option and go to the flop. It comes 10, 7, 5 with two spades. This is a good flop for you, and you make a bet of 1/2 to 2/3 the size of the pot and are quickly called. The turn comes a 2 of clubs. You make another normal sized bet and again are quickly called. Finally, the river comes with the K of hearts. What do you do?

Going back and looking at the action, I believe most players would put their opponent on some kind of a straight or flush draw, and maybe even a pair and a draw (something like JT of spades). First, they limped in mid position in an unopened pot (usually not a sign of great strength). Second, they called you quickly on a draw heavy flop. This is important. Even novice players can see the straight and flush draws. So, odds are good that if he flopped a set or a raggedy two pair, he probably would have raised you before the river. So you can be confident that your hand was most likely good up to this point.

The river K might scare some people. It really shouldn’t. Your assessment of what types of hands your opponent is likely holding doesn't include many hands with a K. The only hand where you would be in trouble is if he was holding KT. If he just hit his 3-outer on you, well that’s poker. Nothing you can do about it.

All that being said, if we now conclude that our opponent was likely drawing and missed, I think most beginning players would immediately fire at the pot again on the river. This is a mistake. If he was indeed drawing, he can’t call you and most likely isn’t going to raise you if you fire. The right play is to check. If you check to him, it does a couple of things. First, it gives him the impression that you are weak. Second, it gives him a chance to bet his busted draw. That’s usually all a low level fish needs to try to steal this from you. Let him fire at the pot and pick off his bluff. These are extra chips he’s waiting to give you. Don’t just be satisfied with the fact he missed. Give him some bait and see if he bites. At these levels, he usually will.

To Steal or Not to Steal:

There will be lots of situations in these games where you will need to steal a pot to survive. Knowing when and how to steal is very important. However, there are some times when a steal attempt is not very advisable. Say you are on the button with 78 suited in clubs. There is a limp from up front, a middle position raiser, and then it’s on you. You decide (right or wrong) to come along for the ride and call. The early position limper also calls. The flop comes J, 6, 2 rainbow. The early limper checks, and surprisingly the raiser checks as well. Now the action is to you. What do you do?

I think a lot of novice players would try to steal this pot here. I would not, and I’ll explain why. First, there is the early position player who limped and then called the raise. It doesn’t automatically mean a big hand, but it sure is possible. Even if he doesn’t have AA or KK, he may have flopped a set and checked, hoping to nab the guy behind him who raised preflop. If you take a stab at this pot, he may just nab you! Resist the temptation to steal these kinds of pots. You can get yourself in hot water.

However, if we make a slight modification to our example and instead say that there was an early position raiser, a mid position caller, and then we decided to come along for the ride – I feel this is a completely different situation and ripe for some thievery! With the same flop as before, we can start to make some general assumptions. It’s probable both our opponents missed. Also, the trap idea from above isn’t in place. The mid position caller in this example isn’t checking to try to trap you. You didn’t show any strength preflop so if he had any piece of the board, he’d more than likely lead out. So stick a little bet out there and see what happens. It won't win every time, but it will win often enough to show a profit at these levels.

You’d be surprised how often you run into variations of the above two situations, and knowing what to do can mean a big difference in your stack.