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View Full Version : Best site for SNG?


sapster
06-03-2004, 06:59 PM
I'm wondering what site is the best to start playing some real money SNG's. I consider myself a fairly skilled player, I read books, 2+2 posts, play home games, play lots of freerolls online, all to pretty good success etc. My bankroll is about $250, im trying to decide between UB/Stars/Party, does stars have a first deposit bonus? Anyway...Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

TheGrifter
06-03-2004, 07:15 PM
I believe stars is doing a depo bonus right now of 25%. You can clear this bonus in SnG's and Stars has, by far, the best format and range available.

Party has the worst players but you start with almost half as many chips.

nolanfan34
06-03-2004, 07:25 PM
Stars is apparently running a deposit bonus right now, like 25%. There are some threads about this in the Internet forum.

As for SNG's, I play them on Stars and Party. With that bankroll I'm assuming you'll probably stick to $5 and $10 ones to start with, which I have played a lot of. Here are some pros/cons.

Party Poker:

Pros - Generally fishy play at that level. 10 players per table, and you can count on probably 3-4 limpers PF early on especially. Having 10 players vs. Stars 9 results in a slightly higher payout for the top three places.

Cons - You start with 800 chips, an arbitrary number that I've never quite understood. This is not a tremendously deep stack to begin with. If you make a 3 or 4x BB raise PF and a pot sized bet on the flop, you're often talking 1/3 to 1/2 of your starting stack, so when you don't hit your hand, you can get in a hole early.

Also, the blinds increase every 10 hands. Period. If you aren't able to catch some good cards in the first 40 hands, you're going to be short stacked when the blinds hit the 50/100 level.

Poker Stars:

Pros - Smaller entry fee on the $5 games, $0.50 instead of the $1 Party charges. Doesn't seem like a lot, but if you multitable these it can add up.

Larger starting stack, 1500 chips. Blind structure is roughtly similar, but goes up in 10 min increments instead of a certain number of hands. Gives you a lot of time to manuever or wait out a run of bad cards.

9 Players per table, so less people to be eliminated before making the money. Starts also offers Turbo SNG's that have blinds increase at an even faster level, if you're interested in that.

Cons - Tougher competition. Not as many fishy players from what I've seen. The larger starting stacks result in longer games IMO. The larger stacks also help weaker players I think, as it takes longer to eliminate them (especially in limit), and they're as capable of having a hot run as anyone.

These are the pros/cons as I see them. Both are beatable with solid play. Lately I've been playing more of these on Party, especially limit, because of the weaker competition and the fact people bust out earlier with the smaller stack sizes.

I haven't played SNG's on UB, but most of what I've read about that site say it's similar to Stars as far as tightness goes.