[Irieguy]

Have you ever played in one of those SNGs where 2 or 3 people are elimated in the first few hands? Don't you automatically think to yourself, "sweet, this is going to be easy," only to be surprised by the fact that there are still 7 players in level 5? Well, I've been looking at that issue for while and think I understand what may be happening.

First of all, you have to understand the "reverse gap concept." As we all know, in a tournament structure game it is correct to raise with a wider range of hands than you would be willing to call a raise with. But most players actually utilize a reverse gap concept. They are too weak/passive to raise enough... but they hate to fold, so they will cold-call raises and limp-call with virtually any hand they think may be playable. This means that they will literally call a raise with a wider range of hands than they would raise with in the first place. It's amazing that you could play poker that badly, but it is ubiquitous in the SNGs $33 and below.

At the lower limits, this reverse-gap mentality is made even worse by the stack sizes. After one orbit, 3-5 players will have more than 1000 chips, and the others will have less than 800. It seems that this really bothers the poor player. They see their stack of 720 chips, see 4 opponents with 1100 chips, and they get very nervous. That extra digit makes a big perceptual difference. So when chips are pushed at them, their K-8s starts to look like a good way to catch up to the big stacks.

But when 1 player triples up in an early hand, the poor players have the same initial reaction that we all do: "if I just wait a little longer, more people will bust out and I can make the money." Now, a suited king is going to look just as pretty as ever, so there's still going to be plenty of limping. But the field becomes a little less willing to call off their stack because they think they might be able to survive a little while in a tournament that starts out that way. The reverse gap becomes narrower. Yet another example of how a bad player can make an accidental adjustment that helps them. But the result is that the SNG will play more slowly than it would tend to if you only lose 1 player in the first level or two.

So what does that mean to an expert player? Well, if the reverse gap narrows, implied odds are going to get worse. That means that speculative hands like small pairs will decrease in value. Also, the bubble is likely to occur with the blinds representing a large portion of most of the players' stacks. You will want to identify the players who are more likely to relinquish their blinds in the later levels. Lastly, you start to see some more half-hearted preflop raises from late position that can be safely played back at from the blinds. Blind play is already the most important part of SNG play, but in these types of tournaments it becomes even more important.

So, limp less, play the blinds more aggressively, and look for your late-stage marks. I think that may be the way to handle those early-out SNGs. Of course, this is pure conjecture and I may be totally wrong... so I'm interested to hear what everybody thinks.

Irieguy