need help with hand selection in sng's once people go out

[ojsdaman]

Hello all, I was wondering if you could help me out with hand selection. I play party poker, 10-30 $ sng. I always play limit, and my vpip is around 20. I use Hilgar's book for determining starting hands. But that mostly refers to the tourneys when they are 10 handed. I was wondering if there is another chart that would state good starting hands once people start to lose. Or if anyone has suggestions, I would appreciate it. For example, I never play Ace/rag with 10 people in, but when is it smart to begin playing Ace/rag depending on the people left. Thankyou very much for your help and suggestions. I really appreciate it

[Slim Pickens]

HEPFAP has a section on shorthanded play that really helped me adapt to atrition in tournaments. There's no "chart," but if you understand why the hands on any other chart are on there, you should be able to figure out how to expand your range of starting hands for a smaller table.

Slim

[ojsdaman]

thankyou very much but i already have that book. It did help me a bunch, but i was looking for more with the 4-8 range.

[Cry Me A River]

Generally speaking you want to play SNG's exactly the same until you hit the bubble. Read the FAQ for this forum, however, that's NL thinking and you'll probably need to make adjustments since pot odds are far more important in limit and implied odds go way down.

If anything, I'd take this to mean that you should actually *tighten up* as players bust out since it means on average less and less PF limpers and worse pot odds. The value of drawing hands will go down, but the strength of top hands will rise.

That being said, I'm a NL SNG tourney player (frankly, limit tournaments sounds about as much fun as Syphilis [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]) so I may be completely out to lunch...

[Sidekick]

The following general guideline doesn't take into account rising blinds, having to determine how certain plays affect your chances of winning a tournament, etc.

You have probably already read/heard this, but just in case you haven't. The general rule that I have seen most often for shorter handed play is to treat the table as if 'X' number of players have folded in front of you. For example, if 5 players have been knocked out of the tournament then your playable hands from UTG would now be the hands that you would normally play if 5 players had folded in front of you.

For tournament structures there are some problems with this, but it is a decent starting point for determining what hands you are willing to play in a limit tournament.

Hope this is what you were looking for and that it helps.

[Laughingboy]

[ QUOTE ]

That being said, I'm a NL SNG tourney player (frankly, limit tournaments sounds about as much fun as Syphilis [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]) so I may be completely out to lunch...

[/ QUOTE ]

Nah, Syphilis ain't as bad. At least you have fun GETTING it. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Pokerscott]

Here is a sight that shows starting hand strengths given different numbers of players:

hand rankings

And here is a post describing an analysis I did for the type of hands you can expect to get if you only have N hands left to look at (before the blinds get you...)

typical best hand with N left analysis

Pokerscott