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If your goal is to become a strong NL cash game player, then I think starting out in sitngos is a bad idea. I've played with a few very intelligent players who learned how to play NL playing sitngos, and they were extremely leaky in live cash games with decent stack sizes. Party sitngos have extremely short stack sizes at every blind level, and other sites' sitngos are not much deeper. Additionally, proper strategy in a sitngo with a structured payout involves serious deviations from proper NL ring game strategy.

That being said, if your goal is to make money playing online poker with a relatively low standard deviation relative to your win rate, allowing you to play with a small bankroll, sitngos might be your best bet. A friend of mine who plays online professionally switched from large buyin NL ring games to playing only NL sitngos a few months ago because of some of the advantages that sitngos offer. I'm currently taking a break from NL and limit ring game play to focus entirely on Limit sitngos. I think they can be fun and a great change of pace, plus they are much easier to keep records for, which is a very important habit for a new player to get into.

Whichever game you choose, good luck!

scrub