Winning Concepts in SnGs
I'm trying to start a poker website, and I wrote a little essay about important concepts in SnGs. This is my first draft so feel free to add to it.
Winning Concepts in SnGs
(1) The Gap Concept - You need a stronger hand to call an allin than to move allin.
*Intuition - If your opponent is going allin with 20% of his hands, you can only call allin with 10% of your hands profitably about. You should only be getting into allin encounters where you have a good edge over the opponent's range of hands in the first place.
(2) Allin Encounters on the "bubble" are very costly!
*Intuition - With 4 players and a decent stack you should on average earn a quarter of the prize pool (and more)! If you call an allin with AJ thinking you'll win 60% of the time, you're actually losing money! 60% of the time you win less than half the prize pool. Say you average 4 buyins. 40% of the time you get nothing. .6*.4=2.4 buyins which is a very generous estimate.
(3) Steal more against opponents when they have more to lose
*Intuition - Players are much more likely to fold if they are in chip position than if they are desperate!
(4) Don't make your pots big early without a premium hand
*Intuition - Smaller variation increases your overall rate because losing chips hurts more than winning the same amount of chips helps. This means not raising with AQ and AJ if you're expecting multiway action. Other hands you will raise with because you are hoping for a reraise.
(5) Go allin before you are so low that people will have to call (less than 3 big blinds).
*Intuition - The chance they fold makes your equity better than a confrontation with a random hand.
(6) Usually limping or checking in a BB vs SB situation is worse than raising.
*Intuition - Most likely the other player has a week hand, because trapping with moderate hands is a poor play. Even if they call, you can make a continuation bet on the flop profitably. Usually a 3x BB raise will suffice. After you make this play a few times, it will stop working as well however. People will definitely notice.
(7) Make a continuation bet against 1 or 2 players but not 3 or more.
*Intuition - Your chance of winning the pot decreases exponentially with each additional player in the hand.
(8) Read into people's bets for weakness
*Note - Players often bluff Qxx or Jxx flops. People don't bet big on the river with a mediocre hand. They either have a strong hand or want to psh you out. A small bet is either a value bet or a blocking bet. Most SnGers don't go beyond the first level of thinking, their own hand, so you should go one step beyond them.
(9) Don't think in terms of winning, losing, and "catching bluffs" - That's how losing players deceive themselves. Think in terms of expected value.
*Note - You can't ever put a player on one specific hand unless they limp UTG then minimum reraise, then they have AA. In other cases you should be thinking in terms of ranges of hands.
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