Introduction

In this article

• How to use the starting hands charts.
  
• What blind-steals and steal re-raises are.
  
• How to master the late phase.
  

Downloads

• The PokerStrategy.com learning software for playing in the late phase (~10 MB) [http://static.pokerstrategy.com/software/8/download/setup_icmtrainerlight_int.exe]

You've already learned that a Sit and Go goes through three phases of play: the early phase with small blinds and relatively big chip stacks, the middle phase with noticeably bigger blind sizes and the late phase with very high blinds.

As the aim in a Sit and Go tournament is to stay alive as long as possible, everything you do is supposed to prepare you for the late phase. Winning a lot of chips early on by any means or eliminating as many of your opponents as possible is not your goal.

In this article, you will find the so-called Starting Hand Charts for the early and the middle phase. They ought to give you an overview how to play your preflop hands in the three different phases. The charts are put together with the help of mathematical computations and the practical experience of professional tournament players.

Download all charts and overviews as printout version here (Adobe Reader PDF-Format) [http://resources.pokerstrategy.com/Strategy/en/ps_sng_basic_handout_en.pdf]

For the late phase, there is a special training software that will help you to learn the optimal strategy. The software is completely free and available at the following URL:

Download the learning software for the late tournament phase here [http://static.pokerstrategy.com/software/8/download/setup_icmtrainerlight_int.exe]

QUIZ

How do you play in the early phase?

The early phase is distinguished by the blinds being still small in comparison to your and your opponents' chip stack. As a rule of thumb, you should remember this: the early phase ends when your chip stack fall under 24 big blinds.

Basically, your strategy is to only enter pots where you clearly have the best hand. In other words: no tough decisions! This means you will only enter the action with cards that will often stay or become the best hand even after the community cards are dealt, allowing you to play through the many betting rounds without too much hassle or too many headaches.

You can see the starting hand chart (SHC) for the early phase below. You will find all starting hands that are profitably playable in there, with the corresponding best way of playing them. If you follow this chart, you will automatically generate a large number of the advantageous situations we mentioned earlier.

Download all charts and overviews as printout version here (Adobe Reader PDF-Format) [http://resources.pokerstrategy.com/Strategy/en/ps_sng_basic_handout_en.pdf]

Starting hands chart for the early tournament phase Hands Raises in front of you Early pos. Middle pos. Late pos. Blinds   None Raise AA, KK Exactly one Raise   More than one All-In   None Raise QQ Exactly one Raise   More than one Fold   None Raise AK Exactly one Call   More than one Fold JJ, TT None Call Raise   One or more Fold 99 to 22 None Call   One or more Fold AQ, AJ, KQ None Fold Raise   One or more Fold Special rules If there is a raise behind you, you only continue playing with AA, KK, QQ and AK and go All-In immediately. You fold all other cards. If an opponent raises more than 6 big blinds, you only continue playing with AA, KK, QQ and AK and go All-In immediately. You fold all other cards.

How to read the chart

At the left side, you see all possible starting hands listed. Any hand not on this list should not be played - it would only result in trouble.

Every card is given as a single letter or a digit. The letter comes from the card's name, like Q for a queen, for instance.

Used card designations   A   Ace   K   King   Q   Queen   J   Jack   T   Ten   9   Nine

If you're holding a potentially playable hand, your action still depends on what the players before you have done. Has someone in front of you already raised his hand or has nobody raised yet?

Therefore the second column of the chart is divided into three rows, which show the different possible situations that you might get into. Depending on whether someone has already raised before you, your recommended action can be found in the corresponding columns to the right in the third column. It will point out whether you should call, raise or fold.

Besides your cards and the action of the players in front of you, a third factor comes into play, namely your position.

In poker, position is another word for when it is your turn to act in a betting round. As the order who's turn it is in a betting round depends on who the current dealer is, the position derives from this, as well.

The positions at the poker table SB BB UTG1 UTG2 UTG3 MP1 MP2 MP3 CO BU

The two blind positions: SB and BB
The two players that pay the small and big blinds are called SB and BB respectively. Rotating clockwise, they sit behind the dealer, to his left.

The three early positions: UTG1, UTG2 and UTG3
The three players that follow the blinds when rotating clockwise find themselves in early position. They are designated as UTG1, UTG2 and UTG3, which originates from under the gun - the early positions are commonly looked upon as the worst, and figuratively speaking, you are looking into the barrel of a gun.

The three middle positions: MP1, MP2 and MP3
Next, there are three players in the middle positions.

The two late positions: CO and BU
The player in front of the dealer and the actual card dealer constitute the end of the round. They are called CO (for cut-off) and BU (for button). The latter is derived from the chip or button that marks the current dealer position.

If there are only nine players on the table, there are only two early position. For 8 players, there will even only be one early position left.

For every player that leaves the table, we leave out another position, going from the early positions to the middle positions and then to the late positions.

QUIZ

How large are your raises?

With some hands, you raise before the flop. Whenever you do this, you should follow some rules for the size of your raises.

• Your basic raise is 4 big blinds. You will always raise to this size if no one entered the hand before you.
• For every player that called the blind before you, you add another big blind on top.
• If there has been a raise in front of you, you raise to triple the amount of that raise.
• If there were several raises in front of you, you raise to triple the amount of the last raise.
• For every player that called the last raise in front of you, you add another amount equal to the size of this raise to your own raise.
• If you have to put more than half of your chips at stake for a raise, you go all-in right away.

These rules have proven their value in practice, as a raise should never be so small as to give your opponents a good price for a call. It shouldn't be too big, either, though, as to avoid only attracting opponents that have a better hand than yours.

There isn't as much calculating as there seems to be at first glance. These rules will quickly come naturally to you.

1. The big blind is 10 chips. Nobody entered the hand before you. You would then raise to 40 chips.

2. The big blind is 10 chips, but there are already two players who called. You raise to 60 chips (4 big blinds plus 1 big blind per player that called).

3. A player in front of you has raised to 40 chips. You raise, if you have the right cards, to 3 * 40 = 120 chips, triple the amount of his raise.

4. A player in front of you has raised to 40 chips, but there are already 2 players who called his raise. You raise to 3 times 40 + 2 times 40 = 200 chips, triple the amount of the previous raise plus an additional raise size per caller.

QUIZ

Examples for practice

In this case, you are in the first middle position (MP1) and have a small pair of fours. The starting hands chart tells you that you can call any pair from 99 to 22, as long as no one has raised. As this is the case here, you can call to see the flop in the hopes of hitting a set.

This is a typical situation that usually causes problems for beginners. You have an ace with a suited side-card and nobody raised before you. Couldn't you just call and take a look at what the flop brings?

The problem is that there are still players behind you that could raise. But the hands you can hit on the flop create an even bigger threat. In case you hit a pair of fours, it's not worth much. If you hit a pair of aces, however, you are in for trouble as soon as somebody gives you action. Your pair isn't really worth much here, due to your kicker.

You will only rarely hit your flush. It's much more likely that the flop brings only two additional hearts, leaving you with one missing - you would then have a so-called flush draw. You might hit your flush on the turn or river, but you will often have to invest a lot of chips to get there, violating your number 1 rule: don't risk chips unnecessarily!

You have no reason at all to waste chips on a speculative hand. Seeing as how you have hardly any chance of getting into a profitable situation with this A4 suited on the flop, you should already have folded. You can easily realize this is the correct course of action, as the hand is not even included in the starting hands chart.

A pair of kings is always a beautiful sight. You probably already know this yourself, but if needed, the starting hand chart also tells you that the best course of action is to get as many chips into the pot before the flop as possible. This means you should raise here. Now the question remains: how much?

The big blind is 20 chips. 2 players called. Your raise, if someone else has already called, amounts to 4 big blinds plus an additional big blind per player that entered the hand. All in all, this equates to 6 big blinds or 120 chips, in this situation.

How to play the middle phase

The middle phase starts when your chip stack gets below 24 big blinds and it ends when it sinks to 13 big blinds or less, putting you in the push-or-fold phase.

In this phase, your strategy is to play less hands than before, but you complement this strategy with two special moves: blind steals and steal re-raises.

Download the charts and overviews as a printout version here (Adobe Reader PDF-Format) [http://resources.pokerstrategy.com/Strategy/en/ps_sng_basic_handout_en.pdf]

Starting hands chart for the middle phase of a tournament Hands Raises in front of you Early pos. Middle pos. Late pos. Blinds AA, KK None Raise   One or more All-In   None Raise AK, QQ, JJ Exactly one All-In   More than one Fold AQ, TT None Fold Raise   One or more Fold Special rule In case of a raise behind you, you only continue playing with AA, KK, QQ and AK and go All-In right away. You fold all other hands.

As you can see, we got rid of the small pairs. The reason is that you can't play them profitably any longer by just calling pre-flop. If you were to play them, you would have to play them aggressively in the context of a blind-steal or a steal re-raise, as we will see later.

QUIZ

What is a blind-steal?

In Texas Hold’em, there are two players every round that have to pay a certain amount blindly, the blinds, in order to create a pot that's there from the start. In the middle phase of a Sit and Go, the blinds grow to a size where it starts getting lucrative to run a risk in order to win this pot.

A blind-steal, the practice of stealing the blinds, is accomplished by threatening the other players with a raise before the flop so that they all fold and you can collect the blinds. This works a lot better in the later positions, of course, and only when everyone in front of you folded.

That's why the following rules apply to blind steals:

• All players in front of you have folded.
• You are in late position (CO or BU) or in the small blind (SB).
• You want to force the other players to give up and you do not want to play for a big pot against them.

This means: if all the players in front of you get out of the hand and you are in late position or the small blind, you raise. This isn't all, however, as you can't simply steal the blinds with any two cards. They can be weaker than the cards you would usually raise with, but they should at least have some sort of chance to win, in case the steal doesn't succeed and a player decides to call your raise.

The following overview provides you with a good guideline to attempt steals.

Download all charts and overviews as printout version here (Adobe Reader PDF-Format) [http://resources.pokerstrategy.com/Strategy/en/ps_sng_basic_handout_en.pdf]

Overview of all possible blind-steal hands Your position You raise as a blindsteal with ... Cut-off - CO Aces AJ   Kings KQ   Pairs 99, 88, 77, 66 Button - BU Aces AJ, AT   Kings KQ, KJ, KT   Queens QJ   Pairs 99, 88, 77, 66, 55, 44, 33, 22 Small Blind - SB Aces AJ, AT, A9, A8   Kings KQ, KJ, KT, K9   Queens QJ, QT   Pairs 99, 88, 77, 66, 55, 44, 33, 22

It's not a big blunder if a player calls your raise. You will just continue the hand normally, just as if you had raised regularly, according to the next article about play after the flop.

It will, however, be inconvenient if a player behind you decides to re-raise you. In that case, you unfortunately have to fold all blind-steal hands. Sometimes you might feel like you are committed to the pot. Try to resist this feeling and stay true to your strategy by folding!

QUIZ

What is a steal re-raise?

You've just learned that a raise in the middle phase doesn't necessarily mean you're up against a strong hand. This opens up the opportunity for another move: the steal re-raise.

A steal re-raise is quite a simple move: if a single player raised in front of you and no one else has called him so far, you go all-in right away, trying to steal the pot.

This works in the long run if you follow these three rules:

• A single opponent has raised.
• No one except for that one player has entered the hand so far.
• A steal re-raise always equates to going all-in right away and putting all of your chips at stake.

If someone has entered the hand in front of the raise or if someone has called it, the situation is not good for a steal re-raise.

You can't just execute a steal re-raise with any two cards either, as was also the case for the blind-steal. They should at least be good enough to not be completely hopeless in case your opponent doesn't give up and calls your all-in.

So far, it has also been important what position you're in. For a steal re-raise, what's important is the opponent's position, however. There is one simple reason for this: even though a lot of players might not know the principle of position, a player will usually raise with stronger hands in early position.

The following overview shows you in which situations you can react to an opponent's raise with an all-in. For simplicity's sake, it also includes all the hands with which you would put all your chips in anyway, such as for example, a pair of aces.

Download all charts and overviews as printout version here (Adobe Reader PDF-Format) [http://resources.pokerstrategy.com/Strategy/en/ps_sng_basic_handout_en.pdf]

Overview of all possible steal re-raise hands Opponent's position You go all-in for a steal re-raise with ... Early position Aces AK, AQ   Pairs AA, KK, QQ, JJ Middle position Aces AK, AQ   Pairs AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT Late position Aces AK, AQ, AJ   Pairs AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99, 88 Small blind Aces AK, AQ, AJ   Kings KQ   Pairs AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99, 88, 77

QUIZ

Examples for practice

Another hand that looks good but shouldn't be played in this situation. There are already players who've entered the hand in front of you, meaning this is not a blind-steal situation anymore. Instead, you should play according to the starting hands chart, which doesn't include ace ten (AT) at all. This means you should get out of this hand and fold. It doesn't pay to play it - the hand merely looks good.

In this case, we have a typical blind-steal situation. All the players in front of you have folded their hands and you're in the small blind (SB) position. The overview shows you that queen ten (QT) is included in the hands you can attempt a blind-steal with from the small blind, so you raise.

Your goal is to get the player in the big blind (BB) to fold and to collect the pot. If this doesn't work and the BB calls your raise, you just play as if you had raised regularly, as specified in the article about play after the flop, which you will see later.

Should your opponent decide to raise, the hand is finished as far as you are concerned. You should definitely fold now. QT might be a good hand for a blind-steal, but nothing more than that.

As you can see, one player has raised in front of you and nobody else has entered the hand so far. You should immediately recognize that a steal re-raise is possible here. All you have to do is to check whether your hand qualifies in the overview.

According to the standard starting hands chart for the middle phase, you couldn't profitably play a pair of tens (TT) against a raise. This means you would normally fold, for instance when other players already entered the hand.

As this is a special case, the starting hands chart doesn't count, however, and we use the overview for steal re-raises instead. Your opponent raised from the second middle position (MP2). And just look at that, the overview tells you that you can steal re-raise with TT if your opponent has raised from middle position, meaning you can go all-in.

How to play in the late phase

The late phase is also called the push-or-fold phase. You are only confronted with a push-or-fold decision when ...

• ... you have 13 or fewer big blinds ...
• ... or when all the players behind you and all the players that have entered the hand before you have 13 or fewer big blinds.

If neither situation applies, we still play according to the strategies for the middle phase. There is a simple way to summarize both rules: if you can win or lose more than 13 big blinds in one round, you are not in the push-or-fold phase.

In the push-or-fold phase, you only have two options at your disposal. You either go all-in before the flop (push) or you get out of the hand (fold). This sounds easy, but it can be very complicated, because the decision depends heavily on your chip stack; depending on the situation, you can sometimes go all-in with a vast number of hands.

• The later your position, the more hands you go all-in with.
• If someone has entered the hand before you or has raised, you go all-in with fewer hands.
• The smaller your chip stack or the smaller the chip stack of the opponents behind you, the more hands you go all-in with.
• Always keep an eye on the table situation and observe who could become dangerous or who is under a lot of pressure.

There is a mathematical model which describes exactly which hands you should go all-in with. It doesn't just take into account the actual chip stack sizes, but also the implications of the possible chip winnings and losses for your ranking in the tournament and thus your effective money winnings. You don't play a tournament to win chips but to place as high as possible, after all.

The name of this model is the Independent Chip Model (ICM). It would be very complicated to deal with it right here and now, and you're probably not in the mood for a long-winded mathematics class. If you want to know more about the mathematical foundation of ICM, you can find elaborate articles on ICM in the advanced strategy sections. You can, amongst other things, find four starting hands charts for playing in the late phase, based on ICM, in the bronze section.

In order to give you a better understanding of ICM in practice, the software department of PokerStrategy has developed a learning tool. A couple of lessons should teach you which hands you can push with and when you should fold.

The first step, of course, is downloading and installing the software.

Download learning software for the late phase of a tournament here [http://static.pokerstrategy.com/software/8/download/setup_icmtrainerlight.exe]

Download the software and start the setup program in order to install the tool. Once you've started the ICM-Trainer, you can begin a new lesson by clicking on the Start lesson button - you can change the language by going to Extras > Language > English.

Start lesson

The program will now confront you with a game situation where you have to decide between going all-in (push) or folding (fold). You will always be the player named Hero in these scenarios. You'll see your cards and what the opponents in front of you did.

Who are you?

You also know all the stack sizes. Take a look at the situation and try to make the correct decision. After deciding, click on the button Push to go all-in or Fold to get rid of your cards. In addition, you'll receive tips and advice on the right side of the window.

Making a decision

The program will subsequently show you whether you made the right decision as well as displaying all the hands that you could correctly, and thus profitably, have gone all-in with. You'll see a listing of the complete hand range. For instance, in the example below, you should have gone all-in with every pair of twos or higher (22+), as well as any suited ace starting at A8s (A8s+), and so on.

The result

It's obvious that you can't learn the perfect strategy in 5 minutes. If it was this easy, your opponents would be able to play like that, too. Invest some time and play through the different lessons, it's really worth it.

QUIZ

Summary

The contents of this article are best understood when put into practice, so:

• Download the starting hands charts, print them out and follow them.
• Download the learning software for the late phase and play through it.

Each of the three tournament phases has its own strategy. The biggest difference between tournaments and other forms of poker is the fact that they're not about getting the most chips. In a cash game, you're always trying to make the decision that will bring you the biggest profit with your hand. In a tournament, you try to find the decision that will get you the furthest in the ranking. This is often quite a contrast - especially in the early and even in the middle phase, the right decision will often be: get out of the hand!

This is a fact that a lot of players have a hard time understanding. They're holding a good hand, so they push their chips into the pot and hope for the best. In a cash game, their move might even be the correct one, while being disastrous in a tournament, as it simply doesn't take into account that a tournament is a different form of poker with its own rules.

The third and last article of this series will deal with the game after the flop. You will learn which hands you should put pressure on your opponents with and when you should play passively instead.

Go to the next article: How to play after the flop [/strategy/sng/1349/]

LINKS
Related articles: How do you play a tournament? [/strategy/sng/1347/] How do you play after the flop? [/strategy/sng/1349/] Forum discussion: Take a look at additional sample hands and let professionals judge your hands on this board [/forum/board.php?boardid=1429]

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