Low stakes SnG question

Hi, I am playing low stakes 6-man Turbo SnGs (2-6$).

Assume we are early into the game, blinds are 20/40 or 30/60, with average stack 1500. Almost all pots are crowded, people limping/calling with anything. A 5xBB raise gets 4 callers.

So we are, say, in the cutoff seat, and one guy limps in in front of me. We hold A8s. What do we do? I tried to figure it out on myself but kind of failed

Raising too much probably isn't good because it's a kind of marginal hand, right? If we limp in, we get a 5-way pot, which is a kind of a flip. If a raise or a call aren't great, then folding probably isn't a big mistake, or is it?

What about when we are holding A9, AT?

Thanks a lot in advance.

easy fold
a9 easy fold
at easy fold
aj easy fold
aq limp/raise
ak raise

less than 10 bb = shove

tight is right

That's too tight imo. Cutoff seat ->fold ATs after a limper who lims in 67% of pots fells kind of wrong to me.

at the lowest levels the avarage table VPIP is ~20%, up to ~23% on weekends

I wouldn't generalize that people limp most of their hands.

AJo I would open from CO if they are no limpers or just one but that is it.

Well you are right, but there are some tables which are incredibly loose. If you are sitting there and see last 5 pots to have at least 4 people, you can safely assume that they will not suddenly turn tight.

Well, I'm prolly among the least qualified to speak on this subject.

But I would say fold for the most part... in some specific sng's where they are as looes as your saying I could see a case for justifying limping pretty easily. The problem I see is that a lot of the time your hand hits you're going to be beat, and when it misses you have to fold.

Personally. I would play A10+ and fold everything else, anything below 10 is just too low of a kicker and too often not top pair. It's really a marginal spot though as far as I know.

edit: also, in a 6man turbo sit and go, you don't wanna play marginal hands like that where you could flop top pair bad kicker and then be in a spot where you want to call down, I'm no expert and hopefully a more educated person will help me out here, but I'd think since only the top 2 get paid and you're talking early, that by playing such marginal hands in marginal spots you could be hurting your equity. (not sure, still learning, mainly putting this out there so someone could explain it to me hahah)

fold. Generally u wanna play the opposite of what the table is playing. And sngs your supposed to be really tight anyway. Save those chips for when ur shoving later

play like the biggest nit u can imagine ever up to 50/100 then start running them over obv
However im not sure if 50/100 is the best to start putting pressure on ur opponents as im not a SNG grinder.SO a sng specc should say from what blinds up is best to go crazy

Basically Harrington's book says when you have less than 20x(BB+SB+antes) you are in "yellow zone", and high card + x combinations go up in value, while like suited connectors go down. So according to him that's a raise; however I have trouble figuring out whether that's really the correct move when everyone is calling every raise.

When you play like a nit, sometimes you get to the bubble with like 1500 chips, and the other tow guys are like 4000, 3500. It's really no fun to be in that spot; but maybe that's the way to go?

haringtons book is outdated and it doesnt apply to sit n gos mainly. Honestly u should just be folding everything except pp's AK,AQ till like 50/100. Then work on your push/shove. Thats pretty much all sng's are. When to shove light when to call someones shove etc etc. 1 thing i did notice is u said it was 6 man sng's and I don't know if strategy changes in those.

a post from another sng thread by twisted echo..


Shenny,

Hes not insulting cash/none sng players but he does have a point. There is a certain way to play sngs thats fairly counterintuative to playing poker.

For example

A (CO) 6000
B (But) 4000
C (sb) 700
D (bb) 700

Blinds 200/400, A shoves we are B and we have AK. Its a reaaaaally easy fold and a horrible call. Im sure lots of good cashgame players will call here to win because its obv really +Cev, but not +$ev.

In tournaments chipev (amount of chips won) vs $ev ($ stack is worth) are almost the same since payouts are steeper, only 10-15% get paid and usually u are miles of the money for a good while. Therefore they play like cashgames and in general you shouldnt pass edges. This is why lots of cashgame players can jump into mtts and be v successful

In sngs 1/3 of the field gets paid, and due to the format and payout structure there are tons of +Cev spots that are -$ev. Cashgame players couldn't jump into these and crush without working on their games and adjusting to the different way sngs are played vs cash.

Similar to this, doubling up your stack does not double it in value. This is pretty important as to why playing the weaker hands that are +ev are less valuable in a sng compared to cash. Sure we can show some marginal profit with AJo utg, but in a sng you have to show MORE profit before it becomes correct to play than anything >breakeven.

Same reason your attempt to steal in cashgames should be > than in a sng, because you shouldn't be playing the marginally +EV hands in a sng due to the fact that along they make you chips in the longrun, they don't make you enough.

I kinda wandered off topic slightly here, but basically there is a ton of 'sng math' people should really be learning if they are playing sngs. While most of the top cashgame players would win at sngs, they almost certainly wouldn't win at the higher levels without working on their sng game due purely to the nature of sngs, and making plays that seem silly. Sng poker isn't really the same poker as cash, its more about math and stacksizes and ICM which is why higher limit sngs are pretty close to dead as more and more people are playing close to perfect - and w/ nash equilibrium its tough to make huge mistakes as regs realise how wide they can push and even w/ the others regs adjusting it doesn't really help.

So yeah, i would fold AJo utg+2 - even in lower buyins since although worse hands that you dominate will call thus making you chips - they will call with so many random hands that often you'll be against multiple opponents and have to check fold, or even against one who will fold v little and chips that you have in your stack are worth more than chips gained so it can get very expensive trying to win small pots.

I'm sure if you have good reads on everyone at your table and play really well postflop you could probably show a profit here (and maybe when you play higher you have to include more hands in your range to stop you having such a narrow range thats easier to play against) but i would be teaching people who are starting sngs to fold here for sure

Thanks a lot [GiTM]-Ace for the input. Actually Dan Harrington said in a recent interview that he is working on a new book on those short SnG's.
He said something about "based on information gathered from internet", so we can pretty much expect another piece of art

Btw, has anyone tried the PokerStrategy.com's ICM trainer? (it is a push/fold calculator and trainer)

I heard that the best program for sng's is SNGEGT. I have no idea how to use it though (I'm a fish).

yea. SNGEGT is cool, I don't know how to use it either though.

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