Nobody likes buying into a poker tournament only to bust out a few minutes later. Yet this happens a lot in Sit & Go’s because players don’t know a whole lot of strategy for how to play the beginning stages of the tournament. That is why it’s so essential to have a plan for how you’ll navigate through the beginning parts of a Sit & Go.
The first thing you need to employ in your plan is that there is no rush to double up in the beginning. Many players think differently as they try to go all-in ASAP in an effort to take all of somebody’s chips. But you should never try to force an all-in call just for the sake of doubling up.
Instead, you should play conservative in the beginning so that you avoid all of the maniacs who have no regard for their tournament buy-in. If you happen to land A-A and somebody wants to go all-in pre-flop, then by all means put them to the test. But other than these kinds of situations, you should be wary of jumping into the heavy action too early.
Just remember, you’ve got a whole tournament to be aggressive so don’t get stuck trying to prove something in the early going.
Another thing to be mindful of in the beginning stages of a Sit & Go is playing your position right. This should go without saying since nearly every player knows the basics of playing early, middle, and late position.
But you should play even more conservatively in early position during a Sit & Go since your chip stack is finite. In other words, you can’t just add more to it once the stack starts dwindling like in a cash game. The best strategy for early position is scaling back your starting hand requirements so that you aren’t playing dominated hands like A-Q.
liked your article but i wouldnt call the maniacs, maniacs there are noobs its really annoying..
Yesterday i was in A Freeroll and everyone on the table sitted out except me, so o good take al those blinds till i moved too another table. My winnings? 16 000 chips from that table i was happy hehe