Sit and Go

   I started playing online poker back in 2011 and one of the very first games I played was a Sit and Go tournament on Fulltilt Poker. According to my records, it was a $US22 tournament and I came second, making a tidy profit of $US32. My fortunes in Sit and Gos (SNGs) since then have been patchy to say the least but I'm still plugging away at them. I have no idea how many hours I've spent playing in this game type in the last four years but it must be a pretty big number by now. And the reason I keep playing these games is very simple: I just love Sit and Gos.
   Probably the best thing about online SNGs is the convenience. There are games of this type available at just about any time of the day or night on the bigger poker sites. And the typical 9-player game usually takes about an hour to complete (if you go all the way to the end) so you don't have to invest too much time. The other great thing about these types of tournament is the pay-out structure. In typical multi-table tournaments the top 10% of players get paid. If this rate applied to a 9-player game then only one player would win anything. But it is usually 3 players who get paid, amounting to a top 30% pay-out. You've got to love those odds.

   To be clear, when I use the term Sit and Go I mean a single-table on-demand poker tournament. Technically, you can get SNGs in any multiple of players. There are 18 player SNGs, 27 player SNGs, and other on-demand tournaments with many more participants. But the games I like to play in are the single table SNGs that involve 9 players. So, properly speaking, I'm talking about Single Table Tournaments, but let's not get bogged down in details. I did try my hand at the 27-player SNGs a while back but it turned out to be a bit of a disaster. And I prefer not to play in the 6-player version simply because of the reduced payout. By and large I've been playing in 9-player SNGs for the last four years, but unfortunately my enjoyment of this game format has not been matched by good results.
   I neglected to mention that after playing that first online $22 SNG I played in another. I came 9th in that game. I guess that's when I decided that I was playing at too high a level.  My next session was a set of five $5.50 games. I only played SNGs sporadically after that and by June of 2011 my last Fulltilt session was a $2.20 game. After that I switched to 888 Poker, starting out with $2.90 games and moving on to $5.50s. From October on I was playing in one or more SNG sessions per week, some $5.50s and some $8.80s. By the end of the year I was marginally ahead on my SNG results; so far, so good.
   In 2012 I played two or three sessions per week, all on 888 Poker. This was a mixture of $2.90, $5.50 and $8.80 games and by the end of the year, after all that play, I was very slightly in the red.   
  2013 was considerably better. It was a real mixed bag of games; I started at 5.50/8.80 games then stuck to 8.80s only, then back to5.50/8.80s again. I also started playing in $7.00 games on Pokerstars in this period before going back to 888 only at the end of the year. During this time I played between two and four sessions per week and by the end of the year I was showing a 17% Return on Investment (ROI) and a $600 profit. This was my best SNG year by far.
   I played very few SNG sessions in early 2014, but from March onwards I was back in the saddle, once more playing in a mix of games on both sites. I was playing two or three sessions per week. but my returns were not good. By June I'd dropped down to the $3.00/$3.50 level. I stopped playing in the 888 Poker $3.00 games by the end of the year, probably because these lower buy-in games are not as heavily patronised on 888. By the end of the year I was showing a -17% ROI, an exact reversal of the previous year's results. But not quite. Because I'd played fewer games and at lower levels, my loss for the year was less than half the profit made in 2013.
   The bumpy ride has continued this year. In summer I went back to the $5.50 games and racked up a 30% loss. In autumn I actually managed a small profit playing in the next level down. By the end of winter I was playing exclusively in Pokerstars $3.50 games and showed a 10% loss. By that point I was down another $180 and not feeling very confident in my ability to play SNGs. The funny thing is, taken overall, I'm still in profit for this game type. This is largely due to my good results when playing my mixed bag of sessions in 2013. However I think my decision to drop to a lower level and minimise my losses has helped to keep the results in the black. It could have been a lot worse. The question is: what was I doing right in 2013 and what was I doing wrong in 2014/15? This is something I'm still trying to work out.
   Although my go-to site for SNGs has been 888 Poker for a long time, I'm now playing on Pokerstars only. This is due to a change in tournament structure. One of the things I didn't like about Pokerstars (apart from my belief that the players on this site are harder to beat) was their use of antes. Having antes as well as blinds means that your chip stack is eaten away faster, making the game more like a turbo. Up until recently 888 hasn't used antes in their structure but that changed earlier this year. It took me a while playing the new 888 games with antes before I realised that the tournament structure had also changed. Instead of going: 10/20, 15/30, 25/50, 50/100
                                      the blinds were now: 10/20, 20/40, 30/60, 50/100. So instead of having the double-up at level 4, it was now happening at level 2. The overall effect of this, combined with the antes, was to make the game play more like a turbo.
    Then, when I took a closer look at the Pokerstars structure I realised that the blind levels on Stars were actually longer; 10 minutes as opposed to 8 minutes on 888. What it all adds up to is:           after 15 minutes 888 is at 20/40/5 while Stars is at 15/30/4
 after 30 minutes 888 is at 50/100/10 while Stars is at 25/50/6
  after 45 minutes 888 is at 100/200/20 while Stars is at 60/120/15. 
Pokerstars now has a slower blind structure than 888 Poker. I've never liked playing in turbo tournaments so I now play my SNGs on Pokerstars.

   Despite the change in preferred site and the addition of antes, my basic SNG strategy remains the same. It is essentially the same as the way that I play Multi-table Tournaments, and it is the strategy that is usually recommended by the experts. I just play a tight game in the early stages when the blinds are low, playing only premium hands. Then as the stack/blind ratio gets higher I start getting more active, looking for good spots to chip up. Although this basic strategy hasn't been working for me recently, I still think it is the best way to go and I intend to persevere with it for now at least.
   Although No Limit Ring Games are my primary online poker game at the moment, I still manage to squeeze a few SNG sessions in from time to time. Most weekends I can manage a session of two to three hours, often on a Sunday afternoon. I usually play three games, and if I'm behind at that stage, I end the session. On the odd occasions that I'm ahead, I might play another game or two. I figure that I'll keep plugging away at the Pokerstars $3.50 Sit and Gos at least till the end of the year and then decide where to go from there.
   Regardless of the results in the upcoming months I can't see myself giving up on playing SNGs. I just enjoy them too much. But if my results turn out to be really bad, then I'll probably have to re-think my strategy. There is no shortage of websites that offer advice on the best way to play these types of tournaments and if necessary, I'll try adopting one of these plans. I took a lot of notes on SNGs from www.pokerprofessor.com a while back, so that might be a good place to start. But for now, I'm just going to keep trying to get back some of that 2013 SNG mojo.