Texas Hold’em STT Strategy For Beginners
- by admin
Sit and Go’s(or STTS, SNGs) can be a great way to learn the ropes of poker, allowing you to play with a full stack of chips for only a minimal investment.
Of course you’ll want to turn that investment into profit so this is a brief introduction and advice for playing and winning money at sit and go’s. For brevity’s sake, we will only be dealing with 9 or 10 handed single table tournaments.
Early Patience
The aim of the game is to finish in the top 3 spots where the payouts begin and the first mantra that should define your play in the early levels is “tight is right.”
With the stacks deep and little blind pressure, you have plenty of time in the early levels to only enter pots holding premium hands. Hands like big pairs such as QQ, KK, AA are all playable as are hands like AQ and AK. When you play these hands, play them aggressively – raise pre-flop, generally bet the flop and look to get value from these premium hands and you will see your chip stack begin to rise.
More marginal hands such as ace-jack and pocket 8s or 9s should really only be played from late position. This may seem overly cautious, but remember a big part of sit and go strategy is surviving through to the latter stages when the blinds rise, and at that point your strategy will change. For now though play tightly and look to only accumulate chips when the odds are in your favour.
Chipping Up
“Set-mining” is a viable strategy for gaining chips. This involves calling a small portion of your stack with a pocket pair and looking to make a set, or three-of-a-kind. This is a powerful hand and if you flop a set, you may be able to win a big pot.
Look to set-mine when conditions are right. These conditions are as follows:
1) You are committing a small % of your stack pre-flop (generally around 1/12 of what you would expect to win if you hit a set)
AND
2) a) There are many players entering the pot
OR
b) You believe your opponent is holding a big hand (QQ+) and will commit most of his chips post-flop if you hit a set.
End Game Strategy
The end-game is a different matter. As the blinds become increasingly large, you will now start to simply move all-in preflop to win the blinds. Here lots more hands are playable and at times you can simply move all-in with any two cards as it becomes +EV to do so – especially from late position or blind on blind.
When and how to do this is a more complex field and we will go into this at a later date, but for further reading, investigate ICM (Independent Chip Modelling) and its application to sit and goes.
There’s no substitute for experience so bear these basic ideas in mind and sign up and play.