You wanna make more money from home? Sure, we all do.... fortunately, the players at the Party $10+1 SNGs are so bad that you can be reasonably assured that you can make money with almost zero poker skill of your own, if you simply listen to this advice. Take it for what its' worth. Anybody who thinks that this is not a winning strategy, feel free to speak up and we'll refine it.

PARTY $11 SNGS: STAGE ONE (First 30 hands)
(1) Fold every single hand you see. Fold everything. Everything.
(2) Here's a list of the only exceptions you need to make: AA, KK, QQ, AK. In late position, throw in AQ and JJ.
(3) After the flop, if you flop top pair with 2nd kicker or top kicker, an overpair, or a set, bet or raise the size of the pot on every street and call any all-ins, unless there are 3 cards to a flush or 4 connecting cards on the board.
(4) If you don't flop at least top pair 2nd kicker, or there are 3 suited cards on the board, or four connecting cards, check/fold your hand.

STAGE TWO (hand 31 until there are 4 people left):
(1) Never limp in or call a raise preflop. Raise or fold.
(2) If your stack is less than 8 times the size of the big blind, either go all in or fold preflop.
(3) If it's checked to you, you have more than 10 times the size of the big blind, and you are on the button or the cutoff, raise. No matter what cards you have. Depending on the situation, it's usually right to bet or raise the flop as well.
(4) Don't call an all-in unless you either have AA-88, AK-AT, or you have incredible pot odds help.

STAGE THREE (there are exactly 4 players left):
(1) If you are the shortest stack, play hyperaggressively until you are not the shortest stack, or you are at least very close to being the 3rd stack.
(2) If you are the 3rd stack, try to steal blinds at least once every 2 rounds. Don't mess with the big stack at the table.
(3) If you are 2nd, and far, far ahead of the 4th stack, try to steal the 3rd stack's blinds whenever you can.
(4) If you are 1st with a small chip lead, play conservatively and tightly.
(5) If you are 1st with a large chip lead, play loose and agressive, at least until somebody wins an all-in against you.
(6) No matter what, always raise or fold, never call.
(7) If the short stack is less than 2x the size of the big blind, and you are not the short stack nor a big chipleader, do not put any money into the pot no matter what cards you are holding unless they are exactly AA.

STAGE FOUR (3 handed and heads up):
(1) Raise all in with your top 50% of hands.
(2) Call an all in with AA-77, AK-A9, KQ
(3) If you have less than 4x the big blind, go all in. With any two cards, from any position.

What do you guys think of this as a low stakes strategy?

Nash,
I read this post last night and thought I would try a little experiment today to see how it transferred to UB. I know the structure is a little different and people say the play is "better". So I played 5 - 200UB point SnGs. I wanted to practice the new strategy before I hit the money tables and I find the play on the 200UB to very be much the same as on the $5 SnGs that I play.

Anyway here are my, admittedly very early, results.
1 - first
1 - second
3 OTM (4th, 5th, 6th).

ITM = 40%
ROI = 60%

I think Stage #1 could even extend to hand 50 on UB. Hand 30 only brings you to a 20/40 blind level. I think this is still a little early for blind steals to be very profitable. By hand 50 you are at 50/100 and steals are worth more. Maybe an in-between of adapting to the table texture is the best route here. I did note that after folding all but one or two hands in the first 30 I must have had a very tight image because very few of my blind steals were called and then only with very good hands.

Stage #2 is very effective. Changing gears after establishing such a tight style allowed me to win several hands on the turn even if my bet was called on the flop. Only twice did I bust out in Stage #2. Once when I foolishly semi bluffed a top pair/flush draw and missed, the second was a short stack all-in with 77 that was called by TT and AA - oops.

Stage #3 is where my personal game will improve the most. I have a lot more work to do here but find this strategy to be excellent.

Stage #4: I just couldn't get my self to go all-in as much as you suggested. I guess my natural style is to play tight. That is why in the past my 3rd places were double my firsts. This will take some work. I will say that my adaptation of your style was very successful the two times I got to stage four. I won the first time and should have won the second but AJ ran into TT. I flopped an ace but he rivered a ten. Bummer.

I admit that this sample is way too small for anything but an initial response but that response is that you hit it on the head. Thank you very much for the support. I can only imagine how many hours you put into creating this post.

Now it is time to take this new me to the real tables and make some money.

Are players that much better at $20+2?

Dang - I hate it when life interferes with my poker playing. I have only had a chance to play 3 SnGs since I posted (all $5 + .50). I have 2 firsts and a third. Off to good start.

Stealth - I have never played the $20 SnG so I can't answer other than to say that others on this site have said the play is only a little bit better.

Nash - in Stage 4 just what do you mean when you say to raise all-in with your top 50% of hands? Do you mean all-in with anything better than Q7?

No, players at the $20 SNGs aren't a whole hell of a lot better than the players at the $10 ones... The only real difference I see is that they usually play SLIGHTLY tighter than they do at the $10s, and don't usually call off all of their money QUITE so quickly (ie.. not sure if it's that way now, since I haven't played $10 in a while, but I would regularly have 2 or 3 people out within the first couple orbits of a $10, and they usually wait until at least the 3rd orbit to start going bananas at the $20s...)...

As for Sunbob's question... When I'm ITM, I'm pushing like crazy with TONS of hands like Nash advised... I'm usually MUCH more likely to get 3rd or 1st than 2nd...

WRT Stage 4... you mentioned this mostly applies to PP. I know many times with UB SNGs, when you're down to the last 4 players, the blinds are not yet large enough to demand you pushing all-in. I stick with raising 2.5-3x the BB as long as my M is above 10. (M... as in the M concept in Harrington's new book... the ratio of your stack to the total of the blinds and antes). I'll give an example...

Ultimate Bet No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t400 (4 handed)

BB (t3660)
Hero (t7085)
Button (t3165)
SB (t1090)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with , .
Hero raises to t850, 3 folds.

Final Pot: t1450

A couple hands prior to that one, I raised 850 with QJo in the same position. Again, everyone folded.

I like to pay attention to how much I need to raise to chase people away. From my experience, in most tables when it's down to 3 or 4 players, raising 2.5x BB will be plenty.

When you push all-in there can be two positive results.. scooping up the blinds... or getting called and winning. The problem? In low-stakes SNGs, I notice many people not calling all-ins except with pocket pairs and big aces. If you raise all-in with A6s, you'll get called by 88-AA, and AT+. With every one of those cases, you're an underdog. So what you really want is to scoop up the blinds uncontested and NOT be called. And to accomplish that... you often don't need to push all-in. If I only raised 2.5x the BB and was called, I could have outplayed him on the flop, or got out without doubling him up and losing my chip lead. Then again, I'm confident in my flop skills. I can lay down TP crap kick (or top kick) when I think I'm beat.

What do you think of my variation? Perhaps it doesn't apply to PP.

What about playing from the SB in stage one when you allready have 2/3 of a BB on the table? Should I be folding this even though there's a great chance I am only having to pay 5 more for the shot a winningt 60?

Good stuff Nash...

This looks like a pretty optimal heuristic.for playing SnG's. No poker strategy is ever definitive but this "system" does provide a straight forward set of fundamentals for this niche of online poker. Plus it shifts the emphasis off experience and feel - things a new player will usually have the most difficulty with. One addition I might add is to try and play when there are at least 50k players on the site as this will help avoid running into the tighter tables (though this may be more imporant at the higher levels)

I play mostly 50s right now and am gonna try and start mixing in a few of the 100s. As I was reading the strategy you laid out, I realize its pretty close to how I play at the 50s and wanted to hear peoples thoughts on how they diverge from this guide at the higher stakes games.

Stage One:

Do you loosen up your starting hand requirements? Are you more willing to get involved at the lower levels? Here are you more apt to just call a raise with a hand like AK or JJ or do you reraise?

Do you play more cautiously on the flop? Fold to raise or all-in with TPTK of TP2K? Or if called do you put another pot size bet out on the turn? In my experience so far, when someone raises my bet on the flop I'm very often up against at least two pair and strongly consider laying down TPTK to even a min raise in order to avoid crippling myself early. Is this too weak/tight?

Stage Two:

Everything here seems to scale up well to the 50s... does anyone here add anything to their game at this stage at these stakes?

Stage Three:

Again this seems like very sound strategy for the higher stakes as well. How aggresive is hyperaggresive? Top-50? Any two cards? Stealing at this point in the tournament is usually an all-in endeavor if yer 3rd stack (i.e. i usually have less than 8x the big blind and almost always an M value of less than 8.) Obviously getting ITM is the essential priority here and its always a risk to move all your chips in... are you all still generally willing to make a steal for all your chips in this position?

Stage Four:

Do you still play this aggresively at the higher stakes or should one try and mix it up a bit more. Right now the only hands I really mix it up with are AA, KK, QQ and push everything else that I would be raising with.

Do you alter your strategy at all going from 3-handed to heads-up? If you have about $5000 and the blinds are 200/400 are you still pushing all-in with raising hands? And what are your approx requirements for reraising (or do you base this more on your read of the opponent?)

Finally, how much of a read do you typically get on players at these levels and how dramatically does it affect your play? I find I can three table for a profit but I'm not really getting reads on the majority of the players and it seems not to be especially important ... I'm wondering if this is where I'm losing a few percentage points in my ITM and my ROI...

Anyway thanks for posting this guide, even for the more experienced I think its a nice refresher and its always good to have some fundamentals to look at and keep yerself disciplined.

....oh and as a little postscript to those who are finding hard to be as aggresive as they recommend ITM, I have recently started playing this way and my results have improved by leaps and bounds, many many more 1st than I was getting before (though i still seem to be getting too many 2nds ...)

To escapeplan9: thanks for the rec on Harrington's book, I have a lot of poker lit but this is right on the top of the pile, one of, if not the best books I've read on NL. To anyone who doesn't have it yet (especially vol. 2) there really isn't a way to better spend thirty bucks.

- TM


pps - how do the 100s stack up against the 50s? And what kind of ITM/ROI are you guys able to maintain at the 50s and 100s?

Frankly, I don't like the "m" concept because of the difference between blinds and antes. Sure, you can raise to 3xBB if your M is 10 and sum of the antes is pretty big, but what if your M is 10 and there are no antes? Are you really going to raise 30% of your stack and then fold? With 2:1 pot odds to call the all in? That would be a bad move 99% of the time.

When it comes to the bubble, you do need to act differently if you're the 3rd stack. But that's the point -- this isn't an optimal strategy, this is a simple strategy that is easy to follow and is an excellent *starting point* for people taking on SNGs. I fully recommend that experienced players depart from this strategy when it comes to certain details, but it's hard to explain exactly how much your chip position matters on the bubble as compared to your need to take the blinds, and alot of it depends on adapting to the other players.

tanx Nash, this gives more substance what Id been doin - tight early / gamblin' l8r.

1 SnG with the Nashvegas system, got second place. whoop. but dammit nobody called my pfrs with AA,AK,AQ! can't complain though, good thread.

1 tourney is enough data points, right? lol...

but anywho, thanx for the post. SnG'ers also need to take into account who is in the blinds - and their chip stacks - during the stealing stage. if possible try not to continuously raise [with junk] the chip leader who has 5x your stack...that can lead to bloodshed. and he has more ammo then you. conversly timid medium stack can be easily pushed around.

im still amazed at the hands people call all in s with...84s ? good times.