The three biggest SNG mistakes

Former SNG record breaker bencb has three immediate tips to turn around your SNG game.

Do you find yourself floundering in Sit’N’Go tournaments, even when you think you’ve got a decent strategy?

Many players who come to Raise Your Edge for Sit’N’Go coaching have similar leaks in their game and today we’ll touch on 3 of them.

Here are three of the biggest mistakes players make in Sit’n’Gos. 

Mistake #1: Not playing enough hands heads-up

Playing too few hands heads-up is the most common mistake new players tend to make in Sit’N’Gos. Especially coming from other variants, players are not used to playing a very high VPIP. However, the structure of Sit’N’Go's benefits a very high VPIP in heads up. Try to go for >90% for most stack sizes.

Of course, you can’t just open raise every hand, so you can limp your weaker hands with the occasional trap and raise your stronger hands. Especially in lower stakes there is no need to balance your range.

During heads-up we should aim to play a VPIP that is as high as possible. According to GTO we should be playing 95% of our hands with 13bb+ from the small blind. The reason being we get extremely good odds and are able to realize our equity quite well in position. In reality it also makes a lot of sense, because the population plays very passive and tends to play very honestly in limped pots, while isolating very little.

Playing exploitatively you could even go for 100% VPIP and only adapt slightly if your opponent isolates a lot.

Mistake #2: Not C-betting enough

C-bets are a very important tool, especially in a game with a super fast structure and a lot of played hands. The big thing to understand with Sit’N’Gos is that you want to fight for small pots, and the easiest way to do so is to C-bet a lot.

At lower stakes C-betting is an auto profit spot against most opponents. If you go for a 1/3 pot size C-bet you only have to be successful one out of four attempts in order to make a profit.

Therefore, you should always go for the C-bet unless you have a very good reason not to. C-betting doesn’t just make sense for raised pots. You should also go for C-bets in pots where you limped preflop. The fact that the population tends to check/raise very little makes this play even more powerful.

Mistake #3: Donk Betting

Donk bets have their name for a reason. In most spots they just complicate things, while not achieving a whole lot. If you’re considering leading into the preflop aggressor, think about the alternatives first.

Most of the time a check/raise is the better solution, and sometimes a check/call or even a check/fold makes more sense instead. While a solver might suggest that donk betting is the best play in certain spots, I highly recommend not implementing it into your game.

Donk bets can be very difficult to balance with checks, and the EV gain of a perfectly executed donk betting strategy is very little.

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