Sit and Go tournaments have grown a lot in popularity, particularly in the online poker world. The main reason for this is that many players are time poor and don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to poker. They won’t to load up a game and start playing with a minimal investment, and who can blame them! Party Poker is one of my favorite places to play SNGs.
There are 3 types of SNGs on partypoker: Standard SNGs with blinds increasing every 10 minutes, Speed SNGs with blinds increasing every 5 minutes and Turbo SNGs with blind increasing every 3 minutes. In addition Party Poker also offers Steps SNG tournaments, where you can play in $3-$500 SNGs. If you win in one SNG then you move up one step. Take a look at the exclusive partypoker bonus code and read the party poker review.
However, when it comes to tournament poker, there are two main categories, multi-table tournaments (MTTs) and sit-and-go tournaments (SNGs). Typically MTT’s offer larger fields and prize pools but take longer to finish, whereas SNG’s have smaller prize pools but fill up a lot quicker so you can play straight away.
Turbo SNGs are a faster and more exciting format where the changes to starting chip stacks and blind structure ensures that the blinds are increased faster than normal to make for a quicker game. In a turbo SNG, every player starts with fewer chips than a standard SNG and the blinds typically increase every 5 minutes in comparison to the standard blind levels of 10 to 15 minutes.
What this means for Turbo SNG players is that you will be required to adopt a faster and looser playing style to accommodate for the different playing conditions. The smaller the gap between the blinds and stack sizes, the wider range of hands you should be playing, since you can’t be waiting around for premium hands because if you did you’d risk getting blinded out.
The strategy for turbo SNG’s is to try and get a quick double up so you have a good shot at taking down the tournament for a nice payday. Realistically to win the tournament you are going to need a few chips to play with so doubling up quickly is the priority. The turbo SNG is not suitable for all players. The faster game format tends to attract the more aggressive players, which makes sense since the looser aggressive players are used to playing more hands.
If your personality dictates that you play more conservatively and prefer to only play premium hands, then the turbo SNG structure might not be the game for you and you would be better off playing the standard speed Sit and Go’s. In standard SNG’s you don’t need to risk your tournament life in coin flip situations at the early stages of a tournament as much as you would in turbo SNG’s so the smart tight aggressive player can do well in the regular format and keep adding chips to their stack without a huge amount of risk. In standard speed SNG’s you can play tight early in the tournament and basically wait for premium hands since the pots are smaller and you are not at risk of getting blinded out early on. While turbo SNG’s can be fun to play, I think they are more suitable for experienced SNG players who are better at playing a wider range of hands. Of course this tip is only relevant if you are interesting in playing SNG’s to make money, which I am sure is the majority of readers.
So get familiar with SNG’s playing them in standard speed, and if you are looking for more excitement, once you are very familiar with the regular format you can play the turbo speed games and enjoy the faster action. And if you think that standard speed SNG’s are stressful, wait until you play the turbo speed SNG’s!
