Double Up SNG Tip

If you’ve been playing the double-up SNG’s at Carbon quite a bit, then I’ve got a nice tip for you. This tip is designed to help you double up early on in one of these SNG’s, and if you can pull this off, you’ve got a great shot at making it ITM. Plus it disguises you as a fish so that you’re more likely to get major action from an opponent when you’ve got a great preflop hand. Okay, enough with the build-up and on to the tip.

Okay let’s say that you get either pocket aces or kings in the early stages of a DU SNG, and you’re facing a raise from an opponent. Now the standard preflop move with these hands is to 3-bet any opponent who has already raised so that you can isolate them and get value out of your pocket pairs. And for the sake of this tip, keep in mind that very few people shove with pocket aces or kings early on because they want to get maximum value by not forcing a fold.

But what if you were to shove with your pocket aces when the minimum call is only 4X the big blind? The answer is that the initial rasier would think you were a complete fish who was trying to steal a measly pot worth 100 or 120 chips, while also risking your tournament life in the process. Going further, a lot of opponents would view your donk range as medium pocket pairs (66 to 99) or Ax.

In the end, you’d be surprised at what people are willing to call you with in the aforementioned situation. In many cases, people will call you with AJ, TT, 99, etc. because they think that your range is so weak.

Of course, you also have to think about the negative side in that you won’t get called by the opponent and surrender what could have turned out to be 200 or 300 chips. But as a rebuttal to this, consider that even if you only get called 1 out of 4 times, you are still going to make around 1,500 chips and double up, which is still better than making 200 or 300 chips in four different situations.