Focus on Time

As mentioned before, $5 isn’t a big payoff when you’re stuck in a SNG for 45 minutes or more (assuming you even get first place).  Even if you play mid-stakes sit and go’s such as $20 + $2 and have a solid ROI of 1.20, you’d still be hard-pressed to make any sort of living by playing one table at a time.  After all, a 1.20 ROI would only give you a $4.40 profit per SNG, which doesn’t provide enough money to make playing a single table worth your time.

So what’s the solution?  You really need to consider multi-tabling at some point in your online poker career.  It’s the only way that you’re ever going to make a substantial amount of money by playing SNG’s.

Don’t Settle for Second or Third Place

Placing third in a sit and go will only get you a little more than your buy-in back while placing second will fall short of doubling your buy-in.  That being the case, you can’t settle for placing second or third because the real money is at the top.  Of course, this doesn’t mean you need to play like a madman when the table gets down to four or five players just to double up.  However, you can’t keep folding in hopes of backing into the money either.  First place gets well over half of the prize pool, and that’s what your goal should be.

Keep your Playing Style in Mind

Obviously just playing a lot of sit and go tables isn’t going to automatically make you a professional poker player; you’ve also got to factor strategy into the equation.  And much of this strategy will hinge on you choosing SNG’s that fit your particular playing style.  If you fancy yourself a highly skilled sit and go player, choosing tournaments with large starting chip stacks and slow blind levels is crucial.  If you’re more of a gambler who wants fast action, Turbo SNG’s will suit you better.

But more often than you’d like, the short stack will battle back through numerous moves made out of desperation.  Suddenly, these players become a factor again and your thoughts of being guaranteed a top 3 finish are gone.  For this reason, it’s important to know how to deal with these short stacks before they double up through you.

First off, you should look at how many blinds the short stack can afford to judge how desperate they are.  Sometimes players will be short-stacked when compared to the rest, but have enough chips to cover 15 blinds or more.  On the other hand, a player that has 10 blinds or less will be more desperate to make a move.

In most instances, it’s going to be the short stack going all-in and the bigger stacks making the call.  So it’s also important to know what hands you will call with if you’re a bigger stack, and are on the fence about deciding whether or not to make the call.  Seeing as how premium pocket pairs like AA – JJ don’t come around that often, you are going to be making calls with marginal hands the majority of the time.

Some of the hands you should consider calling with include any pocket pair (depending on how many people are left at the table), A-10, KJ, QJ, and anything better than these hands.  Of course, you can’t just let the cards dictate your strategy since you should also consider a short stack’s table position and the aforementioned number of blinds they can cover.  If they go all-in from early position and can cover 15 blinds, you should stick to premium hands before you make the call.

Playing the river is all about knowing how to handle different situations at the end of a hand.  And one of the most common situations on the river is when you’re holding a good hand, but not the nuts.  For instance, say you hold Kh-Qh on a board of 10s-Qc-3h-Qd-Jd in a three-handed pot.

The small blind makes a raise while you and another player behind you still have to act.  On this board where there is no flush possibility and only a straight possibility, your trips queens are too good to fold.  But you can’t eliminate the possibility that a straight is out there so you should simply call to avoid being re-raised.

Another common river situation is when you’re heads-up with top pair and have been betting all along.  A good example of this is if you held As-Jc on a board of Ah-3d-9h-Qs-4h.  Unfortunately, a flush has landed on the river so you can’t be sure if your opponent is a fish who called your bets in hopes of hitting a flush later on.  How you bet will mainly depend on your position in this situation.

If you’re in early position, you should bet to show the possibility that you might have the ace-high flush.  Even if the other player calls, you have a chance to beat them based on the fact that they’re only holding a pair of queens.  If you’re in late position, you can either fold (if they’re a tight player who raises) or raise assuming you don’t think they’re check-raising.

One last situation is when you’ve hit a drawing hand on the river and have the nuts.  Obviously you want to get as much money as possible in the pot so how you bet depends on the opponent.  If the opponent is tight, you can make a small bet and hope that they’ll call just because of the pot size.  On the other hand, you can check-raise a more aggressive opponent.

Phil Hellmuth

He holds the title of having won the most WSOP bracelets in history with 11. And his best game is no doubt No Limit Hold’em tournaments. Phil Hellmuth is emotional and aggressive at the table and it causes the other players to respect his bets and raises.  However, you’d be better off at using a less emotional style when playing cash games.

Phil Ivey

Ivey is known for being the top poker player in the world when all variations are taken into account. Of course Ivey’s absolute best variation is 7 Card Stud since he has won millions of dollars playing this in cash games and tournaments. Ivey is emotionless so he is able to mislead opponents easily, and he reads other players really well. So it’s no wonder why he is said to be the best in the world.

Chris “Jesus” Ferguson

He has obtained gold bracelets in Omaha, Texas Hold’em, and Stud, but out of the three poker disciplines, he is most successful in Stud. Ferguson is good with numbers and uses this to his advantage at the table. He also rarely gives off tells to other players, causing many to give up on trying to figure him out.

One of these situations is when you’re in heads-up play during a tourney.  Whether you’re in an actual heads-up tournament, or have had the good fortune to make it down to the final two players standing, aces are very valuable at this point.  In fact, many experienced player will push all-in whenever they get an ace in their hand since the odds are in their favor.  The thinking here is that aces don’t come around all of the time and when they do, you’ve got to play them.  Plus most winning hands in heads-up play are pairs so if you can pair your ace, you’re most likely going to win.

Aside from heads-up situations, playing a single ace in short-handed tournaments is also a good decision in many cases.  Because of the fact that short-handed tourneys only have 6 players at the table (to start), you can get away with using single-ace hands in many situations.  As long as the pot isn’t too big, you can play hands like A-5 since top pair will win more often.  Just make sure that the price to see cards isn’t too high!

The key thing to remember with a single ace is that the fewer players there are in the hand pre-flop, the better chance you have of taking down the pot.

Now with that being said, aggressive play can definitely pay off in certain ways.  For one thing, being an aggressive player allows you to win lots of hands since tighter players will usually fold when they’ve got nothing.  Another advantage of being aggressive is that you can steal blinds from the table when you’re in late position.  But even though aggressive players will win lots of hands and blinds, it will take away the bluff in most cases.

This is especially true when you raise out of position because those who have been watching your extra aggressive play will be suspicious when you make raises out of position.  This hurts your chances a lot when you’re trying to raise from early position with a pair of 9’s and two players after you decide to call because they don’t buy that you have a really strong hand.

Even if you’re sitting in late position with a garbage hand, you will still be looked at suspiciously by other players after you make a raise in an attempt to steal the blinds.  Basically, playing aggressive all of the time will limit your abilities to pull off successful bluffs.  It can even hurt you later on in hands like when you are trying to bluff players on a weak board by raising to get them to fold.

For instance, if you’re at a new table and somebody makes a huge raise while you are holding a second rate hand, you have no choice but to respect their raise at this point.  You have no information on how they play and calling their raise with no info is only going to put you in a bad situation.  But if you stay at the same table and notice that the same player is making raise after raise, you will have a good idea that they’re a loose/aggressive player.

With this being the case, the raises from the loose/aggressive player won’t hold as much weight as they would with others at the table.  The obvious “others” we’re talking about are the tight players who don’t like to bet out a whole lot unless they have the nuts (or close to it).  If a tight player makes a raise, you can be rest assured that they’re holding something worthy of taking down a big pot at the showdown.

And while the whole watching for tight and aggressive players at your table notion is overstated, doing so will help you to identify which raises hold weight and which ones don’t.  Furthermore, you might want to switch to a tight style of play from time to time in order to give your own raises more power.  For instance, if you notice that nobody respects your raises, it could be because you are playing far too aggressively.

However, it is of the upmost importance that you are able to focus not only on the hands you actually play, but also the on hands where you folded.  Here’s a good example on how a hand you folded away can hurt you when not given attention afterwards.

Let’s say that you pick up pocket queens in a $2/$4 game of No-Limit Hold’em and are in late position.  Two players limp in before you throw out a $25 raise and the small blind is the only player to call your raise.  The flop comes up 9c-6c-10h and the small blind decides to check before you throw out a $35 raise.  This prompts the small blind to call again and the turn is a harmless 4s.  You decide to make another raise of $55 and the small blind calls yet again before the river is shown to be an Ac.

Now you have no idea what to do since you’ve still only got a pair of queens and there are both straight and top pair opportunities on the board.  The worst part is that you have no idea what to do because you weren’t paying attention in the earlier hands.

In this example, let’s just say that the small blind player got involved in a previous hand where he laid down a set of 10’s face up where the only thing that would have beaten him was a better set or a backdoor straight.  Anybody who is even mildly aggressive would have called in this situation, but not the player we’re talking about because they’re tight/weak.  So if they’ve went all-in in the hand we’re playing, they need to have the nuts and we should’ve folded long before the river.

The key point here is that you can’t let distractions take you away from any hand because they are all critical.

But the dilemma comes in when you consider the straight potential of J-10.  If the board does present you with a straight opportunity, then there’s a good chance that you’ll have the high straight with these cards.  Seeing as how there’s the potential to hit a big straight with J-10, you’ll want to look for situations with large multi-pots to play this hand.

The best spots to play J-10 in is obviously late position since you’ve seen how many players have limped into the pot.  If several players have limped in, then you have an excellent opportunity to call and see if you hit a drawing hand on the flop.  This situation will give you a great chance to wait for your hand before betting big.

The opportunities for playing J-10 only get better when you throw a lot of tight players into the mix since they won’t be as likely to make you pay to see cards.  If you can continue to see cards for cheap then you’ll be able to play your drawing hand into the turn and even river.

You can also semi-bluff with J-10 since it gives you a shot at getting some kind of hand down the line.  Just make sure that you’re semi-bluffing the right players though because you don’t want to be counting on the straight to come through in a bluffing situation.

Stopping a session early because you’re ahead

While most players already know not to keep playing during a losing session just to break even (many people still do it anyways), some players will quit sessions just because they’re ahead.  Now this can be a great confidence booster to know that you’ve played a solid, winning session.  However, quitting when you’re beating the game will leave you short on profits time and time again.  If anything, you want to make even more time for a winning session by putting things off while the going is good.

Picking the wrong games

Being a profitable poker player isn’t always about making the best plays or being one of the top players at your online poker room – it’s about being better than those at your table!  That’s why picking the wrong games can be such a killer in terms of profit.  When choosing an online poker table, make sure to look at the flop-viewed percentage so that you can get a good idea as to how many limpers are in the room.

Making a call just to see an opponent’s hand

You can usually make a fairly good gut decision as to whether an opponent has you beat or not.  However, there is always that inclination to try and see if an opponent is possibly bluffing even when you know you’re beat.  Resisting this temptation is a must though if you’ve already put your opponent on a range and have decided that they’ve got you beat.