More Big Mistakes in No-Limit Sit-and-Go Tournaments

It was then she knew she had made her first mistake.

In my last column, I talked about the popularity of one-table "sit-and-go" ("S&G") tournaments, in which nine or 10 players sit down at a table and play a tournament, with the last three players usually getting some piece of the pie. This format has gotten so popular that I saw a live World Series of Poker satellite informally turned into a sit-and-go. With six tournament chip "lammers" up for grabs (all theoretically to the ultimate winner), the players agreed to pay them off 3-2-1 to the final three finishers. Brick and mortar imitates online – who'd have thought?

Anyway, the purpose of my last column was to discuss some of the biggest mistakes I see players make in these S&G tournaments. Today's discussion picks up where that one left off.

4. Making all-in calls when you rate to be a tiny favorite or a big dog. I was recently in a sit-and-go and made a moderately big raise ($400, when most players had about $1,000) with K-K from early position. Normally, I don't like to adjust my raise size to the quality of my hand; it gives away too much information. But in this case, the players seemed content to call raises without much regard to their size. So, I figured I'd get full value for my kings. It was folded to a player who was short-stacked with just over $400. He reraised me all in for less than $50 more, so I of course called. I was surprised to see him turn up pocket fours, so he must have known I needed additional material for this column. If we discount the "suicide play" possibility, he was almost certainly facing two overcards, if not an overpair. And with the blinds still very small ($10-$20), he still had plenty of play left.

I've heard people make this argument before: "I put the raiser on two overcards and my pair is a favorite over that hand. Let's get the chips in the middle." Well, wait. First, with 10 rounds of blinds in front of you (and five rounds at the next level), it's irresponsible to risk your entire stack on a near even-money bet. Yes, his 4-4 would have been an 11-9 favorite had I had A-K, but that means that 45 percent of the time, he'd bust out of the tournament. And, unfortunately for this fellow, he was a 4-1 dog when all the money went in. Let's suppose that there was just a 25 percent chance that I had a pair larger than his. Then, 25 percent of the time, he had a 20 percent chance (as a 4-1 underdog) – a 5 percent equity. And 75 percent of the time, he had a 55 percent chance (about 42 percent equity). So, his net equity in the situation was 5 percent + 42 percent = 47 percent. Given the range of hands I was likely to be playing, he should have known he was an underdog. But even if his computation gave him a small edge (perhaps he thought my chances of having a bigger pair were much lower), it still would have been a large mistake to commit all of his chips to such a showdown that early in the event.

5. Making limit raises in a pot-limit or no-limit tournament. Yes, I know there's a button there that you can click that puts in a limit raise. Don't use it. Now, at some point in the past, I heard Chris Ferguson say that he generally open-raises about twice the big blind. And as long as the sun rises in the east, I won't try to tell Chris Ferguson how to play any form of poker (or dance, or throw playing cards, for that matter). I don't know if Chris still believes that or still plays like that. But in general, you don't want to offer your opponent a good price to catch a flop that will bust you. Particularly if there has already been a single limit raise, ignore the button that lets you put in a second limit raise; you're just asking for trouble. You are reopening the betting in front of you, offering the initial raiser a chance to put in a big reraise (if he was fishing with a monster hand). An additional limit raise doesn't put any real pressure on people to fold their hands, which is generally what you'd like to do in a no-limit tournament.

One good way to structure your raises is to think of the event as a pot-limit game. That is, suppose there are $10 and $20 blinds. If you are the first raiser in a pot-limit hand, you can (effectively) call the $20 big blind, and then raise $50, to $70 total. So, if you're opening for a raise, making it $70 to go is just fine (although I'd usually make it more like $60). If there's a limit raise in front of you, do the same math: $10 and $20 blinds, one raise to $40. So, now you "call" $40, which puts a total of $110 in the pot. You raise the $110 over the $40 to make it $150 to go. That is a very reasonable raise. It basically shuts out the rest of the field (unless someone wakes up with a monster), and puts huge pressure on the limit raiser, on whom you presumably have position. Of course, you have to consider what a raise of this size does to your stack (and to that of the original raiser), but you get the general idea.

Wow, I'm out of words again, and still have much to say. More later.