‘Well, Damn!’

I was working with a student who wanted to discuss his disappointing sit-and-go (SNG) results. He was profiting a little, but he had an inordinate number of third-place finishes and not nearly as many first- or second-place finishes. I went over a bunch of hand histories with him, and even reviewed a couple of SNGs in their entirety.
That information helped me to confirm what his results already suggested: He was excellent at playing a short stack, but wasn’t aggressive enough when he had the chip lead.

The rest of our conversation went something like this:

“Let’s start with your ability to finish third even when you are fairly card-dead. Clearly, this is one of your strengths. Why do you think you are able to do that?”
“Well, I don’t get out of line and play hands that I shouldn’t. Some other players get impatient as they get short-stacked and take a stand with marginal hands. I try to wait for something better.”

“It’s true that you’re very patient, which is good. On the other hand, you know that you can’t be too patient or you’ll be blinded down to nothing.”

“Right, that’s true. I guess what I meant was that when I do play a marginal hand, I try to do it at the right times.”

“What are the right times?”

“Well, I want to be the aggressor, right? I’m not going to call off my stack with something marginal, but I’ll try to steal with it. And it also matters who my potential opponent is. I’d much rather take a shot against another short stack than against the chip leader.”

“Why is that?”

[He thinks for a few seconds.] “Two reasons. First of all, since the chip leader has a lot of chips, he can afford to take more risks. So, he might call me with hands like 3-3, A-8, or stuff that other players would probably fold. Since I’d be playing a marginal hand, he could easily have me beat; or, we’d probably be close to 50-50, and while losing the hand wouldn’t hurt him much, if I lost, I’d be out. I don’t want to risk finishing out of the money on a coin flip, especially if it doesn’t guarantee that I’ll make the money.

“That’s the other reason. If we’re four-handed and I go all in against another short stack and he calls, at least I know that if I win, I’ve either crippled or eliminated him, and that puts me into the money.”

“Good answers. Now let me ask you a few more questions. Do you think that your typical opponents have a general grasp of those concepts?”

“Well, maybe they haven’t really thought it out, but I think they have the general idea that they should avoid the big stacks, yes.”

[These next few questions, I purposely asked him in a rapid-fire manner.]

“Do you think the big stacks also understand that?”

“Sure. That’s why they stay aggressive.”

“So, when you’re the big stack, doesn’t that mean that you should be staying more aggressive?”

“Well, yeah, but …”

“Yes?”

“Well, I don’t really trust the short stacks to stay out of my way. I feel like they’re going to take a stand against me because they know I’m raising too many hands.”

“When you’re the short stack, you know that the chip leader is raising a lot of hands, right?”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“But you’re not taking a stand against him, for the reasons that you mentioned.”
“Well … yeah, I guess.”

“So why should they take a stand against you?”

[A few seconds pass.]

“Well, damn! I guess when you put it that way …”

We spent the rest of our conversation continuing that train of thought. He needed to take the way that his opponents play against him when he’s a short stack, and use that same strategy against them when playing a big stack. After all, he was very good at hanging on to finish third, but in the process, he was letting the chip leader run away with the lead. If, when he got the early chip lead, he could run away with that lead in the same manner, the first- and second-place finishes would follow.

At a given buy-in level of SNGs (or multitable tournaments or cash games), you’re not going to be that much better than your opponents. If you were, you’d be playing for higher stakes. If they were that bad, they’d soon get tired of losing and play something else. It’s the small differences in skill that set you apart from your opponents. You’re not going to win every time, but it’s an extra win here and there and a few extra in-the-money finishes that will generate your long-term profits.
For the most part, you need to give your opponents credit for having a skill set similar to yours. That’s something that a surprising number of players refuse to do, or they don’t give it enough thought.

In the case of my student, it’s not that he thought his SNG strategy was unique; he just didn’t make the conscious connection that his opponents shared much of his same mentality. He knew how to play a short stack well; he just needed to understand that his opponents also knew how to play a short stack, but maybe not quite as well. Since they had similar skills and mindsets, he should have known how to properly formulate his big-stack strategy, as well.

Instead, he was treating other short-stacked players as unrealistically different from himself. Yes, maybe they are somewhat less patient and will play a marginal hand more often than they should, but they are still going to fold the vast majority of the time that the chip leader raises. When he went ahead and adjusted his strategy to become more aggressive as a big stack, he found that out. ♠

Matt Lessinger is the author of The Book of Bluffs: How to Bluff and Win at Poker, available everywhere. You can find other articles of his at www.CardPlayer.com.