Make Money from Double or Nothing SNG's

The poker rooms recently launched an innovative single table poker tournaments which offers a low risk, low variance way of building your bankroll. Double or nothing sit and go’s mean you sit down in a single table tournament with a total of ten players including you, and the top five finishers double their stake, the bottom five leave with nothing. Once five players are reached, the tournament ends and you do not play to a winner. You can win a lot of these tournaments with a solid approach. In order to win money, you must cash 65% of the time as only cashing one out of two games means you only break even, but when the rake is factored in you actually lose money. But do not despair as playing a certain strategy will give you a good chance to win and double your stake.

Early Levels

There is no need to get into a battle for chips early in this SNG. You need to wait for premium hands before getting involved with your chips. There are multiple reasons for this. Other players will not understand that they only really need one good hand to last until late into the SNG. You will often be up against, or playing with, marginal hands and your chips are best kept until either you hit the nuts or have a strong hand.

Even in a situation where you double your chip stack from an all-in move, as you can only double your stake if you win this is only a break even strategy and that is if you win 100% of the time! So long terms if a player keeps shoving then they do not have the level of understanding to win the required amount of these SNG’s to be profitable. They are therefore weaker than you in this type of tournament strategy, meaning they are beatable.

Middle Stages

As the blinds get higher in relation to your stack, some players will have started to bust out from the table as you reduce closer to the magic five players who get paid. Tight play is key here, but if you are playing a hand you need to either re-raise (all-in depending on your actual stack) or fold, as the blinds are too high to allow too much play post-flop.

You may find if you are on a particularly weak table that just sitting back the first few levels there may have been a few confrontations that have reduced the field dramatically. I have played in DON tournaments where after 50/100 the tournament is down to six players. Players used to enter the events and sit out and often cash, but unfortunately players are wise to this and DON strategy is a bit more well-known now. Stay tight and focus on other players stack sizes. Stay tight and let the other players make the mistakes.

Late Stage

The tournament is down to six players and after one more elimination everyone left is a winner. If you have a good chip stack then you should sit back and wait for another player with a short stack to bubble. If you are a middle stack you can sit back, but may need to steal from position with a decent hand. Short stackers need to play hard with decent hand to try and steal the blinds to survive. Check out some of the middle stacks and when they are in the blinds they are prime stealing material. Medium stacks will be trying to wait it out. Be careful shoving into the very short stacks, they will likely have live cards and will call relatively light in desperation.

Your edge comes from allowing players to coin-flip early on in the tournament that does not really benefit them long term. Even the players who win and have a larger stack will throw their chips around too much and risk getting into a large confrontation for a large part of their stack. Because of the straight forward strategy and tight style you need to play you should try multi-tabling these SNG’s and this will increase your win rate. Make sure you always remember to track your results and resist temptation to get involved with mediocre hands. It will be good practise for the bigger MTT’s you may wish to play once your bankroll is built.

Popularity: 1% [?]