SNG Strategy part two

What you first need to take into consideration before anything else is the level of the juice or to put it more plainly….the cost of the poker tournament. As was stated earlier, the cost of the $200 tournament was $15 which equates to 7.5% of the tournament buy in. This can be a very significant obstacle to overcome and it is this “tax” that can quite often turn what would be a winning player into a losing poker player. This hurdle can be made all the more difficult depending on the calibre of players that you have on your table.

Playing successful poker is not always about being a good player or having a successful strategy to implement. Quite often it is being able to sit at a table where you have a significant edge over your opposition that becomes the primary reason for success. As the old saying goes, “you can be the tenth best poker player in the world but if you sit in a game with the other nine who are better than you then you will be a losing player”.

But getting back to the subject of the “juice” for a minute, it is imperative that you carefully select your tournaments so that you are paying as little of this “playing tax” as possible. Do not under any circumstances play in any sit and go tournament that has a fee for playing that is above 10%. What you tend to find online is that the smaller the stakes of the game then the worse the effect of the rake is or in this case the juice.

SCAN THE LEADERBOARDS

Luckily, there are not many SNG’s out there that have a juice that is in excess of 10% so you are quite fortunate. But even with a level of 10%, care has to be taken and this takes us back to the level of your opposition. What you must avoid at all costs is to be playing in a SNG where many of your opposition play them well and have a very good angle on them. If the playing field is too level in terms of skill then everyone would lose to the rake (juice) in time.

So to overcome this effect you need to know just who plays these tournaments well from those who don’t. This can be achieved through several ways and one of those is to take notes on your opponents. But a much quicker and easier way is to simply check the online tournament leader boards on the site that you happen to be on if they have them.

On the home page of the poker site that you are playing on should be tournament leader boards. These boards will reveal the top tournament and cash game players on that site and who they are for all online poker games. The site that I play on not only has a leader board but it also tells you how the points system works that rates the players so that you can see and work out just how successful the players are or whether they could just be getting lucky over a brief spell. Look out for the next part of this series in part three.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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