Sit and Go Tournaments: Middle Stage Strategy

As You enter the Middle Stage of a Sit and Go Tournament, some players will have been eliminated and the blinds will have increased to the point where they are a greater portion of your total stack. Sitting around at this stage of the tournament is a strategic mistake and you have to start to be more aggressive and get yourself in a position where you can go on to win this SNG.

What Changes?

As two to three players are eliminated, and the blinds are increasing, play starts to become more aggressive.

Seeing flops with low pairs and suited connectors is no longer profitable, because the implied odds of hitting a big hand are reduced, and the ability to draw to improve is almost gone.

When the blinds are about 100/200, and six players remain (typical for that level), the average stack is about 2,300. If someone raises to 600 preflop, calling with a hand like 8-7 suited or A-6 suited (hoping for a big draw) is wasteful. You won’t hit the draw anywhere near often enough to risk one fourth of your stack preflop. (This assumes starting stacks of 1,500.)

Since the table is short handed, waiting for good hands (or taking flops with mediocre ones) means you’re going to be one of the shorter stacks, not one of the larger. Ideally, you want to get to the bubble stage (four players left) with 4,000 or so chips.

Since you will probably go around the table three times while playing down from six to four players, the blinds alone will knock your 2,300 average stack down to 1,400. That approach is almost certain to fail, so at this stage you should focus on one of three strategic options instead.

In the middle stages, you are looking for a position where you can either:

• Steal the blinds
• Get all-in with a coin flip
• Get a bad preflop call from another player when you raise with a good hand.

Stealing the Blinds

Blind steals are fairly important at this stage. If you were fairly passive in the early stages, not raising the players on your immediate left too much (without big hands, anyway), your raises at this level will get a little more respect.

If you raise with any two cards from the button, standard ABC players will typically defend their blinds infrequently — often in the region of 20% of the time — and even less frequently will they reraise.

That means your steal raise has a 64% chance of success from the start. You can reasonably expect to get in one or two successful steals at this level and remember that each time you steal successfully then that covers the cost of the blinds for one whole circuit of the table which buys you more time to wait for a good hand to play.

All In on a coin flip

All in on a coin flip refers to situations where you decide to reraise all-in with a hand like a pocket pair or two high cards (such as Ace-Ten or better) against a preflop raiser. While this is a play that carries high variance, it can be a necessary move in short-stacked tournament situations when blinds have increased to the point where they are a greater portion of your total stack.

This gives you two ways to win the pot:

1. They are scared of your re-raise and fold, or
2. They call and you win anyway

For reference, most pairs have a slight statistical edge over two overcards (for example, 8-8 is a slight favourite versus A-K) in preflop all-in scenarios — though chance still plays a major role.

Yes, it is possible that you will go all in with 8-8 and get called by J-J, but again, that would be assuming an unlikely worst-case scenario.

Now’s the time to shift gears — sitting back too long can cost you the chance to win. You’ll need to start taking calculated risks to avoid getting blinded out and give yourself the best shot at building a stack for the later stages.

Get called with a Premium Hand

You raise with a premium hand and get a call from an opponent. If they connect with part of the flop but your hand is still ahead, you may be in a strong position to win a valuable pot.

When you’re running low on chips, folding premium pairs is rarely the right play — even if the board looks dangerous, you often won’t have the stack to wait for a better spot.

True, you can lay down J-J if someone bets into you on an A-K-Q flop but in general with premium pairs at this stage of the tournament you are either going looking to double up or get knocked out and move onto your next SNG.