Unless you play for a living, or don’t have a lot else going on, it’s difficult to commit time to play a big-field MTT. They take hours to play, and you have to be ready to go to the very end. Being up until midnight, only to triple your buy-in, feels like a waste. The wee hours of the morning bring a final table and real money, but also a following day full of dozing off and coffee abuse at school or work.

Several sites offer 180-man SNGs or 360-max tournaments, which are a nice alternative and less variance than the massive fields on PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker. But then, you have to decide between regular (12- to 15-minute levels) or turbo (typically 5-minute) structures. Regular structures offer a lot of play…which then still leads to long completion times. A regular 180-man SNG on Stars typically takes about four hours, tough to squeeze in between classes, or after the kids go to bed. Turbo structures solve this problem…along with eliminating much of the poker from the game. If you enjoy post-flop play, turbos aren’t the game for you.

Fortunately, there’s a space in-between regular & turbo structures. Something for those of us who want the competition of tournament poker, a reasonable reward for winning, but only have 2 hours to play. The 45-man SNGs on Full Tilt Poker fall right in the sweet spot for many of us.

FTP’s 45-mans follow their standard single-table SNG structure – only 8-minute levels, but the blinds escalate in small increments. There are two levels between 25/50 and 50/100, and two more between 50/100 and 100/200, one more of each than in Stars’ structure. First place pays out 15.5x the buy-in, and six spots are in the money (12% of the field). By the time the final table is reached, the average stack is usually 15 BB (at the 250/500 blind level) or 12.5 BB (at 300/600). The entire tournament takes about 1 hour and 45 minutes to play.

The Full Tilt structure gives a good amount of play during the first 45 minutes or so, and more if you pick up a hand or two early on. This is quite a bit longer than in a multi-table turbo, where the optimal strategy is pretty much push-or-fold after the first 3-4 levels (and you’re folding everything but Top 5 hands before then). So the game feels like a regular tournament, scratching that itch missing in many other shorter games.

The 45-man SNG feels like a regular tournament, but that feeling ends as you reach the second half. By the time the 1-hour break rolls around, there are usually 14-16 players left (less in the $10+1s, where you’re practically at the final table). If your opponents are not experienced with the structure, they’ll fail to recognize the shift to a “push/fold pre-flop” strategy. This is especially true in the $10+1 and $24+2 games, where you find a hefty percentage of lousy players.

The $26 token satellites on FTP are a godsend for these 45-mans, as much of the field is full of players who got in for $6 or $8. These multi-table SNGs are orders of magnitude softer than the equivalent $20+2 180-man SNGs on Stars. You will undoubtedly see a lot of people limping around with mediocre aces and suited connectors at the final table, thinking they’re playing deep-stacked because they have more than 10 big blinds. Of course, these weak-loose donators will fold to any strength you show. Find the limpers, abuse the limpers…and you’ll be in good shape for the final table, the money bubble, and beyond.

PokerStars offers similar 27-man and 45-man SNGs, but they’re fairly well hidden under the “Sit & Go” tab (unlike the Full Tilt 45-mans, which occupy the top of the Tourney registration page). Of the two, I prefer the 27-man structure to the 45-man. The Stars 45-man SNGs pay out seven spots, diluting an extra 2 buy-ins from the top prize as compared to FTP. The 27-mans, on the other hand, pay out 5 spots and 9x the buy-in to the winner (closer to proportional with the Full Tilt structure). Clocking in at under an hour and a half, they don’t take much longer than a vanilla single-table, with a much higher reward.

As on Full Tilt, the Stars multi-table SNGs use the same structure as their non-turbo single-table counterparts. And also as Full Tilt, a substantial percentage of the field think they’re playing a normal MTT for far longer than the blind structure dictates. You will have at least one opportunity per orbit to shove over the top of a limper and add an additional bit of chips to your stack...which is always fun.

Just as fun, your ears will ring with the sonorous tones of bad players typing, “What are you, chicken? Afraid to play poker?” Music to your ears, cash in your pockets, and a victory to notch in your belt…what can be better?

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