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Online SNG play has often been described as a minefield. Because of the general structure of SNGs, the mid-level tight players have generally adopted a now-conventional strategy similar to the one championed by top players such as Sheets.

In that system, you generally don't play hands, except for tier 1 starting hands, until the blinds get big enough to be worth stealing. Once the blinds get big, say 50/100 or 100/200, it's all about knowing when to push. OK, there are times when it's considered OK to see a flop if the odds are great, but for the most part it's a relatively confining system. It's been said that, for this reason, SNGs are more science than art.

This is an enormously succesful system at the lower limits, and a pretty successful one as you move higher and higher. As more people come to sites like this and sign up with training services like PokerXFactor, this style is flourishing. Hell, it might be the only viable style for the $5-10 SNGs, considering how erratic the play is in those. At those levels, you'll probably be able to get all of your chips in preflop when you want to, and that's a winning strategy. Take a ton of coinflips as a 3:1 or 3:2 favorite and live and die by the numbers.

But what I want to discuss here is a counter-system for players who believe they are better than their opponents and want to take their SNG game to the next level. It's heavily focused on making good reads and postflop play, because that's where good players separate themselves from bad ones, so it requires discipline. More than a strategy system, it's a set of macro concepts that suggests that perhaps you ought to turn conventional SNG strategy on its head.

OK, most games usually break down like this. BTW, I play mostly 6-seat SNGs, so I'll be using those in my examples. At your average 6-seat table, for a game between $10-100, the breakdown will be as follows: one good player who you have to play carefully against; two weak-tight players who you need to abuse; and two total maniacs/calling stations/generally bad players.

Most of the time, barring a strong run of cards or bad play against them, one or two of those bad players are going to bust early. They'll give their chips away going all in with a small pair or overbetting AK on a missed flop, or making some other illogical move that'll leave you scratching your head. And when they do, if you weren't the one to take them out, you'll be wishing you had.

Now, my breakdown of the types of players at a usual table was by no means scientific, but rather a subjective assesment from my own experience. But the fact remains that I don't think I've seen a table without at least two bad players in my thousands of games online, so I don't think most of you will have seen different results than I have.

So there's a ton of dead money lying around. In those first two or three levels, there's a good chance that 1/3 of the chips in play will change hands. Those that get that dead money will be at a significant advantage. Those that don't will be desperately searching for a double up, which means playing too tight at 25/50 and too loose for my tastes at 100/200.

By the conventional wisdom, it's just not worth it to play big pots or steal when the blinds are really low. Here's why I think that's backwards. When the blinds are high, your moves become prescribed. One bad bluff will cost you a good chunk of your stack, if not the whole thing, so it's hard to make those moves unless youre damn sure they'll work. And since you didn't bluff at all early, it's hard to be sure they'll work at all, unless you picked up a damn good read from a 3rd-party hand with your opponent.

Furthermore, you lose the ability to outplay people the more the blinds go up. By the time they reach 50/100, and especially at 100/200 and above, most games turn into preflop all-in matches. You can stick to a correct strategy and have a small edge, but unless your opponent is a total fool, it's hard to have a big edge. At 200/400, just about every player is pushing 22+/A2+/K6+/Q9s+. You become dependent on the cards, and if they don't come, there's little you can do. You can still outplay your opponent slightly, but the game will likely come down to the first hand you each pick up anything playable. Instead of the 3:1 and 4:1 favorite scenarios you're usually looking to find, you'll have to settle for a lot more 50/50s and 3:2s, or even 2:3s.

So how many times has this scenario come up: early in a game, the action is fast and furious. The loose and terrible players are playing big pot after big pot, people are getting knocked out, chips are flying - and you're sitting there watching. You're folding hands like 77 and AT because its too early to play them, as they'll be hard to play postflop. All of a sudden, it's three-way action and you have 1200 chips to the 3000 and 4800 the other two stacks have. Three-handed, the blinds are hitting you hard at 50/100 and 100/200, and you're just not seeing any paint to make a stand. You didn't come all this way to bust stealing with 27, so you continue to blind down. Just need one double up, and then you'll be...still the short stack. If you don't pick up a hand in the next two or three rotations, your game is pretty much over.

Is it possible to come back from that scenario? Yes, but it's hard - and it's damn near impossible without cards to make it happen. You've lost your fold equity, the other stacks are big, and a marginal call for a bigstack like their KT against your A9 is basically a coinflip for all your chips. Is that what you waited the whole time for? Wouldn't it have been better to simply outplay the bad players early, while you had margin for error? Where you could make a bluff or play a speculative hand without losing 1/3 of your chips?

So that's what I'm advocating. I still say play TAG, be patient, don't force anything. Don't make a bluff unless you have solid evidence the other player has folded in similar situations. Don't overplay a hand just because you think the other player is bad.

What I am advocating is to speculate more early. I'll limp in MP with a small pocket pair in the first or second level, or call a 3xBB raise with 78s on the button if there's one or two other players in the pot. I'll open AT for a raise in MP, and make my decisions from there. Basically, I'm looking for huge hands that I can hit cheap - sets, nut flushes, straights. I want to get my first double up before 50/100 so I'm never forced into a corner. That makes you predictable. A good player can utilize a doubled-up chipstack far more efficiently than a bad one; it also lets you be more creative and make smart, agressive plays you couldn't do with a small stack. You can value bet the calling stations, bluff the weak-tight, and against those that play the conventional system - well, they're often the easiest to read. There's nothing like a PokerXFactor avatar to tell me how to play against a certain player (Im not trying to bash PXF, its a great service, just saying by telling me you learned there, you've given me strategic info on how to play against you).

Now, some of the usual rules still apply. I'm going to try to make my plays in position, and unless I flop top 2 or better, I'm probably done with the hand. I'm not going to call a raise with a small pocket pair unless it's in the first two blind levels and it's not raised to more than 3xBB...that way I'm not committing more than 7% of my stack to see a flop.

Here's an another practical example that comes up often. Early in a game, you see one of the bad players give away 2/3 of their stack calling down bets with A2 on an A-high board. Now they're down to 500, and start pushing preflop often. If you haven't doubled up yet, you probably won't want to call off 1/3 of your chips with a hand like A9 or 77. You're pretty sure youre ahead, but your edge probably isnt that big and a bad beat - or them actually picking up a hand - puts you in dire straights with 1000 chips. However, if you've already doubled up, you can make those calls - if you lose, you still have 2000 chips and are in good shape.

That's an idea that most MTT players embrace. Chip accumulation is key, and the only way to survive the bad beats that occur is to have enough of a stack to absorb them. Once you have the big stack at the table, you'll be able to get into more confrontations against shortstacks, which is where many of the chips won at the 25/50 level come from.

The other thing I'm doing early is identifying the ATMs and planning my strategy against them. You'll probably be able to spot the worst player at the table in the first two rotations; they'll be the ones opening for 300 at blinds 10/20 or calling down pot-sized bets with bottom pair. As soon as you identify them, plan your strategy for how you plan on busting them. Each time you see them play a hand, regardless of whether or not they show it down, use it to modify your plan. If you see them bet the flop, get called, check the turn, and then bet the river big to take it without showdown two different times, make a note of it, they might be a river-stealer. That means you'll want to check/call them on the flop and check the turn with a big hand. Maybe they're just a calling station, so value bet the hell out of them with your big hands. Maybe they like to reraise preflop every time they have any ace or pair, in which case feel free to push a more marginal hand like AJ if you raise and they repop you.

Just figure out in advance your strategy for these bad players, and look for spots to implement it. Try to get into pots with them; when you miss, you'll get away having lost less than 5% of your stack. If you hit, and planned your extraction method right, you'll add 33% or more to your stack most times.

Is it easy? No, you'll have to make more difficult postflop decisions than usual. You'll have to develop good reads to know when you're ahead and when you're behind - though, of course, that's what being good at this game is all about. If you are good, utilize it, dont give away your advantage! If you believe that you're the superior player, you want to be making those postflop decisions against an inferior opponent. That's where you outplay them; you make better decisions than they do after the flop, and you'll find yourself the bigstack by level 4 instead of the little stack waiting for KQs or A9 so they can make a desperation push.

I often hear TAG SNG players complaining about how much they get sucked out on. They played a supertight game, finally got their money in with AK against AJ, and got sucked out on. Think about it like this. Those players left their whole tournament up to one single hand, which they would still lose 25% of the time. They passed up several opportunities along the way just to be about as big a favorite as you can be preflop, and then 1 in 4 times they get bad beat. Even the 3 in 4 they double up, now they're just on an even playing field in a 3-handed game again. I would rather spread out the risk and have the outcome of my game come down to 4-5 hands, where my skill advantage will pay off, rather than one hand that I'll still lose 25% of the time anyway. That's one of the biggest ways to remove luck from a game; make sure your outcome doesn't depend on only one hand.

This style is not for everyone, but I have found it very effective. It's also not always possible; with the wrong mix of players at a table, there can be way too much preflop action to ever allow you to implement this system.

Still,  when you can, its worth a try. There are only so many playable hands in a SNG. Often, the worst mistake you can make is assuming you'll get better chances later and passing up a shot at the table maniac early. You can grind a 20% or higher ROI forever using the conventional wisdom, due to the sheer awful play of most players online. But if you want better results than that, if you believe you have a talent advantage and are tired of putting up mediocre results considering how much better you are than the donkeys at the table with you, by all means, find opportunities to outplay your opponents early, while you stack allows it. You'll find you're a much more dangerous, creative player. And when you get that early doubleup, you'll win a lot higher percent of the time.

I'll write up some more specific SNG strategies later in the week. For the meantime, consider trying a few SNGs at limits lower than you usually play to experiment with this theory and see if it works for you.

Cheers,

Alex
EpicATC