Sit and Go’s dreaded bubble
How often do you play a 9 or 10 person sit and go only to get knocked out, or worse, blinded out in 4th place, just out of the money. “Bubbling” should be the last thing on your mind once it becomes four handed. What should be on your mind is raise, raise, raise.
Everyone has heard the rumor, and we’ve probably all been guilty of playing really weak tight once we get to the bubble in a tournament. No one wants to lose money, but it always amazes me how many people are playing simply to get their money back. When it gets 4 handed in a sit and go the last thing I care to get is 3rd, its just about as good as 4th in my book. 1st and 2nd is where all the money is. The “bubble” is when the heat should really be turned on.
If you’re the button you should be raising. You can’t be afraid to throw in 1/5th of your chips preflop with 10♦4♥ from the button. At that point in the tournament the blinds should be juicy enough to make quite a killing just taking them down. If you get reraised by another player use your judgment to decide if they need a premium hand to be pushing.
Also dont’ be afraid to reraise from the BB when the button raises you. A reraise all in will often make them fold their hand, as odds are they were trying to steal your blinds too. Another advantage of being the raiser, as I’ve said before, is when they call. It can be very disheartening when your raise is called and you have 5&spades3♣, but on a flop like A♥10♣2&spades with position you can often take it down as they’re simply trying to get a check down to see if they hit their hand, and then you’ve made the blinds + the raise they paid to be weak tight.
You have to be careful against the short stacks as they are more likely to reraise all-in, but you also shouldn’t be afraid to put them all in with hands like J♥9♥ or K&spades5&spades. They may feel desperate and go for it, and unless they wake up with a monster, hands like A&spades4♥ vs your K&spades5&spades are little better than 60% to win the hand, not that bad for a chance to knock off the bubbler and pick up some extra chips once 3-handed.
Once you make the money play often loosens up, but you should still keep the heat on, picking up pots after a flop becomes very important, and the blinds are even more lucrative. If you can show no fear once the bubble approaches you have a great chance to run over the other players who are just playing for a meager profit and end up in the money with a commanding chip lead.
Good luck out there!
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Fittsy
September 23rd, 2005 at 10:12 am
Great article Steve!
This is even more dramatic when you’re talking about larger SNG’s. I play in a lot of the 27 person SNGs at PokerStars. It really starts to hit you when you get down to around 12-13 players left. Very likely your table has 5 or 6 players on it. Yet you need to get to 9 players before the final table. So what happens is the blinds are getting bigger AND you’re getting the blinds twice as often. If you play tight at this point you are going to be taken down by the blinds.
I learned this the hard way going into the middle part of the SNG with the chip lead. Then playing tight to hold onto my lead for the final table. Pretty soon I wasn’t the leader, I wasn’t even average I was short stacked!
Thanks for the post Steve!
Fittsy