Tags:
Advanced, Hold' em, Intermediate, Multi-table tournaments, Poker Clinic, Sit & Go's
Bubble trouble?
The most important part of Sit & Go play is your strategy for the bubble. The payout structure for a 10-man Sit & Go is 50% to first, 30% to second and 20% to third. This offers a significant reward to players making the cut and punishes those who get knocked out in fourth place unnecessarily. As we can see, the leap from fourth to third is 20%. This effectively means you can either win or lose double the initial buy-in during the bubble, which is a substantial reward for only a short period of play.
We can begin to understand correct bubble strategy using a formula called Independent Chip Modelling (ICM) which calculates the value of your tournament chips in real money. You can then use this to compare outcomes for different scenarios when players are all-in and come up with correct strategies to adopt in each situation. Sadly there is no one size fits all approach, as the right decision varies depending on the stack sizes involved. Understanding ICM is crucial to becoming a good Sit & Go player.
ICM in practice
Let's take a look at ICM in practice... If we are playing a $10 Sit & Go with 1000 starting stacks and four players remain with 2,500 chips each, obviously each stack is worth $25. However this changes radically if two players are all-in, as if one of them is eliminated the other two players are now guaranteed at least $20 for third, whereas before they could still end up with nothing.
ICM tells us that with three stacks of 5,000, 2,500 and 2,500 the smaller stacks have both increased in value to $30.83 despite having the same amount of chips. The big stack is only worth $38.34 despite having doubled up. Effectively therefore, discounting pot odds, the big stack would need to be around a 65% or greater favourite when he doubled up to avoid having made a mathematically incorrect decision.
In other words there is no value in risking a coin flip at this stage as the big stack. This kind of finding is the basis for bubble strategy in Sit & Go’s where the blinds are very high – that you rarely want to call all-in unless you have an excellent hand. AK is only 65% against a random hand and much worse against stronger ranges, and therefore you can move all-in with many hands assuming your opponent knows he should not be calling.
Next up: Bubble play - big-stack strategy