As the name implies, you are not playing to a specific prize structure but rather half of the entrants double their buy-in and the other half get nothing. In a ten-handed game the bubble will burst when five players are left and the sixth-place finisher is the unlucky bubble. Obviously this is quite different from the standard Sit & Go format where three people are paid out on a 50%/30%/20% basis, and that means your strategy needs to be different too.
In the early stages you should play much tighter than in any other format, because you only need to double your stack once to have average chips for the prizes, and often if other players get knocked out quickly you may not need to win even this many. For example, if your starting stack is 1,000 chips and another player knocks out three people to amass a hefty 4,000 chipstack, the average for the other four players when the bubble bursts will be 1,500 rather than the initial 2,000. In some cases if lots of confrontations take place you may even get there without having to increase your starting stack at all!
Staying alive
As survival really is the name of the game you should avoid playing most marginal hands early, as flush and straight draws will often cost you additional chips to hit. The main exception is if you can get in cheaply after other players with a small pocket pair that can instantly flop a monster when it hits a set. In fact, using the ICM (Independent Chip Model) formula we can calculate that if you play a $5 Sit & Go and double up on the first hand your stack is now only worth $7.78 in equity terms, because the elimination is also beneficial to the other players. For this reason you would need to be around a 65% favourite or greater in an all-in scenario not to be losing money overall.
This all adds up to prove that avoiding big confrontations with marginal hands is vital in the early game. A hand like A-K only wins 65% of the time against a random hand, and much less often against the stronger ranges people usually play in this format (J-J or better). As such, getting all-in with it would usually be a mistake, and against most players you should only be prepared to get all your chips in with big pocket pairs like Aces and Kings. The again, if you know your opponent is very loose and bad and likes to play any Ace then you could have them crushed. Think carefully.
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