Everyone with any experience of Sit & Go’s knows that getting knocked out on the bubble is a disaster when the payouts are divided on a standard 50%/30%/20% distribution. Surviving long enough to reach third means almost doubling your money. Because of this, most Sit & Go strategy for play when the blinds are high involves moving in with a wide range of hands to steal the blinds, but calling with a very narrow range to avoid the risk of elimination. Moving all-in gives you two ways to win but calling gives you only one. This can be expressed through ICM, which translates tournament chips into real-dollar values based on the situation. By comparing outcomes against certain hand ranges, correct decisions can be determined. There are even programs, like Sit And Go Endgame Tools or SitNGo Wizard, that will do most of this work for you.
Calling conditions
To call all-in around the bubble you will need certain conditions to be true to compensate beyond just thinking that you have a slightly better hand than your opponent. Remember, this is not a cash game. For example, if you have a big stack you will still have chips to back you up if you lose, but when you’re the short stack you need to try to double-up. Perhaps you just have a strong hand like a big pair against a wide opponent range that justifies taking the risk of bubbling.
Most of these situations can be quantified using ICM. On the bubble of a ten-player $40 Sit & Go each stack is worth $100 in equity terms (as the total prize pool is $400). As such you need to be around 65% or greater to call all-in before pot odds are considered, since your equity becomes zero if you lose but only increases to $153.33 if you win. Calling with a hand that would be a coinflip would therefore be a disaster, since your equity would now be $153.33*0.5 or $76.67 for a loss of $23.33 on that hand alone. Even with 60% equity and no pot odds you would still lose around $8 on the call. Translating this into hand ranges is very telling – for example even against a random hand A-Ko barely passes 65% equity and 7-7 only has 66%. All in all, calling on the bubble is a dangerous thing to do.
When you can call
So, because of the structure of Sit & Go’s, calling all-in is rarely preferable to shoving first-to-act, and with roughly even stacks it's almost never advisable unless you have a strong hand. However, there are clearly times when calling is correct, owing to the situation and relative stack sizes. For example, with the shortest stack, ICM considerations aren’t that important, as you simply need to double-up to stay in the game, and you may have too few chips to force a fold by going all-in anyway. As such, calling another player’s all-in or calling all-in in the big blind when pot-committed is fairly routine when you’re getting good pot odds. In fact, if you are very short-stacked having another player shove before you can even be helpful, as they will often force the blinds out and leave you with attractive pot odds. For example, if you had 600 chips at the 200/400 level you would be getting 2-to-1 if another player raised and you called when not in the blinds.
Chip daddy
Having a big stack makes calling much easier too, since you are not risking elimination. For example, if you have 3,000 chips on the bubble of a ten-player $40 Sit & Go and your opponents have 1,000 chips each, your stack value in equity terms is $148. Knocking someone out increases it to $170.67, but losing only reduces it to $121.33. So, you either win $22.67 or lose $26.67 which means you only need to have about 54% equity to call (which pot odds will reduce further). But being a short stack here and losing is disastrous, since your stack value of $84 will only go up to $121.33 if you double-up, meaning you need more than 69% equity to call. And that means only calling with monster pairs.
The most perilous position to be calling in is as a middle stack against a larger stack. If you call all-in here you’re pretty much freerolling the fourth-place player into the money. Suppose in the above example the stacks are 4,000, 2,000, 1,000 and 1,000. Now the second player has a stack value of $110.48, which would only go up to $148.95 if he doubles through the first-place player. He would actually need over 74% equity to call all-in. Now A-K would be an automatic fold and the only hands that could be worth calling with are high pairs. Pocket Tens barely scrapes by with 75% equity against a random hand.
Additional factors
So, we can safely say that calling an all-in on the bubble is extremely risky unless you have a big hand or a big stack. In most other situations the equity needed to call is very high, restricting your calling range to big pairs and sometimes even requiring you to fold hands like A-K. However, even with such tight ranges you should not always be calling when you have a slight edge, as other factors can indicate that folding might yield a greater return with less risk later. As a medium stack, for example, you might want to fold a marginal hand like T-T against a big stack if the blinds are about to plough through the short stacks, even if ICM suggests you might be slightly ahead. Folding in these spots will also greatly reduce variance.
ICM isn’t everything
Making marginal calls purely based on ICM is a bad idea, as it is not an infallible method of valuing stacks. It does not take into account some factors that are important when the blinds get very high, such as who is going to take the next big blind. For this reason short stacks are often overvalued by ICM, as the fact that they’ll often be forced to call all-in on the big blind is ignored. Likewise, middle stacks are undervalued, because ICM overlooks their ability to gain equity simply by outlasting the short stacks! As a result, playing tight on the bubble with a medium stack can often be the best strategy, since you essentially force the shorter stacks to make a move before you. And if they don’t, the blinds will quickly decimate their already short stacks.
For this reason, calling on the bubble is something that should be done sparingly, and mainly in situations where you either have little to lose or a lot to gain. It can often seem like you should be doing more if you are stuck in second place while a big stack wins every pot, but the important thing to remember about Sit & Go’s is that the situation defines the correct strategy. Your time as the big stack will come soon in another game!