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.