Early Game SNG thoughts

Today, I'm going to take a look at early game Turbo SNG play. I'll take a look at playing queens preflop, important notes to take early on, and the importance of keeping your chips, based on my experience at the 15+1 Turbos in the past three weeks. I'm currently up 650$, over about 150 SNGs (27% ROI), which is quite good. A nice goal would be to maintain 20% ROI at the 25+2 while 8 tabling. Might be hard to achieve, sure, but hopefully I'll get to it :)

How I play queens

I play queens differently depending on the preflop raise, really. It's the cutoff for me for big pocket pairs. I don't know if this goes for higher stakes at all, I doubt it. At the 5$-25$ level, though, it holds quite true.

I argue myself that minraising is strength. True, yes, but not early game preflop. Early game and preflop I think that this usually signifies a hand like KJ, KQ, AJ or something like that, and these hand will either raise to 40 or 60 total at 10/20 or 15/30 blinds. Reraise this without a doubt, to something like 120, and you will either find a fold or a call. I'd call an allin and fold to a T400 raise or so.

A raise from aces or kings will be something like 80-120, or 100-150. I have to reraise, though. I'll raise it to 300-400, and fold to any raise.

A raise like 200-270-300 is usually AK, as far as I've seen. Yeah, 250 preflop raises at 15/30 happen. I'll push it.

Here's a hand I would've usually laid down quite easily, but I called anyway just to see how right I was, and use the information for this post.

PokerStars Game #3690747382: Tournament #18326355, Hold'em No Limit - Level I (10/20) - 2006/01/19 - 19:46:52 (ET)
Table '18326355 1' Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Rock4403 (1480 in chips)
Seat 2: mdrobis (1480 in chips)
Seat 3: cariver (1600 in chips)
Seat 4: alex vincent (1500 in chips)
Seat 5: ans3lmo (1480 in chips)
Seat 6: Oxy (1500 in chips)
Seat 7: ThaProdigy (1500 in chips)
Seat 8: pegstar (1480 in chips)
Seat 9: Wired Fives (1480 in chips) is sitting out
cariver: posts small blind 10
alex vincent: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Oxy [Qs Qd]
ans3lmo: raises 60 to 80
Oxy: raises 120 to 200
ThaProdigy: folds
pegstar: folds
Wired Fives: folds
Rock4403: calls 200
mdrobis: folds
cariver: folds
cariver is sitting out
alex vincent: folds
ans3lmo: raises 380 to 580
Oxy: raises 920 to 1500 and is all-in
Rock4403: folds
ans3lmo: calls 900 and is all-in
Oxy said, "thought so"
Oxy said, "nh"
*** FLOP *** [2d Th As]
Oxy said, "gg"
ans3lmo said, "gg"
*** TURN *** [2d Th As] [8s]
*** RIVER *** [2d Th As 8s] [6s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
ans3lmo: shows [Ad Ac] (three of a kind, Aces)
Oxy: shows [Qs Qd] (a pair of Queens)
ans3lmo collected 3190 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 3190 | Rake 0
Board [2d Th As 8s 6s]
Seat 1: Rock4403 folded before Flop
Seat 2: mdrobis (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: cariver (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: alex vincent (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: ans3lmo showed [Ad Ac] and won (3190) with three of a kind, Aces
Seat 6: Oxy showed [Qs Qd] and lost with a pair of Queens
Seat 7: ThaProdigy folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: pegstar folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: Wired Fives folded before Flop (didn't bet)

Queens are an easy push later on, obviously. Still, you don't want to start going out on them.

Next up is note-taking in SNGs. When I eight-table, I don't have much time for taking notes, but one thing I make it of utmost importance to mark down is what their minraise is. A minbet on the flop can be a suckerin bet (stupid, if you ask me) or a very weak bet, and knowing which one it is is very important when blinds are 100/200 and you've got 2k chips. This brings me to my last point - being cheap with your chips. I don't want to give anything I don't have to in the early game. I find this is extremely important, because the blinds increase so fast, having that extra BB can mean a lot of difference. Not to mention, when you get your double-up, you've gained even more chips, so the 30 or 60 chips you lose early on are actually 60 and 120. For these reasons, I don't enter pots that have been raised to something like 4-5BB with small pocket pairs. I make my cont bets half the pot + one BB, usually. Cont betting is very important, and I always do it OOP against two or less opponents, and always do it if it has been checked to me, but it is also important to realize that if you haven't hit, and get called or raised, it's time to check/fold. Too many people think that they've invested 200-300 chips so they have to push or something like that. Not true at all. You can easily play at 50/100 with 1000 chips.

These are just some thoughts to keep in mind for the early game of the SNG.