PokerStars Carnival Of Tournaments - Golden SNGs

With the 900,000,000th tournament on PokerStars approaching The Carnival Of Tournaments rolls into town on April 14^th with a key promotion being the return of the Golden Sit N Goes. These are your regular Sit N Go games, only during the promotion random games are is selected and additional prizes (some of them big) are awarded to the players - you will not know whether your game is selected until it starts.

This is the 4^th time PokerStars has run these games, with each promotion slightly different from the last, so first up you are provided with a description of how they are being ran on this occasion along with extra pay-outs. If you are lucky enough to catch one of the new Milestone SNGs, you will gain even bigger pay-outs and what this could mean to your bankroll is covered next. To tie it up you probably realise these Golden SNGs are going to tough to hit so I’ve broken down the extra benefits of playing SNGs over the next 2 weeks can gain you.

Golden Sit N Goes – How Often They Run & Bonus Pay-outs

Simply all you have to do in order to find a Golden SNG is to play real money and hope to get lucky. PokerStars say the games will be selected randomly. As before 9 man, 6 max, Heads-Up or Multi-table Sit N Goes all are eligible to be Golden whether they are normal, turbo or hyper-turbos. The only games that don’t count are satellites and Steps.

You only know you are in a Golden game when the game starts and a sparkly golden table appears. All games will award a multiple of the buy-in back to the players, which means you will at least be freerolling. The prize pool will also be enlarged by a multiplier. This will all be listed in the prizepool information in the lobby and there will be a banner showing these on the table when the game starts.

The different pay-out multipliers are listed here:

BIG: You get the SNG buy-in back. The prize pool is doubled

BIGGER: You receive 2x the SNG buy-in. The prize pool is tripled

BIGGEST: You receive 5x the SNG buy-in. The prize pool is multiplied by six

Golden Sit N Goes – Milestone Payouts

While the promotional games are random there will be 5 really cool Milestone Golden SNGs. These will occur when the total amount of money given out in this promotion hits key points. These are $100k, $200k, $300k $400k and $500k.

Payouts for the first 4 of these up to $400k are 10x the buy-in and 10x the prize pool. The big one however is the $500k Milestone Golden SNG which award 20x the buy-in, 20x the prize-pool plus an extra $500 for every player!

It’s really great that PokerStars have found a tournament promotion to match the milestone cash hands here - expect the lobbies to be busy when these milestones are approaching.

Golden Sit N Goes – Additional Benefits For You

As there is no strategy anyone can adopt to hit these extra payouts, you shouldn’t be worrying too much about how many or how few you get. By all means increase your volume a bit but just accept they are random and if they come, they come. You will find that they bring extra benefits to you as a SNG player.

Firstly this promotion brings a lot of players into the game who are clueless about SNGs. They may be primarily Cash or MTT players, with no concept of ICM in game, or even better they could be newbies drawn to play by this promotion. With all the information available to see this amount of fish is a rare thing in the modern era of SNGs and should not be missed!

Then you have the Regs who have usually figured this out too and will be out in force. Many end up playing far more tables and longer sessions. While I agree it makes sense to increase your volume over this promotion if you can, you should not do it to a degree where it damages your game, either through playing too many tables or playing tired. While some good Regs can manage this, many over-extend themselves and become very exploitable or start making frequent mistakes. By sticking to a disciplined routine and not falling into a similar trap you can take advantage of this.

At certain points you will find the games at your stake overrun by Regs, who even when they are exploitable might be great in numbers, it’s not worth bothering with. You may also find Regs dropping down in stakes, in order to increase their volume. This can be particularly true between the $3.50 & $7 and $7 and $15 levels ($30+ players tend to have Supernova or SN Elite targets in mind). If this happens it could be worth a look at the buy-in level above yours and take a shot in it. This is particularly true if you are fresh at the start of a session, where you have time to research the others who have registered and can focus with fewer tables.

Golden Sit N Goes – Too Good To Miss

If you are a SNG player on Stars this promotion is great, and there is nothing you have to do to get rewarded, just play your games.  The only extra ‘work’ will be worth checking the lobby and noting how close your are to a Milestone Golden SNG as you don’t want to miss these! Even if you unlucky enough to dodge all the Golden games remember there are significant value to be found in exploiting your opponent’s mistakes over the promotion.

If you haven’t got a PokerStars account already, you’re probably from a forgotten tribe who have just emerged from the rainforest, in which case welcome to the modern world! Remeber, you can claim up to 3 welcome bonuses, use Marketing Code PSP3108 when you register and Bonus Code STARS600 for those first 3 deposits - check out www.pokerstars.com and fill your bankroll with the Golden Sit N Goes now!

GL at the tables!

Mark

PS: Check out my unique Sit N Go themed review of PokerStars here.