SNG Satellites – The SAGE Poker System for Heads Up Satellite Play?
Here We Look At The S.A.G.E Poker System
And Ask Whether This Is Suitable For Online SNG Satellite Qualifiers.
When you are heads-up at the end of a Satellite SNG Tournament with just one prize on offer the SAGE poker system can be used to ensure that your play is ‘mathematically un-exploitable’. The system itself is very simple – it involves assigning ‘power rankings’ to hands and comparing them with a table showing your optimal push / fold ranges. SAGE works best with less than 10 Big Blind stacks, with more than this you have some room to play poker.
Before we get into the math and discuss whether using SAGE would be a good option a quick note on copyright. This is © 2005 Lee Jones and James Kittock. Lee Jones is former Pokerstars card-room manager and author of the best selling book ‘Winning Low Limit Holdem’.
We should also mention why this is in the Satellite Section and not the SNG strategy articles list. This is because SAGE is designed to work with just a single prize, if we have two prizes we would need to weight the chart to reflect the percentage payout of each prize. This would add a level of complexity to the system. Other mathematical models such as ICM and Nash Equilibrium are better suited for more than one prize.
The SAGE system’s benefit is simplicity. There are 2 key factors, both of which are very easy to work out – then a simple chart for deciding on your action. The keys factors are ‘PI’ which stands for the ‘Power Index’ of your current cards and ‘R’ which is the ratio of the smallest stack to the big blind. For each ‘R’ there are then numbers given for the SB to push all in and the BB to call based on PI.
Working out PI is done like this: Each card is given a ‘power number’ based on its rank. Ace= 15 / King = 13 / Queen = 12 / Jack = 11 and the others at face value. To get the PI of your hand take the highest card’s power number, double it – then add the number of the smaller card. For example – Queen-Eight would be (12*2)+8 = 30.
For suited cards you add 2 points to the total and for pairs you add 22 points. So the highest PI is for Ace-Ace (15*2) + (15+22) = 67 and the lowest PI is for 3-2 off-suit (3*2) +2 = 8.
So, based on the value of ‘R’ here is a list of what PI you can push and call with.
R |
Push from SB |
Call From BB |
7 |
PI 26 |
PI 30 |
6 |
PI 25 |
PI 29 |
5 |
PI 24 |
PI 28 |
4 |
PI 23 |
PI 26 |
3 |
PI 22 |
PI 24 |
2 |
PI 21 |
PI 17 |
1 |
PI 17 |
ANY* |
* One of you is all-in at this point in the chart.
Well that is the system, simple and mathematically un-exploitable – meaning that you can not lose an edge playing this system. However there is always a difference between mathematically un-exploitable play and ‘optimal play’. The question that we need to ask is how we can adjust to individual opponents?
If an opponent is playing looser than the SAGE system should indicate the logically we will not be giving up anything by following the rules outlined above. Our optimal strategy becomes the same as the Unexploitable strategy.
If an opponent is playing tighter then it would appear to follow that we should push slightly wider and call slightly tighter ourselves. The logical outcome of a tight opponent is that we are getting more ‘walks’ from the BB and taking the blind uncontested more often when we are pushing all-in from the SB… this would more than make up for the times we fold the BB ‘too tight’ giving our opponent credit for a good hand.
GL using SAGE at those online satellite qualifier tables.
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