SNG Starting Hands
A Complete Guide To Starting Hands For Sit And Go Tournaments

The Sit N Go Starting Hands Guide That Explains The Poker Strategy Concepts Behind The Selections

Starting Hand selection is a key component of any winning poker strategy – discipline, combined with the ability to take advantage of profitable situations as they arise can ensure your online play has a solid foundation.

Sit N Go Starting hands selection has 3 major differences when compared to cash game poker – those who ignore these differences (intentionally or otherwise) these will rarely be winners in SNG Poker over the long term. This article will explain these differences and will then provide a starting hand guide which can be adapted to suit your individual needs and playing style.

For a detailed, yet easy to understand explanation of the stages of SNG Strategy see our acclaimed SNG Poker eBook ‘A Comedy Of Errors’ which looks at Sit N Goes in terms of the mistakes your opponents make and how to exploit them – you will find additional link at the end of this article.

3 Critical Factors In SNG Starting Hand Selection

1. The Stages Of A Sit N Go Tournament:
   
   Sit And Go Tournaments start with 9 or 10 players and blinds which are a very small percentage of your stack. They end with blinds totaling 15% or more of stacks and just 2 players facing off heads-up. It should be clear that starting hand selection needs to adjust to account for many factors including position, number of opponents, stack sizes and the speed of blind increases (turbo or standard).
   
   
2. Multi-Tabling SNGs And Playing Against Multi-Tablers!
   
   If you are a SNG Grinder who is playing 8 or even more tables at once then your starting hand selection will be different from the profitable leisure player who enjoys just one game at a time. In order to multi-table effectively, some slightly profitable starting hands are often dropped to make decisions easier. If you are playing against several multi-tablers  you may want to increase your own hand selection to take account of this.
   
   
3. The Bubble And Chip Equity Models
   
   At the bubble of a SNG tournament you can stop thinking in terms of which hands you wish to select based on their inherent ‘strength’. Instead winning player’s judge the range of SNG hands that opponent’s will call with and work backwards from there. Your SNG Starting hand selection can be very wide for all-in moves (depending on your opponents) and is usually very narrow for calling all-in moves (often premium hands only).
   
   We strongly recommend taking the 30 day trial of SNG Wiz (aff link) in order to get a solid understanding of the ICM Push / Fold ranges – even if you do not use this model yourself an understanding of how your opponents are thinking will be profitable over time.
   
   
4. Sit N Go Starting Hands Charts

Notes On The SNG Starting Hand Charts

- We have not included a ‘Call Raise’ column in these charts. This is for a good reason that there are very few scenarios where this is a profitable move. The few that exist are either due to very deep stacks (implied odds plays), situations in which a weak opponent opens and you have a monster hand (hoping to induce a squeeze from an aggressive opponent behind you in the middle stages) or ‘player specific’ situations which are out of scope for this beginners article.

- Blind Stealing will often depend on how likely your opponents are to ‘defend’ rather than the actual cards that you hold. Balance between maintaining an effective stack for stealing during the later stages, and accumulating chips will depend on a number of factors.

- Some of the starting hand requirements for SNG tournaments can appear tight for those players more used to cash games or multi-table tournaments. There are good reasons for this apparent tightness which concern exploiting the weaknesses of your opponents and the maintenance of fold equity for the all-important bubble. These subjects are covered in our acclaimed Poker eBook ‘A Comedy Of Errors’. Sign-up for our exclusive monthly newsletter today to receive your complimentary copy.

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