Turbo Sit N Go Strategy

Turbo Sit ‘N’ Go tournaments require a different overall strategy because of their unique blind structure. This, along with opponent hand ranges allow for a profitable ICM strategy based mostly on mathematics. There is less profiling required in these tourneys because as the blinds speed up there is less and less manoeuvring in terms of post-flop poker tips.

As a result, about halfway through a Sit ‘N’ Go turbo tournament, most pots are either very small or very big as players will tend to fold or shove and call all-in given the mathematical strength of their hole cards. In a regular single table tournament you are mostly looking for 2 strong hole cards to play, where in a turbo situation you often have to make your stand based on 1 good card which you may be holding. Any ace or any king is a standard poker strategy for short or big stack.

The optimal sit and go turbo players are surely online, because it allows them to multi-table and make quick mathematical decisions over and over again. The better they get at those ICM mathematical supported decisions, the more money they will make. Now because the game is reduced to selective shoving all-in once the high blinds start, a high level of luck is to be anticipated. That means you will go through a lot of bad beats, but put bad beats on opponents as well.

As a result of the short time frame in turbos, holding up long enough means the bubble will advance rather rapidly, and your strategy must be aggressive, rather than passive. Most single table sit ‘n’ go tournaments pay 3 places, and if there are medium stacks at your table, they will likely be trying to cash in the tournament by tightening their game. These players make ideal prospects for blind stealing, especially when they have been playing too tight at the start of the tournament. Either way you need to recognize your adversaries’ stack sizes, especially the ones who are going to act behind you. Failure to do so can result in creating a bad math scenario, because you had odds to call his all in.

You may get absolutely disappointed with the later levels in a turbo sit ‘n’ go tournament because just like any other online poker games, you will find yourself card dead very often. What you do not want to do is to let your stack exhaust to the point where your opponents would have no folding equity against your all in push. If you are pushing with a hand like jack-deuce suited, needless to say you want your opponent to fold, so the idea is to have a stack big enough to really hurt anybody who is thinking about getting involved. Most of the time your mid-stack opponent will be playing too tight and you should be counting on him to fold most of those situations.

Don’t forget however, this also works in the opposite way in that you won’t be able to intimidate short players at the table because they will be forced to play any decent looking cards, especially if their M is low.