I must say that I was very honoured to be given the chance to write for such a distinguished poker website as blonde poker and very much relish sharing what knowledge I have built up with the poker community in general. Here I would like to talk about single table tournaments and in particular, the software that you can use in order to further increase your edge.I actually played these one table tournaments full time a couple of years ago for about a six month period up to and including the $200+$15 level so I would say that I have some experience in knowing how to beat them. But despite the fact that as with all forms of online poker, the SNG environment is getting significantly tougher... there are still profits to be made by most players at the $50 levels and below who use nothing more than a good strategy mixed with the discipline to keep applying it even when things may appear to be going pear shaped.
Everyone seems to be aware of the tight to start type of strategy these days and I for one think that there is far more mileage in mixing it up more during the earlier levels in the higher stakes tournaments. But in situations in which everyone knows a good starting strategy then you really need to be taking your game a lot further if you want to stay a winner.
I have actually written a very substantial amount of theory in numerous sources about how to beat single table tournaments including an e-book but one of the things that my e-book didn’t talk about was Independent Chip Modelling and I took a fair bit of stick for it. This was deliberate on my part as I was more interested in writing something that appealed to as wide an audience as possible, a kind of 'Kill Phil”'type of strategy that could fast track novice players into semi-serious players in a very short time frame.
But many serious players have stated how SNG’s may soon become impossible to beat. I am not overly sure about this and in my opinion it all depends on the levels that you intend to play. One factor with regards toSNG’s is that if you can attain a good endgame phase to your play then you have really cracked the SNG code and there is little further that you can do to increase your edge in any major meaningful way and this is what I think many professionals mean.
It is for this reason that high-stakes SNG’s at the $500 level and above are now very tough to beat and a return on investment of 5% is considered very good at those levels and many professionals operate at even less than this.
So what exactly is Independent Chip Modelling and why is it so important? Well you may already be aware of the term as this is more commonly referred to as ICM so the chances are that you may have read it somewhere but not fully understood what it was that was being discussed.
As you reach the later stages of an SNG then the average stack sizes are going to be relatively small when compared to the blinds. This makes the tactic of sitting back and waiting totally the wrong plan of attack and this is by far the most aggressive stage of the tournament.
The tournament can go from being four handed to all over in the space of a few hands. But if you think that successful end game play is all about maximum aggression all the time then you couldn’t be more wrong. There are clearly defined guidelines for knowing what hands to move all in with and more importantly knowing which hands to call an all in with.
The bad news is that this is not something that can be learnt from some hand chart because the correct strategy is geared around various factors like the strength of your hand, the size of your stack, the prize pool, how many players are left and the size of your opponent's stack.
These are variables that change every single hand so there is nothing set in stone here. But the good news is that there are several software tools on the market that can actually do this job for you. ICM tools can greatly increase your knowledge of being able to accurately calculate your total equity in the prize pool. In layman’s terms, this basically means knowing the correct time to shove your stack in the middle.
When I played SNG’s full time I used sngwiz which for me is the best ICM tool out there but I have also heard equally good reports of its nearest rival as well which is sngegt (sit and go end game tools). Now it is only fair to point out that these pieces of software cannot be used during actual play but continual usage of these very fine simulators will not only increase your knowledge of SNG end game scenarios but will also increase your bottom line and certainly at the lower levels of play.
You will be able to set up real game situations to test and hone your endgame push and shove decisions as well as being able to utilise the excellent quiz facility that is built into the system of both pieces of software. For example, let us say that you are in the big blind in a $20 SNG and there are just two players remaining. This is a ten man tournament so we have 15,000 in tournament chips on the table. You opponent who has a stack of 9,000 compared to your 6,000 has been very aggressive and has taken the chip lead away from you by a series of raises and reraises.
If you try to play back then they aggressively move all in. The blinds are at the 500-1000 level and your opponent moves all in once again and you are sat there with the Jc-7d... do you call? Most players would fold this hand and wait for something better but those hands may never materialise. Or how about the very next hand where you are on the button and you see the 9c-7d... do you raise, fold or move all in?
Understanding ICM will definitely propel not only your knowledge of single table tournament endgame situations but it will also increase your ROI (return on investment) and that simply has to be great news for everyone.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson is sponsored by Cake Poker and can be seen at www.cakepoker.com/thedean