To exactly say when a tournament goes from one stage to another is difficult. You need to take several factors into considerations such as blinds and how your opponents play. That said we will try to set the strategy for play in the early stages of a Sit & Go tournament. We define the early stages as when there are between 10 to 7 players at the table.

The main focus of this chapter is as always to make you stay alive in the early stages of a Sit & Go tournament.

Early stage strategy

”Tight is right!” Maybe you will get surprised over how tight we recommend that you play in the beginning of the tournament. But this is what we believe to be the right strategy. In the early stages you basically only want to play good starting hands. If you usually play a lot of starting hands you should instead focus on playing a bit fewer. Patience is very important in the early stages of a Sit & Go tournament. This is something we at pokerbeginner have experienced ourselves, the hard way. If you play to many hands early you will probably just find your chip stack getting smaller and smaller.

In other words we recommend that you play solid starting hands. You should also play these hands aggressively. Raise and reraise a lot! There are two main reasons why you should play only the best hands.

1. First there are still a lot of players in the tournament. Since there are so many players still at the table chances are that someone is sitting on quite a handsome hand. There are also a lot of players playing to loose and getting all-in to often so it´s better to keep your head down until things stabilize a bit (and believe us they do after the first few players are out). In other words it´s better to wait until later rounds before you get into coin flip situations. So play your quality hands instead and play them straightforward!

2. The second reason is that the blinds are small compared to your chip stack so you can afford to let decent hands go. You can wait for better cards!

Remember the Gap concept

Sklansky has written about the “gap concept” in his book about tournament poker. Simple put the concept states that you need a better hand to call or re-raise a pot that someone infront already opened for a raise. This is due to the relative holding of your opponent (to you) and his/her position. If someone opens the pot for a raise in early position they usually have a very good hand.  So if someone raises go back to your premium hands. In the same way if no one has yet opened the pot you can play more hands. Always remember this concept. If someone raises the pot you need a better hand.

Great starting hands

When we say that we want quality hands we mean the premium hands. That is AA, KK, QQ and AK suited or not suited. AK suited has somewhat more strength since you will get a flush about 6% of the time when you hold the suited. These five combinations are your basic starting hands in early position. As your position improves you can play more hands. (More on this below.)

Normally you are not that interested of playing the hands to showdown. You should settle with winning a couple of decent pots or to get all-in and be a huge favourite. We recommend that you play aggressively. You play great hands and you should not allow someone to draw out on you cheaply. If you slowplay you need to be willing to lay down after seeing a flop you don’t like.

When adopting this very tight strategy you should even be careful playing QQ and AK especially if there is a lot of action at the table. Let’s look at an example. You hold QQ and raise 5 times the BB. A player in middle position goes all-in. What do you think he´s holding to make a move like that? Well of course this is impossible to say exactly but if we don´t know anything about the player a good guess should be that he holds AA or KK. Sometimes he will have something else, but maybe it is better to be a coward and throw the cards away. He might be bluffing, but that is not really likely. If you decide to call and find a really large hand you will probably be out of the tournament. The risk isn´t worth it. (That said if he has been playing almost every hand since the tournament began a call is mandatory. Know your opponents!)

As your position improves you can start playing more starting hands but beware of your opponents. In the early stages of a tournament they can be the main deciding factor when it comes to choosing starting hands.

Position and opponents

From a middle to late position you can expand your starting hands a bit. You can now play lower pairs such as J,J and 10,10.  From the two last seats and without anyone else in the pot you might also wants to play AQ suited. Do not overplay these hands and play them only if no one else has yet entered the pot.

If someone raised a pot you should re-raise only if you have a great hand. This means going back to your early position starting hands. If you give your opponent credit for playing a tight game you might only want to play AA and KK.

If there is a lot of limping (and not a lot of raising) you might want to call a bit more to try to see some cheap flops. But don’t get fooled and try to play all kind of hands! Good hands to try to see a cheap flop with could be AJ and A10 suited as well as lower pairs or suited connectors. Only try this when you have a good position and when limping is the “normal” preflop play. You don´t want to limp and in the next instant find someone raising thus slashing your odds to pieces. Remember that these hands need a good flop. If not then fold!

If the blinds are getting relatively large and your opponents are so passive (tight) that almost nobody has left the tournament this might be a good opportunity to try stealing some blinds. Do this by raising from late position. Do not bother to steal during the first 3-4 levels since the risk/reward ratio is to low.

Survived the early stages? Let´s go on to the middle stage problematics!

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