The most important thing to remember is that SNG's are a skill unto
themselves. In other words SNG's, for lack of a better term, are not
real poker in a way. You see a lot of these real successful MTT players
try to play SNG's and they get very frustrated that they can't do
as well. I think the reason for that is they don't recognize the fact
that SNG's are a brute force type of poker that doesn't take all that
much finesse to succeed at all but the highest levels.
There have actually been articles written on actual SNG formulas that
you could use, if you wanted to try them that will make you kind of
a winning player. The classic SNG strategy that I use is essentially
be hyper-tight early and hyper-aggressive late. That sounds all nice
and easy, but the problem is you have to get from the hyper-tight
stage to the hyper-aggressive stage.
By hyper-tight I mean in the first level or two, when you have about
50 big blinds or so, depending on what site your are playing on, you
want to be staying out of the way. You want to be playing only the
best of hands especially in early position. An example is if I get
a hand like JJ UTG (under the gun - early position) I will raise about
ZERO percent of the time. I will just limp in with the jacks. If you
have Ace-King in the small blind and you have a mid-position guy raise
and then the button makes a re-raise of 3x that players bet - where
in a MTT you have enough chips where you might be able to make a move
on top of them - in a SNG you just have to fold. And that is just
to a single re-raise. Especially in level one. Level one is not the
time to be committing all your chips to be honest.
Level one is the time to sit and do nothing unless you have a really
big hand. If you're in the big blind and you get to see the flop for
free and you hit a big hand, then obviously you are ready to commit
all your chips. The idea in the early part of SNG's is to really stay
out of trouble and play super-super tight.
Now you kind of fast forward to the end of SNG's you have to have
completely different skills. In early position at the table play the
best of hands, but just like in regular poker, as you are closer to
the button you can play looser. If it gets folded to me on the button
and I have a hand like K10, I'll just fold it pretty quickly. Even
if I have the button because it's level one and I'm not gaining too
much from it.
To give you more concrete examples: If have a hand like KJ or KQ and
I'm in middle position and someone limps UTG, I just muck it in the
first level or two in a SNG. Where in a MTT with a deeper stack I
have other options. Same as AJ and AQ, they should just be thrown
away UTG at level one. AJ and AQ are good hands when you can isolate
one person and they are good when there are blinds to steal and things
like that. But when the blinds are really small relative to your stack
you want to stay out of trouble in SNG's until the later stages when
you must get more aggressive.
Let's say you have a ROI% (Return on Investment) of 15%. I would say
about 12% of that is how you play the bubble and how you play late
in the game as opposed to how you play AQ UTG or some hand like that.
FOXSports.com: How do you play your chip stack relative to the blinds?
Eric Haber: Again the main keys in SNG's
are what I call several layers of flexibility. You can do certain
things with a certain multiple of the blinds that you can't do with
a smaller multiple of the blinds.
The first level of flexibility that you always have to maintain is
pre-flop fold equity. In other words you have to at all costs have
enough chips where you can raise and the person left to act can mathematically
fold. That is the number one criteria for playing SNG's.
Now the typical number that people look to for that basic fold equity
is about 4-5bbs (big blinds). If you can maintain between 4-5bbs then
that is the first level of flexibility. As long as you maintain that
you can survive. The next level of flexibility is being able to re-raise
somebody and have them fold. Now you have to do the math here. We
are talking about 15bbs or slightly less or slightly more. If someone
raises ahead of you, you have to think - Do I have the level of flexibility
of being able to re-raise that player?
When you are playing an SNG you always have to be cognizant of what
your stack is relative to the blinds. Dan Harrington in his books
talks about "M" - he puts a name to it. All he is basically
saying is you have to preserve your fold equity. You have to be able
to steal if you want to be able to survive these things. In addition
always keep in the back of your mind, before you make any play, how
is it going to affect my flexibility.
If you have say 30bbs and somebody makes a raise and you can call
it and its not going to put you into a level where you can't re-raise
all-in, then you can make that call. Why? It's because in this situation
you are not really sacrificing any flexibility. Where if someone makes
a raise, where either intentionally or not by them, puts you in a
position that if you call and lose you are going to now fall into
a lower level of flexibility, then you are probably more likely to
fold it.
It's not similar to your big stack MTT's where you have a lot of chips
to play with. Another point is it's not like a big MTT's because there
are only 9-10 players in the SNG. The SNG is only going to last roughly
40-50 hands if it's a turbo or a little over a 100 hands if it is
a regular SNG. So every decision that you make becomes that much more
important. You can splash around in a MTT, lose a few hands and maybe
make that up later. It's not so easy in a SNG. You make one big mistake
and you are in huge trouble.
FOXSports.com: So do you advocate when you go below the 4-5bbs everything is a push all in?
Eric Haber: When you go below 4-5bbs it's
not even a push. In other words if you have 5bbs you can push and
get them to fold. If you have 2bbs it's an interesting paradox. At
2bbs you now you have to wait because you have no fold equity.
To figure out when you have to push as opposed to a standard raise
is actually another type of discussion. The way that goes is follows:
before you consider making a 3x the bb raise you have to ask yourself
this question - if I get re-raised all-in am I going to be calling
anyway? If you make it a 3x bbs raise and say someone was going to
push all-in over the top of you and you're getting 3-1 odds on your
call, you would be calling anyway. So if you are going to be calling
a re-raise anyway making it 3x the bbs, it's kind of silly to not
push all your chips in. That level comes usually about the 7.5bbs
level.
Take the classic example of there being $1000 in the pot pre-flop
($200-$400 with $50 antes) and you have say 4400 in chips - another
way is to say if there is 7.5bbs and antes it would be about 4.5 x
the pot. Those are kind of the two lines of demarcation for when you
really should be pushing as opposed to just making a standard raise.
Because you are going to be getting about 2-1 on your calls if you
get re-raised all-in anyway, so it's better off to just push all-in
in the first place.
FOXSports.com: I've heard you mention strategic decisions vs. tactical decisions on the PokerXfactor.com SNG videos - can you break those down for us.
Eric Haber: This goes back to the discussion
I had on flexibility earlier. Sometimes you are faced with a decision
that you can calculate from a pot odds perspective. Let's say that
you raised pre-flop with some hand and they pushed over the top of
you. To play you figure out that you need 2-1 odds to make the call.
That is your tactical decision. It's really just what are the numbers
and does my hand justify making that type of call.
A strategic decision is a little different - it doesn't really factor
in the pot odds, it factors in more of what flexibility you are going
to give up in the future if you make the call vs. what flexibility
you are risking. In other words lets say that you were in one of those
tenuous positions where you have about 9bbs. At 9bbs it is a level
where you can still get away with making a standard 3x blind raise.
You are not forced to be pushing all-in with 9bbs. That is a higher
level of flexibility to having 7bbs. It lets you do one more thing.
Now if you get put in one of those pot odds, call or fold type situations,
where let's say the math says it's a call by a little bit, but what
that call will do will bring you below that 7.5bbs level, then you
might be better off folding it. Even more interesting, let's say you
calculate the pot odds in a situation like that and it's actually
a small fold, but what happens if you call and lose, you are going
to be in the same range of flexibility. An example - let's say that
you had 13bbs, which is enough where you can have pre-flop fold equity
and you don't have to go all-in yet. The problem is that you don't
have a lot of re-raise fold equity, so that is a level that you are
at with 13bbs. Then say you are faced with a call where the math is
not really giving you the right pot odds, if you do call and you lose,
it will only bring you down to 9bbs, which is essentially the same
strategic point of flexibility as 13bbs.
With 9bbs you can still raise without going all-in and you still cannot
re-re-raise all in. So you are not really risking anything from a
flexibility perspective to make the call. That is one weird situation
where the math says you are "-EV" (Negative Expected Value)
to make the call, but from a strategic perspective its not a bad idea.
The person who but it best as far as the difference between strategic
vs. tactical play is probably JohnnyBax. He said it's like the winning
the battle vs. winning the war thing. That is the best way to put
it. A strategic decision is one that impacts your flexibility for
the rest of the tournament. A tactical decision is purely based on
pot odds and whether you are +EV or not for that hand.
Let me give you a great example. You are in a MTT and you are down
to ten left and the final table will consist of nine players. At this
point there are five players sitting at two tables. Let's use the
extreme example - you are 6th in chips in regards to all ten players
but you are the chip leader at your table. Of course at your table
no one wants to bust out before the final table and presently you
are basically destroying the table. Every time you are raising they
are folding. The worst thing that could happen to you is to give this
position up because now is when you are going to pick up chips. You
don't want to be merging with those big stacks on the other table
yet.
You are in this particular strategic position where you have a hammerlock
on what's happening. Now, a situation arises where you're in the big
blind and the small blind has 2bbs. He goes all-in costing you one
bb. You are sitting with a great hand, QQ. Obviously from any reasonable
players +EV calculation you have to call. But what are you gaining
by calling? If you call you win the one big blind and then the tables
merge and you are losing all of your advantage. Whereas if you just
fold, giving the guy the one blind, then you can go back to destroying
everybody. From a strategic perspective you control your table and
you want to do everything you can to preserve that.
FoxSports.com: Everyone struggles with playing middle pairs. Do you have any sage advice?
Eric Haber: (laughs) Middle pairs. If
I knew how to play middle pairs perfectly I would have a higher ROI
%. It's the hardest part of SNG play. I speak to some of the best
SNG players out there for their current strategies. We instant message
each other back and forth - what do you do with 33 UTG and 10 bbs
nowadays, are you still folding it or are you pushing all in? Even
among the best players these types of questions are still up in the
air.
The problem with the way people play small to mid-pair pairs, especially
with the calling end of it, is really not that much different than
the problem people have with calling in general. It's the first rule
you learn in any poker book is that you don't want to be a caller.
You would rather be a raiser. And in SNG's …especially on the
bubble, that could not be truer. You USUALLY do not want to be a caller
with all but some of the very best hands. If the odds dictate it,
sure… But to make a call with a hand like 22 or 44, the odds
are there far less than people think.
You hear people comment that in the best-case scenario they have a
coin flip. You know… the huge conventional wisdom is true sometimes.
I've seen it happen. People make calls with 44 and they are up against
AK. They hold up and they say "I made the call with 4's cause
I knew it was a coin flip." You THINK you know it's a flip because
the AK comes but you never know for sure. They could have any of those
other pairs and you are just dominated. So you can't just, in a game
of misinformation like poker, presume that you have a flip when you
call with a small or medium pair. Sure it is more likely than not
that someone doesn't have a pair, but the consequences of someone
having that overpair is just devastating to your tournament. Typically
you want to play these medium pairs the way you play a lot of hands,
you would rather be an all-in raiser than an all-in caller. That's
very standard stuff.
