Difference MTT & Sng?

[j0na1234]

I know what the difference is between a multi table tournament and a sit & go. But what are the main differences in playing them? Do you play more tight in tournament because the field is bigger, or the opposite: do you play much looser to accumulate chips and go for top10 cashes? What is the best tactic here and how do you guys psychologically approach it ?

[rlg476]

Here is what Howard Lederer wrote about set and goes at Full Tilt Poker, Tips from the Pros:

mastering it should be considered mandatory homework for the serious student."

The Sit N Go (SNG) is online poker's great gift to the aspiring tournament player. Prior to the SNG, final table experience was hard to come by. You could enter a dozen multi-table tournaments and never find yourself at a final table. Or you could make one or two, only to get knocked out in 8th or 9th place. Adapting to an ever-diminishing number of players at a single table is a crucial skill in tournament poker, and it's a hard experience to find offline without investing a lot of time and money. Online, this experience is a mouse-click away. The SNG's advantages are many. For starters, it's low-cost, or even free. It's also fun, and convenient: You don't need to schedule it -- a SNG starts every time the table fills up -- and it's usually over in less than an hour. It is the flight simulator of Final Table play, and mastering it should be considered mandatory homework for the serious student.

Now that you know why you should play, let's look at how:

The most obvious difference between a SNG and a multi-table tournament is that when someone goes broke in a SNG, there isn't someone waiting to fill their spot. Multi-table play consists mostly of full-table, ring game poker. But as players get eliminated from a SNG, the table gets shorter- and shorter-handed. This reduction in players basically serves to artificially raise the antes. For instance, say you are playing five-handed and the blinds are 100-200: You are paying 300 in blinds for every five hands, or 60 per hand. As soon as someone gets knocked out, you're four-handed. Now you're paying 75 per hand -- a 25% increase -- despite the fact that the blinds have remained the same. Accordingly, you're forced to gamble more, or risk getting blinded out.

Since the size of the blinds relative to your stack size should always play a major role in you hand selection, I recommend starting out with pretty conservative starting hand requirements. This serves two functions: First, the blinds dictate that you play fairly tight early; the blinds are small and you are nine-handed, so they don't come around as often. Second, this helps you establish a tight image, which you hope will pay off later when the blinds are high and you might really need a timely ante steal.

But there is another not-so-obvious reason to play tighter earlier and looser later: The payout structure rewards tight play. Most SNG's pay 50% to first, 30% to second, and 20% to third. This payout structure dictates that you play for third. Why? Looking at the payout structure another way might help. Basically, the payout means that 60% gets awarded once you are down to three players, 20% gets awarded when you get down to two players, and the final 20% gets awarded to the winner. If you can just get to third, you get at least one-third of 60% of the prize pool, or 20%. You've locked up a profit, and you have a chance to win up to 30% more. It's only now that you're in the top three that your strategy should take an abrupt turn. Now it pays to gamble for the win. Let's look at the numbers again: 60% of the prize pool is off the table, and moving up one spot is worth only another 10%. But move up just one more spot and it's worth a whopping 30% extra -- that's three times more for first than it is for second. And with the blinds going up, gambling for the win is even more clearly the correct play.

I see many players employ a nearly opposite strategy. They figure they have nothing to lose, so they go for the quick double-up early. They take chances too soon when, in their view, there's "nothing on the line". Then, once they're in the money, they tighten up, thinking about that extra payout for moving up a spot. If you start to rethink your SNG approach and adopt a "slow early, fast late" strategy, you will see an almost immediate improvement in your results.

Best of luck and see you at the tables,


Howard Lederer

[soonerdel]

sng's are sprints... mtt's are marathons big difference in the way they are played.. sng's are much more push/shove

[GOIVIT]

I play a lot of sitngo's and MTT's and Howard is spot on (he should be as a true pro). The whole point to a sitngo is to cash, once there you go for 1st. Sounds obvious but its not. Everyone is tring to double up and coast to the cash, but to the patient player goes the spoils.

[mathieu06]

sng's are sprints... mtt's are marathons big difference in the way they are played.. sng's are much more push/shove

exactly but i think marathons are better if you want to play with experience and not with lucky ... you have all your possiblitys in their tournements ...

[hojediade]

It mostly depends on which SnG you're playing. I played some 90 to 180 SnG at FTP which i played like MTT, spending nearly 3 hours which is long enough.
I agree that 10-handed SnG is really useful to learn how to master a FT. The only difference is that everyone has the same amount of chips, which is a huge difference of course. I would add that SnG is a great way to learn how to play the bubble in MTT too.

[Poker Orifice]

I've actually read alot of criticism about Howard's comaparison of a SNG to a MTT final table. In the sng, you don't need to get involved in early levels much if at all, whereas on an MTT final table, the table dynamics are going to dictate the play in a big way (some stacks will be short enough (or possibly many) that any re-raise preflop (or often times even the initial raise) are going to be shoves.
Difference in how you go about playing a SNG in comparison to an MTT.
In an MTT you want to gradually accumulate chips and build up your stack (not super necessary in most online structures to be doing so in the early levels but generally speaking this is what you'd want to be doing). MTT play is going to be deeper stacked play giving you implied odds to play a wider variety of hands in position. There are also multiple inflection points and play needs to be adjusted accordingly.

In a SNG, you'll see alot of players playing them similiarly to how they'd play an MTT and will see some of them get involved in way too many pots (especially in the micro buy-in levels). Basic strategy in a SNG is to try to maintain a stack so that you'll have decent fold equity when it comes to push/fold game. In other words, you don't want to risk spewing off chips unecessarily.
Early levels you want to play a tight aggressive cautious game. If you do manage to acquire some chips, it is often more important to not spew chips,.. winning pots does not equal winning the game.... being the last one standing = winning the game. In other words, it is often not worth it to try to win for example 600 more chips when you're sitting on 2100 ( as losing the 600 will decrease your tournament equity quite considerably compared to how much it would increase one's equity by picking up the 600).
In mid-levels one needs to open up their game a bit and get much more active. Picking off the blinds at this stage becomes crucial.

There are big differences really. Pointing out some of the SNG basic strategy here was just trying to illustrate a general idea of them.

[Poker Orifice]

There are actually some pretty big diffences between how you'd play differently structured mtts, never mind the comparison between MTT's & SNGs in general.

[tork]

MTT is allright but Sng no smwjook game in russia tourney - not have hhs gamers!!!

[mt19135]

i usually play tighter early in a mtt then a sng. try and steal more in a sng and be tight and patient early on in a mtt