SNG strategy early

I have been spending some time trying to figure out why my game has elevated itself to a higher level. It is hard to put a finger on success sometimes, because a lot of times we just aren't aware that we did anything differently.

First off, I play turbo SNGs. These are SNGs where the blind levels(the forced bets per round of hands dealt) will automatically go up at a quicker pace, usually every 5 minutes versus 10 or even 15 minutes that some tournaments have. At the WSOP it used to be 120 minute blind levels, I am not sure if it was changed to 90 minutes or not. The longer the blind levels the more the skill of players should shine through, as they have longer to wait for good hands. In turbos the blind levels go up very quickly, thus, putting presure on people to make moves that they don't want to make as their stacks dwindle. This is the time when people incorrectly make calls, and all-in moves that they shouldn't.

I think the key to doing well in these SNGs is to be very deliberate and conservative in the early stages of these tournaments. When you have more than 20 big blinds(bbs) or so, there is no need to be playing a lot of hands or playing speculative hands.

In early position, under the gun (UTG, first to act after the hands are deal), UTG+1, and UTG+2 we don't want to be playing a lot of hands in these positions. We really only want to be raising with hands like AA and KKs. A case can be made for limping QQs, and AK even from early position. I would limp hands like AJ or AQ in early position (EP) so that if there was a raise I could simply fold my hand and move on.

The problem with raising AJ or AQ in EP is that if somebody raises you later you will be out of position, unless it is the small blind(SB) or big blind(BB). If an Ace comes on the flop there will be the posibility that we could lose a lot of chips with a second best hand. What if we hit our J or Q, we could still be in bad shape with AA-QQ against our AJ or AQ hand. I would tend to just throw my hand away and move on.

If I was in Late position (LP) I would be inclined to just limp behind if someone had already opend the pot. If someone had raised I would just fold AQ AJ type hands, and just call with AK a fair amount of time, unless I knew this person to be a loose raiser, then I would raise them to punish them for raising with weak hands, but if the person was fairly conservative, then I might just call and try and trap with my big hand.

The real point of this is to point out that we want to go out of our way to minimize risk early on in a SNG, period. There is no reason for us to give up our percieved skill advantage by taking unnecessary risks. This might mean throwing away JJ on a Q high flop to a bet. We must always remember that we want to be getting our chips into the middle when we are ahead, and not taking chances that we don't have to take.

There is a time to be aggressive, and there is a time to be raising and playing big pots, but most of the time we want to play small pots. We want to try and control the pots so that we don't have to invest a lot of our stack to get to the river.

There is another big benefit when you limp AK early on and hit your hand. If you play it in a passive way and get to the river not betting that much and checking a street or two, you can really send a message to your opponents when they see your AK. Not to mention you may actually win more by checking an A or K flop to someone who limped with A5 type hand and thinks their Ace is good and bluffs at the pot and then when you reraise them they will call thinking that you hit the river undercard to their big ace.