Nothing better than spending a lazy Sunday afternoon playing a few Sit ‘n Go’s. I decided to sit down at a few $2+$0.20 tables (I’m moving up the limits soon, I promise ) and test my “skills”, here’s how I went:

SNG #1:

Played this one fairly tight to finish in 2nd place, my opponent had me well covered heads up (by around 10x) as he’d caught AA and KK in consecutive hands to knock two players out.

In the end I had to gamble, blinds would have had me within 3 hands otherwise. Here’s how the final hand played out:

On the SB, my hole cards:

I push all in.

He shows:

Nice hand for him to catch on the BB heads up. We see a flop:

Ok, he gets a pocket pair on the BB now hits his set on the flop. I still have hope… c’mon the straight or flush!

Turn:

“Them’s quads beeetches!” (thanks to the Poker Princess for that line), unfortunately in this case I was the “beeetch”.

SNG’s #2 and #3:

My notes on these two are kinda, umm, brief. There’s an unfortunate reason for that… my time at these tables was “kinda, umm, brief”!

I finished on the bubble in number 2 (fourth place) and went out in a disappointing fifth place in number 3. My notes claim I wasn’t getting any cards but I believe my biggest mistake on both of these tables was that I was playing way too loose.

If you’re making loose calls in the middle levels of a SNG you are simply bleeding chips, before you know it you’re the short stack and everyone on the table is coming after you. You end up all in with some more marginal cards and short of a miracle you’re going home early…

SNG #3:

3rd place! Not bad, but I am extremely annoyed at myself for not getting further. I don’t know about you guys but I can handle taking a bad beat pretty well, if I have get my chips in while I’m ahead then I believe I made a long-term profitable play, it’s when I make a bad play that I get really annoyed:

I’m on the BB, the dealer folds and the SB min-raises. I have the SB slightly outstacked and to me this looks like an attempt to steal my blind, I’ve been stealing a few blinds myself and all I can think is he’s trying to push me back a little. I look at my cards:

And for some inexplicable reason I call. In hindsight these probably aren’t blind defending cards, even if they are a flat call just screams WEAK here. I might as well tell him what cards I have.

Anyway, onto the flop:

SB bets the minimum bet which is only a quarter of the pot, to me this is a weak bet and hints he may have missed the flop (“My king didn’t hit, but you believe I have the ace right?”). So with all the stupidity in the world I click that fun little button “All-In”, he calls (damn!) and shows me:

Double damn! I’ve walked right into his trap, I wouldn’t mind except that I completely ignored the big neon warning sign flashing “Danger: TRAP!”.

Of course the poker gods want to get their kicks too, the turn comes:

I’m saved!!! What? Oh yeah, the river:

I was kicking myself. Needless to say the blinds caught up with me next time around and I was outta there in 3rd.

SNG #5:

I played in one more SNG yesterday and again placed 3rd. Unfortunately though it was one of the most boring SNG tables I’ve ever sat down at, talk about a rock garden. My natural instinct when faced with an ultra tight table is to push, raise pre-flop, steal blinds and scare them out of pots… which is fine, as long as you don’t push it.

I pushed it.

I think I got a little over aggressive and going into the final four I was almost the short stack (around even with another player and well dominated by the other two). As the guy I was equal to was on my left I was pushing him as hard as I could, in the end I got lucky catching a straight on the river after a bluff attempt and took him out. Because the table had been so tight, it had taken a long time to get to this point and the blinds were at $600/$1200 (the SB alone was enough to eat my stack), I didn’t catch any cards and was out of there a short time later.

Summary:

Three ITM finishes in 5 SNG’s is nothing to complain about, however, I still have a lot to learn. I especially need to work on when to be aggressive and when not to be aggressive (two of the things I listed here). I’m sure this will become more natural with experience, so my plan for now is to keep playing as often as I can…