Online poker players can earn a nice part-time or even a decent full-time income playing a game that they love.
But like anything worth doing, it takes time, practice, and study to learn the ropes in order to move from fish to baller. I wouldn’t recommend getting a fake ID like Phil Ivey did, but the more you practice and actively learn from your mistakes, the better you’ll get.
One of the better ways to get this practice in on actual cash games for a reasonable bankroll is through SNG tournaments. They’re an easy bankroll builder, and an easy way to get into the discipline of online poker and build up skill. They’re also relatively easy to become proficient at.
What is a Sit-N-Go (SNG) tournament?
SNG tournaments are either timed or freeze-out poker games with a limited number of players, usually six or nine. The blind structure is such that the tournament plays out in a half-hour to an hour at the most.
Online poker sites will have a single buy-in for the tournament, plus a fee that goes to the site.
Once the tournament is full, play starts. When your chips are gone, you’re out.
Timed tournaments end after a prescribed amount of time, and the prize pool is distributed to the remaining players proportional to their chip count.
Regular SNGs will typically have the top two players cash in a 6-max (six players) or the top three for a 9-max. For a 6-max, second place will nearly double their buy-in and first will win nearly four times their buy-in.
Now I’ll talk about five reasons why these SNG tournaments are so good for beginners:
1. You get more poker play for your money
One of the other popular options for online poker, aside from big multi-table tournaments, is the ring game or cash game. This is basically a never-ending series of hands that players enter and leave as either (a) they want to, or (b) as their bankroll dictates, haha!
Cash games have a fixed blind cost, and players can usually buy in for up to 100 big blinds. For a $0.05/$0.10 cash game (usually one of the least expensive), 100 big blinds is $10. It’s possible to lose that entire stack on a bad beat. For a beginning poker player, this can be a lot of money.
With SNGs, on the other hand, an entire tournament can cost as little as $0.25. Sure, top prize is only $0.90, but you can play an awful lot of SNGs for $10. Even if you lose them all, that’s forty tournaments you were in.
2. Build up your multi-tabling skills on the cheap
Because these SNGs at the so-called micro level are so inexpensive, you can play several of them at one time without breaking the bank.
Why play several at once, you might ask? Poker is a game of edges. Once you become a winning poker player, the more games per hour you play, the more money you’ll make, all other things being equal.
Practicing multi-table play with the cheap SNGs is an affordable way to build up this crucial skill.
3. Track your tournament play for free on SharkScope
If you want to spy on your fellow players and get the inside scoop on their play, SharkScope.com is a great place to go.
By signing up for a free account and agreeing to share your stats publicly with whomever wants to check you out, you get a nice history of a lot of your poker stats. Plus you can get achievements, and who doesn’t like those?
SharkScope only tracks tournament play, but this does include SNG tournaments. So if you focus on SNGs then you get a good set of stats to track your progress.
4. SNGs are easier to become proficient at
Aside from being less expensive for beginners, SNGs are easier to become proficient at than cash games or larger multi-table tournaments.
The theory behind successful play on SNGs can be a bit more tractable for beginners.
(This is something that HispanicSoup can coach you through and fine-tune by watching you play, by the way!)
5. You can even cash if you’re in the top half on some SNG tournaments!
Earlier I mentioned that the top two cash in on 6-max SNGs, and the top three cash in on 9-max.
Some poker sites recently have started so-called jumpstart tournaments for 6-max SNGs. The top prize is less, but the top three players cash in these tournaments. The payout for third is slightly more than breakeven, but hey, cash is cash! Cashing is always, always preferable to not cashing!
What are your poker goals? How have you done with SNG tournaments?
Let us know in the comments, or drop HispanicSoup a line!
header photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash