Doube or Nothing Sit n Go

**JeffPainter** · 02-20-2011

Are the double or nothing sit n gos a sound investment? Im just curious, as I am doing 9 man no limit sit n gos, but I have a little money on Felt Stars, and was just wondering. I know the competition is WAY lower there than I face at Full Tilt, but I am just asking from an ROI standpoint. Thanks in advance!

**Jarr3tt88** · 02-20-2011

I liked the DoNs (minus the fee which means you have to win 3/5 to be profitable).....pstars is getting rid of them for the terrible Fifty/50s

**ImNotSpecial** · 02-21-2011

the DoN has certain strategy you have to follow...
IMO
it goes something like this...
this is your own strategy'' - play very tight untill the blinds get up to 75/150 -100/200 so only play AA KK QQ AK AQ (maybe AJ A10 JJ 10 10 to steal blinds)
when the blinds reach the 75/150 level... you have to remember that theres 225 +antes in there... this is about 350 in there... and if you only got 1.3K this a lot to your stack..
so you can play a little bit looser now.. for instance shipping it with A7 suited +/ 88 pair +...

If someone raises, dont be tempted in with JQ KJ K10 J10 etc... its just not worth it, and trust me every chip is accounted for on the bubble. 10 chips could save your sng life...

When you raise early on, i would make it 3/4x against weak players
and 2.5 x against the grinders (always do a quick right click search player when you sit down - this is my way of doing it - if there on 1 table Yellow note, 2 light blue, 3-5 dark blue, 6+ RED =grinders....)

the grinders will always play differently... they play ABC poker, as in they will always raise good hands/fold bad hands... PLUSSSSS.... they wil always Cbet if the board is dry...
I usualy float their cbet and when they check the turn i bet hard...if they fold your ok, if they call you better hope to suck out on the river lol

When it comes down to 6/7 handed a grinder will call you with ATC if he has less than 10BB left...
you ship to him and he will call with anything going... simply because he knows its a coin flip... so be ready for some awfull bad beats..
They will also ship ATC pre flop into your BB/SB if they know your looser/weaker oponent and if they think you dont know the strategy very well...
ITS BASICLY ABOUT SURVIVAL.. but dont play to avoid losing.. play to win.
dont be afraid to get all your chips in the middle with good hands...
if a grinder goes all in pre flop before 75/150 and he has a decent enough stack, only call with KK AA...

oh yeah if a player is hiding from search feature...
just do this to find out if he is a grinder or not...
go back to the pstars sng page, click on three of the next DoN's that are registering. for instance if you buy into a $5.20 DoN sng, go back and get the next three $5.20 DoN sng's, if the player who was hiding is on 2/3 of those sng's you know hes a grinder so tag him red

If you see a grinder, raise pre flop, get a call. then he cbets the flop but folds to a raise on the flop/turn..
make a note of this...
you can see how people play after about 20 hands though,,, and dont try and bluff a calling station...

when 6 handed... keep checking when the blinds go up, so you know how many chips youll have when they do go up... also so that if you see someone with 1K, and you know the blinds are 200/400 and its got 1 min til they go up,,, take your time bank down so that the timer for blinds goes down too. so that when it gets round to them, they have bigger blinds and hopefully a grinder will put them all in.. AS THE GRINDERS LOVEEE TO APPLY PRESSURE ON THE BUBBLE...

GOOD LUCK..
id reccomened at least 10 $1.10 DoN's just to get into the swing of it, dont worry about profiting from them, just use that money for experiance, the $1 are same as $5 to be honest

hope i helped a little

**ImNotSpecial** · 02-21-2011

oh yh... you gotta be consistanly winning to be profitable

**Tino11** · 02-21-2011

Some good advice there from ImNotSpecial.
I have played DoN games now, onand off for a couple of years. When they first surfaced, I got a decent roll built on Ladbrokes by just playing them. I would agree with everything ImNotSpecial says, but, theres always a but, there are other ways, especially if you go for the turbo games.

I was playing a very tight game and placing in most games I played. But then I changed tac and wanted to see what would happen if. Thats what I am doing right now. I am playing $2 & $3 games on merge and am trying to loosen up, use more aggression overall and look to exploit the tight nature of these games. So far, the results are inconclusive as I have yet to play enough games. It started well, went bad with variance kicking in and then came back to even, so not great, but progress.

Most DoN articles out there on the net [there aint many] basically all say the same, play tight, be aggressive when you do play a hand and only play at opponents with premium hands. I think this is now accepted as somewhere near optimal strategy, but I do believe that it can be exploited.

The one piece of advice I dont go along with ImNotSpecial is the $1 games. Just a complete donk fest and not worth playing unless you dont mind playing a game of bingo. Acheaper way of doing things is just to take some time and watch a few games. Look at what kind of hands are being shown at showdown. Take notice of the bet sizing those players are using on their way to showdown. You will soon recognise the chasers and the calling stations just by watching, it costs nothing but your time. On the merge network, you can watch a game and make notes even when you aren't involved. Take advantage of that. You could have a good set of notes on some of the regulars that will help in the future, all for nothing. If you can run some software, even better. A lot of DoN players will fold to cbets 100% of the time. Some will make cbets 100% of the time. You cant hit a flop that often, so its exploitable. Some players fold everytime they face a 3bet, in that case, 3bet them as often as you can. There is so little 4betting that its not even worth looking at. Look for steal stats, they can be invaluable when the bubble hits and you are short stacked. You can make those steals that will keep you in the money.

So if you want a cheap way to build a roll, DoN games will certainly give you that, so good luck with it, I am sure it will be an education if nothing else.

**JeffPainter** · 02-21-2011

Thanks for the help guys. One VERY important question though, especially for the above poster....

As far as Merge sites go, I play on Felt Stars. Is there ANY way to do a "player search" so I can find out who is a "grinder" and multi-tabling in my current game? Or is there any other way to find this information out? Any free sites similar to sharkscope.com? Sharkscope is nice, but limited to five searcehs a day.

Thanks

**ImNotSpecial** · 02-21-2011

Answer your question:
I do not play on felt stars (never heard of it lol)
but on most sites... whilst at a table or on the home page, usualy clicking

Ctrl F

brings up the search feature, if you do it now it will come up with search on your computer...

read next post for my detailed strategy

**ImNotSpecial** · 02-21-2011

When it comes to the DoN's. where the other poster said about the $1 bingos... I feel this may be the case on the sites your playing, but if you go over to pokerstars you wil find it a completely different ball field...
Their is a player on their.. not naming names (for my own reasons) plays the $1 DoN's...
and he plays them day in day out... playing 20 tables at once..
Ive checked all his stats (he was on their when i first started playing poker as its where i started myself... I took 8 months off from pokerstars. I went back about 6weeks ago and i took a look, to my suprise he was still there plaing 20 tables on $1.10 DoN's)
So yeah, i looked up his stats and it says he plays about 100-200 sng's per day !
and his graphs went straight down, confused the heck out of me... untill i thought OMG I SMELL A BOT... the guy plays 20 tables constantly all day every day... hes never played any other game, so i thought its a bot and its clearly just recording everyones hands for someone elses database !

NEXT POST IS ABOUT STRATEGY

**ImNotSpecial** · 02-21-2011

okay here are my starting hands... i feel that you will gain nothing from knowing this as you will probably never play me on a DoN as most of you are from USA and im from UK... and i probably play too high for most people (as i have terrible BRM)

So yeah! starting stack 1500 chips
blinds 10/20
15/30
20/40
25/50
range of hands AA KK QQ JJ AK AQ AJ KQ (raising 2.5x to grinders - 3/4x to fish)
If someone raises 3x/4x I only reraise with AA KK and probably raise to 3.5x their original raise + the extra chips from callers.
So like this, UTG raises 60 to 80total.
UTG+1 calls
UTG+2 calls
Me raise 3.5x 80. so 280 +80+80, so 440 total i raise to.
thats 1/3 my stack on the lowest blinds going, that clearly shows i have AA or KK and tells them to fold. If they ship it, im calling. AA over KK so be it.

If they flat call i put them on AK KK QQ.

When the blind levels get to about 50/100
75/150
the game changes for everyone and you have to take this into account. As everyone with 1K chips has just turned into a short stack, with this in mind the ranges change completely...
Well mine does, and so does the grinders partialy...
Fish= most fish dont understand how the game changes and so they do not adapt to the new strategy.
Grinders=play the same way everytime and know exactly what is happening.
Myself= ehh your getting it lol

Right so blinds are at 50/100 and my range is now this
lets presume i have 1500 chips still...
blinds +antes = roughly 320 assuming 8/9 players still in.
so 320 is rather a lot for my 1500 stack. Im probably going to open raise about 2.8xBB with AA KK QQ JJ 1010 99 88 AK AQ AJ (maybe A10 A9 KQ)
If someone has raised, i would probably ship it with AA KK QQ AK AQ (depending on the player, a loose player i would ship AJ A10, KQ also. A tight player tightens my range)

If im in the CO and we are still 8/9 handed... for instance if the BB and SB are grinders, Im just going to ship it to them with AA KK QQ JJ 1010 99 88 77 66 AK AQ AJ A10 A9 KQ KJ QJ...
this is for the sole reason that, if you open raise about 2-4xBB the grinders range gets looser and their going to ship light because they think your trying to steal and that they can get you to fold your hand.. where as If youve shipped it already, they have to have a big hand to call you with (their range would usualy be 88+)

when you get to 100/200 ranges are crazy...
You have to note down what hands people have been playing (grinders only usualy) If you know their only playing huge hands at lower blinds, and their open folding the Button, then you know their only playing monsters and not playing hands such as A9+ etc... So if they open raise, your range has to be super tight...
oh yh remember to ABUSE THE 100/200 LEVEL...
most people do get rather tight as their scared of going busto (fish only) so really do abuse them, they get rather tight instead of loose and this is why they loose, the tight players keep folding and blinding out, the loose players win all the blinds and end up cashing !

If you notice a grinder is open shipping with about 1000-2500 chips then you need to know their range-
UTG to MP would usualy be 99+ but some grinders do make the odd ship with ATC when they only got 1200 chips.
when MP-CO their range becomes rather large, they could ship ATC.
for my sng life i would call with AA KK QQ JJ 1010 99 AK AQ AJ A10 A9 KQ QJ.

as for 150/300 and the next few levels of blinds (usualy goes up to 500/1000 at most) the ranges stay the same... UNLESS.
if you are 6 handed then most grinders will ship ATC (any two cards) for many reasons.
a few are:
BB is weak
BB is short stack
they are short stack
the blinds are going up next hand and its their BB next
If everyone folds to BB, he will no longer be short stack, and instead the pressure would be on the grinder...
They know it will be a coin flip either way
AK vs 4Jo is still a coin flip and so ATC is live and kicking.

So now weve covered ranges...

We move onto a small section of Betting, Usualy and i would say about 80% of the time a grinder would cbet the flop if you flat call pre flop. If you min raise a wet flop, they usualy fold.
If you float the flop and bet the turn once they check, they either fold or IF THEY RE RAISE YOU, get out of the hand. If they flat call the turn bet from you and then they check the river, unless your hand has increased dramaticly and you now have nuts or close to nuts, then i suggest you check back at them as they have realised your going to be the aggressor in this hand so theyll let you hang yourself..
most grinders play either a certain way, they let you hang yourself or they bet and hope your good enough to call. (asuming they have it).
Most grinders are playing ABC poker which is basicly betting goog hands,folding bad hands) as because their on about 12 tabels +, they do not have time to mix it up and get tricky on you...

Obviously i have so much more to say... but i hope this helps, if you read it lol i know its a lot to take in, but if im honest im not amazing at poker, but this strategy works for me and i cash about 9/10 times on DoN's unless i get a bad beat...

if it doesnt make sense, or you have any questions just ask ill be happy to help..
if you want a short answer just say, i can re write things shorter... im usualy on here everyday, but not so much lately as not playing poker so much

**RakeGuard** · 02-21-2011

Woah nelly. I was gonna come in here and offer my 2 cents, but it looks like imnotspecial has added in his $20! Bravo!

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