I've been playing a little bit more SNGs lately instead of my usual ring/MTT appearances. However, I've been noticing a little bit of a bad trend coming up in my play. I don't know how to play with 3 or 4 people left. I find myself coming in 3rd a lot and 4th even more. This is something I seriously need to fix. I have a feeling that it has something to do with my tight nature and how so many people tend to go all in at this point with crappy cards and I hate getting sucked out on.

I have absolutely no problem getting to this stage everytime with a medium stack (or low stack if I have crap cards) but after this point I am totally lost. I know I have to work on my heads up game as well, but that's for a different day. Right now I have to get to the final 2 more often.

How do the SNG players here deal with the final 3/4 situations? I would like to get some insight from Irexes as he seems to know what he's talking about when it comes to SNG play.

good sng strategy is play standard, tight agressive poker early. obviously since you say you can make the final 3/4 easaily, it seems like i dont have to explain how to do this. once you are there though, typically the blinds have raised, M's are shrinking, and you are left with basically all in or nothing decisions.

the 1st thing im going to tell you is start playing more agressive short handed. most people who play sng's play loose early and then tighten up later, thinking this is the best way to move up the money. WRONG! these are the types of people who i rob daily. in a standard sng, the greatest edge is in the endgame. in order to exploit this edge, you must play smart, agressive poker. basically, what seperates you from a good sng player is the ability to steal blinds. for this, i reccomend SNG PWR tools. dl the free demo, it will open your eyes to playing sngs.

as for heads up play, pwr tools has a good tutorial, and HOH has a really basic, straight forward, but GREAT heads up strategy, lots of info and percentages and stuff.
some basic ideas are position is extremely important, and your position dictates your pf raise size. you can raise less on the button because you can end more hands with a bet on the flop, but you must raise more (not more hands, higher bets) out of position to end more hands pf, thus making an attempt to negate bad position. heads up play is less about the cards, more about agressive play.

basically, your sng sucess mostly depends on how skilled you are at stealing the blinds.

Originally Posted by gder03

you go all in and make them play tight. not other way around. with your strategy in 4 handed play, you say you keep coming in 4th. so what you have to lose? nothing. you can only improve. play as if your a madman.

well said. alot of the time playing like a "madman" is +ev. lol

try to play some short handed sngs.

And in the stage you are in 'ending up with the last 4/3' , reads on the players are very important!

It's always a plus to get to the bubble with a nice stack. Then you can bully the shortstack out of hands and wait till he is pretty much blinded down. Hopefully somebody will take him out.

Originally Posted by manifest

How do the SNG players here deal with the final 3/4 situations? I would like to get some insight from Irexes as he seems to know what he's talking about when it comes to SNG play.

Very kind (though possibly misguided). It's often either allin or fold at this point as any pot can be definitive, however you really want to be the aggressor. I only call preflop raises with JJ or better and usually will reraise allin if the blinds are getting spicy. I'll also fold 77-99 to a preflop raise more often than not even with 4 or 5 left, though I'll often push if first to act. Playing most of the poker preflop really allows you to pick your spots.

Developing a really, really tight image in the first half of the tourney is key (I'll often not play a hand for 20-30 minutes) this gives you plenty of time to double up on the strength of a really good hand (if you get one) but also means that when the blinds are big 10% of the starting stack or more, you can steal a few pots without trouble.

I've got 125 buyins at the $55s logged and when I get to 4 left I make it through exactly 75% of the time. However I finish 1st more than any other position 20 wins, 17 2nds and 10 3rds. I need a bigger sample to be sure but I think the key point is with 6 or 5 people left when it becomes possible to start bullying and edging ahead as people don't realise til too late that their stack is becoming precarious relative to the blinds.

There's a lot more on this, and I'm sure people disagree with some of the above but the most important thing is to be the first to act rather than the person reacting as you get very few bullets in your gun and need to chose your spots and make the other guy make the mistake.

what is pwr sng tools?

Originally Posted by pocketje

what is pwr sng tools?

google search it, go to the website and dl the demo. go through the tutorial, it explains everything, requires no review.

the demo is free