Top Five Sit and Go Mistakes
If you are a sit and go player, the name of the game is survival. It's all about making it to the final three spots, so you can make the money and come out with a profit. The key to surviving is to avoid making huge mistakes, and new players all make very similar mistakes early in a sit and go. This article looks at the top five ways that players bust in sit and go's, and has a few tips on how to avoid these mistakes.
#1 - Act a Fool
The easiest way to quickly bust in a sit and go is to play like a maniac. Often times when I play low stakes sit and go's I see players entering almost every pot preflop, and losing a ton of chips with poor hands. Also, they go way too far with these hands, and lose way more chips than they should. A perfect example of this is when a player raises a pot with KJ early in a sit and go, hit middle pair, and get all in. Why would you do that? It just doesn't make sense.
#2 - Play Loose
One mistake I see over and over in sit and go's is players who see over 40% of the flops, even during the early stages. The only excuse for seeing that many flops is if you're getting Aces or Kings 40% of the time, and that is a pretty ridiculous proposition. Amateurs like to play hands like 910 suited even for a raise, and that is a losing play that will surely get you stacked eventually.
#3 - Underestimate Opponents
Even if you're playing at a low stakes sit and go table, you can never take your opponents too lightly. For example, I was recently in a $5 sit and go and was dealt AA. I raised it up, and had one caller. The flop was K54, and my opponent bet out into me.
At this point I surely put him on KQ or KJ, so I re-raised him. After that, he went all in, and I quickly called. He had 44, and knocked me out. If this were a higher stakes sit and go I would have questioned his bet into me on the flop, but since it was a low stakes game I figured he was just making a foolish play.
#4 - Multi-Task
No matter how good of a poker player you are, it is important to focus on the task at hand. If you're playing online poker while cooking, cleaning, watching TV, and chatting with friends, you're doomed to have a bad session. Because of this, you should always focus on the poker game. Even if you're multi tabling you'll still be way better off by focusing solely on the computer instead of other tasks.
#5 - Overestimate Draws
Another super common mistake I see at the low stakes tables is players getting it all-in early with just a draw. You're supposed to stay tight during the early stages of a sit and go, and the only time you should get your whole stack in is when you're sure you have the best of it. A flush draw or a straight draw is definitely not the best of it.