Why I play SNG’s - what is right for you?
A couple of weeks ago, I read an interesting article on Plan3t Gong about enjoying playing poker. It got me thinking, and I decided to write this article on, why I play Sit and Go’s, not other forms of poker - and how it began.
I started out playing Fixed Limit cashgame about 4 years ago. It was fun at first, even though in hindsight, it seems SO boring. I grinded out a few bonuses and won a bit, but still very little. So I tried SNG’s and played some small multitable tournaments. I did not make any big scores, as far as I recall, but I enjoyed it more than those silly ringgames.
I have tried playing No Limit cash games… I took a long trip to Canada last year, and spent 4 months skiing and sharing a house with 3 cash game players, two of which were huge winners. Of course that tickled my interest, and I did once again try to grind some NL25/NL50. But I hate it… I really hate it. The HUGE swings affect my mood, and I am 100 times more likely to tilt than when playing SNG’s. I hate being able to outsmart the others for 5 hours and maybe be up 1-2 buyins - and then loose it all by being sucked out. Of course that is because my cashgame skills are not very good, I realize that… But whenever I play cashgames, I feel frustrated much of the time - and I am simply not having any fun!
Ok, but what about multitable tournaments (MTT) then? That’s pretty much what a regular at the SNG’s asked me a few months back. I was playing this other regular at the SNG’s quite a lot, but then he disappeared for a while - and one day he was back in my games, and we chatted a bit. He wanted to contact me and ended up calling me and lecturing me for about an hour on, why I should switch to multitable tournaments. We had very similar skills, and he told me he thought I played really well, and he told me about why he had switched to playing multitable tournaments almost exclusively. He believed the earning potential was much higher than in SNG’s, the 2-3 months he had been playing almost exclusively MTT’s, he had doubled his earnings. He told me that he believed I could do the same. He might be right… But there are reasons I don’t play many MTT’s… First of all, it is SO boring! You play full ring (9-10 players) most of the time, and if I wanted that, I could play cashgames. Also, the swings are so crazy. Playing perfect in 50 tournaments and not making a single final table is not uncommon, and that sucks pretty bad. Also, an MTT takes a lot of time, usually at least 4-6 hours if you make it to the final table, depending on the size of the tournament of course. I usually play 2-4 hour sessions of SNG’s, and I stop when I get tired or don’t feel I can play my A-game much longer - or I have something else I have to do (No “you don’t have a life”-jokes please!) 
So Sit and Go’s are perfect for me. It is by far the game I understand the best, I have 100 times more experience playing them than anything else, I have a much bigger edge than in anything else, I can play anywhere from 1 hour and up, and stop within 1 hour again - and I make a decent profit. Not a killing like some of my cashgame playing friends, but I am happy with my current results.
Bot more important than anything else - I really enjoy playing Sit and Go’s!
See you at the tables - I’ll be the one taking your money!
