The Beginners Guide Series: All-In Or Fold Sit & Go Strategy
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All-In or Fold Sit & Go – A Beginners Strategy Guide
Today we will review some beginner strategies for the All-in or Fold Sit & Go (AOF SNG) poker tournaments, one of the many online poker tournament variants offered through the GGPoker client. AOF SNG poker is different from regular poker tournaments and regular SNG’s for a few reasons. First, these online poker tournaments are limited to 16 players and played in 2 distinct rounds. The first round, which starts with 4 players at each table, is a shootout with each of the 4 table winners advancing to the final table. The 4 table winners, all of whom will be at the final table, will also be in the money. One other important difference between AOF SNGs and other online poker games, your option to Call, Bet or Raise has been removed leaving you with the choice to either go All-In or Fold. These poker tournaments last approximately 12 minutes and are offered in two variants, Hold’em and Omaha! So if you are looking for fast poker games with non-stop all in action then this is the perfect game for you!
As these poker tournaments are played in two rounds: the shootout and the final table, we will look at both individually and offer some tips to help you become more familiar with the game.
Round 1 – The Shootout
The first round of this online poker tournament is played in a shootout format, meaning play continues until only 1 player has all the chips. Each player starts the tournament with 3 stacks of 800 chips. These stacks can be put into play all at once, or you could play 1 stack to start holding 2 back, or play 2 stacks and hold the last one for an emergency, or you can go all in with the 3 chips stacks right at the start. All of the strategies have benefits but you should play the way you are most comfortable. One useful tip to remember is if you are competing in the daily AOF Jackpot $25,000 leaderboard, where it matters how many times you go all in preflop, then you should use your chip stacks one at a time. This way you will collect more leaderboard points, being able to gain the leaderboard points a minimum of three times for all-ins during the shootout round of the poker game.
Blinds for the first round start at 50/100 and they increase every minute of play. This means that there is not a lot of time before our stacks get eaten by the blinds.
Starting from the cut off position you can go all-in with decent poker hands. From the button and the small blind you can widen your range significantly. Don’t hesitate going all-in with less than premium holdings from the small blind when there is only one opponent remaining. Remember, it’s a fast shootout format which means that we need to play lots of poker hands quickly if we want to win the round!
Keep in mind that at the start of each hand, if your current chip count is below 2 big blinds, a stack will be added automatically so you have more than two big blinds, assuming you still have a stack remaining.
Players who reach the final table will have all of their stacks restored and start the final table with 3 fresh stacks.
Round 2 – The Final Table
Congratulations! You made the final table and are in the money! Every poker player who wins their table and survives the first round makes the money. Each position they climb at the final table increases the payout by an average of 1.5 buy-ins. As we previously mentioned, if you compete for the daily leaderboard, you should take the stacks one at a time, not all at once, in order to maximize your points on the leaderboard with pre-flop all-ins.
Our poker strategy here, from the moment the tournament starts, should be again to push premium only hands from the cut off position. Increase our range from the button and from the small blind become even more aggressive, opening our range when there is only one opponent remaining. Always keep an eye on each player’s current and backup stacks because there will be times that the best strategy is to fold a borderline hand in order to climb the payment ladder. If, for example, on the next hand, one or two players will be automatically all in because of the blinds, we should fold our hand unless we wake up with a monster. Our goal is to always make the best EV+ decision and try to finish as high as possible!
The more games you play the more familiar you will become with this fun mode and improve your overall game.
Summary
Hopefully these beginners tips for the online poker AOF SNG tournaments help you understand how the game works and will allow you to create your own strategy for this poker tournament variant.
Best of luck in this great game that contains two fun steps, the shootout and the final table in-the-money play. Get aggressive, don’t sit around waiting for those big hands. Remember, these tournaments will be completed within approximately 12 minutes!
As always, when you play poker games online, especially when you play real money games, please play responsibly!
