Poker Tips from the Pro's - Beating low-stakes SNG’s

A few years ago, I wrote an e-book all about SNG’s and my strategies for beating them at that time. Like with anything else in life, everything moves on and the strategies that I discussed four years ago no longer work now above certain levels. However if you can dismiss illusions of grandeur and do what I call “bottom feed” then you can still make money in online poker simply by taking it from the novices and beginners at the very bottom end.

Last year and the early part of this year, I proved that it was possible for a multi-tabling NL50 player to make as much as $3000-$4000 a month with rakeback. This was simply playing a disciplined solid strategy and then taking advantage of weak players. There are many adequate players at NL50 but at that level there are just enough players coming in at the bottom to be able to make money without needing to be working on your game all the time.

It is exactly the same principle with SNG’s. They along with every other form of poker have toughened up considerably over the past year or two. But once again if you can content yourself with staying at the bottom and not moving up then you can still make money at this form of poker.

So how can this be done? Well the process is not complicated, firstly you need to get yourself a good rakeback deal or sign up bonus as this will get you off to a great start. Then you need to practice sound money management principles and have at least 50 buy-ins for the level that you are playing at!

I would then advocate getting hold of some game software like Sit and Go Shark which will help you tremendously. Then if you operate a basic system that allows you to play very tightly through the early rounds and to then loosen up and become far more aggressive in later rounds then you will take advantage of all of the players who bust out early.

Many players either through a lack of knowledge or patience or time bust out of the lower buy-in SNG’s far more quickly than what they should do. This allows the more disciplined and patient players to cash in on this just by sitting and waiting and pushing their stronger hands. This is not a sophisticated strategy but then again, this is designed for those millions upon millions of players for whom trying to work on their poker game for long periods isn’t even an option.

So do remember that there is always money to be made in poker for decent players who can shelve any ambition of moving up. This in my opinion will always continue to be the case as long as there are new players coming in at the bottom.