18 February 2010

Bodog Poker's Beginner Sit and Gos


I like Sit and Gos [SnGs] because they allow for a lot of poker action in a large variety of situations. You get the early stages, the mid-stage where being good at bubble play is important and the late stage where, hopefully, you get heads-up with another opponent for the top prize. Certainly, SnGs don’t pay the top positions nearly as much as a real deep final table run in a multi-table tournament, but the added benefits of SnGs more than make up for the larger fields of MTTs. Good SnG players can make a good living at poker and most of the time with less variance than the typical tournament grinder.

An added benefit of a SnG is the field size and start times. Heads-up, 6-Max, fullring and anywhere from 1 to 20 tables are all available to the SnG player. The ultimate benefit, however, is the start times. You register, wait for the SnG to fill up with opponents and start play. There is no necessity to put the family on hold for that special 8PM tournament you like. You don’t have to worry if that late breakfast with your dad is going to make you late for that morning’s $100 rebuy. In the era of high-speed internet connections and rapid lifestyles, SnGs are the ultimate in plug-and-play poker.

This brings me to Bodog Poker’s “Beginner” Sit and Gos. When I first found their Beginner SnGs I initially thought that players would only have access to them for a limited amount of time after signing up for a new Bodog Poker account and depositing. This is not the case.

The name is a bit of a misnomer. They are listed as “Beginner” SnGs due to the very different prize structure. Rather than pay out to the top 3 spots as per traditional SnGs, the Beginner SnGs pay out the top 5 spots of players [10-person tables]. This is very user-friendly for players who are new to SnGs….and to good players who are looking for a little less variance. I know what you are thinking. Aren’t these basically just Double or Nothing SnGs where the top 5 players earn double their buy-in sans fee? On the surface, yes. The top half of finishers get prize money, while the bottom half do not. Where they vary is in the payouts.

In a Beginner single table Sit and Go, the prize pool is split 30%-25%-20%-15%-10% paying out 1st to 5th, respectively. Players get less variance, but at the small cost of less of the prizepool when they finish in the top two positions. The added benefit of the Beginner SnGs is consolation prize money when they hit 4th or 5th place.

So how do Beginner level SnGs compare to regular SnGs? If you were to play ten $2 SnGs of each type and finished in each of the 10 possible positions, both SnGs would garner you a return of $20. This would give you a Return of Investment [ROI] of -9.09% in each type of tournament. Keep in mind that even though you won as much in prizepool as you paid into it, you gain a net loss of $2 because that is how much you paid in fees to play. Now, let’s switch it up a bit. You play ten $2 regular SnGs and ten $2 Beginner SnGs. This time you win twice, finish 2nd and 3rd once each and finish 4th twice and 5th once in each. The other 3 times you finish somewhere between 6th and 10th. Here is what your results would look like:









You’d make an extra $1 in profit playing the regular SnGs under this example with an ROI of 36.36% compared to 31.82% for the Beginner SnGs. However, just finish one more time in 5th place and the ROI for the Beginner SnGs increases to 40.91%. These “bubble” finishes in regular SnGs won’t pay off like they will in the Beginner SnGs.

Like anything else, players need to find what they are comfortable with. I like both regular and Beginner SnGs. The key, however, is that Beginner SnGs are only available at Bodog Poker, so when I play there I like having the opportunity to play them.

Single table Beginner SnGs are available in the following buy-ins: $2+$0.20, $4+$0.40, $8+$0.80, $16+$1.60, $32+$3.

Beginner SnGs are also available in 2-Table $4+$0.40 and 3-Table $2+$0.20 variety, paying 8 and 10 places, respectively.

I played a set of 6 of the $2+$0.20. I managed to win $14, meaning a measly $0.80 profit. For having not played any SnGs in probably 2 or 3 months, I'm happy with the roughly 6% ROI. Let's see how I do in the future!

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