Sit and go tournaments or single table tournaments are a very good spots to make some easy money if you are patient enough to wait for your cards and smart enough to know when to bet and when to fold. Some of the weakest online players try to win online single table tournaments before they give a multi table tournament a go. It should be of particular interest to you that with ten participants on a table that if you can manage to be in the money 51% of the time that you will do very well over time. Let’s assume that you win 17%, finish 2nd 17%, and finish third 17% then below you can review how much you will make over 100 tourneys:

Cost of 100 $10+1 tourneys = $1,100

1 - $850

2 - $710

3 - $340

Total Estimated Revenues = $1,900

Cost = $1,100

Profit = $800 ($8 per tourney)

In a sit-and-go tournament with a no-limit format you have to really be on your toes as your position relative to your opponents is constantly changing. Please note that Online Texas Holdem is not played the same as in a land based casino or poker room. No limit texas holdem becomes a totally different game with fewer players which means that 5 people at a poker table is a not at all the same game as with ten people at a table. It is important as an Online Texas Hold’em player to recognize this difference in the game and it is vital for you to benefit from and use this difference in becoming a profitable single table no limit texas holdem tournament player. The table strategy has been divided into different sections based on the number of players remaining at the table so that you can understand the changing strategies as they happen.

Early in the single table tournament - 8 to 10 players left:

The preferred strategy is very simple: you cannot play tight enough. Your goal at the early stage of a single table Texas Hold’em tourney is to avoid being busted out prematurely. You just need to hang onto chips to play with at a later stage in the poker tournament. It is about survival at this point in the tournament and if you think of it as anything else then you are destined to lose. If you win a hand or two before there are seven people left great for you. Just avoid the hand that will cost you a big chunk of your chips and wait until there are fewer players left before you make your move. In fact fewer players means that you have a better chance of winning a hand or two so it is in your interest to wait. Your focus should be on keeping a healthy stack of chips on the table and not necessarily on winning all the chips right away.

If you see someone go all in early then you know that they are weak players (along with anyone who calls them). You want to make sure that you have chips to play with when there are a handful of players left. It is much easier to outplay the opposition when it is down to fewer players. Some argue that playing lots of hands when blinds are low is the way to play (yes in a multi table No Limit Holdem Tournament yes – not on a single table tournament. You really want to conserve chips and wait until the table has seven or fewer players before you begin to gamble. Don’t waste your chips early.

Playing tight is a must, but equally important is specifically avoiding the type of starting hands that have the potential to lose a lot of chips by making a second-best hand. You might say that starting hands like (A-Q) or (A-J) or (A-T) or (K-Q) or (K-J) should be treated as marginal hands early on. These hands will win pots without a doubt. When you win a pot it is a small one but when you lose one it is a big one to a hand that is ever so slightly better than yours.

Note that in all the examples of hands it is always assumed that nobody has raised into the pot before your turn to play. If the raise is around 5-15 percent of your stack, you can call with any pair hoping to flop a set. A-A and K-K are clear reraising situations. Q-Q and J-J are borderline hands. Hands like T-T and A-K should usually be folded to a raise of more than 15% of your stack. Even when the raiser is very loose, you can easily get into trouble on these hands. If you do play them, play them carefully, and do not attempt to push a small edge.

If you think your hand is good it is important to raise or reraise with it to maximize your chances of winning the pot as well as to capture as many chips as possible in the process. The name of the game is Texas Holdem and when you are holding the cards you have to extract the maximum amount of chips from your opponents. If you ever think you are falling into a calling station pattern just remember that if you are calling you are likely behind in a hand and you will lose valuable chips that you need in later stages when your poker edge is greater.

Remember, single table Texas Holdem tournaments are won through bluffing, and at this stage it is very difficult to bluff people out. If you want to play small pocket pairs then you can limp and hope to catch a set (three of a kind). Should you get lucky and flop a set, try to win the maximum on it. This is one of the few situations in a tournament where your hand is strong enough to risk a drawout. However, if your opponent is checking, don't give him free cards. Bet enough that it will be a mistake for him to draw to a straight or flush. But if he is betting, use your judgment to play the hand in the best way to win his whole stack.

What do you do if you flop a good hand when you get a free look at a flop from the big blind position? No need to try to trap now. Bet it hard and fast. If you get raised either go all in or fold – your call. Remember that your ultimate goal is to get to the next stage of the tournament.

Middle Stage - 7 to 6 players remaining:

By now with 3 or 4 players busted out the game is totally different. The players that wanted to throw caution to the wind and gamble should be gone. Most if not all the players left will be TV survivors. In other words now you should see only 2 or 3 players seeing each flop so you can steal blinds by betting 5 X BB into a pot and by raising a lot of pots after the flop to take them down. Some of your opponents will be as good as you are and for these players just avoid them for now (unless you get a monster hand). During this stage you will notice that few players are willing to go into a big pot with a marginal hand so you can really capitalize this fact. It could be the case that one or two players have large stacks of chips. Notice how they play and if you see them getting a little reckless don’t be tempted into playing that style of game. If a guy with $6K in chips (buy in $1,500) plays K 4 os or J 7 suited you don’t need to get into a battle with a player like that. You can count on him playing badly but in fact now he may catch some good cards so be careful.

This stage is just the beginning of how your play should open up as the single table tournament progresses. You can start mixing it up a bit into pots and try to go into a hand once per round around.

Late Stage - 5 to 4 players remaining:

This stage is like the home stretch to the finish line in a horse race. Your goal during this stage is to make it into any of the top three positions. If you must give up a hand or two that you felt was good to win or likely to win that is fine. You hang on and wait until you are in the money before you take a big gamble on a hand.

At this point positional isolation is the key and stealing pots is the name of the game. You don’t have to get into an all in battle unless you have the nuts. Calculate how many rounds you can last at your current level and figure someone else will likely bust out before you. Try to use the blind changes to your advantage by timing the change such that you are on or close to the button. If your opponents play tight then you can expect to steal a lot of blinds with terrible hands just by raising 3 or 4 times the big blind into them when they are in the blinds. In the event that they call watch out for a reverse trap. Remember you are trying to make top three so even if you have $1 and you are top three they you win.

In the Money - 3 players remaining:

Congratulations you made it in the money. Now the trick is to do your best to finish first or second. It depends on how your opponents play but generally they will be tight aggressive and in that case blind stealing is the way to play. If you have a maniac then he will likely make you go all in as quickly as possible. If there are three people left let the other person do the all in thing first. At least that way you make 2nd place quaranteed.

Some people argue that you might as well go all in as often as possible since any two cards are almost as good as any two other cards (with the exception of pairs). As a result AK is almost as good as 23. Where you get in trouble is when your opponent has 99 and you have 87 – now you are a real dog.

If your opponent has gone all in before you just fold your hand and move onto the next hand if the blind does not represent a large proportion of your total chip count. Be patient and wait for the heads up battle.

Heads up - 2 players remaining (the ultimate goal):

The correct strategy here depends largely on how big the blinds are in relation to your total chip count and the total chips in play. If you have 1,000 and the blinds are 300/600 then you might as well go all in when you play. Generally speaking the blinds will be more than 10% of the total chips on the table you are best off moving all in every hand and stealing as much as you can until your opponent calls you down. At this point the game is almost a coin flip so you might as well steam as many pots as you can before your opponent makes a move on you

Ideally you want to play against someone waiting for an ace or a king before making a play and if that is the case then your all in bets will likely take down a large percentage of pots uncontested. If on the other hand your opponent plays the all in game too then you have to wait for the ace or king before calling him. In this case the game is down to who bets first since they will go all in right away. This is not an unusual scenario and one which you will need a pair or Ax to call your opponents all in. It is always better to lose when you are the aggressor at Texas Holdem Poker so when in doubt go all in.

To Summarize:

To become profitable in single table no limit Texas Holdem Tournaments you have to adjust your play to the current table situation. At the beginning of the tournament you should be playing few if any hands, in the middle of the tournament you play just enough hands to make it to the final 4 or 5 players. Now you play as often as you need to so as to pick up chips and stay alive. Once you are down to 3 players left you try to wait until you can wait them out and play heads up against one of the other two opponents. Once heads up you go all in almost every hand until a winner is decided.