Poker News > Introductory Double or Nothing Sit & Go Strategy


Introductory Double or Nothing Sit & Go Strategy

By Dan Katz - Apr 14th, 2009

At the risk of appearing way out of the loop, I will admit I just discovered the new-fangled “Double or Nothing” Sit & Gos on PokerStars. I know that they have been around for a while, but I just haven’t been playing on Stars lately. They have turned out to be very interesting, a nice change of pace from the standard Sit & Go. And even though almost every time I have been eliminated, I have had the best hand when the money went in (I’ve had Aces cracked three times!), I have had quite a lot of fun with them. This week, I would like to impart my wisdom upon you and share a bit of my strategy for these tournaments. For the uninitiated, “Double or Nothings” are 10-handed Sit & Gos starting with 1,500 chip stacks (on PokerStars), where the top five finishers win twice their buy-in and the other five get zero. “Double or Nothing” indeed! First place wins as much as fifth place. The nice thing about them is that since it is theoretically easier to make the money – since more people get paid and the payout structures are flat – variance is lower than in ...

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4 Comments

Neph   April 15th, 2009 at 6:24 am

It is not correct to say that “in order to profit, you must make the money two out of every three tournaments” – nor, really, that the rake is “high compared to the payouts”.

For example, consider the $10+0.80 non-turbo double-or-nothing sit-and-gos on PokerStars. If you make the money 54% of the time, your average return will be (0.54 * 20) = 10.80 – i.e. 54% ITM is break-even [0% ROI] when the rake is 8%.

Similarly, for the turbo versions – e.g. $10+0.40 [4% rake] – you only need to make the money more than 52% of the time to show a profit.

Sorry to quibble ;)

bart   April 15th, 2009 at 6:44 pm

I thought the same thing….I’d love to see anyone win these things 2/3 of the time. In a $100 + $4 turbo if you could win 66% of the time that would be a $28/game profit. Maybe something like 58% would be attainable long term, similar to heads up matches.

Dan Katz   April 15th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

Neph,

You are correct. I was really just oversimplifying, boiling it down to the ultra-short term (in this case, three tourneys) in order to illustrate my point that you can’t alternate wins and losses like you can in traditional S&G’s. You were way more accurate than I was – thanks for the addendum to the article!

André   May 25th, 2009 at 6:11 am

I think you have said it all.
It is very important to know the oponents skill and to pick the right spots to steal. There are many players that when reraised aren t afraid to go all in with low aces or low pp so if you dont have a monster is not a good idea to go coin flip with them.
The player needs to be patient even when is stack is small. There may always be someone who makes a mistake and you survive without risks.

I hope you write more about dons.

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