Adjusting Your SNG Game

Are You Adjusting The Right Ways For Good & Bad Players?

Have you noticed that… there’s a big difference between good SNG players and fishy SNG players?

If you haven’t seen it yet – you will – once you get a few dozen games under your belt.

The sooner, the better. Because you shouldn’t be using the same strategies for both types of players. It’ll cost you money.

Trust me – you can’t pull of certain plays like c-bets, or isolate short stacks, the same way for both player-types and expect to come out unscathed.

But don’t worry -- I’m going to tell you which moves work and for what type of player.

You just have to keep reading.

How to Adjust For Good and Bad Players (6 Different Situations)

Here are 6 different situations where I’ve had to make the biggest adjustments between playing good and bad players.

1. Isolating short stacks

A great way to build your stack is to isolate short stacks. These guys are so short and desperate that they shove a wide range of hands hoping to maintain an inkling of fold equity.

At least, that’s the case with good players.

Good players know that the shorter you are, the less fold equity you have, thus the more hands you need to be willing to shove if you don’t want to lose it altogether.

So you can isolate wide – all pairs, aces, lots of kings, some queens, etc.

But bad players – they don’t know this, don’t care or are too scared.

They’re going to show up here with an ace, maybe KQ and KJ, and not a whole lot else.

So if you isolate here with KQ you’re going to be mad at yourself. And you’re going to lose a portion of your stack more often than not.

Keep this strategy up for good players. But for bad players you might avoid them altogether or stick to the tip-top of your range.

2. Abusing the bubble

This is kind of funny, actually.

When you abuse the bubble that’s full of regs – they know exactly what you’re doing. They know that, in most cases, you have absolute garbage.

But… and this is a BIG but… that’s a good thing.

Because they know that even if you have garbage, they have to have a really good hand to call an all-in on the bubble. They have too much equity on the line.

But fish – they don’t know this.

So when you shove all in with 87s don’t be surprised when they call with AK or KQ.

And if you know that your opponents will call you with these sorts of hands, it’s your responsibility to tighten up your shoving range.

3. Weird all-in shoves

One thing that fish do that good players usually don’t is shove all in when they don’t have to and/or it doesn’t make sense.

For example, they might have 40 big blinds and they go all in – sometimes they’re the first to act.

You’ll notice that when they do this it’s because they have a hand they don’t quite know how to play. It’s usually something like JJ, 77 or AK.

They go all in because they’re scared they’ll be out-flopped or that they won’t know how to play their hand (depending on board texture).

This is good for you because if you’re willing to take the chance, you can usually get involved against some of these players with TT or better… and you’re usually ahead of their range.

On a side note – there are some (bad) regulars that do this too. Be sure to take note of it because you can use this in future games against them for an easy double up.

4. Your own shoves

You’ll need to remember that a good player knows what you’re doing when you’re short and shoving all in. So they’re going to adjust and try to isolate you when it makes sense.

That means that one adjustment you’ll want to make is narrowing the range of hands you shove so that you’re ahead of them whenever you’re called.

But another way you can go is to avoid shoving hands that are often dominated like A3, K7 or Q5 – your opponents are just going to show up with AT and KQ.

So against regulars (good players) you can do this:

- Shove the tip-top of your range. This means broadways, pairs, strong aces.

- Shove suited connectors and one-gapers like 97s, 76, 65, etc.

The reason why I shove the suited connectors and one-gapers is because good players are going to isolate with the upper-end of their range which consists of mostly face cards and aces – they’re not going to show up (that often) with hands that dominate yours.

Against fish and not-so-good regs I would stick to my normal shoving ranges. They don’t know any better.

5. How you handle re-raises

Believe it or not, sometimes you shouldn’t raise with AK or AQ when someone limps in front of you.

The best example I can think of is from early position.

For example, say someone limps in early position. With a hand like AQ I would usually raise. That’s because it shows strength. And at a table full of decent players I would probably get folds.

However, with weaker players I would probably get lots of calls behind me. I would be out of position in a multi-way pot that’s bloated. You can’t c-bet most times, either. So it’s a waste of chips to raise.

So in spots like that it makes more sense to just call and see a flop.

Then if you hit your hand (top pair) then you can play it hard and fast. And it’ll pay off too, at a table full of dum-dums.

6. Different plays (c-bets, floats, etc)

Kind of like the last point – some plays just aren’t as effective against weaker/dumber players. They don’t fold.

Apparently their software is void of that button.

So you want to be more selective when c-betting against weaker players than you do strong players. In fact, you should be confident that your c-bet is for value.

That way you’re not spending a lot of chips or mental resources trying to play multiple streets against a fish, which really is only going to lead to you losing large portions of your stack or busting early.