As soon as a player registers for a SNG or MTT the one thing that they want is to make it to the money. That is the main goal and purpose for playing in them. Once you get to this point, different players have different mind frames about what they should do. You have to then adjust your play to what you have learned about your opponents. There are a few things that will make your play in the late stage of a SNG a lot simpler.

Playing A Poker SNG Bubble

When players are in the bubble, or a seat away from making the payout, they begin to play differently. The majority of players will tighten up for fear that they will be busted out and lose just before they are paid. Since this is the main mentality of players it is correct to capitalize on it by loosening up. You will be able to steal a lot more money in the bubble by simply showing aggression. This not only increases your stack, but will put you closer to taking down the first place prize.

Most players will play rather tight at this stage of the SNG, but there will be players who take the same approach to the bubble that you do as well. You cannot let them be the one who is stealing all the blinds. It is important that you are reapplying the pressure to them by reraising their steal attempts.

If you don’t combat them at this point your chances of winning the top prize is dwindling down because they will have such an immense amount of chips more than your own that it will be hard to compete against them heads up.

Playing Your Stack Late In A SNG

Once you are in the money you have achieved your goal of making money. The next step to this is to make as much money as you can at this point by placing as high as you can. If you are short stacked in the money then you must apply the same push fold mentality that you had in the middle stage of the SNG. If you are deep stacked you have more options.

Since there are only three players left the quality of hands that are seen will mostly be poor. Not only are you not seeing good hands, but more importantly your opponents aren’t either. You have to take advantage of players not knowing that they need to loosen up their game and start raising more frequently. You can move all in with any ace at this point. More than likely your hand will be best with an ace in it and the likelihood of your opponents having an ace is less because you hold one.

If you have a deep stack late in the tournament you have a few more options. This is because the other players already feel that you are the winner because you have so many more chips than they do. This forces them to feel they must compete against one another for second place. While they are doing this you can coast to the finish line with your deep stack and normally guarantee at least a second place finish. You can also play the aggressive route.

You have already made money so you might as well do your best to knock other players out and build your stack up even more. By being more aggressive you are also the one who has more fold equity in the hand because you are the aggressor. This can scare the other players because they don’t want to be eliminated when they are close to tied for second place.

Playing In The Money And Heads Up

Now that it is down to the final two players in the SNG how you play will be even more different. The first thing to do when playing heads up is to see how your opponent plays during heads up. If they are playing very tight then you have to make sure you are playing loose to steal the blinds more often. You are never letting them limp in because you are always applying pressure. If your opponent is playing very loose then you have to make sure that you tighten up. The difference here is that you must make sure that you are not playing too tight because they are then achieving their goal by stealing most of the blinds.

One of the main things in heads up is to see what kinds of hands your opponent is calling down with. Once you have established their range for heads up your decision making will be much easier. This means that you are going to have to call down a few times to see. You might lose some money by doing so, but in the long run it will pay off because you then know the types of hands you can go broke against them with. With all this in mind you will cruise into first place more often than not.