Always placing 4th in Sngs.

I almost never place 5th-9th, but I place 4th a LOT. And I'd say get 1st and 3rd about an equal number of times, usually I don't get 2nd. What's this mean?!? What should I change to stop getting 4th so much?

1) Play fewer SnGs.
2) Go all in when there are five left.
3) Practice and read so your Poisson distribution moves a bit more toward the winning end.

Do you tighten up when it gets down to 4-5 players?

Try the opposite and attack the shorter stacks more as they will be trying to hold on as well and may well fold under pressure.

Remember poker is about aggression & position use it wisely and you should be able to bully the lesser players out of your top 3 place.

GL

Take more chances (coin flip situations) earlier in the SnG. Take the "I'd rather go out 8th or 9th than bubble" approach.

When it gets down to 4-5 players in a sit and go everyone seems to tighten up A LOT.

If I notice that the rest of the players do this I tend to loosen up a little and get a little more aggressive. Make sure if you do this that you have position...I rarely will raise it up from the blinds unless I've got a premium hand, but many times you can buy the blinds from the button or cutoff with a 3-4X BB raise. If you are really short-stacked you may want to consider an all-in in these situations

Of course, if someone else at the table uses this same strategy it makes things difficult and position becomes that much more important.

This seems to work for me, but I don't play many high buy-in sit and gos...more of the $5 or less variety.

play more LAG when approaching bubble, attack the medium-small stacks.
also stop using the word "always" in all of your poasts

I don't tighten up when it gets 4 or 5 handed but I definetly don't play LAG or super aggressive. When you say LAG does that mean trying to steal the blinds with hands as weak as Q7 or 9 8? The thing is when it gets 4 handed, there is typically two big stacks with over 3000 or 4000 and two medium/small stacks with less than 2000. And normally I have the medium stack at around 2000. And the blinds are very big at this stage like 150/300. And when I try to steal and get picked off then I'm usually pot comitted (if I didn't push all in to begin with) and have to call. And I'll be an underdog and usually lose.

"Take more chances (coin flip situations) earlier in the SnG. Take the "I'd rather go out 8th or 9th than bubble" approach."

But the early game really has little effect on the later stages of the game. There are a lot of times where I don't even play a hand until it gets 4 handed, so I have like 1200-1500 chips, but I start to loosen up and bring my stack up to like 2500-3000 without having to go all in or showdown a hand, and I go on to get first or second.

Usually with 150/300 blinds and a >2000 stack, you should be pushing all in to steal those blinds, rather than raising to 850 or something like that. Simply putting in a raise enables your opponent to push you all in, which you do not want, unless you have a dominating hand.

No offense to you, but I despise this strategy.
Early in SNGs that is what everyone else is doing, trying to double up when they do not need to. If you fold every single hand, your mzone does not get into trouble until about the final 4 or 5.
My SNG strategy is normally play tight early on, hoping to win a big pot with a big pair or the nuts/close to the nuts. When it gets down to about 4 or 5 players, loosen up a lot and start stealing some blinds, and making more plays.

I think we've found the problem. You're playing 1200-1500 chips against bigger stacks almost every tournament. At that point, if you get the good cards or get lucky, you cash. If you don't get the good cards or get unlucky, you finish on the bubble.

If you concentrate on building your stack a little more in the earlier stages by stealing blinds or taking advantage of weakness, you'll have more chips to use in the later stages.

I would suggest pushing all in with 5 or 6 people left to stop this horrendous problem. That way you won''t get out 4th.

Seriously though, I would recommend an opposite strategy to that of the other posters. I would say to play very tight in the early stages to save up chips for the all in confrontations later. When your M gets into the orange and red zone, I would recommend becoming extremely aggressive near the bubble to work up a nice chip stack to go for the win.

Joke already made. Loser.

lol

I have a different solution. Bodog has some STTs with a flatter payout structure, where the top five get paid.

Play in those and, if you really do finish mostly 4th with the occasional 1st and 3rd, you`ll make a steady profit.

The way I said it was funnier.

This is one of the reasons I changed over to cash. I played a lot of sng's on Stars. Managed to get upto the $33 games. But my % finishes in 4th were ridiculous. It was driving me mad. I had beaten all the other levels for a decent roi, and I even had a decent roi in the $55 games when taking shots. But I soon realised that sng's are just getting too hard to play. A lot of players on Stars have a near optimal strategy when it comes to ICM, so it's really difficult to squeeze out an edge, imo. Downswings in sng's can be heartbreaking!

I never thought I would say this but I'm glad I made the transition to cash.

Problem #1 is probably that OP has no idea what ICM is.

I'm going to bed now so try this:

The Independent Chip Model – An Introduction | Chillin411.com

qft, this is basically exactly what I've done, except I came from smaller stakes STTs ($16 turbos specifically).

At anything >$6.50s you would need an ICM calculator to really squeeze out some profit. I got a free copy of sngwiz through a promotion, too bad I got it right after quit playing STTs

Take advantage of your tighter opponents in sng's. There will always be a few mass multitabling monsters that play a specific winning style and its somewhat easy to pick on them.

Lack of aggression seems to be the case too, either you will end up in the money, or you won't. But you cannot let the blinds decide this. 4th to me means that you are not showing proper aggro at earlier levels.

Chances are its what...4.5k, 4.5k, 3k and the 1.5k stack is you?

You need to get lucky if you let it become to this state, as I would have been one of the 3k stacks, or id be out in 6th. Know what I mean?

The longer you let a sng turbo stt go without accumulating chips the higher chance a big stack is going to call you when blinds are high, and crush you.