any 6 max sng tips please

i just deposited $25 on my pokerstars account. i am trying to stick with the $3.25 6 max nlhe turbo tounies cause i seem to have good luck with them. are there any tips you guys can give me to help me a little more. i dont know my stats like you guys do but i average about 30-35% total hands played on all the tournies i have played so far. is that to much or is it fine? i know patience is key since every tells me that variance is high on sngs. im just trying to build a roll and move up. i am currently at $47 from the $25 i deposited. when should i move up to the next level? any tips or comments would be appreciated.

...strictly form a good bankroll management stand point, $3.25 SnG are over your new total bankroll, let alone your starting $25... but apparently it's working for you so I hate to say anything

... a quick guestimate tells me that playing "TAG" you should be closer to 20% or equivalent to 15% on an eight man table ... but tourney's and 6 max differ from 8 full cash games where this high of flops would be a big no-no

i know that going by the rules of brm 3.25 is over the 5% but as you said i seem to be having good luck with them so i am going to stick to them for now. if i start to slip i will move down but i hate playing the dollar games cause i have no luck with them what so ever. i have also noticed in the past that when i play full table sng that i dont really have any luck with them either.

You have done well with your initial investment, even though your were well under rolled for that level. But you probably played well and experienced the good side of variance. The last thing you should do is get overconfident and moving up a level only to experience the bad side of variance and not be able to adapt.

Now that you have a nice little roll, practice BRM and play with at least 20 buy ins for your particular level. So at this stage you should definitely NOT move up yet. You may get away with 15 buy ins as long have you have a strict move up/down strategy. So just stay at the level your at until you have about 20 buy ins for the next level.

i think you're doing a mistake by playing 3.25 games when you have such a small bankroll...you need to realise that sooner or later you will go on a bad run and your bankroll wont be able to absorb the loss and it also might take you on tilt...play 1$ sngs how much ever you hate them..and there is nothing like bad luck in 1$ games and goodluck in $3.25 games..you will realise this sooner or later

like I said:
As for when to move up I think you answered your own question.... once the next level buyin fits the BRM rules, go ahead and give it a shot...

which of course 20 buyins is exactly the same as 5%.. so you have some time at this level yet.... patience is the key

I'm curious about this comment here.... Why would he want to play at a buy-in level that he claims he cannot win on? Just because it follows suggested good BRM, but if he's not winning at the $1's.. why would he choose to play them?

Also, one needs to find the buyin level that one plays best on. Personally I couldn't ever get myself to sit on the $1 sng tables for the simple fact that the play is so horrendous it is extremely boring poker. If one does well on them and isn't rolled to play at a higher buyin level.... then of course 'go for it'. Key being, 'if one does well on them'. He states here that he doesn't.

As far as moving up in buy-in goes. Why move up if you're winning at the moment? I'd suggest waiting until you are comfortably rolled to make the move up,.. one to account for variance and two because you might not be playing optimally if you feel your roll is at all in jeopardy from a downswing. Playing at the level you're most comfortable at, the one where you're hopefully winning, but keeping a balance of not playing at too low where you're potentially going to get bored, but not too high where you might be playing with scared money either. Finding the balance is key.
Personally I only play low buy-in level sngs and purely from a recreational standpoint. I do play to win though but I also find I need to play at a buy-in where the play is at least decent enough to hold my interest and hopefully will be able to play a bit beyond just ABC level1 thinking poker. ('hopefully').
Sounds like you're doing fine. Stick with what's working but be prepared for downswings. I've seen it happen far too often where a player will make the jump up in buyins too early, will run good on them for awhile but then will not have a decent enough roll to account for badswings (cuz they will happen).

I would stick to the 3.25's for now if you are winning. I play 6 max sngs at $13 all the time and cash more often then not. I have also doubled my roll several and tried to move up to the $36 buy-ins, but I always lose my profits when I move up. I play exactly the same way but I never seem to cash. So I suggest just sticking to what is winning for you. Until maybe you have enough to play about 20 or 30 games at the next level.

I believe you might want to tighten up a bit, but then again whatever works for you. Right now that's great that your doing well, continue to do so, but do not move up. Why move up when your doing great at this level? Also, as pointed out by the posters above me, stay in controlled bankroll management. So you should stay winning at this level, but do not move up until statistically correct.

Hi,
I wouldn't worry too much about Bankroll management if 25 dollars is not a big deal. If you can afford to lose it, then it's not like you are going to jail or anything. But what the other posters are getting at is that if you want to be able to withstand sustained downswings (and they WILL come at some point) you need more- I have read that you need between 30 and 60 buyins to be safe.
Secondly, have you considered normal speed games? I started out in turbo but when I moved to six max normal speed games, I found that I had the luxury of waiting for better hands. Turbo always seemed like a bit of a lottery, but some people can make it work.
But regardless of what you play, I would suggest that perhaps the most important thing to master is the correct use of position. There are a bunch of strategy articles that explain why this is so, so I would take a look at them. In the context of turbo games, position is even more important because you need to steal more blinds, and you need to play less than stellar hands. If you can do this with position, your success rate will be much higher. This is simply because you have more information and can exploit weakness with decent raises even if your starting hand is not a total monster.

And if let's say you raised with a marginal hand, ie: K10, Q10, Ax (in turbo late stages) 2.5xBB and you have 4xBB left.. do you call a reraise?

Or better shoving an all-in?

Any good books on turbo since we're on the topic?

I dont know why people play turbo blinds go up so fast and what if you dont get any decent hands right away arnt you screwed? I like regular and I dont play early in a 6 player unless I got a sure win let them beat each other up and most times you will be in the finals. Good luck.

Playing Six-Handed SNGs
Scott Fischman
January 16th 2008
Most people are familiar with the differences between one-table Sit & Go tournaments (SNGs) and other forms of poker. Because these tournaments only pay the top three finishers at a nine-handed table, the standard strategy is to play conservatively until the tournament becomes short-handed and then become more aggressive during short-handed play.
Many newer SNG players favor these nine-handed tournaments because the blinds only increase every six minutes, providing a good amount of play. While these are great tournaments, I also encourage people to try other types of SNGs, including turbos where the blinds increase every three minutes, and six-handed games where you start off playing short-handed and only the top-two finishers are paid.
For really fast-paced excitement, however, I play six-handed turbo SNGs where I’m facing both short tables and quick blinds. The structure of these SNGs forces me to play each hand more carefully as the combination of fast blinds and short-handed play means one mistake can be crippling or even fatal. They also let me finish in time for dinner.
Succeeding in these tournaments requires making some adjustments to your standard SNG strategy. As with any short-handed table, one of the most important things you need to do is open up your starting hand requirements – but not too much. You shouldn’t be playing trash, especially in early position, but you should be willing to see more flops in hopes of hitting a big hand. That said, you shouldn’t play with the intention of stealing blinds – especially in the early going – as there’s just not enough value in that play to make it worthwhile.
This leads me to the biggest mistake I see many people make in these kinds of games, which is playing too loose. For some reason, people think they have to go crazy at short-handed tables in an effort to pick up chips early on. Generally, one or two players go broke right away and, all of a sudden, you have four people left at the table with only two spots getting paid.
Once you’ve lost a couple players, there’s usually one person who’s built up a big chip stack and plays too aggressively in an effort to bully the rest of the table. You have to hang tough in this situation, even if you’re sitting on just around 1,000 chips. The bully wants to double you up, so you might as well let him.
If you are lucky enough to double up or accumulate chips early on, don’t give them up easily. Instead of siphoning off your chips by calling raises out of position or trying to steal too much, pick your spots carefully and continue to play tight, aggressive poker.
Because these short-handed tournaments only pay out two places, you should begin applying more pressure on your competition as you approach the bubble. Your goal should be to finish first, as you’ll earn three times your buy-in as opposed to just doubling your buy-in for second place. Look for the player who is just seeking to squeeze their way into the money and attack their stack as much as possible in order to force their hand and hopefully, induce a mistake. At this point, the quickly rising blinds should force the bubble boy to push all-in with a less than stellar hand.
Overall, it’s a simple but effective strategy. Play relatively tight and put yourself in a position to double up through the table bully in the early to middle stages, and then attack when you reach the bubble. This will put you in position to make the money and play heads-up for the win.

Patience is a virtue. I guarantee it. I only play turbo SNGs.

I've got some other 6-handed turbo SNG articles on my puter. If you're interested in reading some of them, just send me a pm.
Personally I don't usually play the 6-plyr. sngs very often,... only occassionally when I want a quick poker adrenaline boost (my 'fix') and don't have enough time to play a 9-plyr. game and don't want to invest my usual buyin (is this -EV? lol). I'll drop down to the $2 turbos on Fulltilt where you'll find perhaps 2 other players on the table that have an idea about 6-plyr. SNG strategy. I haven't played in many, but so far so good (except when that donk shoved the turn ahead of me when I'd planned on check-raising ALLIN while I was a 20to1 favourite... of course he hits his 2-outer.. you know it, lol).
Part of my reasoning behind playing some of these is to get familiar with them to play in the 6-plyr. $26 token satellite sng's.

I definitly advice you to forget your PATIENCE IS KEY saying in a 6 max
table. You have onlyyyy 6 players!!! that means that the amount of hands
is cut down to about 66 percent mannn!!! That in turn means that there
are less probabilities that a good hand will come out!!! that means that
since there arnt that many strong hands, It would be better for you to play
more loose since many of the hands that you might not have called with
in a bigger table have increased in valuee!!! A value that statisctically would
be better to call with than to fold with!!! That means that you should play
more looseee!!! Get the idea? Yes you have to be concious of what your
doing and not to get carried away, but you diffinitly have to bring up
your game a little bit.

why you need luck??? the one you need is skill, and a good bankroll managent, if you have luck now, wait for the variance. May be wait for 20 o more buy in for the next level. imo.

It might be true that you should loosen up a little in 6-player turbos, but I agree with the other poster that patience is still very key. You should never get caught up in worrying about the quicker blinds. This will only hurt you in the long run while playing these turbos. Sure, you may run into a table every now and then when you're card dead and the quick blinds will kill you, but it's really not that often. I played super aggressive and worried about the blinds way too much when I first started playing turbos and it killed me in the long run. Now, I love playing with other players who are impatient because of the blinds. They take each other out early, which makes it easier for me to get to HU.

I have played quite a few 6 man sng's on Full Tilt. In my experience tight is still very right.

I don't call raises with medium pocket pairs unless it is an extremely good price. I don't raise Junk Like AJ utg.

Choose your hands, play them in position, and use your chips wisely. Don't stack off early in the tournament with AK , JJ. Be patient and the others will waste away their chips. Obviously if hands just don't come you have to make some moves later, but if you haven't blown half your chips on mediocre hands earlier on, you will still leave your self some fold equity for later on, which is vital.

General Sit n Go concepts still apply, they just need tweaking a little.

Well first you should take in consideration that it's a six person sit and go, meaning that it is actually quite sort handed since holdem can have a maximum of 10 players. All this means that you are eligible to play a lot more hands since the value of the hands are driven up. Also you are forced to play a lot more hands since the blinds run after you a lot more often. Other than having to play a lot more hands you should also change your playing style. Since there are fewer players, you can be more sure that people will fold to strong raises. Strong raises mean the same thing, if you are in a 10 handed table or a 6 handed table, that your representing a strong hand. Since the quality of cards that people play goes down, there is a bigger chance of people folding to you, meaning that bluffing is definitly an essential part of poker in a 6 handed sit and go. Then you should take into consideration that it's a sit and go, meaning that it uses the raising of the blinds system just like a tournament does, so you should play it like a final table of a tournament. The number of players will be coming down, and as this table don't forget to constantly be more aggressive.

I use to really want to grind 6-max for awhile so I learned a few things.

1. Never risk more than 2-3% of your BR on any given game, you could easily have a 20 buy-in down swing so a 5% rule is dangerous. I realize currently you are going to make the 3.25 lvl your minimum level and that's fine but try to have 50 buy-ins for the next level before you move up.
2. Pretend it's a 9 max table and that the first 3 ppl have folded. This will help you a bit if you're having trouble with ranging hands, a 6-max table is typically more aggressive than a 9-man table because the early position guys are playing as though they're in middle position, etc.
3. Download a free trial of sng wiz and use it to help you tweak your 6-max game, either review your play or go into quiz mode and use the pokerstars 6-max structure.
4. Once sng wiz runs out, if you don't want to fork up the $$$ to pay for it then go download pokerstove and toy with ranges, by this time you should be getting a bit better at that.
5. Since the table is shorthanded if you ever want to start multi-tabling I've heard that it's a good idea to never do more than 12 of these, it's all a personal preference though.

I'll be the contrarian here.

The 30-35% VP is only a wee bit high. Aim toward the 30% in a 6 max environment, and you can probably do that but upgrading your importance about position. Simple.

I don't mind that you avoided the lower sng buy-in levels. They are so much like freerolls as to make them nearly impossible to establish a longer term strategy. I would even go a bit further and suggest that as soon as you feel comfortable, jump up to the $5 for a test drive, and likewise to the $10. Don't put your br in constant jeopardy, but the occasional foray into the new levels might do you well.

I solved this by playing way over my BR management philosophy but playing LIMIT Holdem.