sit and go poker strategy...

Position is obviously important here. You can play KJ/77/etc aggressively on the button or cutoff if nobody's shown strength, but open raising with it UTG can be suicidal, as you have a much higher chance of running into a big hand with 8 people left to act than with 2 left. That said, as the table gets more shorthanded you have to increase the range of hands you'll play from any position. With 3-4 players, A3 UTG is a decent hand, with 9 players it's an instant fold.

One of the best pieces of advice I've heard regarding shorthanded play is, say if 5 people are left, you treat the game preflop as if it were a full 9 player game where the first 4 players to act have folded.

And yeah, post some hands if you want to - it's the easiest way to identify any obvious leaks. Don't post anything where you just got drawn out on, or where you had to push a decent hand with a shortstack and ran into a monster - that sort of stuff happens to us all and is unavoidable. Look for hands where you're not sure if your play was right, regardless of whether you won the pot or not.

It's hard to find a specific hand to deal with what I consider my largest problem: Playing short-handed (4-6 people left). The balance of being more aggressive vs. not overvaluing cards. I've played a few more SnGs now, and I'm starting to get a bit more comfortable with how to play them up until that point.

Here's a relatively typical example of what my problem is:

PokerStars Game #2533240589: Tournament #12332303, Hold'em No Limit - Level VI (100/200) - 2005/09/09 - 02:28:44 (ET)
Table '12332303 1' Seat #4 is the button
Seat 2: Player1 (3420 in chips)
Seat 4: Player2 (2360 in chips)
Seat 6: Me (3755 in chips)
Seat 8: Player3 (3965 in chips)
FPau: posts small blind 100
beaz1975: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Me [ ]
Player1: raises 400 to 600
Player2: folds
Me: raises 400 to 1000
Player3: folds
Player1: calls 400
*** FLOP *** [ ]

What actually happened was this:

Me: checks
Player1: bets 1000
Me: folds
Player1 collected 2200 from pot
Player1: doesn't show hand´

My fold once he bet felt like the right thing to do, but did I act somewhat correct pre-flop? How should I react to this particular flop? Blinds were being stolen left and right at this table, with the four of us left, otherwise I might have been more conservative in raising this particular hand. Perhaps I overraised it. Should I have folded preflop? Called?

Cheers,
--F

PS. Oh yeah, being that I'm new here, I'm not sure if there's an etiquette problem with posting hands outside of the hand analysis forum. I posted here because I wanted it in the context of what we were already talking about (and specifically how to continue where the Moneymaker strategy stops), but if that's rude, I apologize.

More conservative? I'd have gone all-in!

Certainly I think the fold after flop was correct. He may or may not have King, but you can be damn sure if you call him he will have. As I said, personally AQ I'd have gone all in. Player 1 raised, but that doesn't mean necessarily that he had better cards than you - there are a limited amount of hands that would come into that category and when table is down to 4, the likelihood decreases that someone will beat you. He'll either call or fold - if he calls and he's got KJ for example and hits King, then that's just bad luck.

Final stages of sit and go you cant construct hands, worry about pot odds etc. A call or raise is often so large you'll be pot committed so it's all-in time. AQ will be enough for me.

Maybe it's because of my 12-losses-streak that I'm a bit more careful than I should be when I risk being bubble boy. All-in does sound like the better option. I don't know, this really is the part of the game that I'm the most uncomfortable with.

On the topic of being careful and folding my way to being in the money, I was in chip lead with 5 remaining players three nights ago, when my WiFi-adapter died on me. I couldn't reconnect for over a day, but when I got back, sure enough, there in my inbox was an email from PokerStars congratulating me on my 3rd place.

That is exactly the reason my notebook is hardwired to my router. My wife wanders the house with hers and checks mail, etc. I had a couple of disconnects as well when I played wireless so I do not any longer...

I'm on a business trip at the moment, and the hotel only offered wireless connections in the rooms. Disconnects are a bit too expensive, but in this case, I was amused that I managed to get in the money despite being disconnected with four other players still in the game.

FPaulsson, welcome to Cardschat and feel free to post any of these hands in the hand analyzation forum if you would like for some of us to go over them street by street and give advice. We really need to get that part of the forum going and new members like yourself who make dencent posts are always a welcome addition.

Thanks, Diablo, I appreciate it. I'll be sure to make good use of that forum, as I'm a big fan of analyzing and learning from my mistakes (and, heaven forbid, my good moves).

I'll get some hands posted when I get back home, I'm leaving Mexico in a few hours.

Cheers,
--F

Having given this strategy a few more nights of tests, I can now say fairly for sure that it isn't for me, or possibly isn't for the low buy-in SNGs that I play ($5 PokerStars). Early on, I can usually limp in with suited connectors for only the cost of the BB, and make a lot of money. Waiting for a top hand that may only come once before the blinds are chewing up 1/10th of my stack every round, only to have that hand do nothing but steal the blinds isn't working for me. I'm not sure where I go wrong, or if it's the room and crowd that aren't susceptible to this, but there you have it.

I did learn a lot from this thread, though, and I think trying this out has sharpened my play quite a bit. Especially when it comes to playing low-medium pairs and betting the flop when I have the best hand.

--F