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Best Sit n Go Poker Sites

Thursday, April 28th, 2011 by Phil

Best Sit N Go Poker Sites

Where You Play Sit N Go Tournaments Really Matters

Sit n go poker has become more and more popular over the years. There are a lot of advantages to playing sit n go tournaments versus other forms, which I’ll be discussing in this article. Your choice of poker sites in which to play sit n go poker is extremely important though, as there is a lot of variation between poker sites in terms of the impact this decision will have on your profitability. You are here to get some top notch advice on this though, and I’ll not only be providing you with my top picks, but we’ll also be discussing some of the main reasons why sit n go tournaments are an excellent choice, and then ensure that you’re set up with the right recommendations to best ensure your success at them.

Why Sit N Go Tournaments?

Sit n go tournaments are a great way to learn how to play poker without being subject to losing a lot of money while doing so. In fact, the maximum amount of money that you can lose is limited to the amount of the buy-in, which includes the amount that you contribute to the pot plus the entry fee. So for instance, if a sit n go tournament is listed as $10 + $0.50, the total buy-in is $10.50. So no matter how badly you play or how unlucky you become, $10.50 is the most you can lose.

The buy-ins for sit n go tournaments generally start for as little as $1, so this is particularly great for players just starting out or those who haven’t become skillful enough to beat the higher buy-in levels at sit n go’s. For those looking for higher stakes, the buy-ins can go up to several thousand dollars a tournament, with a wide range in between. Some sit n go poker sites have a better selection than others though as far as choices of different buy-in levels to suit the needs of different players.

This isn’t a real big deal though, as you can have accounts at several sit n go poker sites to make sure you’re always able to take advantage of the best games, so you really don’t want to discount a sit and go poker site just based upon the volume of what‘s offered. Not everyone can afford to maintain several poker accounts at different poker sites though, so this still is one of the factors that goes into my evaluation of a good sit n go poker site.

Sit N Go Tournaments Are Convenient

Have you ever wanted to play a multi-table tournament, only to find out that there’s nothing scheduled for the type of game and the buy-in that you’re looking for? This can be pretty inconvenient, as you now have to wait for one to start, and sometimes this wait can be lengthy. So now, to fill the time, you may want to either sit there doing nothing, or perhaps play a form of poker that isn’t your ideal choice, like a cash game for instance. However, you didn’t really want to play that, you wanted to play a tournament.

Perhaps you’ll even get involved in a different kind of tournament than you were looking for, with a different format than what you wanted, maybe even a different game. Or perhaps you’ll play at a higher stake than what you’re comfortable with, risking more than you wanted to. Or maybe you’ll move down to a lower buy-in than what you wanted, which can not only be boring to you, but you may have passed up on the potential for bigger money if you had been patient. So these tournaments are far from ideal as you can see.

Sit n go tournaments, on the other hand, are much more convenient, as they are set to go as soon as the table fills up. So there’s no designated start time, and the waiting is generally pretty minimal. They generally are limited to just a single table, so it doesn’t take that many players to fill up the seats. Even more importantly perhaps, the tournaments themselves don’t go on for hours on end, like larger tournaments tend to. They even feature turbo levels, for those who can’t or don’t want to wait for the standard length to play itself out, and wish to have the whole thing end sooner.

Poker sites also feature sit n go’s that have several tables, where you can spend a fair bit of time at the tournament if that’s what you’re looking for. There are also shorthanded and even heads up sit n go’s available, for those who prefer these formats. So as you can see, sit n go tournaments are much more tailored to the individual needs of players. This isn’t to say that they are necessarily better than their much longer cousins, the large tournaments, but these are of a particular variety, and sometimes you want something different. Sit n go tournaments certainly offer the opportunity for many other variations, which is certainly a good thing.

Sit N Go’s Have Lower Variance, Which Is A Really Big Advantage

This is a much bigger factor than a lot of poker players imagine it to be, and in fact is a big part of why sit n go tournaments are a great choice to focus on and specialize in. Given that the risk is fixed, and provided that there is a good percentage of payouts, which is almost always the case, there is less variance with sit n go’s than any other form of poker. Large tournaments on the other hand have the highest variance, since you can go a long time and play many tournaments without a significant cash in.

With sit n go tournaments though, good players can finish in the money about half the time, and even average players will cash out about a third of the time. Bigger tournaments only generally pay out to 10% of the entrants, with most of those payouts being pretty insignificant, so the percentage of the times you make some real money is pretty infrequent indeed, no matter how good you are. With cash games, while it’s true that on average you will have as many winning sessions as losing ones, the varying nature of the amount you can lose means that your downswings can be a lot bigger percentage of your bankroll than the limited risk exposure that sit n go’s offer.

So what this all means is that with sit n go’s, you can play relatively higher stakes with the same level of risk versus other forms of online poker. This allows you to increase your return on investment, meaning your average profit per hour, with the same level of safety. Or, depending on your preferences, you can be more conservative, and even have a higher earn rate per hour than other formats in addition to an increased level of safety. Sit n go tournaments also allow you to manage your bankroll easier, as all you need to look at is how many buy-ins you have at a certain level, with buy-ins being a much more stable and meaningful measure.

How Easy The Competition Is Really Matters As Well

I can’t emphasize enough how important ease of competition is as far as determining the level of success you will have playing online poker. So many players don’t pay enough attention to this, to their detriment. They may think that the level of competition at different online poker sites are similar, or even in any sense close, but nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve played some low stakes games at some of the tougher poker sites, just to get a feel for the difference, and in some cases the players at these low stakes are actually better than the high stakes players at other poker sites.

This of course is the case with sit n go tournaments as well. Ease of competition needs to be, far and away, the main determining factor in considering which sites to play online poker at. It’s certainly my main consideration, and unless you have this going for you, nothing else is going to matter. So naturally, it figures in very prominently in my recommendations of the best online poker sites to play sit n go tournaments at.

The Other Major Factor Involved In Deciding Which Poker Sites Are Best

Given that we have a selection of poker sites which offer easy competition, there is another major factor that needs to be looked at when deciding between poker sites to play sit n go’s at. This involves the choice of blind structures and thus the speed of the games. The slower that the blinds escalate, the more skill will prove to be a factor. On the other hand, the faster the blinds escalate, the faster the games will be in terms of time, but these formats have the disadvantage of having skill play less of a role, with the outcomes being more a matter of luck.

Some of this is a matter of the innate structure of the sit n go’s at a particular poker site, where one site may generally have faster or slower blind movements than others. In addition, you also need to look at what most of the people at a given poker site play, as far as the distribution of the action between regular formats and faster ones like turbos and even super turbos. If you are a good player already, it’s important that you look for lots of action at the regular formats, and the format of these need to be skill friendly. If you feel on the other hand that other players are better than you, then you need to prefer the faster formats, although it’s not healthy to stay at this level for long and I know you will want to improve, and as you do so, you should be gravitating to the more skill intensive longer formats.