Sit&Go Mid-game

One of the most overlooked areas of sit&go play is the middle game. Most people have an understanding of how to play the early stages because of the broad similarities to cash games and tournaments, while late-game strategy has been analysed to death. However, it’s also crucial to understand the tricky middle stages, when the blinds have risen but are not yet at the level where you can play push/fold poker.

For the most part, the middle game can be defined as the period when you have 15-30 big blinds. Above that you can still apply deeper-stacked strategies and below it you can just go all-in or fold. Here, you generally need to tighten your game up a bit compared to the early stages and avoid open-limping, since you rarely have the correct implied odds to do so. Instead, you want to be raising most pots that you open, and as the blinds increase and the antes kick in you should be reducing your raise amount to 2.5 big blinds and trying to steal where possible.

Mid-game Strategies

Typically, most sites start players with 1,500 chips, so you will hit the middle game around the 25/50 or 30/60 levels. At this point you need to tighten up, since playing speculative hands is less rewarding and losing a portion of your stack is costly. But if you get dealt strong hands or mid to high pairs, or are in late position, you can still adopt the standard strategies of raising to three big blinds and c-betting most of the time. Doing this will usually commit a decent chunk of your stack and people rarely float or fold marginal hands in sit&gos, so double-barrelling is not a good option if you get called on the flop and have no hand.

Things get more complex when another player has raised, since with stacks of 25-30 big blinds you are risking a lot if you go all-in but aren’t deep enough to re-raise without committing a lot of chips. A re-raise will also mean that making a play after the flop will be awkward if you are called. Instead, flat-calling with a lot of your range is preferable, although this should mainly be stronger hands like A-J suited, 9-9+ and so on rather than speculative ones.

Against late-position raisers when in the blinds, you may still wish to re-raise all-in with this stack size some of the time rather than risk having to play out of position. You will also find that if you raise all-in with a hand like A-K you may still get called by worse.

Playing Following Heavy Action

When you raise with your medium-sized stack and are re-raised, you should not be calling or re-raising without a very solid hand against most players. As already indicated, their hand ranges are likely to be very strong in this spot, as they are effectively putting their tournament life on the line. Also, as more players are knocked out ICM considerations become increasingly relevant, meaning you need an even bigger edge to make a correct call.

However, against weaker players who re-raise fairly wide, watch out for spots where they re-raise an awkward percentage of their stack and are likely to move all-in on any flop. In such situations you will be getting great implied odds to call and try to hit.

Once you get down to effective stacks of 15-20 big blinds you should consider reducing your raise size to 2.5 big blinds to make steals cheaper and allow yourself to get away from more re-raises. You want to conserve chips as much as possible until you see how things develop towards the bubble. By reducing your raise size you can still comfortably continuation-bet and get away if you miss and are re-raised.

If there are antes in play you want to raise more in late position or when you have a big stack to pick up chips. But with no antes and only an average stack, playing tight is usually best since the rising blinds will soon carry you into the all-in zone anyway.

With this stack size you can now re-raise other players more liberally, as 15-20 big blinds is a good re-steal sized stack in terms of the fold equity. However, bear in mind that unless your opponent opens wide you usually want a good Ace or a pair to re-steal with, and that you should be very cautious against early-position raisers or multi-tablers. These players are unlikely to be stealing a lot since getting all-in in marginal situations is best avoided at this stage. However, when a player is likely to fold there are a lot of chips to pick up with this move, so do watch out for opportunities to do it a bit lighter.

Dealing With Limpers

Dealing with limpers in the middle game is also a tricky proposition. How you respond depends on your read of them, although they are typically weaker players. With deeper stacks of 20-30 big blinds you can afford to limp behind with good speculative hands like small pairs or raise to four or five big blinds to isolate, but be sure to leave yourself room to play after the flop. With stacks of less than 20 big blinds after a limper you might also consider just going all-in rather than trying to raise smaller and play a hand like 8-8 or A-Q after the flop.

Finally, remember that in sit&gos the middle game is fairly short and that you will soon have to revert to all-in poker anyway. So if you are unsure of how to play then just sit back and wait for big hands as it will not cost you a great deal. However, if you are more confident or are at a table of weaker players this is a good situation to make a few plays like flat-calling a raise with Aces or stealing a few blinds that can give your stack an important boost going into the late game and the bubble. Just remember to proceed with caution as you can’t win the sit&go at this stage, but you can certainly lose it.

<h3>Key points</h3>

• The middle game is the period when you have 15-30 big blinds. Here, you generally need to tighten up a bit compared to the early stages, though you can make a few moves in the right situations

• Once you get down to effective stacks of 15-20 big blinds you should consider reducing your open size to 2.5BB to make steals cheaper and allow yourself to get away from more re-raises

• With a 15-20 big blind stack you can re-raise other players more liberally, as this is a   good re-stealing stack in terms of the fold equity versus risk it offers