Book Review

Title:  Sit'Go Strategy Author:  Colin Moshman Publisher:  Two plus Two Price:  $16.47 Pages:  281 ISBN:  1880685396 rating:

In recent years, Texas Hold'em Sit'n Go tournaments have exploded in popularity. This unique playing format presents specific advantages which have attracted masses of players. It preserves the feeling of competing in a tournament, but with a shorter duration, a smaller field and a lower buy-in.

This type of game did not even exist a few years ago, as brick and mortar casinos never had the infrastructure to offer them as sit'n gos have a very high turnover. For online poker, this is not a problem at all. Because of their unique features, sit'n gos require a unique strategy. The closest thing to a sit'n go is the final table of a multi-table tournament.

Because of sit'n gos' idiosyncrasies, this type of game is becoming the domain of specialists, and some online players only play sit'n gos, in buy-ins which may reach as high as $530 a game or even higher.

Collin Moshman is a winning high buy-in sit'n go player and Sit'n Go Strategy is one of the first book written exclusively on this topic. A game progresses in three phases, low-blinds at the beginning, mid-blinds in the middle and high-blinds at the end. Each phase requires its own strategy and this is how the book is structured.

First the book introduces critical poker concepts. Chips do not have a constant dollar value. The more chips you have, the less valuable each chip. This is because the winner will ultimately have all the chips but only half the cash pool, so that the final value of the chips is half the value of initial chips. cEV is a sit and go term representing Chips Expected Value which is different from dollar EV for the reason just mentioned.

Low-blind play requires a very conservative strategy because at this stage the risk of elimination is the major concern that you should have above all others. Play cautiously and avoid getting involved in very large pots. Tight-cautious is the name of the game.

In mid-blind play, you should continue to play tightly, but you need to become more aggressive and to occasionally make moves. Attack weak limpers, raise obvious blind stealers and apply unrelenting aggression. The blinds are high enough to create pots worth fighting for.

High-blind play is almost exclusively folding or pushing allin. You should push when you have positive equity, fold otherwise. Sheer aggression is what makes the difference between poker winners and losers.

Finally Sit'n Go Strategy concludes with advice on what it takes to become a professional sit'n go player career, and what the differences are with other forms of poker. The appendices are full of useful odds tables.

Written by a tournament specialist who knows all winning sit and go formats, Sit'n Go Strategy is the book that you need to read if you want to build a solid foundation for your single table tournament game. The book is well written, easy to read and without heavy math content.