Are you an upcoming poker player looking to make a career from playing online? Are you a player who has been struggling to make it in online poker and looking for some tips? Perhaps you have played live poker at your local casino and are looking to transition into the online game.

Whichever the case, this guide was made specifically to teach you how to beat sit & go tournaments, popular at so many different online poker sites. We designed the article to explain everything from the most basic concepts to the more advanced and often overlooked ideas that can help you become a winner in SNGs.

In this article, we will teach you how to:

• Choose your sit & go format
• Find the right poker site to play at
• Decide on starting stake and move up
• Keep track and manage your bankroll
• Improve your skills through reviews and study

Are you ready to finally become a professional poker player and move away from your break even stretch? If so, keep reading and find the most important tips a sit & go player will need to make a career in online poker with one of the most popular game formats out there.

1. Pick Your Sit & Go Format

Sit & go is the single name used for every poker tournament that starts once enough players have been registered. However, there are many different sng formats and if you want to become a poker player focused on these games, you will need to pick one or two of them and focus your efforts.

The first thing you will need to decide on is the number of players in the sit & goes you are going to play. Some popular formats include heads up (with two players), six max (six players total), full ring (9 players) and multi-table (multiple tables of 9).

The formats with fewer players to the table are better suited for the more aggressive, loose players, who like to play many hands. The full ring games are more about patience and waiting for bigger hands in the early stages of the tournament.

How long each of the stages lasts will heavily depend on the speed format of the game. Slow, normal, turbo and hyper turbo are some popular speed formats. Make sure to pick the one that suites your gameplay style. If you are a tighter player who doesn’t like getting into too many uncomfortable situations, choose slower games.

• Short handed sit & goes are best for aggressive players
• Tight players should choose slower sng games with more people
• Multi-table sngs offer the highest ROI potential

2. Find the Site to Play at

Once you have decided what kind of sit & go tournaments you want to play, it is time to find a place where you can play them consistently. This is not an easy decision as there are many different factors to take into consideration.

For one, you will need to find a site that gives you enough action and allows you to get into many games. However, just finding volume is not enough, as playing in tough fields is also not recommended. The best site is the one that offers many tournaments but with a reasonably soft competition.

This can be difficult to find and may take some trial and error. However, remember that the choice of site you play at will greatly impact your final results. The softer the player pool you are playing against, the more chance you will have to actually make a long term profit at that site.

• Find a site that offers many games you are looking for
• Look for a poker room with a soft player pool
• Find balance between player quality and game selection

3. Choose the Appropriate Stake

When getting started, many players greatly overestimate their poker abilities. Don’t get us wrong, you may be a good poker player, but there are many skills associated with actually being a winner in online sit & go tournaments and no one possesses all of them when just getting started.

The stake at which you will start playing is a crucial decision that can help you build up at a steady pace or burn your bankroll before you have even started. The choice of stake to play should depend on the kind of bankroll you have at your disposal along with the skills you believe you possess.

Regardless of your previous poker experience, we always recommend starting at lower stakes. Moving up the stakes if you see that the games you are playing in are too easy is simple and will not cast you as much as playing too high and losing to better players.

• Always start at lower levels
• Find an appropriate level and get some volume in
• Move up once you are sure you are beating your current stake

4. Moving Up the Stakes

In poker, the easiest way to make more money is to play for more money. However, moving up the stakes comes with a certain amount of risk, since you will need to be sure that you can beat the games you are getting involved in first.

While it is not possible to know what to expect from the next stake, you can know for sure how you are doing at your current stake. Analyse your results over a reasonable number of games played and make sure you are a winner in your current games before you try to move up.

Once you do move up to the new stake, don’t stay stuck with it. If needed, don’t be afraid to go back down to your previous level. After all, everything in life is about trials and errors and if you can’t beat the new game just yet, fall back down, study and get ready for it at lower stakes.

• Move up once you are a comfortable winner at your current stake
• Don’t move up too often or too fast
• Don’t be afraid to go back down if you can’t beat the new level

5. Keep an Eye on Your Bankroll

Bankroll management is a key skill that every poker player needs to develop to a high level before they can become a winner at all. In fact, it could be argued that bankroll management is the single most important skill that any professional poker player can work on.

The logical question that most players may ask at this point is, how many buyins do I need to be comfortable. Unfortunately, the answer to that question is not clear cut and there are many factors that will influence it.

The most important factors in the amount of buyins you will want to have include the number of players per tournament, the speed of the tournaments you are playing, your long term ROI and the amount of games you are playing at the same time.

Generally speaking, you will never want to have fewer than 100 buyins for any sit & go type and some games such as the six max hyper turbo sngs may even require up to 500 buyins to be completely comfortable. All of this assumes you are a winner in the games you are playing and the big bankroll is just there to protect you against variance.

• Bankroll management is a key poker skill
• Keep hundreds of buyins in your bankroll at a time
• Make sure you are a winner in the games you are playing

6. Manage Your Expectations

Another thing that many poker players simply can’t seem to fully understand is that there are certain limitation as to how much you can win in each poker format. Sit & goes are fast and easily available, but they are also a game of small margins. This is why even the best players have a return of investment of anywhere between 2% and 20% depending on their skills, the game format they choose and the site they are playing at.

If you are playing a hyper or super turbo format of sit & goes, don’t expect to be doubling your investment every time you sit down to play. In fact, winning one buyin in 20 games of hyper turbos is considered a great job and anything above that would be astronomical.

While many live poker players can often not understand this, the reason that ROI in sit & goes online is so low is the fact that players online are better across the stakes, the blinds go up very fast and the prize distribution makes it very difficult to have an extremely high return.

• Make sure you know what kind of ROI you are expecting
• Check what ROI best players in your games are getting
• Anything above 5% ROI is solid in any type of sng

7. Increasing the Tables Number

Online poker gives players the great advantage of being able to play at many different tables at the same time. This blessing can quickly turn into a curse for players who overestimate their ability and decide to play more tables than they can realistically handle.

As a novice sng player, we recommend starting with no more than a few tables. Playing four or even just two tables while coming up is perfectly fine. While it can be a little boring to wait for the new hands, this gives you a chance to see what other players are doing and how the population is behaving as a whole in the games you are playing.

As you increase the number of tables you are playing simultaneously, you will need to start making more automatic decisions and will be less able to track other players’ actions. For this reason, you should only get into mass tabling once you are perfectly comfortable with the game and can pretty safely determine that player tendencies you can count on.

• Start with few tables and learn about player tendencies
• Add more tables as you get more comfortable
• More tables equals more profit if you are sure of what you are doing

8. Review Your Game

Improving your poker skills will not come easy. While some skills are definitely improved through gameplay alone, the best way to get better at poker is to review the sessions you played and analyse the plays you made.

Fortunately, there are many poker replayers out there that will allow you to review your hand histories which can be saved to your hard drive in most popular poker clients. Make sure to always record hand histories and spend some time reviewing your sessions.

In fact, many of the best online poker players of all time have claimed that they spend as much time going over their hand histories as they do actually playing, and this is probably what made them so good in the first place.

• Always save your hand histories
• Spend at least a few hours a week reviewing them
• Get more experienced players to look at your histories

9. Get Poker Coaching

It is certainly possible to become a great poker player and make it in the game without any special coaching. However, as you move up the stakes and get into the tougher games, paying someone who has already been in your shoes to give you some insights will definitely be worth it.

Poker coaching can sometimes seem somewhat expensive, but as you play the bigger stakes games, you will realize you are only giving away a few buyins to get the kind of information that may take you weeks or months to stumble upon yourself.

Oftentimes, coaching is available from the very best players in the games you are playing, either through videos or through actual one on one sessions with the player in question. In either case, as you move up to higher stakes, it is worth investing some money into actual poker coaching.

• Paid poker coaching becomes valuable at higher stakes
• Save some money as you move up for coaching
• Get the best coaches for the actual games you are playing

10. Get Rakeback and Bonuses

Being a winning poker player is not only about your skills at the poker table, but also those off it. Sometimes, profits are right there for the taking in the form of bonuses, rakeback and promotions that many poker sites and networks offer. Yet, many players remain loyal to a single poker room even when it is not in their best interest.

If you are going to be playing sit and goes, a lot of your final profit is going to come from finding games with lower rake, as well as rakeback deals and bonuses that will get you a percentage of your rake back.

If you are paying a 10% rake in your games and you can find a 50% rakeback deal, that means you are making a 5% ROI just from rakeback alone. If we look back at the fact that we said 5% ROI was solid to have in the first place, this means a massive increase in your potential profit.

• Find games with minimal rake at all times
• Look for good welcome and reload bonuses
• Look for special rakeback deals at poker networks that offer them

11. Put in the Volume

Another thing that is not always discussed and is a big part of why many players never made it in poker is sheer volume. If you are going to become a great player and make a profit while playing, you will simply have to play a great number of sit and goes and that means putting in the hours.

Many players start out their poker careers with great enthusiasm but as time goes by and bad runs come, they lose the drive and fall into a sort of depression in regard to their game. It is not rare to see a player who was playing 60 games a day drop back to playing 15 or 20 and skipping days that could have been a perfectly good time to play some poker.

The number of sit and goes per month that you should be going for will vary depending on the type of games you are playing without a doubt. If you are looking to play slower games, you will want to get in 20 or 30 games in a day.

If you are playing hyper turbos, 100 games in a day is not a massive volume at all. In either case, try to treat poker as a job if you want to make it as a professional poker player and make sure you are playing 5 days a week at least.

• Your profit comes from the games you play in
• Putting in the volume also helps you improve as a player
• Make sure to treat poker as a job and put in the hours

12. Remember to Take Breaks

Like any other professionals, poker players need their breaks and time to do other things in life that fulfil them. Poker can be an extremely stressful job and sit and goes are among the most stressful of games with the massive variance they often bring with them.

If you are looking to make it as a professional poker player, you will need to learn how to balance your personal life with your professional life. While you should certainly take some breaks from playing as well as days off, you should also make sure you have a schedule as to when you play, when you study the game and when you simply rest and do other stuff.

Poker players often fall into the trap of “living it up” with their poker profits as they start moving up the stakes, which can be another crucial mistake. Always remember that poker is just your job and you don’t need to live a lavish lifestyle or go out five times a week just because you are a poker player.

• Poker can be stressful, so remember to take breaks
• Always keep a schedule and stick to it
• Keep sober and ready for work for the days you will be playing

13. Use the Poker Community

Poker community has been around the internet for well over a decade now and it has grown quite large. There are forums, poker websites, Skype groups and countless other resources available, many of which are completely free to access.

If you are looking to make it as a poker player, a good way to do that is by using the poker community to share your hands, your ups and downs and simply get tips on how you can become better at both the game and the life balance necessary to be a winning sng player.

Making friends in the poker world can be beneficial in many different ways. Not only does it open doors for potential staking deals, free coaching and tips and other financial benefits, but it can also help make you more stable overall. Having someone to talk to who understands your lifestyle and your work can be priceless.

• Poker community is available across the net
• Use poker forums and websites to share experiences
• Make friends in the poker world for support and benefits

14. Leave Yourself Options

Poker is not an easy job and it is not one that everyone can do, especially for an extended period of time. If you are just starting out playing sngs online, make sure you have the option of going back to a different lifestyle if you don’t think poker is right for you in the end.

The only way to find out whether poker is just right for you or not is to actually play for some time, but if things don’t work out, you can always get a different job and keep living your life. If you are in school, a good idea is to try poker as a side project and if it does not work out for you, simply finish your school and get work in your chosen field of study.

Most importantly, remember that poker is just a game and you should have fun with it. Learning the game and finding new ways to beat your opponents can be incredibly satisfying, so do that as you grow as a player and enjoy every moment of it for as long as it lasts.

• Give poker a trial run before going professional
• Find out if online poker is the right job for you
• Remember to have backup options if you decide against it