Full Tilt Short Stack Ultra Turbo Sngs
Full Tilt Poker recently started spreading “super turbo” short stack sit and go tournaments, an absolute goldmine for full tilt players who are comfortable playing a short stack, short handed, and especially poker players who play a good sit and go bubble. In a unique new format, these super turbo sit and go tournaments start players with only 300 starting chips, and the blinds start at 15/30 leaving every player with only 10 big blinds to start. In true “super turbo” tournament format, the blinds increase every three minutes ensuring that these new full tilt tournaments are fast paced and exciting!
In most tournament situations I would recommend playing a stack this small very aggressively, advising players to push all in with any reasonable hand in late position. However, these new short stack tournaments at offer full tilt players a great opportunity to get comfortable being patient and waiting for good opportunities with as little as five big blinds in their stack.
Action goes fast in these short stack sit and go tournaments, and players bust each other out fast. Like all nine man sit and go tournaments at Full Tilt, the final three players are paid or “make the money” but there is significant reason to play for the win, because having a big stack allows you to play these tournaments much more comfortably.
Strategy
Play patient and aggressive in the first two orbits, the blinds go up every 3 minutes in these turbo tournaments but you can afford to wait for an opportunity. When you find yourself with a big hand like Ace Queen, get your chips into the pot. There will be a lot of coin flip or 60/40 situations in all stages of these tournaments so take any opportunity to double up as long as you feel like you are ahead. I really prefer to be the one betting rather than calling with these marginal edges, but in these tournaments I can’t afford to lay down big hands pre-flop regardless of the action in front of me.
Go all in Ace King, Ace Queen, and pocket pairs 10 and up.
Double Up Early
Full Tilt short stack sit and go tournaments are over in fifteen minutes, so find your spot to shove in the first few rounds. Doubling up early helps you play the bubble more comfortably, and posting a few blinds can make it tough to come back later. Opponents will call you with a wide range of hands, but that range gets to be almost any two cards if you only have 4-5 big blinds.
If you happen to get a chip stack of over 1,000 chips at any given point, you should feel very comfortable approaching the bubble. With nearly 35% of the total amount of chips in play you can feel pretty comfortable making the money with 6 players left.
With a stack of 1,000 or more, I will bet a large amount of hands to put pressure on the smaller stack players. A player with 200 chips and a big blind of 50 just won’t impact you that much, and there is a surprisingly large amount of fold equity in these tournaments. Raise hands like 78 suited and call any re-shove, we play to win.
Buy-ins And Payouts
Full Tilt offers these short stack tournaments in $3.80, $7.50, $15, $30, $45, and $75 buy-ins. In my experience the play gets looser as the buy-ins increase. I was quite surprised at how tight the $3.80 and $7.50 tournaments were playing!
Each tournament plays down to a lone winner, and three spots are paid a portion of the prize pool.
3rd place takes home two times the original buy-in, 2nd place takes three times the buy-in, and 1st place wins a hefty five times their tournament buy-in!
Profit = Volume
You might be asking, “Ok I get that I will need to win some flips, but how can I consistently profit from this tournament structure?” Good question, and the answer is simple: Volume.
I play these tournaments to get in as many as I possibly can, I feel I have an edge on most players that enter these tournaments and plan to win a reasonable hourly rate by playing as many of these as possible. How many you can play per hour depends on your comfort level with multi-tabling, but most players can comfortably four table these all day long. Players can easily play 15-20 of these short stack tournaments every hour and the sky is the limit when it comes to your hourly rate.
The key point to profiting consistently in these poker tournaments to be the aggressor and pick your spots well. Use up your fold equity early on and get your money into pots with an edge. If you are putting your money into pots without being dominated you are going to win enough to allow you to play a big stack against weaker opponents, and that is a ticket to a nice hourly rate.
The End Game
Usually short handed play in turbo sit and go tournaments is very aggressive due to the size of stacks versus the relative size of the blinds. In the Full Tilt short stack tournaments you will be so used to aggressive play from earlier rounds the end game should come naturally to you. Short-handed specialists will do very well in these turbo tournaments because players will knock each other out of these tournaments very fast. Play your stack size and don’t fold any two high cards or pocket pairs because the play just isn’t deep enough.
Overall I find these tournaments to be very soft at all levels and a great way to teach yourself how to play under pressure, the tournaments fill up in just a few seconds and most of the players are just looking to gamble which in my eyes make this tournament a great way to build a poker bankroll!
