The Sit’n’Go is a unique beast. Unlike cash games which always play deep and major tournaments which also allow for plenty of play, Sit’n’Gos very quickly progress from the early stages where you should fold most hands to the middle and later stages where you have no choice but to take some calculated risks.
This has given rise to a wonderful play known as the unexploitable shove. This is a great play because rather than putting yourself in harm’s way with a standard open, which will often be met by a 3-bet, shoving gives your opponents just two options – call or fold. And we all know that you need a better hand to call with than you do to shove with.
For example, let’s say we raise 2x from the cut-off with K-10 with 15 big blinds left behind. The button looks down at A-7 and shoves over the top. Now we’re put in a situation where we have to fold our hand. But if we open shove our K-10s, the onus is now on our opponents to call off his stack with only A-7 – a much tougher proposition even though his hand is actually ahead of ours.
Provided you are shoving with a suitable range, your shove is unexploitable. In fact, even if you were to turn over your cards and let your opponents see your hand before they make a decision, you will still show a profit in the long run.
You might be surprised, too, to discover just how wide you can shove in certain spots. A profitable shoving range from the cut-off with 15 big blinds would include all pairs, A7s+, K-8s+ and even as low as 8-9s+.
But like anything, practice makes perfect. Don’t worry – there are very few of us who can calculate these sorts of mathematical technicalities in our own heads so using an ICM calculator such as Sit’n’Go Wizard is the best way to learning when to hold’em and when to fold’em. But if you take the time to recognize when to make an unexploitable shove and you will soon be raking in the cash!
