If you’ve played in sit and go poker tournaments, you know that the most stressful part of the tournament can be in the late stages, when there are four or five players left. Since most sit and gos usually pay the top three spots, you are in danger of busting out fourth and doing as well as you possibly can without winning any money, which is a frustrating situation to be in. It is, however, important to keep playing winning sit n go poker in these situations.

Since the blinds are usually pretty high by this point, almost everyone is in danger of busting out. If you have one of the top two chip stacks, there are two elements of strategy you will want to employ. The first, and most important, is that you do not want to get involved with the other big stack at this point. It’s just not worth it. Even a double up will not put you in particularly better shape than you are in right now, and getting knocked out at this point would be disastrous.

The second idea you want to take advantage of is that you will have three or four players who are just trying to ride it out, hoping that someone else will move in and get busted so that they can make it into the money. Because of this, when opponents show weakness, it is a great time to strike. If it is folded around to you, a reasonably sized bet will almost always take the pot. If you are a woman, you have an even better position as men tend to think that women only play strong cards and never bluff. That is actually one of the biggest advantages of women poker players, and definitely something you should try to exploit in the late stage of a sit n go.

Players without big stacks will usually push in immediately if they like their hand so that they have a chance to win the pot uncontested. Only the shortest stacks will risk competing with you, and that is only because they have to. For this reason you should be wary of trying this move against the shortest stack, especially if they are in the blind. They know that if they don’t do anything, they will be blinded out, so they are more likely to call you with a marginal hand.

If you are the shortest stack, this is exactly what you must do. If you sense any weakness, you need to go all-in. Waiting around for great cards will kill you. You cannot let your stack get to the point where you can double up and still be the short stack. You also cannot afford to get cute and simply call hoping for a favorable flop. If you play correctly, as soon as you double up or win enough blinds uncontested, the pressure will be on another player to double up or get destroyed by the blinds. Other players are waiting for you to falter, you need to be aggressive and put the pressure back on one of them.