"Poker's a day to learn and a lifetime to master" (Robert Williamson)

I'm intending to specialise in "sit 'n' go" events. These used to be called "STT" or Single Table Tournaments. There are usually ten (occasionally nine) players, who pay a fixed entry-fee to compete normally for three prizes for first, second and third places. In the typical low-stake event, ten players each pay $11 or E11 or £11 to enter, competing for a first prize of 50, second prize of 30 and third prize of 20 (the remaining 1 unit per player is the "table-money" which goes to the house for providing the facility). Nearly all the online sites have these events and they are available 24 hours per day ...

"Mine" are no-limit hold'em (NLHE) events, though there are other kinds too (Omaha, limit games, and so on). I strongly prefer no-limit to limit games. All comments in this blog, unless otherwise specified, refer to NLHE. I have been playing only in these low-stake events, but have been getting into the prizes about 55% of the time. What I'm really bad at is coming first instead of second/third, but I'm planning to learn something called the "S.A.G.E. system" and get some heads-up practice to improve on that (more about that later).

I've been playing mostly at a site called TrueMoneyGames.com simply because I happened to have an account there (I play backgammon there, for much higher stakes) but it's clearly not the place of choice for poker. I also play at Ladbroke's Poker (dreadful software: my computers really don't like running it at all). But next on my list of "poker things to do" is researching many different online poker emporiums, reading independent reviews of them (not as easy as it sounds: the "independent" reviewers usually have financial incentives and affiliate links involved, and one must clearly be careful), and deciding where I'm really going to play. So far, for educational and review purposes, I have discovered Poker Listings, The Hendon Mob (hmmm ... I see Giles Coren's sister hangs out there) and a forum at 2 + 2 Poker which is so huge it could take a lifetime to read (but it has a special section relating to sit 'n' go events) ...