SAGE System review

The Sit-And-Go Endgame (SAGE) System is a heads-up strategy for NLHE which was developed by Lee H. Jones (author of "Winning Low Limit Hold'em" and formerly the manager of PokerStars poker rooms) and James Kittock (a mathematics professor). It's a solid and unexploitable heads-up strategy that can help you overcome weak and strong players alike. Once you're down to the last two players in a sit 'n' go, first place pays you 50% of the prize pool while second place leaves you with only 30%, so a significant proportion of the prize-money changes hands in these situations.

The system applies only to heads-up, no-limit games in which the ratio ("R") of the smaller stack size at the table divided by the current big blind is less than ten, and is at its strongest when it's less than 8.

It's deceptively simple: all you have to do is work out the power index ("PI" - a calculated numeric value) of your instant pre-flop hand and compare it against the relevant line of the table of R's on a little chart and you can see whether your PI is high enough to be a "yes"; if it's a yes, that means you go all-in if you're the small stack, and you call the all-in (or raise "all-in", i.e. enough to put your opponent all-in). It really is as simple as that, and the little chart is small and easy enough to be reduced to a "sticky note" about 5cm square which you can put on the side of your screen.

Determining your hand's PI is easy: (i) assign each of your cards a number based on the card's rank. For face cards, assign the following power numbers: J = 11, Q = 12, K = 13, and A = 15; (ii) double the power number of the higher ranked card in your hand and adding the number of the lower ranked card (i.e. 2H + L, where H is the higher number and L is the lower number); (iii) add 22 if you're holding a pair, or add 2 if your cards are suited.

Although SAGE is an unexploitable strategy, it's not always the optimal strategy. As R increases past 7 and especially past 10, it's not quite so clever.

It's even easier to use than I've made it sound. I think this area was a considerable "leak" in my game, and a highly relevant one given how often I seem to be in the prize-money. I'll report back later on how it's going for me, but at the moment I strongly welcome it. It seems to work by more or less stifling your opponent's creativity and poker abilities, reducing him to an automated system. Opponents often fold hand after hand as you continue to push your entire stack into the pot.

You can read an article about the system by Lee Jones himself here, and more of his articles here.

Small update

Not all that much to report, here. I am back at home/work, and will probably work now until nearly Christmas without more than some weekend breaks, but I don't normally work on Saturdays or Tuesdays. Poker continues: I am playing almost entirely $16-entry "turbo" ("fast"-moving) single-table 9-player sit 'n' go's at PokerStars. They take typically about 45-50 minutes each. The prize-money is: first place $67.50; second place $40.50; third place $27.00.

I can play two at a time, by starting a new one each time the most recently entered one is reduced from nine to five or six players. That said, I have once been knocked out first, in 9th place, when I went all-in with KK and lost to a player with AJ who flopped an Ace, as can easily happen. I'm actually slightly surprised this sort of thing has not happened more often, but I do play very, very few hands until three people have been knocked out and the blinds have gone up two or three times.

At the moment, I'm getting into the prize-money 48% of the time, so my account-level is gradually increasing. If that figure stays steady, then over a series of about 600 events, mathematically there "should" be only a 5% risk of my losing 11 consecutive times, and less than a 5% risk of my hitting a longer losing patch equivalent financially to 17 consecutive losing events.

I'm hoping not to play as many as 600 of them, though. If I keep going steadily enough, I'll move up to the $27-entry events at some point, and am wondering to what extent the overall standard of play is higher in those. My guess is that whereas there's no discernible difference between the $11 events and the $16 ones, the $27 ones may be a rather different proposition.

Coming up soon: brief reviews of Collin Moshman's book, and the SAGE system!

A slight change of plan ...

Greetings from Greece!

A valued and respected online friend of mine who plays this game professionally and very successfully has very kindly been giving me a lot of advice over the last couple of days.

My original $340 deposit has gradually crept up to just over $500 now, from bits of profit in low-stake NL games (I am fairly regularly turning a $10 table-stake into $15 against weak opponents but not really learning anything much from it) and quite a few low-stake sit 'n' go wins and second places (I do enjoy those). But sometimes friends tell you what you need to hear, which in this instance was that I should be learning the game by playing in $1/$2 ($200 buy-in) 6-max NL games (6 players at the table instead of 9/10 - slightly more aggressive games, and more educational). My own limited experience of watching had suggested that this is the way to learn the game, anyway. So, for the moment, my sit 'n' go plans may go on the back burner, much though I enjoy them, because you should not do too many different things at once. I will deposit another $1,500 to have ten buy-ins available for the $1/$2 NL games (yes, I know you should really have more like 20-30 buy-ins in your account, but I can attend to that later if needed, and to be honest I don't mind paying to learn anyway, and can afford to).

Also to be attended to: re-read one of Sklansky's books and (at least) the first volume of "Harrington on Cash Games".

I have read the SAGE system mentioned down below, and will write about it shortly, but probably postpone the rest of my study of Collin Moshman's sit 'n' go book for the moment. I need to learn this game properly. But not necessarily this week, because I'm on holiday anyway. Further updates follow ...

Selections ...

It's all about selectivity, one way and another, isn't it? Selecting the hands with which you'll call before the flop; selecting what sort of game you want to play; selecting your table; and, for me at the moment, selecting at which online poker room(s) to play. I think there are people who lose consistently who might win equally consistently in different games, and I certainly want to avoid becoming one of them.

From the general consensus of opinion among reviewers and players, it seems that Bodog Poker and Pacific Poker both have plenty of fairly loose games of a not-particularly-high standard in which it's not too difficult to win some money. As against that, at least two people who have withdrawn money from Bodog recently by cheque (why would you want to withdraw by cheque?) have apparently reported that the cheques didn't clear, which is about as potentially alarming a thing as you can hear, to me. And I've also read a couple of pretty hair-raising stories casting some real aspersions about the integrity of the support staff and/or management of Pacific Poker. Pacific is owned by a casino company, and I think these poker rooms, perhaps partly because of the way they promote themselves online, probably attract more than their share of gamblers, which might make them easier places for a patient, disciplined player to win some money?

I have been offered an almost unbelievably complicated rakeback/incentive deal at Betfred Poker by one of its affiliates (rakeback deals come through affiliates, not through the sites themselves). I'm really struggling to predict its longer-term significance, but my guess is that for a very serious player it might work out at about 45% rakeback and in my case it might work out at about 25% - 30%. But I think it will still be available next month or the month after anyway, so I'm not feeling like jumping at it.

I'm going to try Poker Stars, I've decided. It's the biggest poker site in the world, clearly one of the best, the availability of games is second to none, and the software is really very nice. The only negatives about it that I've managed to discover (and I've done a lot of research) are (i) that they don't give rakeback and their sign-up bonus is pretty small (in the long run, the size of the sign-up bonus is irrelevant, though rakeback certainly isn't) and (ii) that it's not the easiest place to win money, because the standard's a little bit higher than most (but in a way, that might not be such a bad thing, really, because I need decent experience too, and at the stakes I'll be playing I hope that won't really be too significant anyway). So I'm going to pay my few hundred Lati in there, and we'll see what happens over the next month or two.

I'm also reading the SAGE system, by Lee H. Jones and Collin Moshman's sit 'n' go book (more about these soon), both of which I think will save me a lot of money in the long run ...

"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) ...