Chris Morgan

ICM calculations are very long and drawn out to do by hand (and impossible to do while at the table). It is better to buy software that will do this for you that will allow you to study away from the table. The best program out there is Sit n Go Wizard. It will allow you to put in your bubble situations where you can vary the stack sizes of yourself and each opponent to see what hands you would +EV push / fold with. Or if you have Holdem Manager, it will read your hand history and tell you if your decision to push or fold was correct. I would also check out Collin Moshman's Sit 'n Go Strategy and Secrets of Sit 'n' Gos: Winning Strategies for Single-table Poker Tournaments by Phil Shaw. Both of these books are great for Sit n Go's and they both go in to detail to understand ICM. I highly recommend both. Good luck.

The absolutly BEST book for Sit n Go's is Collin Moshman's Sit 'n Go Strategy. There are some others out there, just check Amazon.com and do a search. Also, check out sitngoplanet.com for a bunch of good strategy info for this type of game. Hope this helps - keep grinding!

you can hit me via email if you like - CHRLSMAN@AOL.COM - I'm ALWAYS willing to talk SnG's

I normally stick to the standard SnG's but have played plenty of the double ups as well. I have found my ROI is actually lower on these than the standards due to the fact that players (correctly) tighten way up on the bubble. It oftens becomes a crap shoot on the bubble if the remaining players all have similiar sized stacks. The rake is more of a factor on these even though it is usually about 1/2 of what it is on the standard SnG's. Being you are only getting paid 2x your buy in, you need to win 51% of all games you play to show a profit and that doesn't even take the rake into consideration. These games are extremly fishy, even more so than the standards and they fill up quicker too, but bad beats are more of an issue since busting out of 1 means you have to cash in 2 more just to show a profit. If you do play these (and they are fun), I would recommend to study double up strategy exclusively because when it comes bubble time (6 players left) there will be situations where folding AA preflop is correct. You need to reconize the spots to shove wide and to fold tight (AK, QQ+) preflop. The best advise for these games to to "outlast not outplay" your opponents. Good luck!

I also play exclusively on Merge. I have played from $2 to $20 SnG's. I find that the regs are few a far between on the $5 and down buy in games, but even the $10 games only have 1-2 regs per table at most. I have been focused on the $5 games with great results, but agree that when on the bubble, players call too wide (according to ICM) You really just have to focus on the player's stats and find the nit and open shove 75% + against their BB.