DoN SnG Challenge

I've played quite a few of the $5 and $10 Double or Nothing Sit-n-Gos on Pokerstars and have done quite well in them so I decided to play them more formally, along with my $50 Cash Game Challenge.

What are Double or Nothing Sit and Gos?

Double or Nothing Sit-n-Gos (DoNs) are a type of single table tournament with 10 players. If you outlast 5 other players you win double your buy-in. So for example, in a $5 DoN you pay $5 + $0.40 in rake and if you win, you win $10.

You need to have a win rate of at least 55% just to break even but these games are fairly easy with the right strategy. They are also fairly low variance. A little over 60% win rate will give you about an 11% ROI, 75% win rate will achieve a 30% ROI and a 75% win rate will give you close to a 40% ROI.

My DoN SnG Plan

My plan is to start playing the $5.40 DoNs 4 tables at a time with a starting bankroll of $150. That's enough to cover almost 28 games or almost 7 4 table sessions. Since these are low variance games that should be plenty since historically my win rate is about 70%. It was higher at one point but either the players have changed or I have and part of this challenge is to get me playing these games better to increase my win rate.

If my starting bankroll dips down too far I'll reduce the number of tables I play at a time.

My first goal is to reach $1,000 within 2 months.

Once my working bankroll for this challenge reaches $1,000 I will start moving up my buy-in. When I move up a level, I'll start playing one table at a time, then two and 4 as I feel more comfortable. If I determine that the new buy-in level isn't as profitable as the previous one, I'll move back down, possibly increasing the number of tables I play at a time.

One other issue with moving up in buy-ins is that the tables don't fill up as fast above $10 and that may cause me to stick to my current level. Right now, looking at the Pokerstars lobby, There is only one $108 DoN upcoming and nobody has registered. There are 4 $54 DoNs and 8 $21.60 DoNs but they are taking a long time to fill up.

Below is a table showing how I plan to move up in buy-ins as my bankroll increases. As you increase in levels, the players are a bit better and my win rate might drop and there might be higher variance. To account for that I'm allowing for more buy-ins for the higher levels.

Buy-In	Bankroll	Num Buy-Ins
$5.40	$150	27.78
$10.80	$1,000	92.59
$21.60	$4,000	185.19
$54.00	$12,000	222.22
$108.00	$25,000	231.48

As I mentioned, I'm going to start playing 4 tables at a time in the $5.40 level but as my bankroll increases I'll increase the number of concurrent tables I play as long as the total number of tables I play at one time is less than 10% of my bankroll. As I move up in levels I'll probably give myself a bigger cushion. To give you an idea of what that might look like the following table shows what the maximum simultaneous tables I'm allowed to play based on my bankroll.

Max tables at $5.40
Bankroll	Max Tables
$50	1
$100	2
$200	4
$350	6
$500	8
$750	10

Since I've played many of these before, I'm comfortable starting at 4 tables even though it's below my requirements. If you're reading this and want to try this challenge I advice you start with 1 table at a time until you get the hang of it, then 2 then 4. If you aren't making as much with more tables, move down to fewer.

My goal here isn't to play as many tables as I can at a time, it's to hopefully move up in levels and still play well.

I'll be keeping a chart of my progress on the sidebar of this blog (as well as the top of this post) so you can track my results. Click the following link to see all DoN SnG Challenge Updates.