5 Tips to Beating Double or Nothing Sit and Go’s

 Poker Strategy
Feb 182026
 

Double or nothing sit and go’s are tournaments where half of the entrants double their money and half of the entrants lose.  For example if you play in a 10 player $10 buy-in double or nothing tournament, the top 5 finishers would win $20 and the bottom 5 would leave with nothing.  Needless to say this unique payout structure requires you to make some changes to your game in order to have the best chance of winning.

Tip #1 – Play very tight for the first few levels.

For the first few levels you want to play very tight and only play your premium hands.  Playing tight will allow you to preserve your stack for the later stages and will also give your opponents time to take each other out.  You should try not to risk chips in this stage and only play pots when you think you are ahead.

Tip #2 – Try not to call in the middle to late stages

It is important to try to maintain your stack through the middle and late stages when the blinds start to get bigger.  To do this you should raise your premium hands or even your moderate hands in good situations and hopefully take down some blinds.  One thing you should not do in these stages is call raises.  You should be pushing all-in or folding to most raises at this stage.  Once the blinds get bigger it’s not worth risking a tenth or so of your stack to see the flop because those chips may be the difference between doubling up and bubbling out.

Tip #3 – Try to get your chips in when you’re ahead

In double or nothing sit and go’s coin flips are not beneficial to your cause, especially in the early stages.  The amount of chips that you might win is not worth the amount of chips you could just as easily lose.  This is because you can only win a maximum of double your buy-in, so the added value of a double up doesn’t equal the 50% chance of losing your entire stack, because even if you double up you aren’t guaranteed to cash.

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Tip #4 – Play tight at the bubble

In order to make the top half of the field you should stay tight at the bubble.  In double or nothing sit and go’s there are more players at the bubble than in normal tournaments, which decreases your chances of being the bubble boy.  For this reason it is smart to just play super tight and hope that another player busts.  Fifth place pays the same as first, so there is no reason to risk being eliminated in 6th to take the chip lead.

Tip #5 – Survive with smart all-in moves late

If you are getting short stacked at the bubble you should try to move in from good positions to steal blinds and survive in the tournament.  You should go after the middle stacks who have enough chips that they feel they can survive until the cash, but have few enough that they are worried about you doubling through them.

 

The majority of the profit that can be made from double or nothing sit and go’s comes from the few wild players who do not understand the structure.  The players who will be the most profitable are those who are able to adjust their games through the various stages of the double or nothing sit and go.

What is Rakeback?

 Build Your Bankroll
Feb 172026
 

In order for you to understand what rakeback is, first you must understand rake.  Rake is the amount of money that the poker room takes from the pot in cash games and the fees that pay for playing in tournaments.  In cash games the rake is usually a small percentage of the pot, and is only taken when the hand requires a flop to be dealt.  Rake is essentially how the poker rooms make their money and to be honest, they make a lot.  Many players pay thousands of dollars a month in rake.  For example, a typical cash game player who plays four $0.25/$0.50 no limit hold’em tables at a time, for a couple hours a day would pay over $1080 a month in rake!

Poker rooms can calculate your rake contribution using either the dealt or the contribution method.  In the dealt method the total rake is split evenly between all the players dealt in the hand no matter how much each player contributed to the pot.  Whereas, with the contribution method, the rake is split up proportionate to the amount of money you contributed to the pot.  For example, if you contributed $40 to a $100 pot and the rake was $3, then the amount of rake that is counted as yours would be $1.20.

Rakeback is rake that is refunded to the player.  Most online poker rooms offer to give back a percentage of the rake they take from the player if they sign up through a rakeback provider.  The typical rakeback offer is around 30%, but can be higher or lower depending on what room you are playing at.  A few examples would be Cake Poker rakeback offering 36% and PKR rakeback who offer 30%.  Continuing with our example, if the typical player who raked $1080 a month played at Cake Poker and received 33% rakeback, he would receive about $356 of the rake he paid during the month back as a refund.  That is a huge chunk of cash!  Especially for a low limit player who only plays a couple hours a day.

There is absolutely no downside to rakeback.  The only reason some players don’t receive it is simply because they don’t know about it or they already have an account at the poker site they want to play at.  In order to receive rakeback you have to sign up as a new player to the site through a rakeback provider.  If you already have an account at the site, then you are not eligible to receive rakeback at that site.  One way to combat this is to open up a rakeback account at a new site or sometimes if you email the poker room about your dilemma they will be able to help.

I would strongly advise signing up for rakeback.  When you receive your first refund at the end of the month you will be extremely glad you did!