Product
Sit and Go
Definition
A poker tournament with a fixed number of seats, usually one table of six or nine, that starts as soon as the seats are filled rather than at a scheduled time. Faster and more predictable than a multi-table tournament, with a prize pool from the buy-ins paid to the top two or three finishers.
Key takeaways
- A sit and go starts when its fixed number of seats fill, usually one table, and lasts under an hour.
- It fills dead time between scheduled tournaments and is how most online players learned the tournament format.
- Heads-up, turbo and lottery-style variants with randomised prize pools became the volume products of the 2010s.
- Small tables make collusion easier to attempt and to detect, so rooms monitor them closely.
Why it matters
The sit and go solved online poker's scheduling problem. A multi-table tournament needs a start time and a field; a sit and go needs six or nine players who happen to be ready now, and on a large site that is always. The player buys in, waits a minute for the table to fill, and plays a tournament that lasts twenty to forty minutes, with a payout structure usually paying the last three of nine or the last two of six. It is the format on which most online players learned tournament poker and the one that rooms use to fill dead time between scheduled events.
Variants define the modern lobby. Heads-up sit and gos play one against one; turbo and hyper-turbo structures raise blinds fast for a game over in minutes; lottery-style sit and gos randomise the prize pool at the start, with a small chance of a multiple far above the buy-in, and became the biggest volume product in online poker in the 2010s because they combined a tournament with a jackpot. Satellites into larger events are often run as sit and gos. Rooms take a fee on each buy-in as they do for any tournament.
For the room, sit and gos are liquidity-efficient and integrity-sensitive. They fill from a small pool and run continuously, so they work on sites too small for large scheduled fields; and their small tables make collusion between two players against a third easier to arrange and easier to detect, so they are watched closely by the same systems that police cash games.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a sit and go take?
A standard nine-player game takes around thirty to forty-five minutes; turbo and hyper-turbo structures finish in ten to twenty; heads-up games can be over in minutes.
How are sit and go prizes paid?
From the buy-ins less the room’s fee, typically to the top three of nine (around 50, 30 and 20 per cent) or the top two of six, with heads-up paying the winner everything.
What is a lottery sit and go?
A three-player hyper-turbo whose prize pool is drawn at random when it starts, usually a small multiple of the buy-in but occasionally a very large one. The jackpot chance is what made the format so popular.