With more and more online poker rooms introducing exotic poker variants like Badugi, and with the Texas Holdem tables gradually losing juice, it makes perfect sense these days to take up a game like Badugi. Though its rules are relatively simple, this draw poker variant is still unknown among the vast masses of poker players, who are currently grinding away at Full Tilt Poker’s newly introduced Rush Poker tables, hunting for scraps and morsels of value.
Badugi Sit n’ Go action at Pokerstars
Why be content with crumbs though if you can get your hands on the whole loaf? Though Badugi won’t dazzle you with its strategic depth, if will offer a skilled player a valuable edge over those who barely know the rules, and believe me there are more and more such players venturing over to the Badugi tables.
Badugi SNGs work in the exact same way Texas Holdem ones do. You will probably have wait to more for your table to fill up, but when it does and the action gets rolling, you’ll see it’s worth it. Because of its structure (the blinds and the table positions determined by the blinds) is the same as that of Holdem, most of the Strategy elements you know from Holdem will work perfectly here. Your edge will be in the way you play your Badugi hands.
It is a generally healthy Badugi strategy to be tight and you should especially heed that advice in the early stages of SNGs. Protect your finite stack as it’s your weapon and lifeblood in the same time.
When the blinds are small compared to the size of your stack, you should be tight for several reasons. First of all, the pot odds you get fully justify the tight approach. As David Sklansky details in one of his poker books, the smaller the blinds are compared to the size of your stack, the tighter you should play. Tight play fits Badugi just fine, because starting hand selection is just so big in the game anyway. Make sure you do not overplay bad hands, and don’t be afraid to commit your chips on the good hands you pick up.
As the blind go up, the situation precipitates. You’ll be placed under pressure, though if you play right during the early stages, chances are you won’t be under as much pressure as your opponents who didn’t. Stealing the blinds at this stage is usually important, and for that you need two things: a menacingly sized stack (so that your opponents know that tangling with you carries a potential tournament death penalty), and position. Position is the other dominantly important factor in Badugi. Together with starting hand selection, exploiting your position properly is the key to success in this game. Keep stealing blinds in the middle stages of the SNG (to do that optimally, you’ll have to loosen your general starting hand selection criteria a little) and before you know it, you’ll be in the final stretch.
During short-handed and heads-up play keep this in mind: with fewer than 4 people at the table, the chances of a 4-card Badugi become minute. Therefore, bluffing becomes much more efficient. Though some say Badugi is really about making the better hand, in the closing stages of a SNG, bluffing rears its head as a huge factor. Make sure you take full advantage of it. Find some way to alleviate the effects of the poker rake too. Do not want to end up paying way too much in tournament fees, do you?