by Craig Tapscott , Special to FOXSports.com

"Now boys, we can settle this thing peacefully," shouted Haber. "Doc, I like the way you handle that six-shooter. I'm willing to invest a good amount of money in you to help clean up this town. Earp, I want you to settle down, enjoy your family and put petty politics aside. This is not a bad beat. It's a truce. You Clantons, come on down to the saloon and play a little poker. It's a great game to release the pent up anger y'all seem to be possessing. What do you say?"

Online Poker Spotlight SNGs: Part I | II | III | IV Savage Competitor Gentle giant from Texas King of cash games Sites deal with cheating Bad beats - just deal Q&A with Todd Arnold I | II Q&A with Johnny Bax

In today's poker community Eric Haber (aka sheets online) is one of the good guys. Countless players credit his grounded advice and guidance for their successes at the tables and with their temperaments. A few years ago he heard about six young players who wanted to take over the poker world. Eric rewarded their passion for the game by financially backing them. They were called - The Crew. They did indeed make an impression winning a few WSOP bracelets between them, a good investment for a savvy businessman with vision. In March he began a new venture, a poker-training site called PokerXfactor.com. Along with good friend and No. 1 online ranked player JohnnyBax, they share their insight into each fold, raise and all-in during their online tournament wins.

Yet poker could not have been further from his mind when Eric was going through some lean years in NYC. "I was a backgammon player and knew nothing about poker," said sheets. "I had this friend of mine Ylon Schwartz, a super chess player. He and I would play chess in Washington Square Park. Eventually he got into poker like everyone else did. He talked me into coming to a No-Limit tournament at the PlayStation. He explained that for only $50 you receive $300 in chips. I said count me in, that must be a beginner's discount or something. Ylon taught me the rules in a cab on the way to the tournament. During the tourney I'm playing and watching cause I don't know what to do, making a lot of technical errors like folding out of turn etc. I mean I would push all-in when an Ace flopped and I had an Ace in my hand, which I knew how to do. I was figuring it out as we went along. Then after about 3-4 hours the tournament director stops the action and says you're at the final table. Everyone counted up their chips and they made a 10-way chip deal. I walked out with about $480 and the rest is history so to speak."

Early on in his poker education sheets was fascinated with the SNG (Sit-N-Go) one table tournament format. A tenacious thirst for knowledge made him seek out the best players to learn from. "Brett Jungblut taught me how to play in general. The people I learned the most from as far as SNG's was Gigabet, Scott Fischman and Danny Alaei. I had learned poker by reading the books so I knew all the right things to do. Then one day I went to Tunica and met up with Scotty and Brett and they were talking about poker differently than I would think about it. Then one day Brett sent me his hand history of a tournament that he played and I was looking through it and I wanted to throw up. He's re-raising all in with 93 off-suit to an UTG (under the gun) raiser. What was he doing? Actually it reopened my eyes to everything."

FOXSports.com: What is your basic strategy for SNG's?

Eric Haber: The most important thing to remember is that SNG's are a skill unto themselves. In other words SNG's, for lack of a better term, are not real poker in a way. You see a lot of these real successful MTT players try to play SNG's and they get very frustrated that they can't do as well. I think the reason for that is they don't recognize the fact that SNG's are a brute force type of poker that doesn't take all that much finesse to succeed at all but the highest levels.

There have actually been articles written on actual SNG formulas that you could use, if you wanted to try them that will make you kind of a winning player. The classic SNG strategy that I use is essentially be hyper-tight early and hyper-aggressive late. That sounds all nice and easy, but the problem is you have to get from the hyper-tight stage to the hyper-aggressive stage.

By hyper-tight I mean in the first level or two, when you have about 50 big blinds or so, depending on what site your are playing on, you want to be staying out of the way. You want to be playing only the best of hands especially in early position. An example is if I get a hand like JJ UTG (under the gun - early position) I will raise about ZERO percent of the time. I will just limp in with the jacks. If you have Ace-King in the small blind and you have a mid-position guy raise and then the button makes a re-raise of 3x that players bet - where in a MTT you have enough chips where you might be able to make a move on top of them - in a SNG you just have to fold. And that is just to a single re-raise. Especially in level one. Level one is not the time to be committing all your chips to be honest.

Level one is the time to sit and do nothing unless you have a really big hand. If you're in the big blind and you get to see the flop for free and you hit a big hand, then obviously you are ready to commit all your chips. The idea in the early part of SNG's is to really stay out of trouble and play super-super tight.

Now you kind of fast forward to the end of SNG's you have to have completely different skills. In early position at the table play the best of hands, but just like in regular poker, as you are closer to the button you can play looser. If it gets folded to me on the button and I have a hand like K10, I'll just fold it pretty quickly. Even if I have the button because it's level one and I'm not gaining too much from it.

To give you more concrete examples: If have a hand like KJ or KQ and I'm in middle position and someone limps UTG, I just muck it in the first level or two in a SNG. Where in a MTT with a deeper stack I have other options. Same as AJ and AQ, they should just be thrown away UTG at level one. AJ and AQ are good hands when you can isolate one person and they are good when there are blinds to steal and things like that. But when the blinds are really small relative to your stack you want to stay out of trouble in SNG's until the later stages when you must get more aggressive.

Let's say you have a ROI% (Return on Investment) of 15%. I would say about 12% of that is how you play the bubble and how you play late in the game as opposed to how you play AQ UTG or some hand like that.

---

In Part 2, sheets will go into advanced plays in regards to blinds relative to stacks, poker math, and strategic vs. tactical decisions during SNG play.

Craig Tapscott is a frequent contributor to FOXSports.com Poker, Card Player & Card Player College magazine. He may be contacted at: ctapscott@verizon.net.