Sit and go (SNG)
A sit and go is a poker tournament with no scheduled start time: it begins the moment a set number of players have registered and taken their seats. Everyone pays the same buy-in and starts with the same chips, the blinds rise on a timer, and play runs until one player holds every chip. The most common shape is a single table of six or nine seats, with the top two or three finishers sharing the prize pool and everyone else leaving with nothing.
How a sit and go prize pool is worked out
Your buy-in is split in two before a card is dealt. Most of it goes into the prize pool, and a smaller slice is the site’s fee, usually shown as something like €10+€1 in the lobby.
Take a nine-seat table at €10+€1. Nine players put in €99, of which €90 is prize money and €9 is the fee, so the house keeps about 9.1% of what you paid rather than the 10% the €1 looks like on its own. On the familiar 50/30/20 split, first takes €45, second €27 and third €18, while fourth gets nothing for surviving longest of the losers.
Six-seat tables commonly pay two places, often around 65/35, and double-or-nothing versions pay half the field an equal prize. Operators set their own structures, so the payout table in the lobby is the figure that counts.
Sit and go versus a scheduled tournament
The term gets mixed up with the multi-table tournament, or MTT, which starts at a fixed time and can spread hundreds of players across many tables. A sit and go waits for its seats instead, and while most fill a single table, some run across several.
It is not a cash game either.
Your chips in a sit and go have no cash value and cannot be cashed out; only your finishing place pays. Turbo and hyper-turbo labels simply mean the blinds climb faster, which shortens the game and pushes everyone towards all-in decisions sooner.
