MTT related - Time for a change?

[Ciso_B]

I haven’t had the luxury of winning any tournaments lately, despite playing daily for a few weeks now. So take what you will from this post, there isn’t any authority behind it. Just some thoughts regarding tournament play, I play a pretty tight game generally (on pokerstars anyway) this wasn’t always the case, but the fields I am up against usually forces me to adapt to this boring style.
Play patient, pick up the pots where I feel I can take it, hope my hands hold up, try and make position advantage.
Lately, I’ve been going deep in my tournaments, frequently cashing but not sealing the deal, you can see the countless bad beats I’ve had but maybe there is more to it then that. I was on msn last night and 2 thp’ers commented that I maybe have played too tight or got myself too short or that my results this year are so poor that I must be doing something wrong. Open to any criticism that comes my way I dwelled on it. And the 1 truth I could think of , is that although I cash frequently , ,my stack late on when I reach the final 100 or so is more often then not below average. Now I consider myself a good short stack player, I am more patient then most tournament players, simply cos I feel you should hold on for dear life in a tournament and I hold the perhaps naïve belief that a good situation will arise where I shall double up. Its been happening lately, the only problem is I lose the showdown and am out or even shorter.
But maybe I have been going about it the wrong way, the one thing I can take from the big online pro’s is that they are rarely short stacked. I already know they take big chances, I was even playing with a big online pro the other day. I had A-K he had been raising a lot, I was oop so I shoved in for 30,000 (overbet) when he made it 2,200 or something in late. But I didn’t fancy playing out of position with it, he insta called with 7-7 and lucky for me I beat him. I said you deserve that for the call, he said he had me on AK and was more then willing to take the race, sighting that he’s only interested in top 2. I personally hate the call, since although its unlikely I make that move with AA,KK I might do that with JJ,QQ,AK. So 2/3 of the hands I crush him 1 we race. He arrogantly said “I’ve made $500k on this siteâ€

[Garoen]

I also play a lot of PS MTT's (Lower limit, the play is pretty bad). I'm having very similar problems - Playing very tight, Cashing often but rarely having the chipstack to take it all down. In a field of 360 I typically have a chipstack that is roughly 10-40% of the leader's stack by the time we're 1-2 hours in. I can't see the sense in making plays that I KNOW are bad and trying to win coinflips to double up a few times in the first hour. But it almost seems neccesary to keep up with the blinds...

My only thought is that perhaps I'm not maximising the value of my cards when I have the best hand, and not limping enough with poor cards. (Feels like I'm constantly mucking hands like J-3 OOP and seeing JJ3 flops. ) Perhaps you have some of these issues, perhaps not; but I'd be curious what you think about the two main problems I run into.

[lwestatbus]

First, I'm in the same boat. Maybe we should form a club.

I was just rereading the introductory chapters in Harrington Vol. 1 and he advises a mostly tight approach but he also talks about the differences between rapidly rising blinds and slowly rising blinds. All of the tournaments I've played (Stars) have had typical blind level lengths measured in minutes instead of hours.

What happens to me is, if I don't make a big score somewhere early, I find myself deep since I didn't take any bad bets, but having frittered and blinded away so many chips that two things are true (really just one thing in two different circumstances):

1. My chip stack is so small relative to the many large stacks left that any of them can call me down with any sort of value hand just to see if they can take me out.

2. Any short stack I try to intimidate who already has chips in the pot is essentially pot committed and I get called by them also.

Also, because the stack is so short even doubling up doesn't help a lot.

I haven't played a LOT of tournaments but am playing more and will have time this summer to play a lot. Based on my limited experience I think I'm having a pretty bad run of cards in tournaments lately which is preventing me from keeping up with the Jones'--I've had some tournys when I got really deep with great cards.

[MitchellC]

Here's a suggestion...

Stop playing so tight. Specifics:

1. Early on--put about 20% of your stack into risk with drawing hands....call a 3x raise in the BB early in the event with 4-7 suited. Take a chance.

2. Embrace the risk in the game--that's what the poker pros do, because they don't want to survive they want to win.

Frankly, I played like you did and didn't take enough chances--the result low chip stack around bubble time. If I took a bad beat, I was out.

Now I push....but you know what, sometimes I screw up and fall back into that "survival" mindset.

3. Look at your game and find out when is the right time to push...I'm not just talking A-K. I'm talking re-raising with middle pairs like 6-6, and even moving all-in if you have less than 8 times the other guys stack.

Overall, it's true that I may get knocked out earlier, but I also find myself in a position with lots of more chips and a chance to win.

I hope this helps.

[lwestatbus]

Cisco, I've had time to play more tournaments during this summer semester and have been doing a lot of thinking about what seems to be our common circumstances. For what they're worth, here are my thoughts:

1. The payoff structure in most tournaments (all except the satellites) makes a single top 1-3 finish immensely more valuable than multiple top 20 finishes, let alone top 100 finishes.

2. We've going to have to be big stacked to make the final 3 or to win.

3. There are two routes to being big stacked late: a) Get there early and use the big stack to bully, take risks, etc., to get bigger. b) Hang on late and get lucky at the end. (The Joseph Haschem route. I've actually won some small SnGs this way also.)

4. Barring those once in a lifetime runs of cards we aren't usually (as you point out) going to get to the big stack with cards alone. (We not only need cards but also opponents willing to play their cards against us.)

5. I see a LOT of really bad all in moves and CALLS early in the tournaments I play. That means there is dead money out there and we can't harvest it if we aren't in the hand.

If you look at a tournament as a single event there are certainly strategies for playing that make sense. BUT, if we look at a series of tournaments and at the accumulation of winnings as the measure of success then the big payoff from a top finish skews many other considerations. E.g.,

It can make sense to get big early with very risky plays. If the play doesn't work and you bust out you move on to the next tournament with the minimum time invested in the current one.

I made a post quite a while ago that compared a series of tournament entries to a series of hands in a ring game. Each tournament entry is just a bet that has more decisions than a ring game hand.

A player can play aggressively at tournaments the same way they can in one of those really wild six-players-to-the-flop with capped preflop betting ring games. You can spew a lot of chips on the bad hands and tournaments but you don't have to get lucky often to still be ahead.

All of this is making sense to me in terms of explaining other players' play (including your obnoxious big time pro). The real question is whether I want to modify my style.

[MitchellC]

Larry:

Excellent post!

Just one caveat...you can play aggressive without being crazy.

Just one suggestion...the more you play aggressive the better the player you will become since you'll put yourself in some really difficult situations, and have to make some very tough choices.

I've done a lot of work on my book "Tournament Poker: 101 Winning Moves" and I can tell you that being aggressive is what makes Hansen, Lindgren, etc rich!

Good luck! I think you are on your way to some big wins!

[Jauron]

I'll give him points for just slipping in the plug...

[MitchellC]

Hey, I left off the web url...

[HalfSugar]

Yawn. Bye bye.