STT or MTT

[Kiko]

I have usually been playing MTT's but most time found myself coming short and missing out on the money by a couple of places. So i decided to try STT today and just won! Woo Hoo! Ok - it was only $5 buy in and i won $25 but still. Do you guys find these more successful or have i just been lucky?

While im on the MTT part, i have another question about it. I said i find it hard to finish in the money and always seem to find short. Do you guys have any tips on finishing the job and winning money? I mean, quite a few times with 8 left ive been chip leader but then throw it all away. My problem i think is i play silly hands i wouldnt normally. Maybe theres more to it?

[Doc]

Kiko.

My thoughts. Alien is well worth listening to on these matters too.

Most tournaments (single or multi-table) have similar characteristics in some respects.

I'd define 4 phases:

1) Avoid the numpties. Lots of all-ins and general loose play. During this time you don't in general want to get involved unless you have a great hand (or great potential) AND position. Good players will play very few hands IMO. Typically in STT this lasts for two or three rounds of the table.
2) Early/middle phase with many of the lunatics gone - although there will be some with big stacks. You now need to build your stack so you have to loosen up a bit and look to steal some blinds. Others may be doing the same, so be careful. Watch out for any remaining numpties who will still be playing fast and loose. This probably lasts till about 6 players are left in an STT.
3) 'Bubble' - at this stage people are close to money and often the table tightens. This is a good chance to get aggressive, especially if you have a big stack. If you do, you can really bully the table and build your stack quite large. People are afraid of going out and don't want to take risks. Be careful though of very short stacks who will have to take risks. Pick on the middle stacks here. This will last pretty much till you're at the money stage - i.e. last 3
4) End-game. You have to loosen up a lot now as so few are in and the blinds will be so big. Your chances of winning are largely determined by luck, stack size and skill in that order. You can't wait for the nuts - you have to get out there and gamble.

If you're losing from chip leader position then maybe you are being too loose. The other thing is not to be timid. In a tournament you have to take stands, you can't wait around. Say you raise with pocket kings and get re-raised. An ace comes on the flop and you are first to act. Of course the other guy could have an ace or aces, but you still want to bet. If you check-call you've shown weakness and he'll take you on again. If you check rasie you may be risking extra chips, and if you check-fold you may be mucking the best hand. Use your stack and if someone takes you on - go for it, unless you have very strong reason to fear you are beaten. The other thing to remember is that as numbers drop, high cards become more important. You need be less worried about middle straights and flushes. You may lose out occasionally, but you'll win more often than not.

[Kiko]

Top stuff. I have taking most on board - agree with your thinking and everything. I gotta say, we have some top notch knowledgable Poker players on here!!

[GETT1NLOTS]

Kiko,

I agree with most of what Doctor says except for his comments in 1). Like with my disagreement with Alien last night I think this approach fits certain tournements and doesn't suit others.

For example. If you're playing a freeroll with a low prize on offer everyone will be raising and re raising. Bets (pre flop especially) will not be respected as it has cost the entrants nothing to play and they will be of a mind to gamble and build thier stack or get out quick. Who wants to play for 6 hours in a freeroll (playing tight) to earn nothing or $2? Not me. In tournements like this I try and triple my stack pretty quick and I'm quite loose. Once I achieve that I settle down and play pretty much as Doctor has described in the phases. I suppose I have an extra phase if you like?

When I pay $10 or more to enter a tournement I play exactly as Doctor has suggested.

[aliensyndm]

Yip there's some good poker players and gett1nlots Sorry couldn't resist.
Right anyway to answer the question. Have a read of what I said about multi tournies in the other thread also.
It is of course much easier to consistently place in the single table tournaments. I spent quite a long time just playing 10 seater STT and it's no bad thing to do. The more things you master at poker the better.

I'd agree with what Doc has already written. I'll try and explain with a few examples exactly the kinda of thing he is on about and perhaps add a few things of my own.

OK phase 1 as he calls it. As he says you don't need to get involved unless you got the bollox. Say for instance it's the start of a tournie, you start with 1000 chips and the blinds are 10/20. Someone raises to 100 , some person raises to 300 and then someone goes all in. You have AK suited. Do you call ?
Of course not. Why throw your whole stack in on a situation you are likely to be either evens - ie opponents also playing AK, or slight underdog if they are playing pocket pairs. Yes someone could be playing AQ but with blinds at 20 it's not worth the risk. Often in these situations people are unable to fold their hands and often end up in a 3 way or more all in pre-flop. "Pretty" hands like AQ, they raise and then can't throw them away.
With blinds at 10/20 you just pass this kinda thing up.
To take an extreme example - someone goes all in and three people call the all in. You have AA. Do you call ? no. If it were a cash game you would call. But not in a tournament with blinds at that level. There is no need to put all your chips in there. You can wait and put them in when you are much bigger favourite.

Still not convinced ? OK Lets say you have AA...for argument sake we will say the four other people hold KK, QQ, JJ, TT
What's your chances of winning pre flop ? Well it depends on the suits a little etc but it's around 44% ! It's actually more likely that one of the other people will win than you. Not any one of them specifically, but more likely someone will. You are odds on to be knocked out the tournament !
OK if you win it's a nice chip stack yes. Does it gurantee you will in the tournament no ? Far better to wait for a chance when you can get your chips in when you are pretty sure you are a favourite, not the underdog.

Now if it were cash - you could of course call as you'd be getting 4-1 for your money where you have a 44% chance of winning. Clearly long term that will make a profit. It's a huge positive expectation. There's no winning the tournament or anything to consider, it's just about cash. Hence the play there is of course different.


Once you avoid any of this madness you wanna go about building your stack up. As a general rule the larger the blinds become the looser you have to play. You have to do more blind stealing ie raising pre flop and getting everyone to fold without seeinga flop. Try and identify the very tight players - if one of them raises watch out. A good tight player also knows this and can often try and take advantage of his "tight image" and raise with shite and get away with it.
You don't need to go mental, the blinds increase gradually but make sure you try and keep up with them. Remember if you don't have 10 times the big blinds you are short stacked and need to try to double up.



OK as hte money approaches as doc says try and use a large stack to your advantage by picking on people "scared" to get knocked out.
It's important here you understand the value though.
eg

Say the blind levels are 300/600
You are big blind for 600

The short stack raises all in - he has 700 chips.
Everyone folds and it's just you left. You have the cards 47 off suit.
Garbage hand yes but you of course call. It's only costing you 100 chips to call. Forget the blind - that's in the pot, it isn't yours anymore. Look at the pot purely as if you have put no money in it and is it a worthwhile situation to call.
Ok so it costs 100 to call. Now for this 100 you can win the big blinds (600), the small blind(300) and his raise(700). That's 1600 chips for only 100 !!
Amazing odds ! It doesn't matter what cards you have or what cards he has, it's a call. Say the guy has AA the best he could have, you have 47 off - the AA is about 85% favourite to your 15% but you are getting 16-1 pot odds as it's 100 chips to win 1600 so your play actually has a positive expectation.

Do the maths. You make the play 100 times.
You lose 85% of the time. 85 x 100 = 8500 chips.
You win 15% of the time. 15 x 1600 = 24 000 chips.

That is an overall gain of 15500 chips, every time you make that play.

Now if instead you folded 100 times, you would save yourself 100 x 100 = 10000 chips. 15500 -10000 = 5500. You are 5500 chips better off long term by calling the 100 than folding.
This is all assuming the guy has a hand like AA. The same scenario where the person is say playing AK and your expectation is then MUCH bigger.

Obviously in tournament play you don't whip out the calculator and figure this out every time something like it happens. But as long as you understand the principle you can work out when it's worth calling. You of course need to knock these short stacks out. If it's only costing 100 to have a chance of taking someone out....you go for it.


Ok once you is in the bucks, you have to play loose tastic. Anything which even resembles a hand is a raise once the blinds are big.
As already said stack size and luck are a big factor here.


Hands that you might call with say like 78 suited are not as much use anymore. There isn't going to be 6 other callers and you see a flop and decided whether you can make a straight or see if you've flopped a playable hand etc. You're gonna be heads up, or sometimes three way against somone and you look at the hand on it's merit that way.
Take a hand like K8 off. That's a hand when blinds or small or in a cash game I would never call with. But when you're down to the last two or three in a tournie that's a decent hand. When there's only 3 people in there's a decent chance K8 is the best hand out. The fewer people there are, the more the hand values increase.

When you get down to heads up and the blinds are at their maximum, say 500/1000 and the starting stacks were 1000 then it's almost not a bad idea just raising all in no matter what your cards are. If the guy folds then you pick up the blinds, great. If he calls then if you are ahead great, if behind you can still win. Heads up the 50/50 hand is J7 I think. If you have J7 there's a 50% chance your opponent is beating you. If you have better, you are likely to be in front. As already said luck plays a large part here but whatever you do, make sure you are very aggressive.
I've won many tournaments from heads up just through aggression....a person would remember my tight play early on and fold fold fold....finally when they cotton on Im raising with shite and call me, I might actually have a decent hand and beat them. I might actually have a shite hand and beat them anyway. But I've already won enough chips from blinds to justify any % disadvanatage I have against them once called.
It's not nice raising all in with shite but constantly folding aint gonna win you the tournie. Many people can get really moany when they've been folding your raises and then they finally call you with AK thinking they got you sussed. Your J9 has still got over a 1 in 3 chance of beating the AK !!
And when it does, boy do they moan.

[aliensyndm]

Gett1n I am with you in that I don't consider it worthwhile to spend 6 hours wading through X hundred/thousand people where a final table appearance might only return $15 or whatever. Any lesser places are like miniscule.
Hence I could understand why you would wanna go hell for leather and try and build a big stack early. As I have already said all in every hand is a positive expectation in these tournaments. I'm not disagreeing with you there. If you think I am it's probably cos I thought you were meaning say the buy in to the multi is $50, I'm not gonna go hell for leather for a triple through you kow ?

It's cos of all this I think it's a good idea to try and get onto actual cash games/tournies no matter how small asap.

[GETT1NLOTS]

Alien / Doc you wouldn't play a really low stakes MTT tourney in the way you suggested in phase one surely?

Fold AK suited to an 'all in' when playing early on in a freeroll or <$10 tounement? I would never fold that.

I might if the stakes were higher and the prizes good as I would respect an 'all in' on the back of another strong raise pre flop. But never early on in a low stakes MTT or freeroll.

I think it's important to distinguish.

[GETT1NLOTS]

Alien just seen your post. (Seems they crossed and we're agreeing after all).

[Kiko]

Dont know if any of you's are interested in this but me and my mate have been doing it the past 2 hours. We have both entered a $5 buy in STT with 10 people, so both of us are playing, and speaking on msn telling each other which hands we have, and both either folding or whatever. We've done this 3 times and ended up in the money every single time. We are something like $70 each up. Good idea if anyone is interested.

[Kiko]

Obviously it can work the other way and go against you if you's arent getting the hands etc but it has worked pretty well so far.

[aliensyndm]

It is collusion and technically cheating that you know. If Im in a tournie my mate is in, I'll talk to him if we get involved in the same hand or whatever. But not like try and arrange to get in the cash. Even that is still passive collusion. Be careful you dont end up playing too much on the same table as the same people, on paper that does look suspicious etc.
Don't get to used to it, you wanna be able to win at poker without having to collude with people.

[Kiko]

I know what your saying Alien - was just sharing how successful its been. We've stopped for now as i am down to the last table of a Coral freeroll so am trying to concentrate on that for now. Out of 800...Top 2 go through to some sort of finals.

[Doc]

Gettin

I will of course adjust my strategy depending on the type of play I observe. However, if play is as loose as Alien is describing, then there is no point whatsoever in calling 3 or 4 all-ins with a hand like AK, suited or not. You are an underdog against any individual pair, and against 3 or more opponents you are far more likely to exit the tournament than stay in. I would however call an all-in with Aces, barring maybe something incredible like 6 all-ins in front of me or something like that.

Generally speaking I think the value of the by-in is immaterial - it is just that at the lower buy-ins the numpty phase might last longer. Once these guys have blown themselves out, then play continues more or less as normal - expcept that you have more weak players still involved maybe - so good poker play will be rewarded even more.

Kiko - what you are doing is cheating plain and simple. :down
Keep at it and you will get caught. A lot of the sites have fairly sophisticated monitoring techniques and if you examing the T&C of many sites you are consenting for them to check other programs and processes running. If they see an IM dialogue taking place to the same IP as logged on to the game server they will (rightly) be suspicious.

[Kiko]

Yeah - decided it was too dangerous game to play. Maybe the odd time here and there but not as frequent as we done.

Went out of the tournament in 6th

Anyone fancy organsing a little STT this week? Im free Monday to Wednesday anytime if anyone fancies it?

[Doc]

Yeah I'll organise another. Will post something tomorrow