mmfitter said:

Thanks ttwist – In the beg of lets say $10-$20  90 and 180 man sitngos how often do you cap the sb in multiway limped pots with speculative hands when its obvious an iso raise might not iso many players at all?  t1500 and t3000 starting stacks

well you wont find me flatiing raises to often in this spot but if the odds are right in a multiway pot and your in the 40+ bb range and your confident in your post flop play never hurts to fill the sb in hopes of smashing a flop just be prepared to have some big laydowns along the way as limping big seems to be the new trend

Killingbird said:

Best value tournaments in the $10-$55 range?

in all honesty anything on ap/ub but outside of that i find that any tourney that has sattys on the reg to them are always softer and off the top of my head the only tourneys on the web that have sattys to them at this level are th $26 on FTP. there are constantly those $6 token frenzys pooping off on ftp and that alone is a doorway for the micro grinders to work there way into a low to mid tourney so these and pretty partial as my 1st 5 digit online score was 1 of these.

FkCoolers said:

Kind of a generic/tough question to answer but here goes …

What percent of low to midstakes players do you think are actually aware of their own image at the table as well as our image at the table?

Because based on the 300 or so MTT's I've played it seems like the answer might be close to 2% and I feel like I level myself a ton trying to use a more complex approach than I should be using at the stakes I play.

Or… I guess I can phrase it this way.

At what buy-in should you begin playing a different game than by-the-book TAG poker i.e. only 3-betting your big hands, fast playing all flops you hit hard, and rarely bluffing due to many call stations.

i think if you take a typical tourney in this range of buyin of 1000 people 90% will be donk/fish,5-6% will be mediocre/breakeven and 4% will be thinking proffesionals. so if you understand levels of poker thinking you can probaly say 60% of the donk/fish have zero clue where they are in a hand and only consider there two cards we'll call them a 1 or very low level 2 the other 40% of the donk/ fish are just starting to consider what you may have but forced with a descion will only rely on the two cards they 

have they are a 2 in levels of poker thinking. the 5-6% that il call mediocre/breakeven tend to be strong level 2s and level 3 players they have a really good understanding of there hand and are just starting to put people on hands and have the notion every once in awhile of what there opponents think they have but really dont know how to use this to there advantage so i think its this level of player who starts to become image conscience. its the levels 4s and 5s that are the players who deliver the whole package and thats roughly 4% of the tourney and of that 4% 99% are level4s and strong level 4s that 1% of the 4% is Phil Ivey,Bigdogpckt5s,gboro780 only a handful in the world i would consder to be strong level 5s and these type of players are them.

on your other point about playing differently at different buyin levels i would say if you have a uncomfortable felling and have to change your game the buyin might be to big and you have travelled outside your comfort zone. when i play higher stake mtts i may squeez my opening rang early and my calling range aswell but i never shy away from what has made me successfull and i enjoy watching players change there play around me.

whoisjgalt said:

A low stakes MTT philosophical question.  Once antes are in play, what would be some general
guidelines for BvB play?  That is to say,
what should the SB open with, what should the BB call with and what should the
BB 3-bet with? I can imagine it is dependent on the reads you may have of your opponent,
but some general thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!

3 and 4 betting with premium cards is relatively straight forward and easy thing to do with (AA,KK,AK) but its the  Aq and QQ and down that player,table dynamics,stack sizes,position and obv your read on your opponent. But when it comes to what i like to call the funzone (cutoff,Button,sb,bb) you can throw all that out the window and then when you add antes to the mix its really game on in a tourney once those antes hit so expect to see  alot small pairs and kj and ace rags and really start to pay attention to the open frequency off players. so basically im opening all the hands i mentiond above and my 3 bet range is in these spots is very wide to say the least but to give you exacts is tough because then everything i said above comes into play and online you have but 1 minute to make a decision. but i dont nit it up in these spots

lespaulgman said:

Ttwist,

 

Question for you. I was wondering how you approach the middle phases of a tourney, specifically between around the end of the extended registration periods to the money (end of first hour till middle 2nd hour type time). I find that this period is where I am having the most trouble getting myself setup for deep runs.  I was wondering how you deal with the present but small antes (I know they are usually a large % of the SB, but relatively small compared to the average stack size overall).? Thanks!

my goal is to have 50 bbs when the bubble bursts or have 50k when the bb goes to 1k. getting to this point will not happen unless you open your game and take a few more open spots pre flop and i try not to slow play any pots so i dont miss any chances to grab chips i find at this stage of the tourney is when all those 20bb stacks and below really start pushing to double this is the area where you can grab the most chips you just want to have enough to be able to sustain a hit to your stack whent you snap that guy shoving 13bbs with kj while you hold like A8,A9 or KQ and get sucked out on. calling people in these spots when you have a mediocre hand but are ahead of the shovers range are key spots to grabbing chips from the 90 minute mark to money bubble.