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I have a really hard time chippng up in early stages of tourny’s. I understand that the beginnings of tourny’s we should be pretty tight. The thing is there arent very good hands coming ur way that often. Once the blinds get bigger then we’re forced to open our range with an even smaller stack and less FE otherwise we get swallowed by the blinds and antes. At the lower stakes when players are not paying attention to images how are we chipping up when completely card dead. 3bets dont work. I’ve tried opening my range early on while blinds are small and find myself going busto early on because I cant get away from top pr type hands or heavy draws….. this poker is tough!!!
I feel your pain as well as Im in the same boat with the smaller stakes. Its tough people limp and call shoves with hands like 58s for their stacks. You have to dodge a lot of bombs which I dont seem to do well. Last night 2k guarantee on PS, 1600 people. I busted out 136 when I shoved with A7 and another guy who had the same amount of chips called with A5 and I had been playing very tight because I was so card dead or never had a chance to open up becuase of the action in front. So for 3 hours of play I made $5 🙂 But hey thats poker. You cannot expect to have table image or fold equity take you but so far in small MMTs and 180s. I almost think playing a lot of small pots early to build a stack that could take some hits may be the way to go. I would like to see some of the pros play some of the micro/low buy in stuff to get their take on the best strategy.
TPE Management
March 17, 2010
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I think bigdog talks alot about not worrying about chipping up a lot early. You obviously shouldn’t be giving away +EV spots but getting to 8k at 50/100 isn’t really the goal. I think his strategy is to make sure he’s still around once antes get in and then open up his game.
I think this makes a lot of sense. If you play a lot of marginal stuff early you find yourself in tough spots with top pair weak kicker a lot where the only way someone is putting chips in the middle is when yo are crushed.
If you can survive to the ante level with ~20bbs then you can open up your game to double up and make a run.
It’s obviously an isolated incident but I late registered for the daily doubles on FTP last night. Started off with 3k at 50/100. Nothing much happened until I shoved for 20bbs around ante time…doubled up there and then made a deep run.
The point is early stages are not that important to determining your end result. It’s how you adjust once stacks get shallow.
I hear ya Ron, its just rather frustrating to see the 65/10 guy sitting with about 60+bbs and you look down to see AK with say around 12 or so and you shove and he calls with like Q9s. You get no image/position respect in low buy-in stuff. You have to win races. I dont find too many spots early on to play much post flop and I get into push/fold mode and either I doulble up or Im gone.
i think RFB is touching on a really important fact about mtts: your biggest edge actually comes when stacks get shallow.
i know everyone wants to be a really sick postflop player, and obv for really skilled postflop players the deeper you are the bigger of an edge you have.
but i think that in mtts, where avg stacks are generally ~20-30BB deep when all the money is on the line, you find your biggest edge against players who just make huge errors with shallow stacks.
play tight and really work on your play with 20-30BB.
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