Tuesday, May 31, 2005

MTT Thoughts

Been playing a lot of Poker lately so I figured I would give you some good, juicy, whathaveIlearned poker content. Several posts in the making. First post though, while still high off my MTT wins will be what I call the Sir Strategy.
How do I place in two MTTs in a row? Unfreakingbeleivable you say? What is your secret? I have no idea. Ha! I bet you expected some good poker content. You are sadly mistaken. However I will clue you in on a few things that I believe have helped.

Keeping Pace
In playing a few of these I think that I have found there to be a minimal pace you need to keep up to. If you do not you will be constantly worrying about the blinds. So when I initially start a game I play very loose (even for me) and weak. I basically am looking for my KJ to connect and make something nice without getting killed by KQ. All I am trying to do here is get ahead. As far ahead as I can while the blinds are small. If I hit the second break and have less than 2K I am in trouble. I will have to push at some point with cards I would normally not want to push with. I will not be able to see flops with moderate cards. Once I get over 2K in the first break I can slow down a little. I still want to see some flops, but I can stick to better starting cards. So keeping pace is important. This is where some of the luck comes in. You have to get some cards and have some flops hit early to survive. The guidelines I have set for myself are:


  • 2K before first break

  • 10K before second break

  • 30K+ before third break



If I am keeping up with this I do not pay much attention to avg stacks and what the leader has. It all evens out in the end.

Experience
Play a lot of these. Really. If you like MTTs. I personally like two things about them: A lot of Poker for a little money, and a huge chance to score if you get lucky. In playing a lot more of these lately I am getting used to the concepts involved. I am getting a better feel for what a stack means at each part of a tourney. When to steal. How to do different things. You can find MTTs for free (1500 freerolls good), or cheap ones like 5/1, 15/1 and 20/2 MTTs that run every night on Party and various other sites.

Change it Up
If you play all tight all the time your not going to make it in an MTT. I do not care how dumb the fish are on Party, you are going to be lucky to take the blinds. I like to call my looser, more aggressive play Joos style after Jooseus. He and the Chief and the woman called Poison have been my regular partners in these freerolls. Anyhow Joos is somewhat of a gambooler according to ME and PT. However he does well with it because he knows when to back off. So every once in a while Joos it up!!

Especially change it up and read the table when you are into the high blinds portion of the game. Here is an example. I was at a table where everyone let me min-raise and take the blinds every time. Nobody stopped me. So I kept doing it over, and over, and over. If they re-raised me I would calm down for a few rounds, and then start up again. The table was that passive. I was able to get a huge amount of chips and put the table on tilt this way. It was much fun. A lot of tables will absolutely not let you do this. Know your opponents. Last night I had a guy who called every steal attempt I made. No matter what. He was a lucky fricker. So I had to back off and avoid the steals.

Final Table
So far not a lot of experience here. In the one tourney I was at the final table in I learned a couple of things. I however am not sure how to deal with them. The first thing is you can have 280,000 in chips and be short stacked. Ha! That was a major shocker the first time. Just get used to the chip sizes you have yet to see, and think in terms of big bets instead of dollars.

The other thing I have to consider with my final table showing is how much do I care about a spot. Once you get towards the end the value of 7th vs 8th or 4th vs 5th is much larger than lets say 79th vs 80th. You are talking significant amounts of money. In my last showing I ended up pushing with a good hand and losing. It happens. I was small stacked. However it might have been better to wait out the 50K stack. I would then have made almost a third more money. I have not decided if this is a good idea or not. Just pondering.

So that is all I have. It will probably mislead you. However take from it whatever morsels you can. Enjoy yourself too.

1 Comments:

Blogger Heafy said...

It is always hard to know when to push and when to back off at the final table. If you win this pot you could be set up for a shot at first, if you loose you are out in 7th. What to do, what to do?

7:08 PM

 

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