Mid Stages MTT

unknown_username

I just wondered what approach people adopt during the mid stages of a Tournament?

Personally I feel I play a good Tournament game but sometimes when I am above average stack, I still play small/medium pair quite aggro.

Would I be best, especially with a decent stack size to just fold small pair and play nitty until I get a big hand or possibly min raise small hands to set mine on the flop and if it does not hit, fold?

This is one of my weaker area's MTT wise

hhyftrftdr

I know it's a cop out answer, but it really does depend. Depends on your stack, other stacks at table, table dynamic, your image, table position and the structure.

If I have a 'soft' table, then I'll be raising almost any hand in position, and almost any playable hand in any position. If I have a wild table and 33 utg, then I might just bin this pre as s/m gets more difficult/impossible the deeper/shallower we get, plus the chance of seeing a flop is slim anyway.

If we are average, we should avoid going to war with someone who can bust us, unless we have a premium hand or we know that villain is likely to overvalue a marginal hand. Equally, we want to be careful vs the awkward sized stacks (20bb give or take). If they are passive, then try and steal from them, but a good player with 20bb will know how to play that stack accordingly and can put us in some tricky spots. A good stack size to bully is someone with a very similar stack. 

As the tournament progresses, we should just be minraising. Thats minraising our stealing hands, and m/r our Aces and Kings. This balances our range. Don't worry about min raise folding, sometimes this can work in our favour, but we should know what we are doing with our hand before we even play it. 

Getting to know shoving/calling ranges is essential as a tournament progresses. 

I've had too many shandies tonight to dig deeper but I might come back to it tomorrow when the room isn't spinning.