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NLH MTTs - Tips, Advice, & Help Thread
As the old Shakespearian saying goes:
"Thou playeth tournaments for show and cash for dough"
That's not to say multi-table torunaments cannot be consistently proffitable; far from it. In fact, it's probably a bad way to start this thread, but I always finish what I start.
Back to the topic in hand.
This is a place for all your questions on playing No-Limt Holdem Multi-Table Tournaments (henceforth referred to as NLH MTTs, or simply MTTs) for anyone to ask or answer. Unsolicited tips, advice, and strategy is also welcomed, and I'll be trying to contribute at least one new post every day. I'll kick us off:
Comments
I hope to go into more advanced strategy/advice as the thread progresses, but at this stage I feel it appropriate to start with some of the basics. As such, the next couple of posts will probably be most beneficial to new players and those making the transition from cash to tournaments.
What is an MTT?
When entering an MTT, you effectively buy a set number of chips with your entry fee. You are eliminated from the tournament after losing all of these chips. The prize pool is distributed to a set number of players (usually the top 10% or so), and, with very few exceptions, the better our finishing position, the more winnings we receive.
The significant difference between an MTT and the more traditional cash game is that the blind levels increase at regular intervals. The reason for this is to encourage action in order to bring the tournament to an end in a reasonable time period; usually a few hours. As such, the ratio of your chip stack to the blind level is constantly changing, and this is something we always need to be aware of when playing MTTs.
At the beginning of an MTT, we usually start quite deep-stacked; in a regular Sky MTT, we begin with 100 big blinds. There are two prevailing schools of thought as to how we should play in the early stages of MTTs:
Some advocate playing lots of pots with as many weaker players as possible, as with the low blinds and deep stacks, this is where our expected edge is at it's greatest ebb.
Others suggest that you cannot win a tournament in the early stages, and winning the small pots on offer at this stage probably isn't going to benefit you too much.
Both options have their merits, and I advocate a strategy which fall somewhere in between. Ultimately our aim is to get as far into this tournament as we possibly can, so by tightening up in the early stages and playing fewer hands we improve our chances of progressing to the middle stages of the tournament, where pots will be larger and worth fighting for. That isn't to say we should play no hands during the early stages, only that our objective at this stage should not be to steal the blinds for the sake of a 1% increase in our stack. We should be entering pots with hands that can flop big so that when we hit, we are happy to get our stack in and double up.
Ultimately though, the way we play the early stages should be dictated by what we are most comfortable with and whether we are playing poker for fun or for sport.
What's that I hear you ask? When do the early stages become the middle stages? Good question.
In truth, the terms early/middle/late stages are slightly misleading. They imply a specific time period during the life of a torunament. I believe it is better to think about these stages much more subjectively, in terms of our own tournament life. When our stack, or the effective stack, is 100bb, we are in the early stages of our own tournament life. It's difficult to subscribe an arbitrary number of big blinds to identify when we are in the middle stages of our tournament life, but it's probably when our stack, or the effective stack, is around the 40-30bb mark.
In the middle stages, the effective stacks aren't large enough to make playing speculative hands (such as low suited connectors) profitable as, for one thing, we are rarely getting the correct odds to call for our draws, and for another, the potential reward for hitting a hand and getting paid is now incomsumerate with the risk of losing a few big blinds chasing a draw.
Let's say we have 30bb and lose a mere 5bb chasing a missed draw. We would now have 25bb and even fewer options. If we get a double up in the next hand, our stack would increase to 50bb rather than the 60bb we could have had we not lost those 5bb the hand before. At these middle stages, where entire stacks are likely to end up in the middle by the river, chip conservation is key.
The most effective way to accrue chips is to steal the blinds. If we have 30bb and the action folds to us on the button, if we make a raise and both the small and big blind fold, we automatically increase our stack by 5%. If either of the blinds call and we take the pot down on the flop with a c-bet, our stack likely increases by around 8%. That's not peanuts.
The ABC approach to stealing blinds is to wait for a situation in which you are in late position and the action folds round to you and you make a small raise (I will oultine bet sizing at different stages in a later post), hoping everyone folds. How often we do this depends on the type of players waiting behind us. If they are especially passive, we can almost raise with any two. If they like to see flops, it might be an idea to fold complete rags like 95o. If they have been especially aggressive, we might want to raise even fewer hands.
Table Image
Table image (TI) is probably more important than you may realise. Be that our perceived image, or the image our table mates are projecting. It's something that's less prominent at the start, when we are all playing pretty deep poker and getting a feel for the table/tournament.
TI becomes more of a factor as we progress through the tournament. When the stacks get shallower, and we are less likely to get to the river with a load of chips behind us, TI can dictate if we go with our hand or not, and ultimately if we exit an MTT or chip up.
Lets have a look at a fake example. We've been at our table for an hour, nothing too untoward has happened but we've clocked Player A as a bit loose; he's rocked up at showdown with nothing, he's shown a couple of bluffs, he likes to blow people off their hands. We pick up 1010 and raise from our relative short stack. We get a call from Player A and see a 7 high flop. Player A check raises us and wants to play for stacks....with what we've seen previously, it would be foolish to pass 1010 here. So of course we snap off and.....oh wait, he's got QQ, nh gg.
Player A was very aware of his table image, and used it to his advantage.
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How do you think our opponents perceive us? If we've been sitting tight for a while, not getting out of line, passing most hands, then that can give us the leeway to start mixing it up a bit. Our bluffs might be given more credit, than if we'd played every hand for the last 2 hours. Conversely, if we are always in pots, raising most hands, 3 and 4betting occasionally.....we will come across as quite aggro. This means we will get less credit for a strong hand if we open the clip, but can take people to value town when we have the goods.
Ultimately, however we play the game, we should bear in mind how we think we look from other people's perspective, and keep an eye on our opponents tendencies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcpO75jt-RE
I've fished this Neil Channing tip out from the Sky Poker vaults. The first part of his tip about bluffing after losing a big hand is something I need to remind myself every now and again.
For the purpose of this post, I should clarify that I consider myself in the mid-late stages of a tournament when my stack, or the effective stack, is 20bb or less. With 20bb we have much fewer options available to us than with 40bb. With effective stacks lower than 20bb we are very very rarely getting correct odds to call a preflop raise to set-mine, for example. One rare exception might be if we are in the Big Blind position with a small pocket pair, the player UTG min raises and the rest of the table calls, giving us 13-1 to call closing the action.
For the most part though, calling preflop is no longer a viable option with a stack of 20bb or less. At this stage if there is a preflop raise before the action gets to us, we should only really be folding or shoving all-in. This stage of the tournament can be very profitable, especially if there are one or two aggressive players acting in front of us. Against these players, we can shove quite a large range profitably. If a serial raiser opens from the button and we shove 20bb from the big blind, assuming the raiser opens for 2bb and folds to the jam, we can increase our stack by 12.5% and all without seeing a flop. On the occasions when we are called, we are often only a 40% underdog to win the hand. There will be times when we get 20bb in dominated preflop, but crucially we are never getting it in stone-dead. It's also worth remembering that when we have an Ace in our hand, preflop we are never worse than a 30% underdog (unless our opponent has AA).
We should still be trying to steal the blinds when we can, but it is important to be aware of players with 20bb or less who are likely to shove all-in against our pre-flop open. Against these players we should reduce our opening range.
With a stack of 10bb or less we don't have to wait for a preflop raise in front of us; we can freely open jam. When moving all-in prelop with 10bb without much of a hand, it is often best to target players with middling stacks, e.g. 20-30bb. These players have the most to lose if they call; if they lose 10bb, all of a sudden they have moved from a position of relative comfort to being short-stacked. Where possible we should avoid targetting the short stacks as they, like us, need a double-up, and the big stacks of />40bb, who can afford to lose 10bb and remain relatively comfortable.
In an MTT, the bubble is the point at which the next player eliminated will be the last not to cash, i.e., if an MTT pays the top 10 players, when the tournament has 11 players remaining, we are 'on the bubble'.
As the bubble approaches, the players around us are likely to do one of two things:
1. They are likely to tighten up to make the money.
2. They are likely to loosen up and play aggressively preflop to accrue chips.
There is a truism in poker that goes something like "work out what the other players at the table are doing, then do the opposite", and I believe that this is especially apt around the bubble.
If the players around us are tightening up around the bubble, we should absolutely use this as an oppurtunity to loosen up to acquire chips; this is kind of taken as read. However if the players around us are playing aggressively, we can exploit this by using the bubble to move into the money without doing much. If two players are constantly trying to out-aggro each other, our equity increases substantially by just folding and allowing them to have their standoff.
Often the way to play the bubble will be dictated by our stack size. If we are the big stack at the table, we may find it easy to run over the medium stacks waiting for the shorties to bust. If we can hoover up as many chips as possible here, we put ourselves in a great position going into the final table. If we are a short stack on a table full of big stacks who are tryiny to avoid each other while targetting us, it's probably better to make a stand sooner rather than later. Ultimately, it is imperitave to remember that when playing the bubble, as with all poker, we shoudl always make adjustments to best combat the strategy of our opponents.
I welcome comments on all my posts. Please completely pull them apart and I'll try to defend them.
As a general rule of thumb, I think if you have AK and 20bb or less, you are actively looking to get all these chips in pre.
If you have 30-40bb, whilst you might not go broke or seek to GII pre, you are aware that this could be an exit hand/double up if things get heavy.
50bb or more gives you plenty of wiggle room and the opportunity to play down the streets with AK if needs be.
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There are of course no set rules as to how to play AK. I think people play it a bit more conservatively in the early couple of levels. I know I often don't 3bet out of the blinds with it early doors, it's very disguised if you flop well, but people don't wanna flip/bust for 200bb in the first level understandably.
I'd say the longer a tournament goes on, the bigger AK gets; can happily fold it to a 3bet/cold 4bet in the first level, but fast forward 10 levels and if you have AK and are 3bet/cold 4 bet then happy days and off to war we go.
I've been offline for a couple of days so missed this thread's first question! I feel like I've missed the birth of my first child. Thankfully Sky's community is such that hhyftrftdr was there to help with the delivery. I suppose I should start handing out cigars now...
Best move on before I exhaust a perfectly good metaphor...
Bet sizing was one of the things I struggled with when first picking up the game, but once learned, sizing a bet is like riding a bike; a pain in the bum. Waheeey!
There are a few schools of thought on how to size our opening raises preflop, but I tend to favour the following mantra:
Make your opening raise size exactly the same for every hand you play to avoid giving away information relating to your hand strength.
In practice what this means is that at the start of each blind level, we pick a raise size and stick to it for the duration of that level. The dominant factor in this decision is the size of the average or effective stack. In the opening levels of a tournament, when stacks are usually 40-100bb, a 3x big blind open preflop is fine. For every limper into the pot, we can add an extra big blind on top of that standard raise size. For example, if in the first hand of an MTT everyone has 100b and there are two limpers in front of us, if we choose to raise, our raise should be 5 (3+1+1) big blinds.
As stacks get shallower, we can afford to drop our raise size a tad; 2.5x the big blind is enough once the average stack size is less than 40bb. There are a few reasons to do this; firstly, as I outlined in a previous post, when stacks are less than 40bb players should usually be calling less preflop and either folding or 3betting. If players are folding more, the raise size needed to thin out the field preflop can be reduced so that we are risking less chips when we are 3bet and have to release our hand. Raising less preflop also has the effect of reducing the pot size when we are called, allowing for more play down the streets. When the average or effective stack is 20bb or less, we can afford to reduce our opening raise even further, to 2.2x the big blind.
It should be noted that these are very general rules for preflop bet sizing. Once you have played enough tournaments, you will no longer need these guidelines; you will just know when the right time to reduce your opening raise is.
sometimes i question weather i should just ship my own stack rather than raising, they might be loose in most stages but in the late stages they seem to be very worried about loosing.
knowing that they still limp with a lot of hands but are tight when they MTT life is at risk.
Q if i'm going to shove my whole chipstack in an attempt to steal these limped chips how many more blinds should my chipstack be in compaison to those of the limpers and who are in the blinds?
Q also what sort of hands would be recommended in attempting to steal these limpers chips?
As an aside, I wouldn't start going crazy just because of a few limpers. Note who they are, and look to punish them in an aggressive but controlled manner. Look to use position rather than your cards.....which brings me nicely onto question 2.
In a way, if you're shoving all in over limpers you're hand doesn't matter too much. Obviously something that works, and just bin your garbage, but you're not expecting/hoping to see a runout so your hand strength goes out the window somewhat. I'd be wary of shoving hands that can be dominated if someone wakes up with something good behind us though.
I would add that I wouldn't be too keen on open shoving anything over, say, 16bb, especially if there are players waiting behind. Having limpers at the late stages is not an altogether bad situation for us, and is something we need to get used to in low stakes MTTs. I would concentrate on isolating the limpers with hands that are likely to be dominating their limp/calling range. Most of the time you can take the pot down with a cbet on the flop, especially if they fear losing their tournament life to the extent you describe.
As with our bet sizing before the flop, I tend to think it's better (most of the time) not to alter our postflop bet sizing based on the strength of our own hand. Rather, board texture, effective stack size, and the number of players in the hand should be the key factors to consider when sizing our postflop bets.
As a general rule of thumb, the wetter the board, the larger the effective stack, and the lower the number of players in the hand, the more we should bet. On very dry flops, even when stacks are relatively large, against one or two opponents, a 1/2 pot cbet is usually enough. If there are more than two or three opponents in the hand with us, we might even reduce our cbet a little.
On more connected flops, say, a flop with two cards of the same suit (and hence one that could have given our oppenent a flush draw), we should increase our cbet to around 2/3 of the pot to charge a higher price for the draw. On very wet flops we can go as high as 3/5 or even 3/4 of the pot. Again, we can reduce this slightly with more players in the hand.
As the effective stack gets shallower, for reasons outlined in my post on preflop bet sizing, we can afford to reduce the size of our bets and still expect to get the job done. When the effective stack is under 40bb, even on wet boards, a 1/2 pot cbet is enough against one player. When the effective stack is under 20bb, even a 1/3 pot cbet is often enough against some players.
If we continue to bet on the turn, there are a couple of considerations we need to take into account:
Will a bet commit us to the pot?
How much do we need to bet to be able to get stacks in on the river?
As the stack-to-pot ratio has decreased, turn bets tend to be smaller than flop bets in terms of a % of the pot. A good tip to remember is that even if our opponent has a big combo draw on the turn, we don't actually need to bet too much to give him incorrect odds to draw; 1/2 pot or so.
By the river either the draws have got there or they haven't, so giving our opponent a bad price to pay to draw is no longer a consideration. As such, the river usually sees the largsts fluctations in terms of bet sizing. Betting small, say 1/3 of the pot or less, has the advantage of either getting missed draws to fold, or giving marginal hands decent odds to call. As a general rule, the bigger we bet the river, the narrower our opponent's calling range can be. I'll harp back to a point I've made a few times in this thread, and that is to not let the strength of your hand determine the size of your river bet. If you bet similar amounts on the river when betting for value and when bluffing, you will be much more difficult to play against.
I think the analyst might have been Ellie Biessek. I considered writing about that school of thought but decided not to as I can't really see why anyone would want to play inflated pots oop. I've never tried this, but I suspect raising more when in position may actually be a decent strategy.
W
Apologies for neglecting this thread. I have been busy with filmy stuff, but it all seems to be winding down a bit now. If anyone cares for this sort of thing, here is a film we made for BFI Future Film that was supposed to premiere at the Prince Charles Cinema this month: http://vimeo.com/willderitter/growingpains
Anyways, I'll be dipping in and out of this thread when I can (again), so any MTT questions are welcome.
If you suspect players in low buy-in MTTs are calling wider than is the norm, then tightening up while making your bets slightly larger than usual probably isn't a bad strategy, and of course every situation we encounter is player dependent. It has been a while since I wrote this stuff but I suspect I felt that player profiling was a topic of general poker discussion and perhaps slightly beyond the scope of this thread.
I would add that even in low buy-in MTTs, the betsizing I have advocated is sufficient to charge our opponents the wrong price to draw and allows us to play a small-ball style where we can potentially invest less of our stack when bluffing. Of course, if you suspect the average player in a low buy-in MTT calls too much then perhaps there is less need to bluff, which makes your strategy of making larger bets even more lucrative.
W