need help with tourney play

bludreid11

 can anyone help with this
at the early stages i seem to play ok, using position, betting out , even 3 betting a weaker player etc
but as the game continues i see that the chip leaders are way ahead of me.
and if im below the average stack, i feel that i must make a move.
waiting for premium hands is not really an option and it seems that just raising the button to steal doesnt
really increase your stack by much, and as the blinds get higher the more i need to get involved.
should i get busier earlier with less than premium hands?? your best thoughts please

GaryQQQ

Don't worry too much about the average stack and the biggest stack. There are a lot of bingo players in every tournament, while many of them will bust out early the ones who get lucky are often those early to mid tournament chip leaders. They almost never go on to win, the strong players and eventual winners are usually roughly in the middle of the field until the closing stages.

If your stack is in the 25 to 40 big blind range at any stage you still have plenty of chips to work with, you can still enter pots with medium strength hole cards. Between say 15-25BB you need to tighten up your range and look for stronger hole cards because you can no longer afford to raise (or call) too often only to fold later in the hand. 15BB and under you're in trouble, you need to loosen up again now and play aggresively before you lose all fold equity. A 13-20BB stack is good for 3-bet shoves over frequent openers. From 12BB and below almost any bet you make should be an all-in, preferably as the first to enter the pot, at this stage carefully picking your position and opponents to shove on is more important than hand strength.

DOHHHHHHH

Garys advice is sound.

If I were to go back 3 years, I would spend time studying how to play a 10-20xbb stack.

Often if you have a big stack, alot of other players at your table are also playing between 10-20xbbs.....

So it works both ways, learning how to play a short stack, will help you figure out how to play against a short stack also.

But as always with tournaments, don't make a judgement about how you are playing based only on your results. You can play perfectly and still not cash in 20+ MTT's in a row. 

Codex

yup, agree with above

completly ignore chip lead and average stack


what you need to look at is how many BB you have and how many you are about to have and understand how to play these stack sizes

delaney09

In Response to need help with tourney play:

 can anyone help with this at the early stages i seem to play ok, using position, betting out , even 3 betting a weaker player etc but as the game continues i see that the chip leaders are way ahead of me. and if im below the average stack, i feel that i must make a move.waiting for premium hands is not really an option and it seems that just raising the button to steal doesn't really increase your stack by much, and as the blinds get higher the more i need to get involved. should i get busier earlier with less than premium hands?? your best thoughts please
Posted by bludreid11

I would not worry where abouts the chip leaders are in comparison to your chip stack as there are always going to be players with a lot more chips compared to you unless obviously you are sat first, this is what affects quite a few players when they see where they are compared to the chip leaders and then start to play some what erratic to close the margin between them and the leaders, then find themselves busting for silly reasons.

average stack is always between 40/50bbs+ so you may have a 25bb stack and below average but this isn't a problem 25bb is more then enough to play with in a anteless tournament and no need to make moves just keep playing your game finding the right spots as you have to remember there is not much point in making moves to steal the blinds as you are only going to increase your stack by 1.5bbs not exactly much of a change.

I don't think its necessary to get busy early with less than premium hands obviously you can play more hands as it is not going to damage your stack much at 10/20-25/50 so playing hands like 78s and other suited connectors are the types of hands i like to play early on a long with pocket pairs but as soon as blinds go to 50/100+ my range differs, obviously it helps to get that early double or even treble your stack as it gives you the option to bully your table play a lot wider range of hands and take control but it is by no means pivotal that you must get busy early.

Best thing to do is to learn how to play a 10-15bb stack if you can master this then this puts you at a good advantage when you do get to this sort of stack, most when they have this stack will have in their heads any ace i get im shoving which can work but in my opinion is not the way to play the short stack as if you are just shoving it in with hands like A2 for the simple fact they have just 10bigs, these aren't exactly hands that are ever going to be that far ahead of others most times when you do get a call you are either going to be totally dominated or flipping at 51/49 work out the ranges to play at a 10-15bb stack and you should be fine when you get to this stage

bludreid11

  thaks to all who posted.
 
  having read your posts once, im going to read them again and again.
  i think the best advice was about the bb stack and how to play with that amount, so thanks again
  to you all