Any advice please!

chickenh12

I'm not the most experienced player on this site, so it's a very open question because as the heading suggests I'm only after a little advice from you all.

Playing a deepstack tournament, is there a specific style you should adopt since you have more chips and blind levels increase slowly? Or should you just play your own individual game and treat this as anyother regular texas hold'em poker tournament?

offshoot

i dont play many tournaments so am in no way an expert but i imagine that each individual hand goes down in value the deeper the stacks are. While it may be fine and correct to stack off with something like AA on most flops in a normal tournament, when you have a deeper stack theres gonna be a lot of flops where its probably not a good idea as people wont be getting their whole stack in with just one pair. So you need to pot control a lot more.

A deeper stack also gives you room to play a lot more speculative hands, see more flops with suited connectors and small pairs which can hit flops big and hopefully get paid off by people overvalueing overpairs and top pair type hands.

BigBluster

In Response to Any advice please!:

I'm not the most experienced player on this site, so it's a very open question because as the heading suggests I'm only after a little advice from you all. Playing a deepstack tournament, is there a specific style you should adopt since you have more chips and blind levels increase slowly? Or should you just play your own individual game and treat this as anyother regular texas hold'em poker tournament?
Posted by chickenh12

In tournaments, remember that the more chips you have the less valuable each chip is. In other words, it is more important not to lose chips than it is to win them. For example, in a 100-player tournament, adding 50% to your stack early on will make little or no difference to your overall likely placing, whereas losing 50% of your stack early on will probably put you in serious jeopardy.
750 chips = life support
1500 chips or 2,250 chips = pretty much the same chance of placing.

So don't take any risks early on: avoid marginal situations, let others kill each other off and be ready to change gears as the blinds creep up. In deepstack tourneys, this means you should play extremely tight early on. I'd even go so far as to say that not turning up for the first half an hour is likely to have little bearing on your overall placing!

This is not how many cash players would play it, but their skills do not always read directly across to tournaments.

offshoot

it all depends on if you think you have an edge over your table. If you do then you should be playing as many hands as possible to capitalise on it. If your just gonna wait for the blinds to escalate so you dont have to play much postflop and hope to get your money in flipping then thats fine, but surely its preferable to play postflop, get to the river with what your reasonably certain is the best hand and double up by winning a series of smaller pots where you dont have to risk your tournament life.

jimbo31

FOLLOWING ON FROM BIGBLUSTER... PATIENCE IS THE KEY AND IN A DEEPSTACK TOURNEY HAVE IN YOUR MIND WHAT STARTING HANDS YOU WILL PLAY AND ONES U WILL PASS... AT THE EARLY STAGES I TEND TO ONLY PLAY 77,88,99,AQ,AK,TT,JJ,QQ,KK,AA... AND POSSIBLE LIMP SEE A FLOP IF ITS CHEAP WITH 55 DOWN TO 22 ETC.... MUCK ANY ACE RAG TO START.... AS WELL AS SUITED CONNECTORS...AND GAPPERS.. I.E. 7-9 8-10 ETC... AS THIS CAN BE DISGUISED HANDS BUT ALSO TROUBLE HANDS.... HENCE I SAY EARLY STAGES MAYBE SAY THE STRUCTURE IS 5K IN CHIPS 15 MIN BLINDS.... ID PLAY LIKE THIS FOR THE FIRST HOUR MAYBE LONGER.... UR IMAGE WILL BE TIGHT.. WHICH IS WHAT U WANT... AS THE TOURNEY PROGRESSES... OPEN UR RANGE UP (BY THEN U SHOULD HAVE A FEEL FOR THE PLAYERS/TABLE) AND START TO BE MORE AGRESIVE ON LESS THAN PREMIUM HANDS...WAIT FOR THE SPOTS... TRY A FEW STEALS...DEFEND UR BB.... MIX UR GAME UP A BIT AS U HAVE BEEN TAGGED AS A NIT(ROCK) UR OPPONENTS WONT NO WHETHER THEY ARE COMING OR GOING... OF COURSE DONT BE ULTRA AGRESSIVE ALL OF A SUDDEN FOR 10 HANDS ON THE TROT OR THEY WILL SNIFF YOU OUT!! AND DONT BE AFRAID TO MAKE BIG LAYDOWNS.... IT IS TOUGH BUT IF THE BOARD IS SCREAMING OUT FLUSH!!!! AND UR SITTING THERE WITH 2PR/SET AND YOUR TOURNEY LIFE IS ON THE LINE... MUCK IT... UNLSESS U ARE 100% SURE ITS A STONE COLD BLUFF... ONE LAST BIT OF ADVICE I CAN GIVE IS USE YOUR CHIPS.... BY THIS I MEAN PUT OUT "FEELER BETS" DO THEY FLAT CALL U.. MINRAISE.. WHATS THE TEXTURE OF THE BOARD? ARE THEY DRAWING,,, SLOW PLAYING,,, ITS AMAZING HOW U CAN USE UR CHIPS TO GET INFORMATION!! ANYWAY THATS ENOUGH IVE GIVEN ALL MY STRATEGIES AWAY NOW... BEST I DONT PLAY AGAINST ANY OF YOU FOR A WHILE.... GOOD LUCK... ONE FINAL THING... FOLLOW YOUR GUT INSTICT!! ALL THE BEST JIMBO;-)

BigBluster

In Response to Re: Any advice please!:

it all depends on if you think you have an edge over your table. If you do then you should be playing as many hands as possible to capitalise on it. Posted by offshoot

If it were a cash game I would agree entirely. In cash games £5 is £5, whether it is the first or hundredth hand. Not so in tournaments. The fact that chips devalue is fundamental.
Playing cash games, you would probably not be wise to walk away from every bet that is 60/40 in your favour! Early on in tournaments, this is essential. As stated above, winning makes little difference, losing is crippling.

Fundamentally, there is only one objective in a tournament and that is to never have zero chips in front of you. That is it. It is not about squeezing every last chip out of every small edge: that's what cash games are about.