How short is your stack???

Hi all.

An area of my game that I find difficult to deal with is the early pat of a game and stack size. The rest of the tourny I`m comfortable with, but this is what I mean...

U start with 1500 chips in a MTT. Blinds are 10/20 and raise every 20 mins. I am sometimes reluctant to to call a 4 times bb raise in middle position holding say KQ. I feel at this stage of the tourny it is too much of a risk to put in 80 chips at this stage. In general, accepting the fact I will know little about the others at the table, would that be a good fold or not? What are your thoughts?

I use the above example to give you an idea, but the main point is the same with similar hands e.g. AJ, 99. Early in a tourny, what do u think???

I might be unusual, but I struggle with the early stage of a tourny, the middle and latter stages I`m ok (normally the other way around?) Using the example I tend to panic when I drop below 1000 chips even with the blinds @ 25/50.

Any comments guys???

Ta

I tend to agree....early in tournaments I think you have to weed out the crazies...I play conservative early and agressive late

i agree with this form of play it is better to play conservative in the beginning of a tourney and let the donks do themselves in. if you wander around the forum you will find a lot of excellent advice on tourney play and if you have a question abot how you should have played a particular hand then the hand analysis thread is for you

You may want to try and open up a little bit with the starting hands on cheaper flops. With all the so called crazies out there that are not willing to let go of TPTK you are able to pick up lots of chips off these weak players. Change gears fast a few times in relation to your image. By this time you should have a good feel for the table play and act accordingly for the rest of the tourny. Steal if you can or sit back against very aggressive players. IMO

How do you figure this? More risky than had you called a raise at 500/1000 with like a 20K stack? You're only risking around %5 of your stack.

There's nothing wrong with seeing some cheap flops with mediocre hands in the early stages. Everyone's got their own strategy for MTTs, and seeing flops while the 'crazies' are out there getting all their chips in with TPTK as JeeDub mentioned, is a fine strategy. When you do hit, you get paid off tremendously. I'd rather see flops with even more disguised hands than KQ like J9s, 67s, small pairs, etc so that your implied odds are even better.

99 is hidden enough to call a any raise that is justified by proportional stacks.

Hi Chuck, welcome back. Not seen u for a while, have u been away?

Getting back to the above point, it is a state of mind I have. Simplistically, I do not like to see my chipstack drop. It is a part of my game I need to get my head around.

thx ronaldadio; my internet's been down for a while and I haven't had much time for CC or poker in that time. Back and playin some more lately, so I'll be around the forums alot more too with my fixed wireless connection

As for the point, that's fine. Maybe your style just suits TAG early. I personally haven't found my niche for MTTs yet. My style changes with each one I play depending on the table because sometimes TAG just doesn't get paid off that well, and other times playing LAG can dwindle your stack too much...