This might be a bad habit of mine....

Usually when i enter most MTT's, whether it be a $1-90 man SnG, $5 MTT tourney, whatever, i always look at how many people there are starting in the tournament (except rebuy tourneys really) and calculate how many chips should be the "average" to get into the money.

i dont really like to look at the tourney lobby until breaks usually, but its kind of like a "goal" that i set up for myself in a sense. and ill be like "ok, i should be ok if i get X amount of chips, i should make money."

usually when i start off doing really well in a tourney, i wont even care about that number anymore, ill just use my momentum to get as many chips as possible, but i like to have the number when the tournament is pretty much a grind.

is this a good habit i have? or is this a bad habit?

A Like It Man, It's Something Av Never Thought Of And Always Find Myself Constantly Glancing At The Lobby, Am Gonna Try It Next 90 Man SNG A Play, Cheers

are you talking about the average chip number?? that you wont care?
any ways its not a bad habit how much would that help you

yeah basically the avg chip number that it would be going into the money, and i usually round up, like in the $1rebuy im in now, going to the money avg would be about 15.7k so i say i need roughly 16k or so and thats my goal, for now at least unless i go on a hot streak.

no you want to aim to get about 10% of the total chips in play before the final 2 tables

i dont think im final table material yet. =)

but thats a good stat, ill keep that in mind. right now im just trying to really build up a bankroll and then, if i get into the money, try and play my best poker, get the chips i need.

It's information that can be useful. It can also be dangerous. Depends on how you use it.

Assuming you mean something like :"It's a 90-person Sng with 1500 chip starting stacks, so when we get to the final table (9players) the average stack will be 15,000". Then if it's mid-tourney and you have 20,000 chips you know you can slow down a bit and not take as many big risks for a bit.

You can get into trouble if you find yourself way behind or way ahead of your target though, and start taking unnecessary chances ("OMG I'm behind schedule, I need to win some chips NOW or I won't have a chance later on").

I usually keep an eye on the chip counts throughout a tournament, but try not to let it affect my play too much.

yeah i jsut use it as a reference basically, if im "behind schedule" i dont go nuts trying to get chips really, unless im in the money and ill do that bc im playing to win. did that earlier, but got unlucky.

i check the standing and what place im in and thats about it and when i play a tourney i look to make the ft and take top 3 not to just hit money because if i just wanted to just double my 5$ or w/e i could just play a sit n go which wouldnt take that long. so i dont really wanna waste a tourney playing for 4 hours or more just to make couple of bucks...not my style. and keep practicing and playing good and u will make an ft. and i do agree with eltanin. no need to have some kind of a schedule or something. just play yr game...play yr cards try to win bunch of small pots rather than playing bingo and taking a chance of losing most of yr stack. but if u have a strong hand and u feel like u got yr opponent beat than go for it, because once u get more experienced u will find out that the loose and more aggresive players r not dumb and once they see that u will fold to a big raise and r afraid to lose a big pot thats when they r going to try to bully u and push u around and thats where experience and making a good read comes in. well thats about all i got to say gl and have fun.

I'm not much of a trounament player, since I mainly play the donk n'gos and the limit tables, but this seems to be like it could turn out to be counterproductive. Your goals should be different at different stages of the tournament, and they should also change depending of the situation. If you have a low M and are nowhere near the bubble, you'll look to double up, but if you're almost ITM and have some chips behind the average chipstack, you shouldn't be as inclined to take risks.

The opposite is also true. If you have a large chipstack, you should take advantage of the tightness that people develop near the bubble and get even richer before the tables break-up and you get to play with several other bigstacks. But I think joose's goal is spot on, when there's less than 2 tables worth of people (18 and less), you need at least 10% if you want to make it deeper. So I'd keep an eye for the bubble and monitor my M religiously, but thinking about how many chips I need right at the beginning to squeeze ITM, might as well play donk n' gos as was suggested.