Some tips for anyone who wants to play MTTs

Bit bored and should be revising so figured I'd write a post with some basic tips for anyone wanting to play MTTs.

For background, I've been playing MTTs exclusively for about a year now. I've aimed at progressing through the stakes asap and I haven't got much volume at my current stakes so my stats are hard to work out but in the last year I've played ~10,000 MTTs including 180s with $10 average stake and a 25% ROI

The Long Term

This kinda brings me into my first point. If you want to ever take MTTs seriously, you need to always be thinking about the long term. Swings in MTTs are huge - people always underestimate them. Downswings of 500 buyins and more are really common for anyone who plays big fields, even the best players. Those pretty graphs you see which seem like they go straight up actually have huge losing stretches which seem like forever when you are in them. For example, I'm a life time loser in Stars MTTs, simply because my average field size is huge and I've never hit a big score - these occasional binks are the things which will make your profits high but because of the irregularity in which you'll hit them your graph will go down down down, then boom all the way up. You just have to learn to live with it.

I've found two ways are by far the best to help with this. First, find smaller fields to mix in with the bigger ones. For low stakes players, $2.50 turbo 180s and $4 standard 180s are great. For mid stakes, try out some smaller sites like 888 and Party Poker - my average field size on Party is just 100, and the tournaments are soft. It's a pity the software is rubbish compared to Stars but you just have to live with it

Second, try and think in terms of $ per game, and a session as not just the tournaments you play in a day but the tournaments you play in a month, or a quarter, or a year. Trying to work out how you are doing session by session is impossible, and you'll get depressed at how many more losing sessions you have than winning ones when your profit tends to come from occasional large winning sessions evened out but regular losing sessions. Working out $ per game isn't hard - calculate your $ per game, estimate a long term ROI for your schedule, and that's how much you earn each game you play. I think I can play a lot of tables at a $15 abi with 25% ROI - that's $3.75 or so a game. Then you just play as many games as you can, knowing that as long as you keep playing well you are earning that amount.

Be realistic with your long term ROI. People bounce off crazy numbers, especially if they win a tournament early and have a 100% ROI after the first couple of hundred games. The more turbos you play, the more reg filled 180s, the more satellites, the lower your ROI. On the other hand, your ROI will be its highest in well structured softer fields, which tend to be very large - it can take tens of thousands of games to even out, so don't worry if you start badly.

Bankroll Management

As I've said, long term is crucial, and therefore so is BRM. I've been backed for the entire time I've played MTTs so it's never really crossed my mind, but basically the more huge field tournaments you play the bigger your bankroll should be. You should also be flexible - don't be afraid to take shots and also drop your higher buyin tournaments, depending on the current state of your bankroll. Try and make it so your lowest buyins are your biggest fields, and your highest buyins are your smallest fields. Shot taking in things like huge Sunday Million specials with terrible structures and ridiculous fields is just foolish, as you'll never get to the long term, even if you have a 100% ROI.

Numbers I've seen thrown about include 250 buyins, which seems OK for lower stakes, but even at 180 turbos you can have swings bigger than that. I'd advise 300 to 400 average buyins, making sure you are careful with your schedule.

Or, you could choose to get backed. While you have to give away half your profits, if you can find a good stable where you get coaching and attention, it's definitely a good choice. Especially if your online poker roll would constitute significant money to you - you never want to be playing with scared money.

Multi tabling and HUDs

People complain about HUDs all the time, but they are crucial. Learn to read it, and try and understand what the numbers mean. Also appreciate the statistics - some converge pretty quickly towards meaningful figures, such as VPIP, PFR, and to a lesser extent steal. The first two should be your staple stats which you base other stuff around. For example, someone with a 50% 3bet over 50 hands who is playing 23/20 isn't crazy, they've just got a non-converged 3bet stat.

Identifying regs is crucial too. Mark them, and then when you see hands take notes. Note taking can be a chore, especially if you play multiple sites and there's tables popping up everywhere, but it's really worth doing. Even just noting someone as a fish or a reg is great - when a reg opens in late position off a 40bb stack into other 40bb stacks, their range and the way you play against them should be very different to an unknown or against a passive fish.

Stack sizes

Stack sizes are the crucial difference between cash and MTTs. Even then, it varies between MTTs - deep in a hyperturbo, even a 5bb stack is a good stack because you have good fold equity when every one else is short.

Be careful about the stack sizes you open into, and the stack sizes that regs are opening into. A regulars opening range will be alter depending on the stack sizes left to act, and so should yours - tighter when there are reshoving stacks behind you and looser when stacks are deeper.

When playing against multi tablers, you can also manipulate what they see to your advantage. When you have a 3 or 4bb stack, raising rather than shoving all in can be really helpful - when they see they have 3 buttons to choose from rather than 2 it gives them the chance to fold hands they'd call if they knew they were closing the action.


Table Count

I see a lot of posts on here about people playing 8 tables when just starting out and stuff like that. My advice is basically don't do it. I learnt to play both cash and MTTs by starting out at the lowest stakes playing 2 to 4 tables. Take detailed notes and think about every decision, and then when you have plenty of ideal time add in more tables.

Everyone has a different table cap where they stop increasing their hourly. That's another point - max out your hourly, not your ROI. Playing 20 tables at a 10% ROI is way more profitable than playing 5 tables at a 20% ROI, even if your stats aren't as great. Personally, I'm a high volume low edge sort of player - I play 20 to 25 tables across 3 sites but that's how I feel I play optimally. I sacrifice some ROI and I add in variance so I can't progress as quickly as players playing less tables, but if I play fewer tables I get bored and spew so for me it's the best decision.


Feel free to ask questions

why do you now have a gf?

+life ev

Nice post. I've recently gone on a pretty harsh downswing on PokerStars so reading what you said about varience really helps. It's easy to start questioning your game when you lose tourney after tourney for an extended period. Realising that it's part of playing MTTs is important.

Party Poker sucks but I'm definitely gonna try some of their tourneys. They seem to offer good reload bonuses too. Are they easy to clear? Are all their tournaments rake free? 'cos they seem to be. And finally, what are your thoughts on iPoker MTTs? I've played a fair bit on there and it seems pretty soft up to ~$10 buyin.

Party have had rakefree tournaments all this month, and I haven't played there long so I haven't really encountered any reload bonuses worth depositing for. Any reload bonuses will be +ev though so it's good they offer them.

I've only played a couple of iPoker tournies but thought they were soft, I prefer Party software to iPoker software even though there isn't much difference so that's why I've played there. 888 is also meant to be good and I think a couple of CC guys have experience there, idk if it's cash or tournaments.

One other thing about tournaments is choose your affiliate carefully if you can when signing up to new sites. My first big cash was chopping the Hendon Mob affiliate tournament on FTP - they did $5k added tournaments whcih were well worth playing as they only had ~500 runners from memory. If you can find similar offers to this rather than rake races which will basically offer you nothing, you can gain some decent equity for free

Great Post as usual Pascal

Great post. I have always looked at my stats on a long term vs today or even this week due to that variance. The good runs are always followed by the bad... and sometimes it seems the bad lasts forever.

But looking over my stats reminds me it is temporary and trust me, when I am running bad I need that reminder.

Cheers guys.

Figured I could write about a standard session for me. Everyone has different tournaments they love and times they feel they play best at. For example, my backer tends to register from 4pm to 1am or so, and he plays the same schedule every day apart from Sunday with few additions for day specific tournaments. Playing the same schedule every day is great - you'll learn the structure of the different tournaments, the standard field sizes, and you won't be phased when you do get deep because you'll probably have been there before. For example, some tournaments skip certain levels, others always make the money around 400/800 so when you see that level you know you are near the bubble, and so on

For me, I've varied. Over summer when I was playing a ton, especially in June, I just played whenever I woke up, and my sleeping pattern was terrible. This helped me realise just how vital a regular schedule is if you grind a lot - although my biggest win last year did come at 11am in the morning after grinding all afternoon, evening, and through the night

When I moved to Holland, I decided to try and play fewer sessions but for longer, to improve my social life. I played a fair few 15 hour sessions, regging from ~midday until 2.30, although only turbos from 1am onwards. Long sessions were great, but draining. Ideally, I'd like to play at least one long session every couple of weeks - if you slowly improve the length of time you can grind for, you'll find you are more alert and awake towards the end of your session and do less auto piloting, which is great because the later in your session the more tables you'll be deep in.

When I start grinding again, I'm going to stop grinding so late. When I move back to the UK the schedule is an hour early, but over here registering til 2.30 instead of 1.30 is just too late. The ideal would be to grind from 3 or 4pm depending on tournies and finish grinding about 2am, which means turbos only from about 11pm. Getting a good nights sleep is essential and will definitely help your winrate.

As for the schedule itself, I tend to register everything I like the look of. My session normally starts off fairly "slowly", with 10 - 15 tables, and between 8 and 10 I have my table number peaks with about 25 or so (just over 10 on Stars and Stars.fr and a handful on party). I'm pretty comfortable with playing 25 tables now - I put Stars tables top left, Stars.fr tables top right, and Party a bit smaller on the bottom. I've got a 24" monitor so there's plenty of space, and I use my laptop screen for streaming football/music etc because I like the background noise. My backer once said it was -EV for that sorta stuff but I like it because I could never cope with sitting playing poker for 10 hours straight with no distractions.

Eating when grinding might sound like something trival but it's really not. Salad boxes and similar are great for snacks, as are ready meals which you can cook in 2 minutes (and still have some time to eat them). I like microwave burgers which take 1 minute and are ridic easy to prepare If you don't live/grind with anyone and don't want to splash out on takeaways, cooking something before and then reheating it in breaks when you are hungry is a really legit way to do things. Pasta, chilli, etc are my favourites

The food thing really strikes a chord with me. If I'm really hungry, I tend to implode and bust myself out of all tourneys I'm in whereas sitting out would be a much better thing to do.

I don't grind anything near 25 tables at a time. 12 would be my absolute max, probably because of my inability to stack tables. Earlier today I was playing 11 and found my brain was fried over having to make too many decisions too quickly. I did cash in most though which is encouraging.

It's really helpful to read the thoughts of an MTT grinder for insight into lots of simple things. Appreciate the thread Pascal, keep it up.

You have some good points posted here

I like how you describe where you put your tables and everything for the different sites..I also play with background music when i decide to grind

Thanks gsxr

this gives kind of an image of my layout:

http://i.imgur.com/HF2Ta.jpg

where the start bar at the bottom stops is the end of my monitor and the start of my laptop screen

Filtering the lobby as well as possible using text strings like "-up" is pretty necessary too imo, it only takes 5 mins to set it up so you only see the tournaments you want play (maybe a couple of rebuys out your bankroll but that can't be helped) but if it stops a single misclick its well worth it

Weeee! Not even checked this post yet, going to have a read it when I've got some peace of quiet tonight!

Thanks man, I assume it will be good!

Solid read

Just 1 note. Rebuy games tend to have a ton of varience, just bc you can rebuy after you lose, and I have seen some donks come back from absolutly nothing! lol

ok thats it XD

read. this. mans. thread.

Thenreaditagain.

nice post

Tried the above Saturday night on the small Yatahay network, Played 3 small mtt buyins,average field 20 -40 peeps ..Final tabled 2 of them for about $75. It worked for me

Nice Post Pascal. I am just now getting back into MTTs. Been grinding cash for a few months, now I have a schedule with cash days and MTT days. Its been a while so I am rusty, and watching vids again to get my mind in the right direction.

Any vids/training sites you recommend? Or anything else?

And FWIW I find PKR to have a number of good structures with small fields, and pretty soft games. HUD only works on one table at a time and multi tabling suks there anyway, so I choose a good looking game and add it to my stars/BCP games. I am thinking if depositing on 888 cause I have also heard it is soft and many small field games there.

Don't have time to read this now, but posting now so I'll not lose the opportunity to read this later ... thanks, Wally

Good post - thanks!

good tips, nice job

Super post ... never really considered there was that much variance

I've found playing some on the Merge network with smaller fields is massively +EV too. I deposited on there 2 weeks ago and have already turned it into 5 times the original deposit with just small buy in games ($1-$3) with a few wins and final tables. Weird that I'm a loser on Stars all time but a winner on FTP and now Merge.

Great info mate well done

Just want to keep this Fresh