Is it really that hard to cash in High buy in tournaments?

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cotta777

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Is it really that hard...
On the contrast to lower buy in tournaments yes you find looser and less poker orientated players but on the contrast if we are talking online $109.00
or the sunday million, the nightly 100k and so forth in general $80 to $220.00 for a tournament Ive been playing Higher buy ins since ive been back working full time. and have circumstances to play for enjoyment purposes as per no longer dailly.
Personally the fields are a bit smaller most players are playing an optimal range and adjusting to each players requirements and assumed game or image.
so It tends to go along the lines of tight players pick up blinds easy or early raisers pick up blinds easy, since those multi tabling just look at an early raise and guess most the time its going to be strong,
so since the late raisers get playerd back at and the early raisers are gaining more respect,
and post flop again people are assuming your range based on how your playing so if the board is reppable to your range you can continue otherwise your going to have a hard time C-betting AK on a low board, or a pair on a connected wet board.
And its just a realisation that everything is constantly adjusting and adapting to styles and using player images to make decisions.
once you are in control of this, you can pretty much pick up enough blinds and loose cash by playing position extremely well. (what I find works well) is playing tricks on laggy or observant opponents, where they always get drawn into re-raising or betting big on the river because the past two streets have not represented the hand you have, or maybe its just they Feel they can get you off a hand no realising you can anticipate the range they have is usually weaker than the hand you have.
Im not going to go on forever and ofcourse this is just my oppinion on what has been working well and on how i'm finding playing these tournaments, over smaller games
(much more enjoyable) :)
 
Micro Maven

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I've been occasionally dabbling in bigger buy-in tourneys (maybe 30-40) over the past year or so with moderate success. Unfortunately my final tables have been in the $30-$60 buy-ins instead of the $150-200 ones. It's true what they say, there are donks at every level but they just make different mistakes.

It's definitely more difficult to cash in these though. At a $1-10 tourney I can be multi-tasking, not run especially well and still get deep. At the bigger ones I either have to be playing my A- game minimum or run pretty hot. I think the biggest difference is the average aggression level and how that limits your opportunities. For example, if you have 30-40 BB, in the cutoff, maybe you can see the flop with your 55 facing only 1 raise, whereas if you're facing two raisers you can't. That's my experience at least.
 
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well the players are going to be better the higher the buy-in, so the tables will be generally a lot tighter and more strategical, to answer your question it's always going to be hard to cash regardless of the buy-in, you're almost always going to have to have your aces hold up, your kings hold up against AK etc.. and that doesn't change regardless of the buy in size, all you can do is try and get your chips in best everytime and hope and prey that the odds don't go against you, most recently i remember a tourney approaching the bubble and i was sitting with an average stack, ran aces into AJs and lost, then down to about 15bbs get kings in against A 10 and he flops trips so it's never easy lol
 
Jacki Burkhart

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I think in some ways it is easier to cash because: field is smaller so variance is naturally a little lower. most players will have at least some clue what they are doing so you can put them on reasonable ranges and be right a fair amount of the time.

But, you also risk a lot more. So, you really just have to evaluate the risk/reward benefit to your bankroll.

freerolls are the hardest to cash in, IMO even though the play is pretty soft for the first half of the tourney or so. But the field is so big, and the play so erratic... But then on the upside....the risk to reward ratio is a no-brainer!
 
teepack

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Jacki is right. Freerolls are nothing more than a crapshoot until at least you get 80 percent of the field eliminated. I haven't played a lot of real high buy-in tourneys, so I really can't answer the original question.
 
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cotta777

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Very true I guess playing higher buy ins
means less players which can only mean more chance of making the big prize,
And to add to that less players are gambling and playing crazy so the swings naturally are less this personally I feel helps me stay composed throughout a tournament
 
10058765

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I guess the difference between low and high BI is often the postflop skills.
Being good postflop should give you an edge in the lower BI, because not so many players in those have those skills.
In the higher BI this edge might be gone, because there's a load more players who are good or even excellent postflop players.

Suppose your monsterhands are not going to be paid of that easy in high BI, so building a stack might be harder.
 
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RamdeeBen

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Overall I'd say obviously you're always going to have a higher amount of cashes in the micros/low limit tournaments just due to the amount of bad players and people who just want to gamble so early, so often.

That said, the few higher buy-in tournaments I've ever played I've always managed to do very well and cash or run quite deep in but this is obviously a small sample size so actually irrelevant but I've played like 100 tournaments of $50-$215 buy-ins but I've had a 25% ITM cashes there where as in micro/low stakes I'd say I'm cashing around 10-15%. Obviously like I say this is sample size but also I've usually sold action or won a satty into a bigger buy so around the bubble time I tend to take a less variance route and pass up on some marginal +EV spots where as in micro/low buy-ins I'm always taking them even if on the bubble.
 
el_magiciann

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I guess the difference between low and high BI is often the postflop skills.
Being good postflop should give you an edge in the lower BI, because not so many players in those have those skills.
In the higher BI this edge might be gone, because there's a load more players who are good or even excellent postflop players.

Suppose your monsterhands are not going to be paid of that easy in high BI, so building a stack might be harder.

I dissagree with your opinion, sir. I think that being good postflop should give you edge at higher BI because if you played really a lot low BI tourneys you would know that playing frisky, making bluffs and playing with well known image doesn't help you at low BI and you get calls for 4-8 outs or even worse, and you can lose a lot more of that spots, also if you are good at postflop you can make stronger play aginst better opponents when you feel they are weak and win pots that no one wants, making more re raises bluffs and lot more that you can't do against weak opponents or calling stations that are playing mainly at low limits tournaments. : )
 
Arjonius

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There's no blanket answer. Since players are different, so is how likely they are to cash when playing well above their usual BI level. That said, a decent player at lower stakes can certainly expect to cash once in a while. It's not as if the $109 and higher MTTs are filled with great players. There are usually quite a few who satellited in. So just like below average players sometimes cash at your usual level, you will sometimes cash when you're a below average player.
 
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batvalk0

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It is not so hard to join higher buy in tournaments.
Its the same as a freeroll, cause you dealt the same cards, the same flop, turn and river, but there will be more fishes who have money to rebuy or just to start another tournament
 
Jacki Burkhart

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I dissagree with your opinion, sir. I think that being good postflop should give you edge at higher BI because if you played really a lot low BI tourneys you would know that playing frisky, making bluffs and playing with well known image doesn't help you at low BI and you get calls for 4-8 outs or even worse, and you can lose a lot more of that spots, also if you are good at postflop you can make stronger play aginst better opponents when you feel they are weak and win pots that no one wants, making more re raises bluffs and lot more that you can't do against weak opponents or calling stations that are playing mainly at low limits tournaments. : )

The problem here, is we may overestimate our post flop skills relative to the field.

so, in micros we may have excellent post flop skills compared to the field, but take that same player and put them in a high buy-in tourney and all of a sudden their post flop skills are very average, or even below average.

So, they've got this model in their head of "I'm a good post flop player, so I should try to play a lot of small pots" but what they don't actually know is that 3 players at their table are licking their chops, ready to devour them and 4 more players have equal skills. So their "edge" is basically gone, or actually a disadvantage.

This happened to me at my first wsop event. I was crushing $200 and $400 tourneys...so I go to take my shot at a bracelet event. Well, in my normal games Cbets worked great. set mining worked great. Floats worked great.

Put me in the WSOP with better players, and I was basically a fish. none of my normal plays worked and they had way fancier tricks than me. After a couple rounds I found myself just relying on getting good cards, and picking on the 2 or 3 players at the table who were worse than me.

As the event wore on, the players worse than me were being eliminated at a rapid pace, and I found myself basically just praying to pick up hands and have them hold. It was humbling, and I learned a lot. It was a great experience and I'm doing better at those high buy in events. Now, I think I have a decent chance at this point against the field but I'm far from one of the best players in the room...which I frequently am at my normal $200 games.
 
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Arjonius

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The problem here, is we may overestimate our post flop skills relative to the field.

so, in micros we may have excellent post flop skills compared to the field, but take that same player and put them in a high buy-in tourney and all of a sudden their post flop skills are very average, or even below average.

So, they've got this model in their head of "I'm a good post flop player, so I should try to play a lot of small pots" but what they don't actually know is that 3 players at their table are licking their chops, ready to devour them and 4 more players have equal skills. So their "edge" is basically gone, or actually a disadvantage.

This happened to me at my first WSOP event. I was crushing $200 and $400 tourneys...so I go to take my shot at a bracelet event. Well, in my normal games Cbets worked great. set mining worked great. Floats worked great.

Put me in the WSOP with better players, and I was basically a fish. none of my normal plays worked and they had way fancier tricks than me. After a couple rounds I found myself just relying on getting good cards, and picking on the 2 or 3 players at the table who were worse than me.

As the event wore on, the players worse than me were being eliminated at a rapid pace, and I found myself basically just praying to pick up hands and have them hold. It was humbling, and I learned a lot. It was a great experience and I'm doing better at those high buy in events. Now, I think I have a decent chance at this point against the field but I'm far from one of the best players in the room...which I frequently am at my normal $200 games.
This very much reminds me of my first big buyin live MTT. It was the Irish Open with a 4200 Euro BI and a prize pool of just over E3 million. I had a WPT winner at my table until I busted a few minuted before the end of day 1. There were other players who had satellited in, so it didn't feel like everyone was far better than me, but it was easy to see that the average skill level was higher than I was used to, and that it rose as the day progressed and the weaker players busted.

It was also a great learning experience talking poker with people who normally played at higher online levels than me, and seeing how they thought more and/or differently. Even though I expected most of the players to be better than me, it was kind of humbling to realize how much I could learn from players whose usual online levels weren't that far above mine.
 
eidikos

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yes its very difficult because the field is too big, there are many good players in them and its hard for you to have an advantage.besides there is a variety of poker styles that makes it more difficult to eliminate them all
 
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