I have an ITM rating of 25% i think out of 140 or tournaments. however until recently i realised my figure is so high because i was playing to "make the money" but i realised what is adding a couple of dollers to my bankroll really going to achieve so ive started playin to win. that meant crashing out about 150 before the money last night with JJ to K8 who hit trip 8's but as robbed as i was it was the right decision to make against the table chip leader who was very loose because if i hadn't been sucked out i would have had a very healthy stack of around 30'k average 18k. trying to go deep is the only answer
Yes, you are absolutely right!!! With these big MTT's the money is loaded all at the top. Just trying to cash isn't going to grow the BR. You are better off playing ring if you are worried about just cashing.
And that leads me to my poker BR strategy. While playing with proper BRM rules. I believe that ring is the "Bread and Butter" of ones BR. That is where you will make the steady increase in your BR. Use tournaments as a BR turbo boost!!! (Michael Knight would be proud
) Playing to simply cash in an MTT is worthless in the long run. And when you look at how much time it takes to just double your buyin or make a dollar in the lower buyins, you can make more playing ring in that amount of time.
Now, things can happen or go wrong near the bubble, so I'm not saying if you are at the bubble, screw it and not cash. But if you are playing the tournament correctly you should be above the chip average for the tournament and using this time to pick on the middle sized stacks. They don't want a big pot with you because you can take them out of the tournament. The bubble is near and they want to cash as well. You need to be careful with the short stacks, some of them will try to fold to the money and some of them will try to use this to build their stack.
So this brings me to my next point. You want to be aggressive, but don't call a SS with a wide range of hands. There is a difference between calling and pushing and at the micro levels the players don't get this. Don't call a SS all in with A 10 or AJ or QK. Call with AK, maybe AQ or any pp 88 and up. When a SS pushes and you call, you can't out play him after the flop, he's already all in. So you want the best possible chance that you are ahead of the all in.
If you have a huge stack compared to the rest of the table and are close to the chip lead, you can call with a lot wider range, because you have more chips at your disposal.
Lets talk about using the stack to bully the table. You don't want to bully stacks that can cause major harm to your stack with a wide range. However if there is a med stack in the SB and a SS in the BB, I'm going to raise enough to pot commit the SS or enough just to put the SS all in. Also if a med stack or a SS raises and I'm in position I will three bet with a wider range and depending on the situation I might be three bet shoving, making them choose to call for their tournament life or not. It takes a lot of practice with a large stack to do this effectively. There is a huge difference between what I do and what the donkey with a huge stack does. You need to pick your spots and they need to make sense. If you are three betting everyone and pushing all in all the time you lose credibility and it's obvious what you are doing.
I hope this helps, I don't have time to reread this to see if it makes sense. If you have any questions just post them and I will answer them.