What kind of tourneys to play?

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queenie279

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My primary game is cash games. But a couple of times I tried tourneys. I can do very well in cash but I seem to suck at tourneys. How can I improve in this area. I played the same way which is tight and aggressive. Out of about 5 of them I played only cashed in one which was for 7th place and 8 places paid.

What is the best strategy for them? What type of tourneys should I be playing if any at all? What's the best site to them on for US?
 
Arjonius

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Playing tournaments takes a different mind set. They usually pay about 10% of the field, so you have to accept that even with an ITM% that's well above average, you'll lose the large majority of the time. This is very different from cash where above average players can expect to have more winning sessions than losing ones. 5 is far to small a sample to conclude you suck at them, although you might well if you're not making any adjustments.

Another major difference is the rising blinds. As they go up, the effective size of your stack shrinks, which affects the need to play hands you'd fold without much thought playing cash. One example is that stealing is more important in tournaments, and they become more so as the blinds rise.
 
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kyrow

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First your play style needs to moderate throughout the tourny. I will elaborate a little. You say you play tight/aggressive which is great for a cash game. However I only recommend your play style in tournys if you are low stacked and size of blinds.

When a tournament first begins it is far better to play loose as limping in blinds or 3x 4x blind raise is less then 5% of your chip stack and odds are you can trap others using this method of loose play and get ahead of the crowd early on. You want advantage, and the more chips you hold the higher you have the advantage, because you can afford to see more hands played then others. Hope this helps you and good luck.

Edit: It may also help you play some single player(micro-stake) sit n go's while you adjust to this new way of playing poker.
 
dj11

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When a tournament first begins it is far better to play loose as limping in blinds or 3x 4x blind raise is less then 5% of your chip stack and odds are you can trap others using this method of loose play and get ahead of the crowd early on. You want advantage, and the more chips you hold the higher you have the advantage, because you can afford to see more hands played then others. Hope this helps you and good luck.

^^^Not recommended per se.

Avoid the first few orbits unless you have monsters. There are so many loosies playing for that quick advantage that they generally will neutralize themselves. Use those first few orbits to get a feel for the table and its players. Take notes.

Your primary goal is to survive. Many will tell you to play to win early. TOTAL HOGWASH! In order to WIN, you have to survive. If you feel lucky, go ahead, play those minor advantages that work in ring. But note that you will be pegged early by tourney regs as a cash guy.

On average most tourneys take 100 hand s to get to the money. you will want to find 5 spots to get all -in, and you want to do that with the best edge you can. Alternately you can steal a lot of small pots, but do it as cheaply as possible. Everyone these days has a fair understanding of tourney play, so do not assume fish, rather assume ring guys trying to be tourney guys.

Yes, you can be a little loose early, but do it cheaply, and don't assume many bluffs will work. Until you have a decent read on your table, be cautious and patient. Once you think you have reads on your table.......boom, you will change tables........

Patience. You should not worry about the tourney chip leaders. Average chip stacks should be fine. Remember if you can stay near average, you will end up HU for the big prize.

HUD's help. Except Carbons free HUD, which resets at each table change. It is nice for detecting trends at a long run on a single table, but that doesn't happen all that often.

In the end, you will credit your patience and survival mindset for your cashes.

For a transition to tourney approach, I would suggest STT's they play a little more like cash games than MTT's.

I, for one would suggest you do this ubber cheap, as in learn the differences via play money games, but I am unique in that I understand what can and can not be learned via play money games. So ignore that advice if you love paying for you education.
 
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Colbefc

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I play MTT's almost exclusively these days cos after a lot of experimentation I have come to the conclusion that I suck at cash games.
I agree with Kyrow that you would be advised to play some micro SNG's as a transition to MTT's.
Beleive me if you cash in 1 in 5 MTT's which is 20% after playing 1000 of them you would be very happy, I reckon if I cash in one in 10 I am doing well, and I make money at them.
Cash games and MTT's are similar in on the their names, poker, they are so completely different, i suggest you look for threads on here about how to play MTT's cos it really is a big topic.
There is nothing like the feeling of getting to the final table of an MTT, you really feel you have acheived something and wow, MTT final table play, that deserves a book to itself, it is a completely different ball game to what happens leading up to the Final Table, again I suggest looking up threads on here, it really is too big to cover in one post.
Good luck, if you have any specific questions feel free to PM me, I'll help if I can :)
 
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kyrow

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When blinds are 5, 10, or 10, 20, and you have 1,500, or even 3,000 it is well worth a few limp ins to set up a trap. That advise is free and you can take it or leave it. Its worked extremely well for me and gives complete advantage over the table, for when you lay down a trap and ne sucker bites....The whole table has more respect for your game play and you can easily "steal" blinds in middle to late position, which will make ya or break ya at the end game.
 
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queenie279

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Thanks all for your feedback.

First, a couple of people said to play looser. I will try to play a little looser and hope this will work. Since I am so used to playing tight this will be a little out of my comfort zone.

It was suggested to try not to play a few orbs unless I have a big hand. Is this a wise move since the blinds are rising?
Also, going to do a search on tourney play and strategy. Thanks again for the advice.
 
dj11

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My primary game is cash games. But a couple of times I tried tourneys. I can do very well in cash but I seem to suck at tourneys. How can I improve in this area. I played the same way which is tight and aggressive. Out of about 5 of them I played only cashed in one which was for 7th place and 8 places paid.

What is the best strategy for them? What type of tourneys should I be playing if any at all? What's the best site to them on for US?

Unfortunately the sites available for us US players sort of leaves us limited in what games we can play. Merge, Cake, Bovada, ACR are just about all there is, and none of them are overwhelming great with SnG's.

You might start with DoN's where half the field doubles up. TAG is very useful in those.
 
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eazy489

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Tournaments are all about volume. The best tournament players in the world only cash somewhere in the 10-30% range of the tournaments they play. And they only win maybe around 2-7% of the time. You will only know how good you are at tournaments after you have played thousands of them and can track your percentages. If you are looking to get better at them, I would advocate watching some strategy videos online, such as at tournamentpokeredge.com. Or just try googling tournament poker videos and see what comes up. YOu can learn a lot from these videos. Tournament strategy is much different from cash game strategy. Merge and Bovada both have decent tournaments online right now. Try to gauge the amount of "value" of each tournament. You want to pick tournaments where you have a good chance of cashing. For example, lets say there is a $10+1 tournament with a $8k guaranteed. There will most likely be about 800 people in that. Even though you can turn $11 into over $1000 in that tournament, your odds of making it that deep aren't that good. But on the other hand, if there is a tournament for $30+3 and its a $3k guarantee, there will be around 100 ppl in that and your chances of cashing and making it deep are much better. There is a lot more value in this tournament. Try to pick tournaments with good "value"
 
MediaBLITZ

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Thanks all for your feedback.

First, a couple of people said to play looser. I will try to play a little looser and hope this will work. Since I am so used to playing tight this will be a little out of my comfort zone.


Also, going to do a search on tourney play and strategy. Thanks again for the advice.

I'm afraid you might be over simplifying what is being said. You are getting some very good advice here but there is a whole lot going on between the lines (much like a Negreanu book). Tournament play is extremely situational and it introduces a new opponent that dictates a lot of your play - the escalating blind structure. You will need several gears and styles that you will need to expertly play to be successful - all the way from being a boring insufferable nit to an uber-LAG. And know when to execute all of these (which you have seen is a also a style dichotomy as demonstrated in your replys). The discipline of playing cash will be extremely helpful but the good tourney players know when to dump that and become, in comparison, somewhat reckless.
So to make a blanket decision to loosen up could end up badly. It's knowing when to be tight and when to be loose and every shade of gray inbetween.
 
sam1chips

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supposedly I've heard that you play tight in the beginning of tournaments, and then more aggressive as the tourney goes on.
as for tourney types, there are many different kinds on the cake network. in sit and gos, there are double up tournaments, where the top half finish ITM and the bottom half lose. another tourney type is bounty hunters, where the only prize money is given when you knock somebody out.
as for MTT, there are guaranteed prize pool tournaments, along with many tournaments with rebuys and addons and stuff. i guess you just gotta find what youre comfortable with. best of luck
 
Arjonius

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I disagree that it's necessary to play thousands of tournaments to assess your relative ability. The main proviso is that you need to be aware enough to gauge the opponents' abilities and reasonably objective about comparing your own level of play against theirs. If so, you should be able to get a decent feel for your prospects at any given level after far fewer games. What volume will do is provide quantitative evidence.

It's kind of like sitting down at a cash table where you don't know anyone. It doesn't take a huge number of hands before you know whether it's a table you should beat most of the time or not. Playing lots of hands lets you refine this assessment by letting you narrow down how much you're likely to win on average.

There's no set formula for playing tight or loose, even at the beginning of a tournament because what's best can depend on many combinations of factors. As a simple example, if you find yourself at a table of nits, you can open a lot of pots, especially in position, because they'll fold more than they should to your openers and c-bets. Otoh, vs a table of LAGs, the same approach basically amounts to self-inflicted bleeding off of your chips.
 
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