MTT Strategy

[nc_royals]

Patience is not my problem. I can play in a big MTT and wait for the hands and have good luck doing it. Last night was an example I was in a MTT of 760 people, $110 Buy-in and not getting good cards and was going to have to make moves to win. Early in the tourney I was seeing around 25%-30% of flops and building a decent stack. Later in the tourney with blinds getting pretty big is when i went card dead and always seemed to be faced with a raise when i was in a position to make a move. Any advice in these stages when making moves is essential. Im just not seeing enough flops in these instances however I dont want to call a raise with questionable hands.
Thanks.

 

[KenFischer]

I'm assuming you're referring to the point that your stack is getting to critical. If I have 20BB or more, then I will just keep on folding - the cards will generally come if you stay in long enough to see them. When I get to 12BB or less, I'm starting to look for opportunities to get the chips into the middle before I don't have enough to be effective.

When this happens to me I generally look for people who are raising a lot, and try to resteal from them in position. I'm never flat-calling a raise unless I am in the blinds and plan to push on the flop - it's always push or fold with a raise in front of me. Resteals are far more profitable than just stealing the blinds, so you can do it less often.

This is easier to do if you aren't playing multiple tournaments - you need to be able to focus on the play at the table. If I can't get a read on who is standing out as the blind stealer (or I am playing other tables at the same time) I'll just start a running list of pre-flop raises (who raised, and from what position). The frequent raisers are usually easy to spot when I do this.