Alan PK Star: Credits to the author: pokemaobr
Hello everyone, I was here for nothing and decided to write a little about tournaments, and here's the joy...
The 10 secrets to being profitable in Micro Limit Multi Table Tournaments.
1 – MTT IS NOT SNG!
If you still think that playing tight throughout the tournament is the easiest way to win a tournament, you are wrong. MTT IS NOT FOR SURVIVAL. You will not win a tournament by pushing/folding from the 50/100 blinds because you are playing too few hands. Accumulate chips, attack players, play in position. Changing an old mindset is the first step to being a successful MTT player. The variance is higher... So... don't play if you don't have at least 100 BIs...
2 – Much more important than your cards is your position!
Attack, attack, and attack again in position. Playing out of position in a tournament often means you are doomed to create huge pots and have your cbets disarmed by a float from the villain, or by a random raise. In position you can explore your draws, control the pots with semi-nut hands, and extract value from your hand when necessary. If on the flop you are in position and the out of position player checks, bet 53-58% into the pot and be happy.
3 – Much more important than your cards are your opponents!
Knowing how to deal with each type of opponent is a very important factor in a poker tournament. Some simple cases are that against a tight player, your chance of success in a FLOAT (cold call PFlop + cold call Flop + bet turn after a check from the villain) is much higher than against a loose player. On the other hand, your resteal works much better on a loose player than on a tight one. Tight players don't know how to defend blinds, very loose players tend to defend more blinds than they should. And there's always that tight tilted player who shoves any2 after losing a huge pot with a monster PFlop to a trash hand from the villain, if he has a hand and a reasonable stack (any A, K7+, Q9+, JT, any pair), he calls... He has trash 90% sometimes.
4 – Are your cards important? Yes at showdown!
In holdem, we have 4 chances to eliminate the villain from the hand, and our hand will only be shown if we miss in these 4 chances. So why play extremely tight? Why try to take the villain to the showdown every time and take that bad beat? We have to eliminate him from the hand in one of these 4 chances, and if we can't, then we have to have the best hand. Knowing how to deal with the Flop and Turn, we will eliminate the villains and win the pots without having to show our hand, so how will the villain know if we don't have the nuts?
5 – Small pots become big, Big pots become headaches!
It is much easier to control the size of a pot while it is still small, a pot with 4 BBs is easily controlled, I want to see how to control a pot with 40 BBs on the flop... By making smaller raises preflop, we will expel who we want to expel, the players in position (they will call with the same hands they would if our PF raise was 4-8x the BB, they fold the same hands, and they raise the same hands), we will call the players we want to play (SB and BB who will be out of position). We will extract more value from the donkeys who play thinking that the value of the bets is more important quantitatively than the amount of big blinds they have. Uncontrolled pots... are huge, your cbets are huge, your losses are too. Make your raise 2.5x BB or even 2.1x and be happy watching the donkeys all get tangled up to play against you.
6 – Tight or Loose? Be an inverted chameleon!
Another very important secret to being victorious in MTT is knowing how to modify yourself. Remember, you don't play against the entire table every hand, you play against "targets". You don't want to play a hand with a HU value against 9 people, just as you don't want to play a multiway pot value hand against an opponent in a huge pot. Aim for targets, play against the weakest players. If this weak player is extremely tight, play extremely loose. If he is extremely loose, play tight. There's nothing better than after you win with JT on a straight against AK and get AA and the villain thinks it's any2... Do this and feel like the king. If you don't find the weak player at the table... I'm sorry, but you'll be the next one eliminated...
7 – If you don’t know what to do with your hand, throw it in the trash!
There's no point in getting countless pre-flop raising charts from countless websites. IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR HAND, FOLD IT! It's much more profitable to fold a hand because you don't know how to play it than to call/raise and lose control of the pot. Many people don't know how to play with KQ post-flop. If you're one of them, FOLD your KQ pre-flop. When you get your cards, look at them, and take a mental trip to where you want to go. "I want to steal with this one", "I'm going to extract value with this one", "I'm going to float with this one", "I'm going to resteal with this one". If it takes more than 10 seconds after the action reaches you and you have no idea what to do, FOLD IT! The same goes for the flop, turn or river.
8 – In position, if on the river you are not sure that you have the best hand, but your hand is still strong, CHECK or CALL.
A very common mistake is excessive aggression in MTT, and this case is very complicated. Sometimes we have a very strong hand, top pair, 2 pair, but we have a very complicated board, with the villain making too many calls to our aggression, or turning the aggression against us. Check the river, there is no point in trying to extract value from a hand that you are not so sure is ahead (except for the villain's reading, obviously). Many times this bet on the river becomes a call to a push and then, son of a bitch, we have to open another tournament because we played the hand badly.
9 – Small pairs are bigger than big pairs…
Few people realize this, but often our pre-flop folds with small pairs in early position are not so good. Let me explain why... I have AA, and the flop comes A2T, tell me what we can get value from here? AK, AQ, AJ, AT, TT, 22, sometimes KQ, KJ, KK, QQ, JJ, lost, but what are the chances of having Aces here if we have 2 Aces in our hand? Therefore, in fact we will only extract value from TT or 22 or 2 pairs T2 which again is difficult now if I have 22 and the flop comes A2T, I extract the value of any A, now with many more Aces in the villains' hands, and in general you will extract the villain's entire stack if he has Ak, AQ or something like that... Big pairs take big outs from players, take people out of their hands, small pairs if tripped... They are a bomb, they don't take anyone out of the pot and make a lot of people double/triple.
10 – When are you doing badly in a tournament? When you have no chips…
You are eliminated from a tournament only and exclusively if after the showdown there are no chips left. If you have 1 chip, you are alive. So the final and most important secret is to have more chips than any other opponent. What's the point of seeing if I'm at the tournament average? If I have more chips than everyone else at the table, it doesn't matter if I'm below or well below the tournament average. The others at the table won't eliminate you if they don't have any at your table, and they will only join your table if they eliminate someone or if the number of players there decreases. If someone enters there who can eliminate you, maybe change your game. While you're big, dominate your table, dominate, attack, take out the donkeys, and control the pots. Afraid of the bubble? You have to be afraid if you're the short, have chips and dominate, have chips and win... Being a nit?? That doesn't belong to you anymore.
I hope you enjoyed it, play your tournaments and save money!!!
pokemaobr: Thank you for sharing the article. If you have any questions about it, please contact me. Hugs
mandrakrdg: Very good article. Hehehe… after I started adapting my game thinking like this, I do very well in MTTs… lol!
Guzinho: Simple and direct! Cool!
romin23: Very good!
Original author: Alan PK Star.
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