improve Tournament play

[Great__ape]

Hi,

I'm have been reading the forums for a while now, and adapted my tournament play to the 2+2 way ( for as far as I understand it )

I think I have a basic understanding of how to play a tournament, most of the time I end up in the top 5-10 %, however this is based on intuition rather than mathematics.

Reading the forums I think the better players do a lot more mathematics on the fly during the tournaments, and as a result are better players that average participants.

so here is my question, when talking about fold equity it seems to me that most of the time it boils down to the same situations:

you have a hand in a category, you put your opponents on a range of hands and try to balance the probability that they will fold against your bet with the probability you actually win the hand if they call your bet.

Questions,

Is the fold equity formula used to calculate the size of the bet we have to push with ?

Is there somewhere a chart available that made a rough calculation on a number of situations: ie, you have PP, suited connectors, AK , ...your opponents have PP, Suited connectors, AK, displayed in a grid kind of table. This would really help since it would enable me to make decisions much faster in tournaments

Also If anyone could post a link to a thread where all this is explained clearly, I would appreciate it very much


I would also appreciate to receive some comments on my tournament strategy:

basically it boils down to this,

Beginning of the tournament , I try not to do too many fancy plays here, but if the situation seems favourable I will limp in with PP and suited connectors , when hitting the flop , I push hard. This usually brings me to a decent stack ( average or more ) with 60 % of the field gone. (=15 - 20 X BB)

>> is this okay, or should my aim be to go for a bigger stack at this time already ?

mid tournament play,

Here my objective is to steal pots where possible, stealing blinds a lot, or re-stealing pots from other stealers, with or without legitimate hands, I guess this is where Fold equity starts to play, but i use it only intuitively.

Most of the time this strategy brings me into the money and close to the final table.. but also just with an average stack , my goal is to remain at least 10 X bb , again maybe this is too low, I have no idea

Late tournament play, I feel I'm missing something here, if I remain aggressive someone is bound to call me down and most of the times I loose to coin flip situations, should I tighten up or not ?


last question, I also notice that a lot of 2+2ers know each other , and each others names on PP or other sites, Is there a list of who's who ? I def want to know when and if i'm playing against a 2+2er

I welcome all comments, and tips, this is my first post so If it is not in line with the guidelines to good posting, dont flame me 2 much.

kr

PP: Great_Ape
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[CardSharpCook]

First, you're gonna get hammered here if you claim to finish ITM "most of the time". None of us do. But don't worry about it, just watch wording in future posts.

FE + the size of the bet. Yes, FE relates to the size of the bet. If you min bet 15 chips on the river at a 1600 chip pot, your FE is very low. However, there are some strange flucuations here. Sometimes a value bet will be scarier than an all-in and will induce more folds. This depends on the player you are up against and on the board. Make your bets based on the action you wish to induce. If you want a call, maybe you should bet lower. But remember, it is not a direct relationship. I'd even argue that at a point, the bigger the bet the more likely a call.

Never worry that your stack size is too smallb. /images/graemlins/blush.gif Patience and smart play will sometimes leave you with a large stack mid tourney, but usually you'll be around the tourney avg. This is ok. Stack size does effect later tourney play. You can afford to play more hands when you have more chips. You can steal with much less.

Playing back with no hand is a little risky. I like to have at least half a hand if I'm going to play back. However, I'd prefer 87s to ATo. I want at least two live cards, and, of course, I don't want to be fighting an overpair.

Don't tighten up as you approach the money. If anything, loosen up, but pay attention to the other players. Playback against other aggressive players, be wary of tighter players. Again though, this depends on the size of your stack.

Finally, check *official* threads to start learning players' names. Who knows, maybe you can be the one to compile a list for us all to use?

CSC