Online MTTs

Probably beating a horse to death but Im new to this site and Im going to post.

Question is simple: What quality of hands and what sort of strategies do you employ to place well in a tournament that has somewhere between 12-15 hands per round and 12 minute rounds.

I find myself placing in the top 20% of MTTs consistently but Im always in a low M situation (short stackish) and just barely staying alive. Good, solid hands dont arrive very often and pots are contested most of the time so its difficult to limp or even raise with good hands as you get 3 or 4 callers at times.

Should I be making raises with hands like KJ or K10 or the like in mid to late position? What hands should I be calling raises with? I am a very good cash game player but for tournaments I find it very difficult to play.

I am much better than the average tournament player, for the most part I usually can put them on a hand with a high degree of success and play very well but something is lacking, possibly a lack of aggression and maybe too choosey for preflop selections?

My style is pretty well outlined in Harrington on Hold Em volume 1 the conservative style requirements, those are pretty much the hands I play.

Help would be very appreciated. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Exitonly]

Read the Anthology post, if you have questions after that (it'll take a while) then post em here.

[KKbluff]

What are your MTT buy-ins?
How many ppl are you playing with on avg?
What site do you usually play on?

answering these questions might help us address your questions better.

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Should I be making raises with hands like KJ or K10 or the like in mid to late position? What hands should I be calling raises with? I am a very good cash game player but for tournaments I find it very difficult to play.

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You may be a good full-ring player, but sounds like you need some short-handed experience. Yes you raise KT and KJ is mid to late position in most cases. Try playing on the 6-max cash tables for a while and reading the Heads-up and Short-Handed forum a lot. That helps you pick up more chips in the tournament when everyone folds to late position so you don't end up short-stacked in the $$.

Also, as a conservative style player, you should be moving in with hands and picking up the blinds more when you are low M. read Harrington Vol. 2 for more. If your table image is tight, this should prop you up until you can double up through a big stack.

I read the anthology post, and I think Im going to deposit a good amount in partypoker, the round length and the starting stack seems the most conducive to skilled play.

I just finished Harrington Vol 2 and I usually move all in when my M is below 5 with K-x and A-x with first in vigorish in mid to late position and this usually keeps me afloat for 20 or 30 more spots but its not enough. I need to be able to stay above this sort of M level in the first place.

I play $10+1s on Pokerroom, with an average of 200-300 players. I usually finish in the top 80 or so. Money is usually either top 20 or 40.

Im doin somethin wrong or maybe just getting unlucky. Any insights into my play would be helpful.

[KneeCo]

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I read the anthology post, and I think Im going to deposit a good amount in partypoker, the round length and the starting stack seems the most conducive to skilled play.

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Um... no.

If you're only interested in MTTs, Party is *not* the place for you (if however, you want to play a lot of ring games and sngs too, and you have certain financial arrangments which make Party a good place for you, so be it). In other words, there are some advantages to Party, the ones you listed are not them.

Assuming this isn't the case, and you just have some money you're prepared to deposit and take a crack at mostly MTTs, I would go with PokerStars. Play the micro tournaments (1-10$ buyins as you see fit) and a bunch of single table SNGs.

Why is party not the place for this? According to some of the anthology post, the % of blinds per the starting stacks is lower than the other smaller MTTs on other sites. Also the round length is 25% greater. Why wouldn't this be a good place for MTTs?

And according to pokertips.org partypoker has some of the easiest competition, 10% easier (according to their scale) than pokerroom where I currently play.

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Why is party not the place for this? According to some of the anthology post, the % of blinds per the starting stacks is lower than the other smaller MTTs on other sites. Also the round length is 25% greater. Why wouldn't this be a good place for MTTs?

And according to pokertips.org partypoker has some of the easiest competition, 10% easier (according to their scale) than pokerroom where I currently play.

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I don't play on party much (probably twice in the last year) but I prefer to have deeper stacks when I play, so having 10/15 blinds with an 800 stack is not as good to me as having 10/20 blinds with a 1500 stack. Plus, I'd rather the table have max 9 handed, and would rather have the antes, maybe because I feel more natural with those in there than without.

Not sure about the time, but 15 minutes a blind level is pretty decent to me, and plenty of time to make moves. It only starts getting crazy at about the 3:30 mark and beyond, and if you get a nice stack, up to an hour later than that.

I am guessing party has 20 minute rounds? Still, I think I get more value by having more maneuveribility with a 1500, 75 bb stack at the start where I can build using more postflop play and less preflop play, than having an 800, 53 bb stack.

i think if your just starting MTTs ,its a good idea to play some SnG before hand just to get the hang of whats different between that and cash games,get used to blind structure and how they affect the game,get use to adjusting to the blinds,use to different styles of playing,and then you can move much better from SnG to MTT

[burningyen]

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I don't play on party much (probably twice in the last year)

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On Party, you start with 1000 chips in small-to-medium MTTs, 1500 in the big ones. The actual starting stack is smaller than other sites (e.g. 5/10 with 1500 on UB), but the blind progression is slower on Party.

800 is the starting stack in the small-to-medium SnGs.

[burningyen]

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I read the anthology post, and I think Im going to deposit a good amount in partypoker, the round length and the starting stack seems the most conducive to skilled play.

[/ QUOTE ]

Um... no.

If you're only interested in MTTs, Party is *not* the place for you (if however, you want to play a lot of ring games and sngs too, and you have certain financial arrangments which make Party a good place for you, so be it). In other words, there are some advantages to Party, the ones you listed are not them.

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True, the structural advantage of Party MTTs isn't the starting stack or round length, it's the percentage increases in the blinds. That's what makes Party's structures slower than Stars'.