Low buy-in tourneys

[Ghazban]

I've been playing a fair amount of cheap (5+.50, 3+0, etc.) tourneys lately and keep finding myself in the same position. Basically, there are a ton of maniacs who push all their chips in with AJo or KJo preflop early on and get themselves busted out. However, when this happens, there end up being a few lucky maniacs with gigantic stacks left, as well as some good players that have been fortunate enough to have AA when one of the maniacs is pushing in with AT. Now when I'm one of these fortunate souls, I usually do all right as I have enough chips to manuever despite the increasing blinds. If I've been seeing nothing but 74o and J3s in the first 20 hands, I'm usually sitting at a hair below the starting point and am staring at large blinds and still a few hyper aggressive maniacs who have amassed so many chips that I can never see a flop cheaply.

So my question is this: how can I better ensure that I have enough chips to work with when a lot of the tourney players are pushing a lot of chips around with marginal hands? With good hands, its pretty easy, as I can always get them paid off but, without them and with little chance of success bluffing to pick up small pots, what can I do? I've gotten much better at playing with a short stack as I've had so much experience but I'd really like to consistently get through the first hour with enough chips to give me room to play the remainder of the tourney without going all-in on every hand I play.

[37offsuit]

You have to remain patient and look for opportunities to get into pots cheaply. Maniacs aren't going to raise 72o very often and remain in the game. So look for an opportunity to either limp with less than marginal hands when you have position and the maniacs have passed, or when they maniacs limp and you have position.

When you're playing tight and there are other players who are lower stacked and suffering from the same abuse from the maniacs, look for opportunities to semi-bluff them when the maniacs are out of the hand.

All you have to do is find one such opportunity per round to steal the blinds or limp with a worse hand than usual in good position and then hit it in order to stay at a consistent chip count. You are going to have to find some hands to play aggressively though, but then, that's tournament poker.

The above should allow you to make it so that when you double up with a good hand, you're making progress rather than just getting back to where you were.

This also means that you have to chuck those marginal hands you might usually limp with when you have one of the maniacs still to act. JQs, KJs, JTo, small pockets, etc, might have to be tossed instead of limped with here.

In the meantime, use the time you have sitting there to find patterns in the maniacs' play, because they will be there. Maybe they ALWAYS raise on the button regardless of their cards, or they always make a pot sized bet from early position when an ace hits the flop.

Use this info to adjust your play. Maybe you try to sneak in with A3o on the button when the maniac is UTG and has limped because you know if the ace hits, he'll bet it, likely without having anything (he would have raised any ace preflop), and you'll get to see if any one else plays before the action gets to you.

[Ghazban]

Thanks a lot; I can't believe it took your post to make me realize I've been tightening up across the board instead of adjusting my play based on who's in the pot. I do it without even thinking in cash games and in tourneys where the players aren't so wild but, when I see chips flying in these tourneys, I overcompensate and refuse to enter any pots at all. Clearly, this is a big mistake. Instead of backing into the money as I've been doing a lot lately, maybe now I can actually take control and play my way into the bigger prizes.