MTT (Card Dead)

[G Baade]

I am curious what some of the really good MTT players do when they are getting crap cards?


Heres the scenario. 100 person MTT. 15000 in starting chips. Blinds start at 100 200 and go up every 30 minutes. You have been seeing junk for 2 hours and the blinds are now at 800 and 1600. You have hung around and have about 14500 left. You have less thank 10 blinds and they will be going up soon. The other important thing is that the table is very loose and if you try to make a raise with a hand like A 7 in position you will get called. The flop misses you every time it seems so do you?

I seem to get stuck in this situation alot and dont know what to do. It seems whenever I am in position I have something like 10 3. And out of position I get hands I am tempted to play like K J suited. Which is a crap hand but looks real good when your seeing 8 4 all night.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[AL5AcE]

You should always have a read on the 4-5 people acting after you. There may come a chance that a perfect situation arrives that you can just steal a couple of blinds. Whatever you get dealt is secondary. If the table is always as laggy as you describe, perhaps you are playing too tight.

Also, you should still maintain your patience. You can still have a shot at this tourney even when the blinds soon become 1000-2000. At your described point, you should be looking to find something and go allin. However, you should not be reckless until the blinds increase a little more or your stack decreases a little more since you still have a significant amount of chips compared to the blinds. As soon as the blinds increase again, you will have to just take that KJo, maybe even T9o and push, trying to steal the blinds or get lucky.

[KyleM]

[ QUOTE ]
You have hung around and have about 14500 left.

[/ QUOTE ]

First off, bring your "A" game and don't just hang around, regardless of what cards you get. If you do end up with 10bb or less, then its pretty much push or fold, unless you have a monster and want to be reraised all in by an aggressive player. Open push when medium stacks are in the blinds, unless you want to get called.

[ckff93]

I didn't do the math there, but from the feel of the situation it seems like maybe you have been calling or min raising too often and it has wittled down your stack. Certainly at this point of the tournament you've seen 221 hands, which means you've most likely had pocket rockets by now. On a loose table you need to play these for bigger raises because people will call and you will be ahead of them them. Not to mention you need to thin the field.

If you do find that no matter what happens you are still in this situation, then I agree with the other posters, play your position and pick your spots. Just don't get blinded down so far that a double up is meaningless.

P.S. I don't claim to be a really good MTT player [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[G Baade]

Nope! No pocket Aces. Second hand in I got pocket Queens and raised 5 times the blind. Got called in 4 spots. Ace King 6 on flop. Check/Fold! 2 hands at showdown. Ace 5 and K 10 suited. After that the best hand I saw was pocket 6's. I never mini raise and didn't call my chips away. I honestly had nothing better than K J for the rest of the way. Ended up going in with 10 J suited guy called with K Q offsuit and I hit 10 on the flop. He hit runner runner diamonds and had the K for the flush. At the time I had 2 blinds left and thought 10 J was lookin real good.

In a loose game like this would you just get in there and mix it up early? Playing hands like 9 10 and A 2 suited. From any position. There was a lot of calling and only a few people raising. Maybe 2 people at the table were any threat at all.

[SixgunSam]

With 10x the BB, you need to get really aggressive. I would be willing to push PF with reasonable hands while I still had FE - connectors, suited cards, pocket pairs, pretty much anything outside of 73, 93 or hands like that. Honestly, I would rather have a hand like 87s than Ax small to make this play. I would want to be the first one in the pot whenever I made this move. If someone else had raised, I would need a big hand to enter. Picking up the blinds/antes is a big boost to your stack. If you get called, well hopefully you have some live cards and can get lucky. With 10x the BB, you have to be willing to gamble and use your stack for all it's worth, especially against stacks who it could potentially damage if they call.

As far as being card dead before this point - you don't have to hit flops to bet at them. Your opponent will miss most of the time too. What's more important is to be the aggressor PF and try to pick up pots when you can by continuing after the flop. Don't bluff away your stack, but if you raise PF and then play the flop with some authority, you're going to win more often than you lose.

[woodguy]

Some good posters give their opinion in this thread.

Regards,
Woodguy

[G Baade]

Thank you very much!