Early Strategy in Party Tournaments

I'm brand new to this site so perhaps this has been asked before but I couldn't find it anywhere. Anyway, what are the thoughts on your strategy early on in the Party tournaments. I've just started playing them but am thinking that because you only start with $1,500 in chips ($1,000 for lower buy-in tourney) you have to be more agresssive early on and even make a few calls that you may not make later on. With such a small stack to start with and blinds that move relatively quickly it only takes one river beat and you are basically done. Any thoughts?

[gobboboy]

Actually with 1000 chips and 10/15 blinds you have a LOT of room to move. Limp in with a lot of speculative hands and call relatively small raises in order to see a flop. If you hit your hand, you'll likely double up. ESPECIALLY if this is early on. Pocket pairs and suited connectors can pay off BIG time if you make a hand. Almost every tournament, someone triples up the first hand and it's basically assured it's because they made a set, flush or straight with a pocket pair or suited connector.

Play a little loose early on, but once you get past the first break tighten up a LOT. Don't be limping except with very strong speculative hands where other limpers are there to discourage big raises. Work on your postflop skills, but remember that with all the fish out there it's rarely profitable to make some elaborate bluff. It won't work more than half the time.

[JohnFR]

I have found that Party Poker tournies, have a great structure, especially in the big buy in events. If you compare to a table against PokerStars which is probably the other big tourney site you end up with a table that looks like this, MCTSS = M compared to starting stack


Break PP MCTSS PS MCTSS
1st 15/30 33.33 50/100 16.66
2nd 75/150 6.66 200/400 A25 3.03
3rd 200/400 2.5 1k/2k A100 0.641
4th 500/1000 1 4k/8k A400 0.16
5th 1.5k/3k .33 20k/40k A2k 0.032

So as you can see, the structure is amazing at party poker, allowing you to play any style you want in the first couple of hours. With a starting stack of 1500 and the first hour ending at 15/30 blinds, you can play as loose or as tight as you want the first hour. I would continue on, but I think their is a misconception about Party's MTT structure, it is actually one of the best available, I haven't played at UB lately, but I think only UB's might be better.

John

[burningyen]

See this post I made about MTT structures.