Stud tournament strategy

[kschellenger]

Inspired by Roland's post:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...;o=14&vc=1

He suggests the theory in NLHE you should pass up on small advantages early. True. And I was thinking about how this translates for limit stud. Here's how I play, it's worked well for me, but I just wanted to get some discussion about it.

Early in tournaments I play live draws very aggressively. I cap 4-flushes on 4th frequently. I don't play big pairs aggressively. I wait til I improve.
Middle of tournaments I play live draws passively. Pairs I play faster and I start to steal a lot.
Late in tournaments I don't play draws if there is action becuase it takes too much of my stack so I wait for live flushes with high cards and not much action.

Any thoughts?

[bigredlemon]

I dont play much tourneys and have read even less on it, so apologies if i'm wildly off.
Anyways here's my personal take:

The reasoning behind passing small edges is that in a tournament, the person with 100% of the chips (the winner) doesn't get 100% of the profit, as would be the case in a cash game. Thus there are many situations where you have an edge in terms of tournament chips, but are in fact behind relative the final payout. I.e. party ministep 1 where top 7 or 8 out of 10 gets something, people fold pretty much everything but AA/KK until the bubble.

But this is offset by the fact that a large chip stack allows you to bully and thus t1000 is worth more than double what t500 is worth. But this is only true if you can bully. If the table is super loose, then there are going to be alot of people with t1000, so a gamble isn't worth it. Hence why a lot of NL tourny players are super tight early on. A few LAG inevitably get lucky and have a big stack as well, so it isn't worth it for a smart player to risk his stack early on to build a big stack. On the bubble, he can earn that back in a few steals or one hand.

In a limit tourney, you're almost never going to go bust in one hand early on, so there tends to be a bigger reward-risk ratio. It's also much harder for bad players to build a big stack, so having a big stack when the bubble hits is worth much much more. In a limit tourney on the bubble, it's easier to force someone to be committed to play for the rest of his stack while risking a very small portion of your own.