Pokerstars Deep Stack Tournaments

[Eric Draven]

I missed these; I guess they're pretty new. I have a few n00b questions.

How long do they take to complete? None are still in the completed category except an Omaha High/Low. It took 11 hours to complete, considering the starting stacks and blinds this seems to be an acceptable amount of time, is this close to the average of the NL Hold 'em?

How much more skill is required to do well? Not that it matters too much to me, as I'm new to MTT and likely to play terribly anyways, but I'm still curious. Obviously the better players have a bigger advantage with deep stack tournaments, but are n00bs like me totally out of luck? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

How much does the strategy change? I would assume you have more leeway to play more "creative hands." More suited connectors and skipping suited connectors and such, does this lead to more aggressive or passive play from most?


I guess they just seem like a fun way to lose more money... Anything else anyone want to throw out there?

[Yuv]

They are fun and a nice change from the push/fold late-game tournaments, but if you single table, they are not worth the time IMO. Takes over 12 hours to finish.

I am definitely a fan of these deep stack tournaments. They tend to play more like a live tournament in that you don't have to double up within 20 mins to avoid becoming a smallish stack. They give you more leeway to operate and allow skill to be more of a factor than the 9-10min level 1500 stack tourneys. I wouldn't advise getting too creative with crappy hands though. Because everyone has a decent amount of chips you'll find that they tend to play more conservatively, and if you try to get to fancy you'll probably go broke. Smart solid play in the early stages is rewarded more than it is in standard online tourneys.

[Jurollo]

They favor the better players because the blind/stack ratio is smaller and slower. This is the obviously thing that is great about them. However, as Yuv stated these things are TERRIBLE when it comes to $/hr and in my opinion should only really be played for fun or live practice. PS always does unbelieveable things for us MTT'ers and this isn't an exception, we asked for deep stacks and we got them, however, in this player's opinion they are too deep. T3000 and 20 minutes levels would have been great and could have cut down the time these things take tremendously.
~Justin

These are probably my favorite tournaments to play on pokerstars. However if you do decide to play one expect to be playing for awhile if you expect to cash. Awhile meaning at least 6 hours. I believe in the one I Final tabled, it took 3 or 4 hours for 36 people to get down to 9.

As for the play, everytime i've played the first tbale is always playing extremely loose.. So just wait for big hands and then strike and play the smaller hands when you can but dont make it a point to play every suited connector you get. But that's pretty obvious knowledge..

And the number 1 key thing, patience.