How do you manage/pace a tourney?

[bobbycharles]

Don't know if this is common to all, but here is my problem. (Playing Online MTT at PS with standard PS blind structure)

I seem to bog down in the middle stages of the tourney.

Early stages thru the first couple of breaks, I'm typically in the top 10-30% of the field, playing solid TAG.
Late stages, near the bubble, if I'm fortunate enough to get there, I'm mixing it up nicely with aggressive play stealing blinds and moving up.
The problem is the middle stages. I'm either too tight too long, or too Agro too early, or just plain bad, forcing cards etc. Maybe it's a loss of concentration...I don't know.

Does anybody else deal with this? And if so, what do you recommend to better manage the tourney, or better identify inflection points?

[pfkaok]

my plan lately in tourneys is to get going right away, with the attitude that i want to win every chip, so i look for every +EV situation i can find.

basically you just watch how the table is playing, and how you've been playing. if the table is tight and/or you haven't been overly aggressive, then its profitable to attack the blinds. even early on you can build a stack by raising a lot of decent hands (but not only premiums) and get people who check/fold if they miss the flop. if you've been playing really aggro already, then tighten up with your stealing hands, but raise your premiums and you'll get paid off. also if you've been betting tons of flops, and people are starting to give you less respect then try to see lots of flops in position, and when you hit good you'll get paid off. of course if you haven't been betting flops, and aren't seen as too aggressive then look for good flops to bet against 1-3 players, as some are very profitable. if you think people will respect your bet and fold without top pair, then a 2/3 - 3/4 sized bet can be hugely profitable if you don't overdo it.

basically, don't think so much about what hands to play from what position, or what style you should play at each stage of the tourney. just think about finding profitable situations, and take as many as you can without becoming too predictable. you want to be tough to play against.

[davidross]

I think a lot of us struggle with this. Anyone who understands the game knows how to play the deep stack or short stack part of the game well. The top players play the in between better than the rest of us. My personal problem is the fear of leaving myself short stacked so I freeze on the continuation bets, or don't play some of the borderline hands I play earlier or later, which leaves me fewer opportunities to win pots. Essentially I need to be dealt real good cards during this stage to do well.

It's something I need to work on, and I'm playing more low buy in, or FPP events to give myself more experience in these situations to work on it.

[bobbycharles]

Early stages, how much are you raising? I'm finding that a lot of ppl will call a 4xBB raise with as marginal as QTo or worse out of position....or are you hoping for the preflop call, and firing away regardless of the flop looking for them to fold. If so, what size of continuation bet are you sending in?

[bobbycharles]

I think you hit the nail on the head there....it's that in between stages, where I may become weak-tight hoping for good cards. I need to work on exploiting certain situations better, and "grow a set" as I said in a previous post of mine.

[pfkaok]

well, if you become alot more aggressive early on and attack every profitable situation you can find, then usually you'll either have a big stack or will bust pretty early.

what your saying is pretty much why i like this style much better than the more conservative approach that i used to take. during middle and bubble stages there's a whole lot of profitable plays you can make with a larger stack that aren't available with average or smaller stack.

well, yeah, i usually raise 3-4x bb with no limpers, but if somebody limps in front of you, add more of course. nobody is going to limp then fold to a 3x raise, esp when there's antees in there. you don't care if they see the flop as long as they play poorly afterwards. how they play poorly will obviously determine how often you valuebet and whatnot.

for example, the last 2 days i played in live tournies at the US pokeropen i had stacks of 10-12 times my initial stack by the 2nd break... and today, i finished 2253 out of 2257 in the party 500k, and 1577 out of 1597 in the stars 700k. i think both my plays were fine. i haven't been making the money quite as often, but i've certainly been going alot deeper with a big stack more often, and usually have a stack big enough to take advantage of alot more opportunities at bubble time.

[justT]

In my chip count charting adventures (which nobody seemed to like since nobody responded), I found a pattern which always ended in me busting out shortly after it occured, I call it going "flatline". Basically it's a period in the middle of a tourney where my chip count is flat or slightly decreasing for 3 or more orbits. Usually this means I was card dead, and just folding. I really don't think it's an inflection point problem, I think it's more a problem with my stack becoming less competitive to the other stacks (more of a Q problem than an m problem).

I've come to the conclusion that I can't allow my stack to flatline even if I'm card dead. I need to find good situations and keep accumulating chips. I track my chip count so I know if/when I've started to flatline.

I've also started recording all the preflop raises. I use a simple 10 column table, each column is a player, each row is a hand. Whenever there is a preflop raise, I convert it to BB's and write it down. Then when confronted with a raise, I look at the last 20 or so hands to see how often the player has been raising, and how big his raises have been. Looking at the frequency and size of my raises also helps me determine my table image.

[pfkaok]

[ QUOTE ]
In my chip count charting adventures (which nobody seemed to like since nobody responded), I found a pattern which always ended in me busting out shortly after it occured, I call it going "flatline". Basically it's a period in the middle of a tourney where my chip count is flat or slightly decreasing for 3 or more orbits. Usually this means I was card dead, and just folding. I really don't think it's an inflection point problem, I think it's more a problem with my stack becoming less competitive to the other stacks (more of a Q problem than an m problem).

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah, there is a definite "in between" zone which sucks to be in when the blinds start getting big. i feel like its usually in the 15-20 BB range when there's antees, and i try to avoid it if i can. after reading gigabets stack sizes post for about the 10th time, and then getting to play in the WPT event and getting to see how some great players take big risks relatively early on presumably to avoid being in this "flatline" zone, it finally clicked. Great players (which i'm not, but aspire to be one day) can build a stack in a NL tourney so easily and with relatively little risk when they have 50+BB stacks and M's in the 30's or more. there's just so much more room to make good +EV plays that cannot be done with a smaller stack.

[bobbycharles]

That's a really great idea...actually both of them. I downloaded the free trial of Pokerspy and it has a feature that shows your chip stack ups and downs. I may look at that a litle more closely, as I think you're really on to something.
Also, I've been thinking about tracking those preflop raises, and you've just given me a way to do it!
Great post!

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]

I've come to the conclusion that I can't allow my stack to flatline even if I'm card dead.

[/ QUOTE ]


I just can't agree with this (although certainly there are quite a few 'fast' players out there who have success with this approach).

to my eye, it seems like you might end up putting too much pressure on yourself to force the action when your better course would be to stay back and wait.

The fact is, in most tourneys you play, you're going to get short-stacked at some point. Trying to avoid it TOO much is -EV I think.


Also - if you are ALWAYS stealing on CO, button and SB then it isn't likely to work forever.
You can be mostly 'in charge' at a given table without getting TOO out of hand about it.


Also - I think it's common to be TOO results oriented about this stuff.
I think all of think that we just aren't playing very well and aren't taking advantage of enough situations after a lengthy run of crappy finishes...or having your KK lose to A8o, etc etc.


Obviously you want to accumulate chips at every stage of a tournament and every chance you get.
But trying to avoid the inevitable stretch where you're going to go 3 orbits without getting anything worth playing is futile if you ask me.



side-story: At the WSOP ME I was at Johnny Chan's table for my whole duration (he lasted 10 minutes longer than me).
For about 10 hours it was obvious that Johnny wasn't getting many cards. He made a few moves...took a couple beats where he got shorter stacked. And waited and waited and waited and waited.
The cards he needed to rebuild never got there...but I imagine that waiting it out like he was doing has been known to work before.
He made his moves early that didn't work. Then focused on survival. no hurry to get a ton of chips super fast.

Then again, I played against Chip Jett and Huck Seed in a couple of other events and their fast-play ability to accumulate lots and lots of chips was something to behold.