Master Poker MTT Basics
Knowing the difference between these two poker formats is vital. In fact, if you do not understand how each type is different, you are likely to struggle with both. Since we are discussing poker tournament strategy, I will concentrate mostly on that, just barely touching cash games.
There are a few main differences, which you need to be aware of in the MTT strategy. Firstly, there are two factors, which you need to take into consideration when making a decision:
- The amount of chips you have in your stack
- How your stack looks compared to other players
In cash games, your chips have a value that does not ever change. One-dollar chip is always worth one dollar, and a fifty-dollar chip is always worth fifty dollars. This is by far not the case in tournaments.
You may be wondering why this difference is such a big deal.
The answer is relatively simple, in a cash game you are never “out.” Even when you bust, or go all in and lose, you can always buy more chips.
In a tournament, when you lose all your chips, you are out for good.
Therefore, your strategy hinges almost entirely on how your stack looks relative to the field (other players) and how much you stand to gain by outlasting your opponents.
To illustrate this even further, we need to be familiar with the Independent Chip Model (ICM). ICM – is a mathematical model used to calculate a player’s equity in the tournament according to the number of chips he is holding.
Therefore, this model plays a huge role in an effective poker tournament strategy.
If you find yourself playing on the bubble of any poker MTT, busting out means, you are getting nothing and reaching paid places ensures at least a minimum payment. In this spot, your goal is to preserve chips and try to build your stack by attacking other players.
ICM dictates that you could be shoving all-in very aggressively with a wide range and making big profits, but you just cannot be calling other player’s shoves with the mediocre range.
It also applies to final table play, where you have big money jumps. In most cases, you should be more willing to risk your tournament life by showing aggression yourself.
If you want to get better and learn poker tournament strategy, you have to learn this concept. Therefore, study ICM situation using poker tools available online and make sure to understand what it stands for.
Adjust MTT poker strategy based on the stack size
It is easy to think that you can learn one approach and try to adopt it throughout the tournament, but this will never be very effective.
If you want to have better results, you must adjust your strategy based on stack depth.
While there are many nuances that go into this, I will try to breakdown the most important concepts so that you could instantly implement them in your games.
Deep stack
Most live events and significant buy-in online tournaments usually start deep stacked with 100 big blinds (bb) or more. At this stage of a tournament, despite my previous statements, you will be playing a strategy similar to a cash game:
- Carefully select the hands you play
There is no point to force the action at the beginning of the tournament and have a high PFR poker stat. This is the spot, where careful card selection comes into play.
Most of the time, weak players will be playing way too many hands, so your goal is to play strong ones and gradually build your stack by letting them make all of the mistakes. If you have better hand selection, you will simply end up on the winning side of the spectrum more often without doing anything else.
- Be patient and disciplined
Sometimes it is not as easy as it looks, especially if you are not getting any playable hands. However, these skills are necessary if you want to be a successful poker tournament player.
You should spend your time observing your opponents, finding their mistakes, seeing who is tight or passive, and punish them for it when you have a chance instead of chasing opportunities to play weak hands.
They tend to make many mistakes and to overvalue their poor holding. This gives you a tremendous opportunity to build your stack early on. So instead of battling with regulars from the beginning try to concentrate on weaker players.
If you choose your opponents correctly and do a bit of observation, you will know when to value bet light or fold reasonably strong poker hands when facing aggression.
This can be used at the beginning because you end up playing deep stacks almost all the time. However, to build a winning poker tournament strategy, you need to learn how to play with shorter stacks because this is where you spend most of your time.
Medium stack
When you get down to around 50 BB, you should start stealing more often. A lot of the time, you will have antes in your game, and this is a good spot for widening your ranges.
More than in any other format, poker MTT requires distinguishing between your opponents, because you will end up making many decisions based on the situation and your competition instead of just looking at your hand.
This is where the information that you gather earlier comes into play. Ultimately, your mtt strategy at this point will be to get involved with players that you have a position on, and against anyone on who you have a solid read or understanding of their hand range.
You want to bully anyone you can, which will likely be a smaller stack.
Widen your pre-flop raising range, look for signs of weakness, and be willing to risk going all-in if you have some equity when called.
The worst thing you can do when you have a medium stack is given someone the chance to catch up. So always, keep the pressure and try to build your stack implementing an aggressive strategy when you can.
Short stack
This is what makes tournament poker so fun! When you get down to shorter stacks, it is time to unleash the power.
Sitting around just waiting for AA is a bad idea, because likely, you will be blinded down to just a few BB. When this happens, no poker tournament strategy in the world can help you much.
To avoid this scenario, you should start playing aggressively before it is not too late. When you have a reasonable stack of 20 BB, a bit more or less, you should be actively looking for spots to re-shove.
In this case, opening many hands will not help you build the stack. However, if your competition is very tight, you should be trying to steal their blinds quite aggressively from late poker positions and raise hands, which have good blockers, such as Ax or Kx instead of playing low connected hands.
Nevertheless, most of the time opening wide will be a mistake, because you end up facing 3bet jams and drastically reducing your stack when forced to fold.
It is much better to be the aggressor yourself and add some bluffs in your 3bet shoving ranges. A quick example:
- The blinds are 100 and 200 with 25 chips ante on a 9-man table. So even before your hand is dealt, there are 525 chips in the pot. Imagine you are sitting on the button, and your opponent in CO raises to 500. You decide to re-shove all-in for the remaining 4000 (20 BB), and he folds. You just added more than 25% to your stack and instantly moved from 4000 to 5025 adding an extra 5 BB.
This is an enormous boost, and just a few strong moves like this one can bring you back to the playable stack. Remember, patience is your friend here, and you should choose the spots carefully.
As we already discussed, most of your decisions will be based on the situation and your opponents. However, most players tend to open too much and then not defend as often as they should facing a shove.
That is why it is so profitable to push some extra hands as a bluff, such as A-high suited, small pocket pairs, and few other blockers will do wonders.
A tiny stack
The last phase of any poker tournament strategy is open shoving spots. This is the final stage where your primary goal is to double to keep fighting for the title.
If the relative stack size is down to 10 BB you have only two options – fold or raise all-in.
At this point, you are trying to get all your chips in most of your Ax hands, pocket pairs, or any combination of Broadway cards.
When you have an even smaller stack of 6 or 7 BB, you need to remember that you will get called very light, as your opponents are correct to do so. In this instance, you should keep your bluffs to the minimum and use it just in very specific spots.
It is very likely that at one or another point of your tournament you will be in the area where double up is needed and choosing these spots correctly will increase your chances to take down any poker MTT that you play.
For this, we created a push fold chart, which will help you play perfectly at the end of your poker MTT so make sure to check it out.
