Multi-Table Tournaments Strategy in Texas Holdem

 

If you've enjoyed the excitement of Texas Hold'em Single Table Tournaments and you're after a bigger challenge then the next logical step, if you haven't found your way there already, is to try your hand at one of the many great Multi-Table Tournaments.

You will need to be at your very best to battle through to the pay-out places in MTT. You can play to qualify for a place in a major tournament (and yes, that includes the World Series of Poker!) or you can take your chance at winning the huge cash prizes on offer in some of major tournaments.

In all of them though you are you are going to have your stamina tested to the full and be given a rigorous examination of your poker skills. It’s up to you to develop your own unique style in MTTs but if you would like some help with what are considered by many to be optimal tournament strategies then please read on.

 

The Main Aim

There is only one target you should be aiming for in any tournament play and that is to reach the pay-out structure. Nothing else matters and all of your efforts should be focused on making sure you at least get to the places that will see you get a return on your investment.

If you're playing a Freezeout tournament (or you've reached the Freezeout stage of a re-buy tournament) then you should always remember one thing above everything else. If you lose your chips you're out. It's that simple. You can't buy some more and you can't reload. Once your chips are gone, so are you.

Therefore you should always be aware of the need to preserve your chips. You must survive to play and you must play to survive. On top of that, you have to seek to maintain a stack of chips healthy enough to allow you to play your best game.

 

Early Play

The opening stages of any Multi-Table Tournament tend to be more than a little chaotic. The combination of Maniacs, Fish and those players trying to build a huge mountain of chips in the opening minutes leads to a lot of messy play and a surge of early exits.

Unless you're playing with the top starting hands then your best policy at this stage is to play as tight as possible and stay out of the action with anything less than genuinely strong hands. Tournaments are long drawn out affairs and unless you're just a born gambler there's little point in risking an early exit with marginal hands. Remember, once your chips are gone, so are you!

 

Middle Play

As the Fish and the Maniacs are steadily knocked out you'll get a game that's more settled and sensible, and where you can begin to play some poker. This is the time to loosen up and start playing some hands. You're now going to need to build up some chips so that you can make it into the pay-out structure and, hopefully, all the way to the very end of the tournament.

Put pressure on the small stacks and look to steal some blinds. At all times though, unless you're playing very strong cards, try to stay out of the way of anyone who's got a much bigger stack of chips than you. There's no point in risking your tournament life against someone who can call your bets without too much risk to themselves.

As the tournament starts to move towards the places that pay out a prize a lot of players will begin to tighten up and hope to squeeze into the money. This is the absolute optimum time for anybody looking to build their chip stack to go out hunting for victims. If your opponents have previously seen you as a very tight player then your steals will stand all that much more chance of succeeding.

It's at this stage of a tournament that you have to decide what it is you want to achieve. If you're just happy to make it into the money then tighten up yourself, wait around for nothing less than Aces or Kings and try to calculate if you can make it without playing too many hands. However, if you're really serious about wanting to go all the way down to the last few players then you can't just let yourself get whittled away and you're going to have to be more positive in your approach.

 

The End Game

Okay, if you've made it to the pay-out places then well done; you have completed the first objective. The job though is not yet completed. You will often see a situation in poker tournaments whereby there is a sudden rush of players eliminated shortly after the pay-out structure has been reached. There is clearly a relief amongst many of the players that they have made it into the money and they now adopt a carefree attitude, usually pushing all-in with their next decent hand.

If you can avoid this sudden rush of casualties, by tightening up for just a few hands, then you might well find yourself moving up several places up the prize list without really doing anything.

With the big prizes now in sight it's the right time to be bolder and braver than ever. There's never any excuse for playing recklessly, or simply throwing your chips away, and you should still avoid at all cost the temptation to bet against the big stacks with marginal hands, but if you want to have a serious chance of making it to the final table and even winning the event you can't afford to be meek and timid.

 

Watching Your Stack

No matter what stage of the tournament you're at you must always be watching the size of your stack. For example bet365 offers all of its players the chance to check the current average stack size during a tournament whilst they're playing, and players should try and make sure that they at least stay within touching distance of that amount.

If you've sat tight during the opening stages of a tournament then you might find you enter the middle stages with one of the smaller stacks. The main problem if you allow yourself to become short-stacked is that it will be easier and easier for other players to call your bets and many will not even be afraid to call your desperate all-in bet if you've allowed your chip stack to become much smaller than those of your opponents.

There is a general rule of thumb in poker which helps you to decide when it's time to make as a stand. If you're concerned about the size of your stack then add together the size of the small and the big blind and see how it compares to the number of chips you have.

If the number of chips you have is at least fifteen times the combined size of the blinds then you're in good shape and don't need to worry about things. You've got time enough to wait for your hands to come around. If your chip-stack is between ten and fifteen times the blinds then you need to start thinking about ways in which you can add some chips to your stack. Once you get below ten times the size of the blinds then your chip stack is unlikely to frighten your opponents and by the time you reach five times the blinds you're going to have to make a stand with the next decent hand you see.

To highlight an example of this; if you have 4,800 chips and the blinds are 200/400 then your stack is eight times the blinds and you're starting to get into dangerous territory. If the blinds pass through you again without you playing a hand you're going to be down to 4,200 and just suppose the blinds then increase to 300/600? You're now down to just over four times the combined blinds and any raise you make is unlikely to scare the bigger stacks out of a pot if they have a playable hand.

It can be very tempting to wait and wait for a decent hand but if you do that and your chip stack has whittled away then you'll find it very hard to steal any pots and may find you're getting too many callers when you do finally get two cards you're prepared to play. The more callers you get the less chance you have of winning.

MTT Pitfalls

Chip Stack Envy - Early on in tournaments you may see a player, or more than one player, at your table with a mountain of chips. The feeling can be that you yourself need to start playing some hands quickly so that you can catch up. That isn't the case. Quite often in the early stages of tournaments the biggest stacks belong to players who have been prepared to gamble with marginal hands and then got lucky. There are some wild swings of fortune in the opening rounds and you'll often see those players who do get the early chip lead crashing out while the blinds are still low because they carry on playing marginal hands and eventually come unstuck. Don't be tempted to try and keep up with other players in the opening rounds and just concern yourself with your own game and stay focused.

The Early Gamble - Players will quite often find themselves faced with a key decision early in a game. You may find yourself with a hand such as A-K or J-J and find someone going all-in against you. At that early stage of the game you may have no idea what kind of player you're up against and therefore whether you'll be playing someone who's likely to go all-in with A-3 or A-A. Unless you're already heavily pot-committed, or absolutely certain you're up against a very loose player then these early gambles aren't usually worth it. True, if you win you'll be in a very good position, but if you lose then you're out.

Fatigue and Distraction - With tournaments that often have several hundred or more players in them you can pretty much guarantee you're going to be sat there for at least two-three hours and possibly even more. That's quite a commitment and after a while you may find yourself getting tired or even have your mind wandering away to other things, such as e-mails and your favourite Internet sites. If you don't remain focused at all times then you're going to miss out on a lot of important information and your chances of success are going to suffer accordingly.

Giving Up - It's not uncommon for players to simply get bored of the game they're playing and to start throwing their chips away in stupid situations. This is particularly common once they are in the prize money and is probably the prime reason as to why so many players get eliminated so quickly after the pay-out structure has been reached. You should always allow for just how long it might take you to play a tournament if you do well.

Too many all-in bets - If you find yourself in all-in situations too often then it stands to reason that you're eventually going to get stung. Even A-A will only win about 80% of the time against any two random cards. The way to build up your chip-stack is to out-play your opponents, not to push all of your chips into the middle time and time again.

Tilt - After suffering a bad beat, heavy loss or an unexpected reversal of fortune, too many players then simply push the rest of their chips into the pot on the very next hand. It happens time and time again and rarely seems to have a happy ending. There is a saying in poker that you all need to have a chance of winning a tournament is a "chip and a chair". Even if you've lost a large portion of your chips, whether through bad luck or bad play, you can still come back and get into contention. Don't just throw away your remaining chips on a poor hand or in a fit of temper. Multi-Table Tournaments are a very demanding form of poker but they offer some of the greatest rewards. Stay focused and play your best game throughout if you want to be a success in this ultimate test of poker endurance.

 

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04. PLAYING CONNECTORS
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06. PLAY YOUR OPPONENT
07. IMPLIED ODDS IN TEXAS HOLD'EM
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