We all know poker is getting more competitive. It’s hard to go online these days without reading someone proclaiming the “death of poker” as soon as they find out they’re no longer able to beat a game they once crushed.

There are a number of ways players choose to address this situation. Some people study harder and dive into new concepts to improve their game to its absolute peak; some launch fruitless campaigns aimed at getting poker sites to reduce rake in the games they play, turning them into winners again; and others quit poker altogether and find an alternative career.

The toughest games right now are the ones where the edges are thinnest to begin with. Many regulars in games such as single-table non-turbo SNGs and hyper-turbo heads-up SNGs have found their win rates dwindling to negligible levels as the games fill up with regulars who have been able to come pretty close to “solving” the games and executing unexploitable or GTO strategies.

In MTTs, however, this eventuality is still a very long way off since MTTs involve such a wildly diverse set of situations; any kind of “solution” is almost impossible. Individual situations can be solved, but each instance is so different from the next that it would take decades for any one player to learn their solutions on any kind of rote basis.

Thus, the varied nature of MTTs gives us, as MTT players, an advantage in the long-run. For as long as MTTs remain a popular form of the game and an attractive way for recreational players to take a shot at making big money for a small investment, there will always be edges to be gained.

We must, therefore, do whatever we can to prepare ourselves to take each edge presented to us. It’s no longer good enough to simply “study MTTs;” that’s too broad of a topic. It’s like saying you want to get a degree in “scientific studies.” We need to train the specific skills that we will eventually use in MTTs by giving ourselves enough experience in specific situations – putting in enough “reps,” so to speak – that we know what to do when those situations arise in-game, even if each specific type of situation may come along less often on average.

Here are a few ways you can cross-train yourself to develop specific skill sets:

Short-stacked play

Short-stacked play is possibly the most important skill an MTT player can develop. Why? Because it’s guaranteed to be useful in every tournament. There are plenty of tournaments where you’ll never find yourself playing 150 big blinds deep, but every tournament carries with it the possibility of losing most of your stack and being cut down to 10 big blinds. Learning to play good short-stacked poker is pivotal to MTT success.

It’s a combination of theory and practice. It’s a matter of studying short-stacked situations using effective tools (software such as HoldemResources Calculator, ICMIZER, and CardRunnersEV will be helpful with this) so that you have a good grounding in the theory that allows you develop better instincts and then putting in enough volume in short-stacked games so that you feel comfortable executing the strategies you’ve developed.

A recommended training ground for short-stacked play would be the turbo 180-man SNGs on PokerStars, if you have access to the site. Those games provide excellent push-fold practice along with a good grounding in ICM, another MTT-specific skill that can’t really be developed anywhere outside of MTTs or MTT SNGs. Putting in some volume in these games or similar games, if you haven’t already, will give you a solid foundation to build from.

Post-flop practice

The antithesis to the push-fold short-stacked game is a more post-flop-oriented, deep-stacked form of the game. This category almost requires different types of training in and of itself since playing post-flop at 40bb effective stacks requires such a vastly different approach than playing at 200bb stacks.

However, the general principle is the same: until you have the ability to understand your opponents’ post-flop ranges and tendencies and adapt to them, your solid short-stacked play may be undermined by an inability to accumulate chips when stacks are deeper, usually at the beginning of a tournament.

When it comes to training for these scenarios, once again we find ourselves taking a two-pronged approach, looking both at theory and at practice. The necessary theory is rather complex when we dig below the surface. We’re talking about ideas of game theory, range balancing, exploitative plays, unconventional lines, and being aware of both our own range and our opponent’s at every point in a hand. It’s very tough to get a grip on some of these theoretical ideas quickly, but when it comes to practice, it gets a lot simpler.

Cash games are a great way to hone these skills. They’re getting tougher these days, but simply putting in some volume at the low stakes will help you figure out the kinds of adaptations necessary to perform well in post-flop situations.

You can choose to sit in some 40-60bb deep games to really get a handle on the kinds of situations that are common in MTTs or, if you want to focus on really deep-stacked play to mirror the early stages of a tournament, you can sit at some 150-200bb deep tables, perhaps even with antes if you want to test your ability to play a wider range of hands or a more aggressive style.

Variations in opponents’ styles

One major difference between MTTs and many other games is that while the strategies adopted by winning players in many other games have begun to homogenize over time, winning strategies in MTTs vary greatly.

There are very good winning regulars out there who rely on playing a tight strategy and exploiting their own image to make well-timed bluffs. There are other equally good players who rely on a crazy, over-aggressive image to get them paid off when they make a big hand, even if they occasionally spew off a chunk of chips.

In order to excel in MTTs, we must understand how to counter each of these styles and all of the styles in between. For that reason, it’s worth spending time in games where you’ll get to play a larger number of hands against a specific style – perhaps hopping into some heads-up cash games to focus on identifying the correct exploitative plays for opponents with a certain style or trying some of the aforementioned deep-stacked cash games with antes in order to get comfortable playing against people who like to 3-bet a lot and open a lot of pots pre-flop.

Conversely, you might consider putting in some volume in 9-man or 18-man SNGs to get comfortable against the tighter style usually adopted by mass multi-tabling regulars in those games.

A final thought

As time goes by, MTTs will naturally evolve and different strategies will come to the fore. But the only real constant in MTTs is their innate inconstancy. No two situations are the same and for as much as it might be useful to simply practice MTTs, the fact remains that if we want to treat poker like any other competitive discipline. We need to evolve with the game. We need to cross-train like an athlete would.

Soccer players do strength training to improve their stability on the field; sprinters do yoga, gymnastics, and agility training to improve their acceleration and muscle memory; and basketball players do plyometric training to improve their vertical leap and high-intensity interval training to improve cardiovascular fitness. If all you’re doing to improve your MTT game is playing MTTs, then maybe it’s time to find a way to take things up a notch.