A member recently posted this question in the forum, and me being mostly a MTT tournament player, figured I'd try to write a good blog on the topic. My ROI isn't amazing, and I haven't put in a lot of volume this year, but in 2004 and 2005 I had pretty good success in MTT's online. I'm up this year, but not by much, I think my MTT ROI is pretty good on OPR though.
Here's the question:
So heres my problem right now in the later stages of MTTs. I keep
finding myself in tough spots where i'm not sure what the right play is
when im in like the 18-23 BB range. I know you can never raise fold w
< 20bbs so what am I supposed to do w hands like A10-AQ, or mid
pairs in middle pos?? Keep finding myself in spots where I feel like a
fold is too nitty but a raise is bad becasue its likely to put me in a
tough spot post flop and an open shove seems like a bit of an
overshove??
- 100mile
100mile, the right answer is, there is no ONE right answer.
The fact of the matter is late-game variance is one of the hardest
to deal with in MTT's. If you haven't been running good and playing
well enough in a MTT to have a large stack (More than 50BB in the last
20% of the field), then you're going to have to view the rest of the
tournament as a war. It's a battle between you and the other players.
You want their chips, they want yours. When you watch hands that
you're not a part of, pay close attention to who is folding their
blinds a lot, who isn't raising when people limp in, things like that.
Try to pick out people that limp with big hands. You need to realize these things in order to ever be successful late in tournaments, or else, your more observant opponents are going to pick the table apart and take all the free chips while you sit there watching their stacks double and triple, and yours shrink.
If you can do this well enough, you can raise and shove even wider
than A10 profitably, because you know the people you're shoving on
either:
- Play too many hands from what you've seen, or
- They fold
more often than the other opponents at the table that may actually make you show down a winner, or
- They play too passive in spots where they have limped in or play too passive in the blinds.
Granted, there will be times you shove AQ and get snap called by AA
in the blind. Tough luck. It happened to me six times yesterday
(well not AQ vs AA, but something similar). There's going to be times people make a stand
with K10 vs your AK and whack it, oh well, you built a huge pot and got
it in good.
The thing you have to remember though is not to CALL
your chips off lightly with hands like A10 or AJ. Don't ever be a hero unless you are 200% (yes 200% OMG!) sure that your opponent is laying it down, or your opponent is full of ****. Be careful in those
spots, and only reshove on people you see opening more than their fair
share of pots. You need more to call than you need to raise with. (Gap concept, per Sklansky)
Don't be afraid to race late though. I've watched myself time and time again fold hands I KNOW I should be shoving. If when you're about to click fold, you feel something inside you scream "NO OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT," you should probably stick your chips in.
Don't wear your stack down, don't let the blinds kill you.
Be your
own maker, and in the end, eventually, you're going to see your results
improve.
Good luck, and see you at the Final Table!