I have some questions about MTTs in the range of $5-20 buyin. It seems that most of these tournaments (at PartyPoker) seem to have lots of loose play. At the first table, you routinely see 4-5 limpers. There is lots of action and the winner is usually a guy who draws out. Of course, I usually sit and watch this taking notes since lots of hands are shown. Now when I get good starting cards, I'll raise anywhere from 3-5x BB or reraise another raiser if I have a premium hand. But I'm noticing that there are still 3-4 callers with my raises usually. This means my JJ or AK is getting drawn out on a lot. Even with continuation bets there are still several callers willing to pay for more cards.

I'm having trouble dealing with these situations. What usually happens is I get whittled away until I can double up with a monster and then the same thing happens again. Then my AA or KK is cracked and I'm out. I find that this is prevelent until the tourney has about 1/3 or the starting players and then the real poker starts to kick in. I need to make to this point more often though and not with a small stack.

Do I need to become a limper with small pairs, Axs and suited connectors and play their game?

I wrote this for Qualifier MTTs but it most of the principles should apply to low buy-in MTTs as well.

http://www.pokerforums.org/showthrea...3045#post23045

More generally, limping with any pocket pair hoping to hit a set, or limping with Axs in late position with other limpers already in and some suited connectors and hoping to hit is the way to go.

You want to play cheap pots early in the MTT that you can get away from if you miss, but play your big hands hard - it doesn't matter if you get knocked out with AA, KK, AK reraising allin preflop.

You mention JJ as a strong hand. It's ok preflop if you are reraising limpers or weakness, but once the flop comes you need to re-evaluate carefully where you stand.

MTTs require a lot of patience and the acceptance that it often boils down to which way the key coinflip goes.

Originally Posted by Irexes

I wrote this for Qualifier MTTs but it most of the principles should apply to low buy-in MTTs as well.

http://www.pokerforums.org/showthrea...3045#post23045

Nice write up, im reading it now.

Originally Posted by Irexes

More generally, limping with any pocket pair hoping to hit a set, or limping with Axs in late position with other limpers already in and some suited connectors and hoping to hit is the way to go.

You want to play cheap pots early in the MTT that you can get away from if you miss, but play your big hands hard - it doesn't matter if you get knocked out with AA, KK, AK reraising allin preflop.

Ding Ding Ding... Looks good to me!

Most books said to loosen up in a tight game and tigen up in a loose game.

I prefer to be more agressive in a Tight game and looser in a loose game.

Small PP, suited connectors and Ax suited can be very profitable hand in loose game condition. Of course, you have to be a ble to lay down top pair (or even over pair) if you play these.

I don't see this happening that often. In the very early rounds it does, but after the first 15 minutes you get rid of those very loose players, or at least most of them. I play pokerroom & pokerroom skins, lots of STT's and MTT's, and some ring games every once in a while. You will have suckouts on all sites, some just more than others. I've found pokerstars unbearable with suckouts. I've tried to play tournaments there and its too crazy, so i've switched back to pokerroom.

Originally Posted by Irexes

I wrote this for Qualifier MTTs but it most of the principles should apply to low buy-in MTTs as well.

http://www.pokerforums.org/showthrea...3045#post23045

I think this is a pretty good strategic guide to these types of tourneys. Anyone who plays them would do well to read it. Of course, you've also got to read "Harrington on Hold'em: Strategic play for NL tournaments" by Dan Harrington (Volumes I & II). I've read the dang things so much the pages are literally falling out - it's far and away the best poker book ever written (IMHO), and I've read quite a few (though I'm no poker scholar).

Here's some more tactical advice for the early stages:

Personally, my favorite strategy early on is to ONLY play 2 ways: Make big pots for monsters (AA, KK, QQ), and make advertising plays with purely speculative hands (suited cards & connectors, especially A-x). I also just call in with any other quality hand (AK, AQ, KQ, QJ, pairs JJ to 22), and only play them if they turn into monsters (no, top pair with AK is not a monster when some idiot called in with 94s and now has two pair) - top 2 pair, trips, set, top pair with nut flush draw, open ended straight & flush draw, etc.

Make huge raises with the big pairs (5-10 x BB - although some idiot in EP with A-x will probably take care of that for you, just reraise the heck out of him to isolate) to get heads up (and trust me, it will be tough to get heads up against this collection of rabble). With the exception of AA, I will absolutely lay KK or QQ down if it doesn't improve on the flop if I feel there is too much action (3-4 players call your big raise, then all start firing away at a scary flop).

With the speculative hands, just limp most of the time, but in EP put in at least two 2xbb raises with some of them (and watch the whole table call in). You'll get your hand cut off some times when someone puts in a huge raise, but with the blinds this cheap who cares? There are 2 goals here:
1) Disguise yourself as a loose - weak player to set up the good players for later (get your flop% and PF raise % up and show down some crappy ass hands). Particularly with the explosion of poker tracking software, you're now advertising to all the good players at every table, not just yours.
2) hit some monster pots when you nail that nut flush with A4s and three players dump all their chips in. This will happen about one out of every 3 or 4 tourneys.

I usually budget about 15% of my chips for advertising. Trust me, in the overall scheme of things, this risk is insignificant compared to the potential rewards (most of which will come later when a good player calls your all in and finds out you're a lot better than his software said you were).

After I've exhausted my advertising budget, I tighten way up. When I enter pots, I enter to win huge ones (later on in the tourney I'll reverse this and try to win a lot of "smaller" pots by pushing any 2 cards in a super aggressive mode as the table tightens up considerably).