Pushing 10 percent edges in early stages - again

[AhabCaptain]

I am the guy who played a very tight game in the beginning of any MTT. The few times I made it to the middle stages with above average chipstack I was unstoppable. Sadly, this happened very seldom.

I am working on changing from the survivalist way to the accumulator way of playing tournaments so that when I do make it deeper I can have a larger stack and do some real damage. Please help me achieve this. I have read threads from the anthology on aggression and early tournament play and found that what I need to do is push all edges 10% or higher. I tried it a couple of times but probably overdid it so now I am trying to fine-tune my actions. What I mean by that is that I am willing to go to the felt in the first hour anytim I believe I am 10% ahead. Please give me some dos and don'ts on the issue.

Here are my observations so far:
Preflop you can go allin against:
- a loose player (allin call range: 22+, A2s+, A2o+, KTs+, KJo+, QJs, QJo, JTs) w/:
44+, A6s+, A6o+, KQs, KQo
- an avg.player (allin call range: 22+, A2s+, A2o+, KQs) w/:
66+, A6s+, A7o+, KQs
- tight player (allin call range: 66+, A6s+, A8o+, KQs) w/:
88+, A9s+, AJo+, KQs
(hand ranges taken from the pushbot-chart, calculations done with PokerStove)

On the flop you can go allin if:
- you are on a draw and you really believe you have all 15 outs
- you have less outs but you believe he will fold anything up to middle pair (folding equity)
- you believe you are ahead and against a draw w/ 11 outs or less
(a draw w/ 11 outs or less is : any straight draw, any flush draw, any two overcards, any pair needing to improve, any PP needing to improve)

On the flop you can't go allin if:
- you're on a draw and you have less than 15 outs and your opp. is loose
- you have more than 1 opponent


I understand that sometimes pushing on the flop is not the best way to extract the most money. Against who would you push?
How many times does your opp. have to fold to make it profitable to push w/ less out?
What about turn play?
In what other situations should you never go allin on flop?

(p.s. I posted this accidentally in the High Stakes MTT section but I think this comes here)

[Soulman]

Ahab,

you seem to be in the typical early stages of learning poker, where you're looking for rules of what to do under <circumstances>. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as that. This goes double for cases like this, where your rules are dependent on number of outs and/or defined calling/pushing ranges of villain. I'm not patient enough to go more into depth :/

[dlwbppd]

These pushbot charts are only for late play (when most stacks are less than 20 BB's). Doing this at the start of a tournament is a quick way to stack off to a monster.

[AhabCaptain]

I only took the hand ranges from there thinking they might reflect the calling ranges of player types in early tournament play.

[Rocco]

I can only reiterate what Soulman said. You cannot setup rules for what hands to call pushes with against different kinds of players, especially not during early levels. Trust us, we've been in your situation and I was also looking for the easy way to learn tournaments. It took a while, but eventually I found out it was the wrong way to go, and when I abandoned this idea, my game improved. Tournament poker depends on many inputs, and there's no secret formula to making your decisions easy and automatic.

[AhabCaptain]

OK. I might be a newbie to MTTs but believe me I am a pretty successful low limit, shorthanded cash-game player and I can also beat low-limit STT. I remember 2 years ago posting a sheet next to my monitor which contained all the starting hands and what to do with them. Now I find it pretty amusing but still it helped me a lot because there was something I could grasp and go by.

Right now I am trying to find the right looseness and aggressiveness required for MTTs, especially early stages. I thought here I may get some ideas or something to start with but I can see now that no reply in this thread is trying answer me instead it has gone into the direction of only telling me even more general things than my questions were.

I am still waiting for some successful LAG's advices. Thanks.

[AhabCaptain]

I hope there are people with more patience on this site. My questions may be general but still answerable.

[gatorch0mp]

[ QUOTE ]

I am the guy who played a very tight game in the beginning of any MTT. The few times I made it to the middle stages with above average chipstack I was unstoppable. Sadly, this happened very seldom.

[/ QUOTE ]

This doesn't have to happen often for you to be profitable. I mostly play live MTT's and when I first started playing I played as you described... then I went through a fancy phase (I guess I was experimenting or whatever)... and now I'm pretty much back to what you describe (increasing my range just a bit in position). The biggest difference for me between my beginning phase and now is the ability to put opponents on hands and to have a decent idea what they put me on. You really don't need much more then that. What works best for me is to play like "Phil Helmuth" in the beginning stages of the tournament... and then like "Gus Hansen" when I get short or when the bubble approaches [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Keep reading the forums... the best skill I've learned here is shortstack and bubble play... which at least in the live MTT's I play I feel gives me a huge advantage over those in a similar situation. So if the "Helmuth" style doesn't accumulate you chips in the early stages, switch to your shortstack/bubble play mode when the time is right and you still have a decent chance at going far.

-G

[AhabCaptain]

I did get some reaction after all. Thank you.

I have come across the issue of "small number of posts" on other forums too, please don't judge me by that, I still spend quite a time here - that's why I have these questions - they are connected to things I have read here and need further clarification on. I also realized that people on this forum don't really like to respond to general questions. That's OK with me I will try to hide my questions in posted hands in the future. See you around.