Moving up stakes .... Some questions.

[Ryanb9]

Hi guys, Im new to the HSMTT because I am just moving up stakes. For the last year I have been playing $5-$20R MTT's (only on pokerstars though) and have improved my game greatly, as well as my BR [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] So I am now slowly moving up to the $50 / $109 FO's on stars. I would like to ask a few general questions and also observations I have made.


First of all, the field is much softer than I had thought. I figured that when I moved up to say, $100 FO's on stars, I would be playing with crazy good players. I figured it was a field of 500 #1PEN's playing a tournament. However what I have come to realize is that there are many, many losing players (OPR) at these stakes. That aside, the field is much tougher obv.


The only question I can think of at the moment is playing pocket pairs in early position in the early levels (most of these tourneys now start with 3k in chips). I'm having a hard time deciding if the limp / call line is better than the open raise line because I cant really call a reraise oop with my small pair however the limp / call line is so revealing imo.

How do you guys usually play these in the early levels of the $50 - $100 freezouts? -Thanks

[bluesbassman]

At the very early (first 3 or so) blind levels, I'll open limp 22-88 from UTG or UTG+1. The blinds are small and there are still enough bad players to give me sufficient implied odds to hit a set. Sure, I may need to fold to a big raise, but that actually doesn't happen very often, since most players aren't going to try to steal the small pot with a marginal hand.

If I'm in MP or later position I'll usually open raise all pairs at the early blind levels. Once the blinds get bigger, I'll either open raise or fold small pairs, depending on the particular hand (i.e. 22 vs 77), my position, and my read of the table, etc.

So I guess the short answer to your question is yes, it's still reasonable to open limp small pairs from EP (utg, utg+1) at the early blind levels. At least imho.