Age Old question about early tourney strategy

[oaktoon]

Play fast(and/or trap)early to build a stack? Play tight to get in position to get cards/lucky at end? Gavin smith vs. TJ Cloutier, in other words.

I play in a weekly $60 buy-in live game. 70-80 players. Pretty good talent. it's Madison, WI, so we have some of the Hellmuth/UB crowd. (one of our guys finished 3rd in the UB Aruba tournament recently) 1800 starting chips. Blinds are 16 minutes-- basically after two hours, there are usually three-four tables left and it's an all-in fest. Last night I made final two tables-- blinds at 500-1000-- and not more than 2 or 3 players had 10,000+ chips with most of us under 5000. I pushed with A2 just before the blinds swallowed me-- 6 other players, one had AA. So it goes.

So the question is: do you take real risk in order to become one of those 10,000+ chip people who can withstand a beat and still play on at the end? Or do you simply do what is necessary (which i can usually do) to get to end game and then hope you catch at the right time and are smart/judicious about when to push and when to call someone else who has pushed, since most are in short stack land then?

[M1cKmAcK]

I would treat this like an online turbo 45person sng. I've found the best way to play these are to try to take advantage of any +EV situation. You want to steadily build your stack up. Nothing is worse than being on the bubble and having less than 8 BB's. I definitely tend to take more chances in the types of games. I don't mind getting my money in on a flip b/c that is the only way you're going to make the money. That being said, gavin's aggressive/table captain approach will probably suit you best. TJ is a legend, but when you're talking about turbos, you can't play as tight as he does, you'll blind yourself to death.
I don't think these kinds of tourneys are very +EV.

[Ruy Lopez]

Game selection has become vital to me in building a roll. These types of tourneys are crapshoots. If the $60 doesn't mean much and you have a good time, then great. But like Mick said, they're not very +EV. You have to push any edge and win a couple flips to reach the money in these.

[helter skelter]

If there's pretty good talent, like you say, then it may not be worth playing.

Arnold Snyder wrote a book "The Poker Tournament Formula", describing a strategy to beat fast tourneys, however, the way he describes the live tourneys he plays in Las Vegas, most of entrants are "wimps", who fold quite a bit to pressure. (In a nutshell, build a big stack early and wield it like a club against the wimps. Don't let the blinds and antes short stack you because you are "waiting for a hand", like most of the others)

I haven't had much successs with his agressive strategies in online tourneys, because they aren't populated by wimps. I haven't played live since I read the book, so I can't say whether it would work there either.

This is too fast a tourney to employ a tight strategy like TJ's.

[Alex_Rules]

I'm a freshman at U wisconsin now, can you tell me where/how to get to/ if I can be 18 and play in this game?

[ZenMusician]

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This is a modern poker tourney, so don't employ any strategy like TJ's.

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-ZEN