live tourney strategy with reasonably quick levels

[Dr1Gonzo]

Playing in a live tourney soon where they start you off with 2500 chips. The leves are 20mins each (so about equivalent
to 10mins online) so not too fast but reasonably quick. The difference is that the blinds go up quite quickly.

I have put a table below of the SB, BB, and M assuming you folded every hand.
SB BB M
-- -- --
25 25 50
25 50 33
50 100 17
75 150 11
100 200 8
150 350 5
350 700 2

Beause of the way my M would drop off fairly quickly, I'm not sure if a tight strategy would be best or to employ the limp in with marginal hands strategy and try to outplay people post flop.
By the time it gets to the 4th level, I don't really want to have an M of 11!
Any thoughts ?

[Beachman42]

This structure is so standard for most B&M dailies in LV (Sahara, Aladdin, Paris, MGM, etc.) In the few I have played & gone deep, I have *mostly* played positional TAG after getting reads on the fish. Since the blinds escalate so quickly, you will need to get paid off before the end of the 150/75 level & usually its figuring out who will pay you off with TP vs your set/overpair/2 pr hand. Find the TPNK fish and play when they are in the BB. If the table is passive (most of the early rounds are), limp more frequently than you do on-line and try to make a hand vs a fish. Bet your premium hands for value 100% of the time. Finally, when you get in the middle of the MTT and get short, make sure your luckbox is working! There is a higher luck factor in these than normal, but you can overcome some of it by developing and trusting your live reads. GL 2 ya!

[Soulman]

Quick question from an online donk: isn't the standard rule that online = 3 times as many hands as live in the same period of time? I.e. 30 mins of live = 10 mins of online?

[AceLuby]

[ QUOTE ]
Quick question from an online donk: isn't the standard rule that online = 3 times as many hands as live in the same period of time? I.e. 30 mins of live = 10 mins of online?

[/ QUOTE ]

The way I estimate this is if there is a dealer it is roughly 20-25 min live = 10 min online and w/out a dealer it's 30-35 min live = 10 min online. At least in my experience.

[Soulman]

[ QUOTE ]
The way I estimate this is if there is a dealer it is roughly 20-25 min live = 10 min online and w/out a dealer it's 30-35 min live = 10 min online. At least in my experience.

[/ QUOTE ]
Thx, nice to know [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[mornelth]

Buy and read "The tournament formula". It talks about how to estimate the tournament "speed" and how to adjust accordingly.

In the format you described - I'd probably play very LAG early on and try to build a stack BEFORE everyone realized that they are effectively shortstacked and it becomes a push-fest.

Bring your luckbox with you, you'll need it to go deep.

[BigAlK]

[ QUOTE ]
Buy and read "The tournament formula". It talks about how to estimate the tournament "speed" and how to adjust accordingly.

In the format you described - I'd probably play very LAG early on and try to build a stack BEFORE everyone realized that they are effectively shortstacked and it becomes a push-fest.

Bring your luckbox with you, you'll need it to go deep.

[/ QUOTE ]

As Mornleth says "The Poker Tournament Formula" lays out a strategy for fast tournaments and a method for measuring the speed for tournament to tournament comparison that the author calls "the patience factor." This link <PTF> talks a little about the patience factor and groups these (based on a range of patience factors) within skill levels (0-6). There is a link at the bottom of the page referenced above that talks a bit more about skill levels.

If I've done my math right this structure would have a patience factor of 4.94 and a skill level of 3. In comparison the WSOP main event has a patience factor of 75.24 (skill level 6) and most online MTTs are 7.5 - 9.5 patience factor range (skill levels 4 and 5).

As Mornleth says, the key is to build a big stack early. You need to do this while the rest of the field is thinking they have time to wait for big hands. Once they become desperate you can be a bit more selective and hopefully knock off some of the desperate stacks to continue accumulating chips. Some ways of building the big stack early are by seeing and hitting cheap flops with speculative hands that hopefully get paid off big when they hit (by TP type hands) and taking down small pots with positional plays and aggression.

[Dr1Gonzo]

Sounds like a plan.
I suppose you mean playing connectors, etc. and other hands in position?

There is one problem with this. It means that I won't be respected as a tight player so it might be harder to steal later.

Any thoughts on that?

[AceLuby]

[ QUOTE ]
Sounds like a plan.
I suppose you mean playing connectors, etc. and other hands in position?

There is one problem with this. It means that I won't be respected as a tight player so it might be harder to steal later.

Any thoughts on that?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's rare that you are playing the same players early as you are later when stealing is more prevelant. Don't worry about it.

[mornelth]

[ QUOTE ]
Sounds like a plan.
I suppose you mean playing connectors, etc. and other hands in position?


[/ QUOTE ] Connectors suited or not, suited Aces, kings, queens, all pairs and some random hands EVEN WITH A RAISE IN FRONT OF YOU. In position, of course.

[ QUOTE ]
There is one problem with this. It means that I won't be respected as a tight player so it might be harder to steal later.

Any thoughts on that?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's the thing - with those stacks and those blinds you'll be very quickly in a push/fold territory for most players. There will not be too much room for stealing / re-stealing and other FPS stuff later... And if you have a big stack then your raises will be respected more often... simply because you have a big stack and not viewed as easily pushed around (call ONE resteal from a relatively short stack while you are holding like 78s... win or lose doesn't matter all that much, the fact that you can't be easily pushed around - does....)