Poker tournaments have seen a big uptick over the last couple of years, and this trend doesn’t seem to be going away.
Big fields and large guarantees continue to attract players looking for deep runs and significant scores. If you are in this group of players, this article is for you.
Inside, I’ll share with you my top five tips on how to run deep in more tournaments by strengthening your fundamentals and becoming better at recognizing opportunities for exploitative play. So, without any further ado, let’s get straight into it!
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Build a Big Stack Early On
If you want to have more deep runs in big field MTTs, it’s important to build a big stack during the early stages as early as possible.
You shouldn’t sit around waiting for premiums or for your opponents to make huge mistakes. Instead, get in there, play solid GTO poker, and fight for pots!
If you play tight during early levels, you’ll usually manage to last for a few hours and reach the mid-stages of the event, but this shouldn’t be your goal.
If you reach the middle stages of a tournament with a relatively short stack, you’ll need to master a few double-ups in a row to get back in contention, which isn’t an easy feat.
On the chart below, you can see just how many hands you need to get involved in by either calling or raising when playing on the button and facing a cutoff raise when you are playing a deep stack.
The range of hands that are supposed to be raising in these spots is much wider than what most players think and, especially, practice at the tables.
By playing more hands and ramping up the aggression, you’ll give yourself a chance to continue chipping up and building your stack throughout early levels. This will help set you up for later stages and give you a better shot at really deep runs and final tables.
Improve Your Short Stack Play
While early stages of a tournament feature deep stacks, a majority of all MTTs is played with shorter effective stacks, i.e. 40 big blinds or less.
The best of the best study their short-stack play and constantly look for improvements in this area. There is much more to it than shoving all in and hoping for the best.
One area where most players can easily improve is when playing from the big blind and facing a min-raise from the button. Depending on your actual stack size, you should be defending with a very wide range of hands in these spots.
Even with a stack of just 12 big blinds, you should be calling with about 40% of your entire range and shoving with almost 21% of the hands.
When playing 15 big blinds deep, your calling range grows to over 58%, while the shoving range decreases to 18%.
As you move into a somewhat deeper category of 20 or 25 bigs, your GTO calling ranges increase to around 65%, with a mix of all-ins and 3-bets added to your overall defense strategy.
The big blind play is just one area where you can probably improve your short stack play significantly. The bottom line is that if you want to be a successful tournament player, you need to improve your understanding of these scenarios and outplay your competition.
Make Adjustments Based on Payouts
The topic of bubble and adjusting to payouts is one that no tournament strategy article can go without. And while it may have been covered repeatedly, it is so important that it never hurts to reiterate.
At and around the bubble, your stack size should dictate your play, namely:
- As a short stack, your main goal is to survive the bubble and get into the money.
- With a middle stack, you want to get into the money, but you can apply pressure to other short or mid-sized stacks.
- With a big stack, you can apply maximum pressure on other players that you have covered to continue accumulating chips.
Once you make it to the final table, your strategy will be similar. Since there are usually pay jumps for every player that gets eliminated, you should:
- Try to ladder up while not blinding out as a short stack.
- Avoid big stacks and put pressure on smaller and similarly-sized stacks when you’re in the middle of the pack.
- Ramp up aggression and widen your opening ranges as a big stack/chip leader.
Payout implications really come into play when you’re at the final table, so you’ll need to adjust your opening ranges based on effective stack sizes.
Avoid Tilt at All Costs
Going on a tilt is always a danger when you play poker, but tournaments can be especially fruitful ground for developing tilt.
Due to their nature, these games are extremely swingy. You can go from a chip leader to a short stack and back to a decent-sized stack in a span of a few hands without ever doing anything wrong.
That’s just the nature of the beast. You have to accept it and play every hand to the best of your abilities.
The last thing you want is to let tilt creep in and start influencing your decisions. If your level of play constantly decreases every time you experience a bad beat or a cooler, you won’t have much success with poker tournaments in the long run.
When things aren’t going your way, and this will happen often, you have to steer clear of your emotions. Instead, focus on playing the best poker you can and leave the things you can’t change behind you.
Be Mentally Sharp
Playing tournaments can be grueling. You can spend hours sitting at the table and often have very little or nothing to show for it.
Thus, you have to do everything in your power to stay mentally sharp and ready for the grind. Make poker your number one priority, and don’t let other things around you disturb you or take away your focus.
Come to the table ready and well-rested. It’s fine to have some fun and talk with other players, but if you want to succeed, you can’t be having a party, either. If drinks start flowing and other things take precedence, your game will suffer.
Whether you play live or online poker, these tips should help you make more deep runs in tournaments and build a good stack to give yourself a real shot at winning the whole thing.
To sum it up, try to build your stack early, know how to navigate with the short stack, understand the importance of the bubble and pay jumps, and stay sharp and avoid tilt as much as possible, and you’ll set yourself up for success!
