MTT Strategy

For many poker players, especially beginners, multi-table tournaments (MTT’s) can be very intimidating, due to the fact that there are so many tables. However, many people believe that the way to poker glory and life changing money lies not with cash games or sit-and-go’s but with these massive full-field tournaments. Events such as the WSOP, WPT and EPT have large fields but for thousands of players, these MTT’s can also be found in many, if not all online poker rooms. Of course, nobody just strolls into one of these events and stumbles blindly to victory. The best players, online and live, have a definite plan for the event, including strategies for playing individual hands, exploiting predictable opportunities and dodging the inevitable traps that reoccur in full-field tournaments. This article aims to provide you with key tips and strategies that will give you the knowledge and self confidence to play in these tournaments.
A certain percentage of players will come into MTT’s completely ill-equipped to succeed or even play at all well. Some of the reasons for this is they’re lack of experience or knowledge. Possibly they are only playing to have fun or to learn. This is perfectly ok, however, for us this means there is plenty of loose or ‘dead’ money floating around for us to exploit and especially in the early stages of tournaments it is beneficial if you:

1. Grab all that dead money you can before someone else decides to, and
2. Try and dodge the strong players and challenge the weak ones.

If you can take some of this loose money available it will keep it away from some of the stronger players at the table. If these solid players take an early lead it will be much harder for you to wrestle the money away from them later. Make raises and re-raises (within reason). Force your weak opponents to make hard decisions because more often than not, they will not have the savvy to make these tough decisions correctly. You won’t be the only one using this strategy of course, but if you use common sense to decide which players should be attacked and which ones to be avoided you shouldn't’t be under too much pressure and you should be well equipped to compete in the tournaments middle phase.
The key thing about the middle phase of MTT’s is not really about making the right moves but attempting to avoid making the wrong ones. At this stage, it is more than likely most poor players have been eliminated and the general level of skill and knowledge is higher than when the event started. At this moment, you cannot afford to make careless moves or plays or you could be punished severely. Some key errors you should try and avoid are:
1. Monitor your opponents stack size
2. Don’t forget your overall tournament position, and
3. Don’t pick unnecessary fights when you don’t need to.

Your own chip stack, relative to the size of the blinds will tell you what sort of shape you are in within the tournament. For a general rule, if you can survive less than 5 orbits until the blinds and antes bust you then you are in bad shape and you should look for a favourable spot to move all in to try and double up. If you have between 5-10 orbits, you have an adequate stack size and look for hands to drive and try to be selective when being aggressive and with 11 or more orbits, you should be in a strong position and attempt to take control and dominate. In the middle stages of any MTT, your opponents stack sizes will vary from strong and formidable to short and vulnerable. All these stacks will respond to raises differently so you need to pay attention to these stacks or you could end up in a world of hurt.