MTT Strategy on how to be a successful accumulator

[Coop]

Preflop and Flop Strategy for MTTs based on M/BBs

Note: While this guide should keep you out of most trouble preflop and on flop, you still have to be a good player on all streets to be successful in MTTs.
You should be able to count your M or your BBs pretty fast during the whole tournament.


Here is a table showing how many BBs represent which M.

Without Ante your BB count is always 1.5 times your M.

With Ante: (Based on Stars' Blind Structures)

M BB
50 about 125 to 130
30 about 75 to 80
20 about 50 to 55
10 about 25 to 30
5 about 12 to 15


According to Harrington we encounter 5 zones during a MTT.
1. The green zone: M 20 or above (roughly 50 BBs); Every style is open to you, you are very comfortable. Obviously you want to stay in this zone most of the time. However, not all styles lead to staying here long. A survivalist that doesn't play many speculative hands when comfortable will slide slowly through the zones, but he will end up in one of the lower zones more often than an accumulator since good hands don't come along that often. Furthermore big hands get cracked sometimes and by keeping a chip-advantage over the field (hence: staying in the green zone) you maximize your chances of not going broke with a big cracked hand since your opponent is more likely to have less chips than you.
So here's what you can do:
A) You can open the pot. The following hands should be raised from any position (I raise to 3 BBs without ante and to 2 ½ BBs later on when the ante is in.): Any pocket pair, any suited Ace, any suited connector and suited two-gapper, any two suited broadway cards, Ajo+, Kqo. If you end up with 1 caller you should always c-bet, no matter what your hand is. The c-bet size should be between ½ and 2/3 of the pot, but always bigger than the preflop raise. Against 2 callers I would c-bet on all good flops for me (either if I flopped at least a pair or the board is very dry) out of position and in middle position, and on all flops except for the most drawheavy and dangerous ones in position. Against more than 2 callers you need to have hit the flop at least in the way that it gave you a draw to continue and I strongly recommend not to make any bet except for a valuebet against more than 2 opponents. Play your draw cautious and check/call out of position and check behind in position. Give the hand up if you don't catch it. And watch the pot-odds closely. If you get reraised you should call with all the raised hands mentioned here if you are both deepstack and the raise isn't too big. Again it's very important to know your pot-odds and implied odds. In the cut-off, button and small blind we include only a few more hands to be opened with: any Ace, any two broadway cards, Q9, K9.
B) You are facing a raise: Reraise QQ+, AK. Call with all other hands you would open from early position and play a flop except for Ajo and Kqo. Both should only be played against loose player's raises.
C) There is one limper: If in the CO or on the button isolate the limper with any hand you want to play and c-bet by the same rules as mentioned above. In other positions you should raise with 99+, Ajs+, AQ+ and overlimp with all other playable hands mentioned above.

D) There are several limpers: Raise TT+, AQ+ and overlimp with everything else.

As a final note to the green zone strategy: You play smallball poker and try to win a lot of small pots, which you win with steals. Don't overplay toppair without a kicker. You are in the hunt for nuts or at least strong hands if you play your hand for value and not as a bluff.
2. The yellow zone (M of 20 to 12)
You are not that comfortable anymore but not crippled either. You want to still raise all PPs from any position and setmine with them if someone has raised and it costs less than 10% of your stack. You want to additionally raise AT+ and KQ from early and middle position, QJ from middle position, and still steal with a wide range from late position. But otherwise you are not playing suited connectors etc anymore. You don't want to spew chips in this stage, you want to play quality hands and get back to green zone, possibly with a double up. After limpers, no matter how many, you want to raise with 99+, Aq+ and overlimp with other quality hands, but fold the connectors and stealing hands. You don't want to c-bet out of position anymore or against more than 1 player if you haven't connected with the flop.

3. The orange zone (M of 12 to 5)
I divide this zone into two stages: During the resteal stage (M of 12 to 8 ) I will only open quality hands and not open as a steal anymore except for against the tightest BBs from late position. But if a late or middle position player raises that has a PFR of at least like 14% and is not tight and I am to act after him I will reraise all-in with the following hands: All pocket pairs, any suited connector and one gapper, ATs+, AQ+, Kjs+. Sometimes even two gappers. You don't want to push really weak Aces or Kings too often since you might be dominated if you get called and you don't want to push hands without chemistry like T2 or Q4 or 49 too often since they flop really bad.
Below an M of 8 I am only opening if I am willing to commit the rest of my chips to the pot.

4. The red zone (M of below 5)
Right now at the moment this stage needs some more experimenting before I can recommend certain plays. However, in general if you don't have a quality hand but need to steal the blinds you should rather push suited connectors or two gappers and other chemistry hands instead of weak Aces or kings.

I know that this is somewhat incomplete and contains not much new information but rather is a summation of what players like Harrington, Ryan Fisler, Rizen, Annette_15 etc have said on the topic. But still it might be useful.

As a final attachment here is a link to a site where Annette_15 explains how she plays pocket pairs with a medium to short stack.
http://betting.betfair.com/annette_15/articles/how-to-play-pocket-pairs-with-a-short-to-medium-st-160108.html

Good luck, Coop.

[Phaedrus75]

Thanks Coop. A very nice and concise summary!

Could you share your thoughts on how you deal with 3-bets against your open raise in green M?

eg what would this hand: http://www.pokerhand.org/?3286301

Maybe yellow M would be helpful too. Its clear from your summary you can't be folding very much if at all from Orange M...

[Coop]

Green M: With most hands I would call a 3-bet if I have a decent stack and decent implied odds. However, in your AJo example I would fold because of the fear of domination. With 22 or 46s or AQo I would call.

In Yellow M I only steal from late position and calling against a 3-bet with a hand I raised for value depends on his reraising range and stats I have on him. But I think I would call rather tight still.

In Orange M with an M of 8 or more I am only restealing and not openstealing except for (like mentioned) against the tightest BB from late position. Below 8 I am only raising if I am willing to commit the rest of my chips. Folds postflop are still possible, though.

[sun137]

Thankyou for the post Coop, very informative and useful. I will need to put my thinking hat on and compare what I have been doing with the above!!

[Phaedrus75]

Coop, is there a case for making Cbets smaller relative to the pot size once the antes are in play if you have 2 callers?

Currently playing with a stack of 7.5K with blinds 150/200/75. If I 2.5X raise and get 2 caller the pot is 2075. Cbet of 500 to 600 seem pretty frequent at this blind level.

As the blinds increase further I have noticed Cbets tend to get smaller and smaller relative to the pot....which has prompted me to speculate that they become more and more valuable the later into the tournament

[JSquared]

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I have been thinking about Mzones and how my range should be played.

I am pretty much a straight out conservative player in MTT's. I don't think that it is necessarily a bad thing, especially at the lower limits that I play. But I do get frustrated NTM, when I usually have a small stack.

I will definately consider the plays that you have outlined, but probably not implement such a change until I am more BR comforatble.

Do you think this applies more to high buy ins? I know you did experiment at the low stakes with different styles, so it would have to apply to an extent.

[JP]

From observation it appears this is more toward a LAG playing style but has some tight applications for it's own gear changes but it is an overall LAG format imo. It's a quality succesful lag outline too. You have to memorize so many applicable scenarios. I like how you simplified some of it with the "what I do" portions.

[Coop]

I actually never thought about it, but yes, I do make my c-bets smaller later on in the tournament. I guess it's because players are not willing to call so light when they are desperate so you need less to get them to fold. At least that's the only reason I could think of. It saves chips.
To the buy-ins: I think at the really low limits one could make a case for only limping in with speculative hands since people don't fold preflop to raises as often as in higher limits. However, you still want to play those hands, especially against poor players they have very high implied odds.

I agree, in the green zone this is rather a LAG style. But once you are in one of the zones below the green one it becomes pretty much a very resolute and strict TAG game since one mustn't get spewy with a medium to short stack!

[Phaedrus75]

There is a solid case for open raising speculative hands even in the low buy-ins when deep stacked. Whilst it is true you have less fold equity, you do create much bigger pots that people are more inclided to fight for with TPGK type hands. Your implied odds actually increase by starting with a bigger pot on the flop.

I alway 3x raise any hand I open (which does include the above mix). The raise means nothing to people most of the time and you get 6 callers just as you would if you limped. But now the pot is 390 chips instead of 150 if you limped. If you hit the flop well with a concealed hand you are way more likey to stack someone holding KJ with a K high board.

The fact that it is lower limits means your implied odds are usually better (more people stack of lighter), which means you should be playing more, not less of thise speculative hands from green M IMHO.

[JSquared]

I am really loving this thread guys, there is so mucn more for me to learn in MTT's and this is really helping me get my head around it.

My usual reasoning to playing conservative is; The hands I actually do play are usually lucky to hold up in the first place, so what chance to I have to have hand hold up if I play marginal hands?

The reason why I probably feel as such , that I am yellow/Orange Mzoned, and really have to fight to win my hands, usually reraising all in and playing big pots with really good preflop hands. The fact that I am orange/yellow means I have to put my chips all in the middle just to stay afloat.

I am really starting to understand the importance of haviing a green stack for as much as possible, and this type of style can allow for that.

i have said this before, after having a green stack at the NTM stage in an MTT, I love being the big stack late in a tourney, there is no better feeling. The reason is I can take down so many small pots preflop and dictate to the table what happens. With a yellow/prange stack, I am forced to put all my chips in the middle, just to make steals and protect my good hands. Being all in SUCKS

[Phaedrus75]

My experience playing this type of game JJ, is that most of the time, you end up in the same yellow / orange M predicament anyway... because your speculative hands do not always hit (hence they are speculative...lol)

But if you adjust properly to each Mzone you give yourself the best opportunity to keep accumulating before being relegated to push/foldsville.

On the odd occassion when your green M strategy succeeds then you have the kind of advantages you spoke of. Being able to leverage those advantages later in the tournament is the real implied odds of this Green M strategy.

[JP]

Yes in later stages with high blinds a min-raise is enough for a steal in most situations and a 1 or 2x the bb for a cBet is also enough to get the job. I was reading some articles on strategy late stage SNG by phil gordon who mentions this for high blind play in sng's just as in full tournament play Also, most pro recommendations are the same in the late stages.

As usual, people hear a pro say something and take it out of context and you see min raises and reraises from the very start. Phil is a bit more specific stating for the SNG when bb reachs 160 to 200 range is when that can become effective depending on the table dyanmics.

In MTT play it is when blinds are shooting over 1,000 that this starts to be effective. You ALWAYS have to pay attention to stak sizes and play the player. A medium stack will yield a 33 to a 2x pfr if it is half his stack, but a 3x to the same player may trigger a shove. A short stak minraise only lets him fold or shove. A big stak might insta call a 2x. 2.5x is sometimes called for. For the steal preflop. You must pay attention to your table! Not surf the net, watch tv, play a video game but watch what the table is doing. If it is common and succesful the smallish aggression you can do it too. But if it's not working, meeting resistance then you know who it will be effective on if anyone.

I think for MTT play the outline is just a bit too loose for my preferences. However, at some stages you have to play that wide a range. I too am working on this deep field MTT which is where I run into difficulty. Unwilling to gamble like so many do and maybe too tight or card dead so that I fight to bubble. The other day I got to a point I had not been before, a large ticket, large field mtt, getting close to bubble AND being in the top of the field. High blinds were eating me up and I became stuck on who to attack, when, what to take a risk with etc... I hit the brakes too soon and ended up sliding down. But came back opening up again and getting more into the steal campaign as we are discussing now. I sailed past the bubble in the top 10 and was 2nd at one point and slowly dropping again but hanging around t0p 20 until a misclick glitch screwed me over losing 80% of my stak on something that was to be folded. I think using what is in this thread with minor adjustment for your style play will get you places.

[Coop]

After some interesting discussion I decided to now play a few tournaments and make walkthroughs out of each whilst I will try to play like I advocate and don't do anything stupid hopefully.
The tournaments are all on pokerstars:

112085917 $22 with 3000 startingchips (started 2 minutes ago)
112085945 $5.50 with 3000 chips. (starting in 1 hour)
112085980 $11 with 3000 chips and 10 minute blinds (starting in 2 hours)
112085994 $3.30 + rebuys (starting in 2 hours)

If I happen to find out that 4 at a time is too much for a walkthrough I might skip one of the later ones. Threads to each one will come up. And of course I welcome discussion on the hands.

[Phaedrus75]

looking forawrd to going through those Coop. TY so much for this thread, I'm sure it will help lots of guys and gals.

This hand prompted me to consider one other advantage of raising and playing a wide range:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3291398

I elect to slow play my KK OOP, thinking it pretty likely to be HU anyway and I can capitalise on the Cbet post flop, by raising. I wouldn't make this play every time in this spot, but did on this ocassion.

Anyway, the Ace flops and he bets. I could have floated him 1 card I suppose but Ace rag covers alot of this guy's range. I could also have lead out at it myself, but I know him to call loose and I would not get much information that way.

So all things considered I decided I had invested so little in the hand, I played for concealed value and now I am in murky waters. Easy to let this premium hand go because I have stolen way more value out of hands like KJs UTG, popping 3 limpers with 99, isolating and taking it on the flop repping an Ace myself.

Anyway, the point is, its easier not to fall in love with your hand when you don't spend 20 minute stretches waiting for it to come.

[Phaedrus75]

Coop, just thinking about Cbet sizing a little more...

Is it a viable strategy to make Cbets smaller on a dry board? Say you have pocket 66, you get one caller and the flop comes Ad, 4h, 8c. Would it be reasonable to size your Cbet smaller - say 1/3 of the pot to suggest you hit your Ace and want value because you are not scared of any draws?