5 Important Multi Table Tournament Tips

TMulti Table Tournaments are likely the most popular form of poker and one that hasn’t seen such an increase in overall level of play. These are still relatively easy to beat with an average ABC Poker knowledge. However, you have to hold this knowledge and this is exactly what we’ll look at in this article. You’ll learn about 5 very important tips that will help to maximise your edge and expected value while playing MTT’s.

Play Tournaments with less entrants

ournaments, especially those featuring large amounts of players, are known for their massive variance. In order to play the large field tournaments, one might need as high as 1,000 average buy-ins into their account. This, of course, depends on the playing style and the average amount of entrants in each tournament. However, instead of constantly being put in front of variance, you can choose the alternative way and play tournaments with less entrants. I would advise to play on several small poker rooms that feature between 100 and 300 entrants for most of their tournaments. Not only will these allow you to avoid large variance, but also the smaller European networks usually feature weaker competition.

Change Gears

Tournaments can be divided into three stages – early, middle and late ones. You see, each stage of the tournament features different stack sizes also making the optimal strategy quite different. This is the so called gear changing – when the tournament starts and is in the early age, you should be playing a really tight style. Observe your opponents and try to note down who are the good ones as well as who are the ones that you should be playing against.

When the tournament goes into the middle stages, you should be using the knowledge gained in the early phase to exploit the weak players at your table. Mid stages are also important for building a stack so you can apply pressure in the late ones.

How to approach the bubble

The bubble is a stage in a tournament where entrants are closing in to reach the paid places. Usually players approach this stage by playing very tight, which is understandable as none wants to bust just before making it into the money. However, the correct way is to do the opposite – you should be very aggressive, given that you have at least an average stack size. People won’t be willing to get into coin flips, thus will often give up their blinds and fold to your 3bets. This will account for a really significant addition to your stack size as stack sizes are usually between 25 and 40 big blinds deep on average.

Playing ReBuy Tournaments

ReBuy poker tournaments feature an important addition – players are able to buy extra chips towards their stack during the first hour. This completely changes the dynamic of the game as good players will be exploiting the fact that busting your stack does not equal busting the tournament. You should also be exploiting this fact and playing very aggressively. There’s no need to avoid coin flip situations or approaching play carefully. Your goal is to create a really large stack for the mid level of the tournament, the one where you won’t be able to buy extra chips if you bust.

Managing Your Bankroll

Tournaments can be a bit of a headache. It’s certainly possible to go on bad streaks and fail to cash during 100 tournaments in row. This means that you have to be really careful when managing your bankroll. Have between 250 and 500 average buy-ins you’re playing in your bankroll. This will allow you to overcome the variance without affecting your game. If you’re willing to take a shot at higher buy-in tournaments, try to sell some percentage of your action. This way you can still play the event you want without disregarding safe money management.