Help me take the next step.
Hello, big plo whale here, "a serious recreational player" if you may, who lately has had some success in plo mtt micro donkaments. In fact I bink a tourney quite often. However, I play intuitively mostly (I've read JNandez book and understand many spots but not all ofc, however I know nothing about how different stacks than 100 play or anything related to MTTs), and do not seem to find the same success in higher buy ins, busting around before final table(I know there's luck involved too). Could some kind soul share some tips? Are there any reads about MTTs? Anything would do and sorry for the weird post. Peace!
8 Replies
Hey there!
If you mean above 109$ buy in, then you should be careful, most pros (including Jnandez) play those. There are very few fish and very few bad regs. At 54$, 25$ and below you do see a big number of inexperienced players or players that are very unbalanced / bad.
When still far from ITM there are some thresholds at below 30bb where you should just try and get it in even with KKxy and many good Axyz hands, but usually being short means you have to play more carefully. You will not be able to push anyone around, speculative hands go down in value and the big stacks have the upper hand. Accumulating that big stack yourself is one way to success, that's why micro and low stakes are good, because you can double / triple up early on against fish that will make huge mistakes.
I do not have that much time in one session to play MTTs nowadays, but I used to play a lot of the omaholic tournies on GG.
Higher tournaments are going to have higher variance, because there are less fish donating their stacks to you in the early levels (although it does happen). You can no longer afford to avoid high variance spots, and may have to take smaller edges and play your hands more aggro. Also make sure that you don't play differently because the stakes are getting to you.
Higher tournaments are going to have higher variance, because there are less fish donating their stacks to you in the early levels
That's not quite accurate - or at least it isn't in cash games before you make any ICM translations - assuming general aggression is the same, the presence of fishy players doesn't actually increase or decrease your variance. It can appear that your variance goes down when a fishy player enters a pool and thus your winrate goes up but that's actually an illusion - you're varying the same amount, just from a higher amount.
Surely your winrate is higher when there's fish donating? You get it in with bigger average equity?
Surely your winrate is higher when there's fish donating? You get it in with bigger average equity?
Yes. But your variance stays the same. The line changes direction a few degrees, but the variance (can) actually stay the same. It feels like the variance goes down because you spend more of your time winning.
I thought getting it in with 50% is higher variance than getting it in with 80%, but apparently you're a math teacher??
The difference is not that much especially since you're going in more with fishes probably.
But if you're winning 100 bb/100 hands (quite possible in fishy tournament tables), running bad doesn't feel that bad when you're still probably winning.
