No-Limit Multi Table Tourney Strategy

No limit multi table tourneys are probably the most elegant poker format there is. Instead of the endless grinding, here you have a distinct objective - outlast the others. Furthermore you have a predefined stop loss, which I think is fairer then what sometimes happen to the fish when they get sucked into a ring game where they don't belong. Though I can hold my own in most ring games, multi table tourneys has proved a really tricky discipline to me. What usually happened was that I played good poker and finished just outside the money, or I played bad poker and busted out early. Recently things have started to change, notably after a thread in the forum where I discussed multi table strategy with notably Yobo, Gooch123 and GarySJFL. In this article I shall try and explain some of the tricks these guys told me, along with some things that I have come to realize afterwards. I still only have two months of serious experience from multi table tourneys, so don't take me for Chris Moneymaker - I'm not. ....Yet!!! Nevertheless, writing when you have just made some important realizations often help keeping the focus on the issues facing players not yet experts within the discipline, and I hope that some of the ideas presented here will be of help to some of you.

Reaching the final table at a multi table tourney usually requires two things: skill and luck. Now usually luck is considered the enemy of skill, but in a multi table tourney an important part of the skill required is the willingness to reach out for Lady Luck when required.

A tourney can be divided into three phases: the beginning, the middle phase, and the end game.

In the beginning blinds are small. Usually this means the first three levels. You have to realize that what happens here has no effect whatsoever on your eventual success. In other words - in the beginning a lot of the poor players bust out, and you just sit tight and wait. This means the following: Stick to playing the top pairs and big slick. When you play these hands make sure you raise then in for at least 15% of your stack. You don't want people to take a crap shot at you for cheap, as you risk busting out, and you don't really need chips at this point. If someone calls or comes over your head, you'll have to decide whether to go all-in or fold. With aces or kings all-in is mandatory unless you have a really strong feeling that you're beat. With less, you have to use good judgment. If there's not much raising pre-flop you can start taking a lot of flops. I start to play suited and unsuited connectors of all sorts from all positions. With a starting stack of 1000 and the blinds at 20, you can buy an awful lot of lottery tickets before it starts to hurt your stack. But if you do that, you'll have to avoid getting sucked in. I'll fold most drawing hands on the flop here. What you're looking for is to double up with the nuts. Also if you play like this, you'll have to be really careful when you flop two pair. Two pair against trips is really hard to walk away from, and it's one of the more common ways to bust out. So don't be too happy when you flop two pair, and keep in mind that you don't need chips during this phase to succeed. Finally you should pick up the pots that nobody else wants. No matter how many players on the flop, if you're last to act and no one has bet ahead of you, you can usually buy the pot for a pot size bet. Stealing these loose pots usually mean that I keep up with the average stack size, even when I don't get a single hand during the first three stages.

But to repeat - the only thing that matters during the first three stages is that you don't cripple your stack.

During the middle stages the blinds start to get significant, and the game changes radically. Most players don't have a clue on this. They insist on waiting for a good hand, and when they finally get one they get no action on it. This just wont do - the blinds will grind you down. Instead you have to steal some blinds with not so great hands. And when I'm saying not so great - any hand will do really. What you need to achieve is to find the balance between necessity and possibility. Sometimes a table get really passive. When this happens you should steal real badly - simply because it's possible. They're giving you great odds on your steal attempts. Go rob them! At other times you're seated at a table where stealing is more risky. No matter what your stack size you still have to attempt it though, or the blinds will take away your weapons eventually. But how much you should try and steal is also strongly based on how bad you need chips. The fact is that the value of each additional chip is decreasing as a function of the number of chips you've already got (though it can be argued that the very last chip won in the tournament is worth the most). This mean that you have to be willing to take more risk when you're short stacked then you should be when you've got an average or better stack. You could say that as the chips you win are worth more to a short stack then a big one, this actually put the odds (this is not the proper term for this, but I hope you get the idea) in favor of the small stack when a big and a small stack is involved in a pot. As the chips lying in the middle will affect the big stacks chances of winning the whole thing proportionally less then it will for the small stack, the big stack should be more risk averse. Especially so, if losing the pot will make him short stacked.

The tourney literature talks a lot about changing gears. And though I understood the general concept, I didn't really know how to do it in reality. Now I go around it this way. I play in 0th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th gear. Based on the size of the blinds, the average stack size and my chip stack I decide in advance what gear I will use. This decision is based on how badly I need chips and how passive the table is. 3rd gear means that I raise it in three times in the coming round. Knowing that I have to try and steal three times before the blinds reach me again, I pick my hands accordingly. Suffice it to say that some of these hands are not even worth a call in a ring game. Obviously I don't play in 3rd and 4th gear much, but it happens. The tricky part of it is to back down when they call you.

Whereas steal possibilities should easily present themselves on a passive table, the urgency of the need to steal often arrive too late. The key idea is that you have to go all in a lot before you get seriously short stacked. Say you got 1000 chips at blinds = 75/150. Average stack is now 2000. As I see it you have to double or bust before the blinds reach you, or at least steal some blinds so you can wait a round. With 1000 chips you need to double once to be back in business. If you wait till the blinds have passed you have to double twice to get back to average. Now lets make the assumption that you know that you will get dealt two good hands in the coming round, say JJ and AQo, and furthermore that you will get called on both occasions by a single player. Now JJ is 77.6% favorite over a random hand heads up, and AQo is 63.9% favorite. So the chance that you succeed in double up twice is 0.776*0.639 = 50% Add to this that paying the round of blinds take your stack to 775 before acting cripples your chances of stealing, and you'll see that you must be willing to go all-in before the blinds reach you with hands that stand some 40-45% chance of holding up against a random hand. Steals will add the missing 10% if not more, and the likeliness that you will get two great hands just in the next round is not all that great. This means that I'll go all-in in this situation with any hand 56o or better!!! When you're starting to get short Lady luck is your friend - not your enemy. When you're shortstacked going you have nothing to lose when going all in. If no one calls you win the blinds, and if someone call you get your chance to double up, getting the chips you need so badly. Both options are fine as far as you are concerned. What is not so fine is letting the blinds take your stack down to a limit when you cannot make a raise that matters the least bit to your opponents. Cause then you've lost the ability to steal.

At what stack size does winning a pot (or the blinds) become urgent? In my view, when you're down to half the average stack size it's time to move fast. Most people wait till it's too late.

But blind stealing really is an art form. Raising to 2-3 times the big blind, tend to increase the steal success rate dramatically. Just adding another big blind size bet often gives the blinds too good odds. Keep in mid that you're happy to walk away with the blinds no matter what you or they hold. You don't like to run big risks, as the objective of the game is survival. Your raises should not be too big either. If someone comes over the top of your head, you should lay down all but the very best hands. You have bad position, and it takes a heck of a hand (or a heck of a man) to come over the top of a raiser. Therefore you don't want to raise too much, so you can easily release when called or raised. The exception to this is when you get short stacked (under half of average stack); in which case I think you should go all in pre-flop. This has several virtues. As your stack is small this is the only way to get just a little respect. You'd still prefer to be allowed to steal. Second best thing is that you get called. If you do that you can be a favorite., a small dog, or a big dog. But in any case you'll never get less then a 5% shot (K2o vs. KK). If you lose you're out, which you would have been anyway within a couple of rounds from paying the blinds. If you win you're back in business and can go back to your normal game.

If you're really short (which you shouldn't be, as you should be bust or average instead), getting involved in a multiway pot with any hand is not a bad idea, as this is the only way to regain a respectable stack fast. Again the reason is that I can save a double attempt if I succeed, and my chances of success are slim anyway. If you've got a big stack, you should avoid multiway pots like the plague. Even AA will lose 1 in 4 times against two opponents.

I better admit that I haven't really got my end game strategy running too smoothly yet. The thing is that I always play to win it, as only top 3 is worth my time. But as the books tell you, you have to make some kind of decision (depending on your stack) if you want to try to sneak into the money or if you going to play it and go for the final table. If/When you come to the final table you should try to take charge of the table but if you are very "wealthy" it can be a good idea too stay off to get some people out of the way.

Personally I often prefer to sit tight and observe for 2-3 rounds when I reach the final table. Just to get a line on people. Also the small stacks usually reach out for lady luck pretty quickly, so waiting will often move you up the ladder a bit. But you can't overdo it either, as the blinds are huge here. In any event, my experience is that when you get down to the final 4-5 players, it often gets down to crapshot, where a few key hands will decide things - that is - if you play good aggressive poker.

During the final phase (and sometimes also before that) you will sometimes encounter tough decisions. You try with a steal raise when blinds are big compared to your stack size. Say you have 2000 chips left, raise 600 and get called. On the flop the caller bets into you. You have a hand but it is rather mediocre or need help to win. Now what? All-in or fold? Well assuming that you have outs (though not necessarily many of them) the main issue in making your decision should be how you stand if you fold compared to if you call and lose. If you have a stack that still leaves you in the game after folding this hand, I think a fold is often in order when someone shows strength like this. If a fold would leave me seriously shortstacked I would go all in with as little as 3 outs. In other words, as your objective is to win the whole thing, your chances of winning individual hands should not be seen in isolation. Other chances of winning back the loss will arise, but only if you aggressively pursue the chance you have got. And when a fold leaves you with next to no chance of coming back, you should take your longshot and double or leave knowing that you did your best. This mean that you should fold sometimes and go all in at other times in completely identical situations, depending on your stack size and the size of the bet you're considering calling.

There's probably a lot more to good tourney play then this, but nevertheless I think that the issues I've briefly discussed here are causing a lot of players a lot of problems. But if you're willing to reach out for Lady Luck when you need her she will look your way eventually. Good luck with it.

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