Hey everyone this is MATZZZZZ from pokerstars and matzzzzzpoker on twitch.
I wanted to talk about an alternative MTT strategy that I have been using that differs from the mainstream tournament style. Since the goal of a poker tournament is to have all of the chips at the end of the tournament it does not matter who accumulates chips the fastest or who has the most chips during the middle or late stages, it matters who has all of the chips at the end of the tournament and that's all plain and simple.
The key to this strategy is patience, discipline, but also being able to make a big call when the time is right! Using this strategy the ultimate goal is to get our money in in a dominant position (even though) our stack has dipped from passing from early pos with marginal hands or getting our money in with a 60-40 edge from the cut off, button, sb or bb.
The new trend in online poker is to constantly defend your big blind and battle for pots, as well as ship and pray with somewhat marginal hands hoping that someone doesn't wake up with a monster behind you, or of course get lucky and build a giant stack. Also, shipping such a wide range from the small blind or button based on how the big and small blind play. Let's look at a few examples:
I constantly see people ship 77, 88, 99, aj, kq, kj with between 12-20 big blinds from early position or under the gun. My strategy would argue to pass in this spot since there are so many people left to act behind you. Lets say we jam 88 and we get 2 callers with jq suited and ak, our odds of winning go down quite high. Not to mention lets say 2 players with big stacks decide to flat, then there is a good chance they are checking down to the river in later game trying to eliminate us. If we had 10 or under I would say go for it, but in the 12-20 range it would be better to wait.
I do not see the rush when short stacked. I would argue to sit, wait and be patient for an opportunity to get our money in with a 60-40 edge or better. Lets look at another example. Lets say we passed 88, 55, kq from early and middle pos with 18 bbs and not our stack has dwindled to 10bbs. Now on the button we pick up qk off and it's folded to us. We shove and the bb calls with pretty much any two since we are short lets say j8 off. Now we have our approximate edge we are looking for. Lets say we hold and bam magically we are up to 22bbs with big antes in play. Furthermore a good chunk of the field has been eliminated due to our patience.
When using this style people will try to exploit us because we are playing tight. The button and sb will pretty much raise any 2 so we need to be able to make a big call when we need to. Lets say it's folded to the sb and he knows we are super tight so he shoves 62 off. We need to be ready to make a big call with k8 and bam we have the 60-40 approximate edge we are looking for.
This alternative method of poker combines lots of old school ideologies with some new ideas. We will surprise people when we flat from the bb and pull off all kinds of tricks like floating, check raising etc. and they will put us on a hand and give us credit when he have nothing. Playing seemingly tight will give us the opportunity to pull off all kinds of cool moves and bluffs.
So in conclusion when we pick up k10suited in mid pos with 13 bbs maybe we should consider folding and playing patiently rather than getting snap called with a4 off. If you are interested in this style of play please watch the matzzzzzpoker stream on twitch. It might open your eyes to some things that you might want to use in your game. And if you think they style sucks, that's cool too. The great thing about poker is that everyone can play differently, and that's why poker is fun!
