I've just come to a realization that perhaps the most effective tournament strategy is to fold early and often.
I'm sitting in a $1500 tourney on TonyG, and checking out my stats.. I'm folding 78% of my starting hands. I'm winning about 85=90% of hands after seeing the flop.
I know, at least for myself, that i'm winning more seen hands because with less starting hands to play, each hand seems more individualistic to me. What that does, is allow better concentration on correct playing strategy for that specific hand.
To make a long story short, play less hands, and in turn have your hands less full. This makes your hands more manageable.
(did i say hands too many times?)
Edited by Btownd87 (27 September 2009 @ 20:37 GMT)
Joined: Feb '08
Location: United Kingdom
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Winning a greater percentage of post-flop hands doesn't necessarily mean more money/chips. If you have a tight image you may not get called as much cos players will always put you on the best hands. Sometimes playing tight is a good strategy but not always.
Joined: Aug '09
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I agree with you but it depends on how your table is moving. I mean if it is a pretty loose table what you say is a great plan, but if your table is getting tigh, you must play more loose, even more if the blids are high, trying to steal as much as you can.
Joined: May '09
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tight aggressive is beneficial most of the times in early part of the tournaments but it might not be useful everytime. you have to play acc. to your opponents. if you keep on waiting for good hands on later parts of tournament, you'll be eventually blinded out.
Joined: Feb '08
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sometimes i play so tight that i only call or raise a hand when i know for sure that my pocket cards are so good that i can can call a reraise or all in with them but it does not always gives me profit !
It is feasible to sit tight during the early stages of the tournament and play only premium hands. The blinds are small and are not eating up your stack. The pots are not large enough to take risks to win them. But you will have to play more loosely when blinds grow. Otherwise your stack will not grow and soon you will be forced to go all in. And your stack will not be big enough to scare opponents off from calling.
Seems to me a good strategy even if played by most of players. Sometimes, depending on oppo's behaviour, it's better to be a bit aggressive to earn enough fishes to lead table. But I usually play like you
Joined: Dec '08
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Good realization and in many case quite profitable . But when you play long time with those same guys they see that you are a tight player and you don´t get called so oftenly which is a good thing sometimes cause you can change your gaming style ini middle of the game and so on steal some pots with nothing!
Joined: Oct '09
Location: Canada
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You're right and you will understand it with the next sentences and i dont know if u ever noticed but no professional players do play every hand and thats why....Probably the number one mistake poker players make is that they play far too many hands. When you're just starting out playing poker, you want to play poker, and that means staying in hands that arent very good just to be part of the action. But playing more doesnt mean winning more, it usually means losing more. If you find you're staying in half or more the hands you're dealt, you need to upgrade your starting hand requirements.
Joined: Oct '09
Location: United States
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Posted by Btownd87: I've just come to a realization that perhaps the most effective tournament strategy is to fold early and often.
I'm sitting in a $1500 tourney on TonyG, and checking out my stats.. I'm folding 78% of my starting hands. I'm winning about 85=90% of hands after seeing the flop.
I know, at least for myself, that i'm winning more seen hands because with less starting hands to play, each hand seems more individualistic to me. What that does, is allow better concentration on correct playing strategy for that specific hand.
To make a long story short, play less hands, and in turn have your hands less full. This makes your hands more manageable.
(did i say hands too many times?)
You have it right partially, beginners strategy for MTTs should involve a lot of folding early on, I recommend beginners only play AA KK QQ in the early stages, in mid-late stages you should be stealing fairly often or the blinds will eat you just don't try and steal too often UTG....
Tourney play is interesting. But your right in some aspects, very early on when the blinds are small... tighter is defintley righter... but as the blinds start to grow, gotta loosen up a beat & identify the weaker oppenents & EXLPOIT them fully! find out who doesnt defend their blinds and go after them, that should keep you floating nice for a while. Then when it starts to get close to the bubble, if your lucky enough to be on one of those tables where everybody turns into a rock just trying to make the money, then is the time to turn hyper aggressive... always works great for me, although soon as u get resistance really gotta back off a bit. But if all goes well then u should reach FT with a nice chip stack, and just play the FT like a regular 9 man SNG... tight early, then loosen up and become more aggressive again
. But when you play long time with those same guys they see that you are a tight player and you don´t get called so oftenly which is a good thing sometimes cause you can change your gaming style ini middle of the game and so on steal some pots with nothing! 
