Folding Good Hands in MTT

[CaliNaughti]

This question is for anyone who has finished 1st place in a MTTor who has gone real deep. I was curious how many good hands, you layed down, folded, to get that deep or even win the MTT.

Is there a strategy for this? I know I have folded plenty of good hands to go deep, make the FT.

I know you need patience and stamina to go deep...but was dreally curious as to what extent people have gone to make that FT or win it.
Cali

[Kat]

Huge topic obviously. Few thoughts...

In large-field MTTs your focus should be on going deep rather than cashing. If you look at the OPR of the well-known NLHE MTT big hitters, most of them have a fairly low ITM but a high ROI. So they don't cash that often, but when they do they cash big.

Incidentally, this is one reason forum games are poor preparation for large-field MTTs, but that's another story.

So what are these successful MTT players doing? Several things. First, they aren't afraid to bubble. When other players are tightening up waiting for the bubble to burst, the good players are attacking them. Second, once ITM the good players have an arsenal of weapons that are based on the fact that decisions deep in a MTT are situational.

Cali asks about folding big hands. The good MTT players are thinking less about "is this a good hand?" and far more about "what is my M, what is my position, how tight are the blinds playing...?" They know that certain stack dynamics dictate an open-shove with 75o and an open-fold with AJs.

The important point, tho, is that some of these skills are not that hard to learn. In fact some aren't really "skills" they are simply memorizing things like shove/fold ranges for different stack sizes. At least that's true in NLHE. In more sophisticated forms of poker (cough) the game theorists haven't reduced much of the game to charts and tables.

I think the biggest weakness I see late in HF games is that people don't pay enough attention to their position when they are deciding on which hand to shove when they're short stacked. There is an enormous difference in hands you should be open-shoving from the button or small blind compared to hands you should be shoving in EP. Similarly your calling range is dependent in part on the position of the person shoving on you.

Hope the above provides a start to a discussion because I'm not primarily a tournament player and would be interested in the thoughts of those here who are.

[Jedi333]

The situation is everything. Kat only scratches the surface with his post, as it deals mostly with pre-flop play. Post-flop, "good hands" are relative. There are times when 1 pair is basically the nuts, there are other times when you have to fold a full house and not think twice about it.

[bellevuelimo]

Multi Table Tournaments: Folding Good Hands/Pocket Pairs ... You are in a $22 MTT, there are 30 players left of 390 and you have made the money.



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