MTT gamble question

In low buy in multitable tournament i often have many opportunities to gamble early and possibly build a huge stack or bust out. I usually will fold hands even as good as AK preflop to an all in raise so that i will have an opportunity to just steal enough blinds to survive later. So the question is should i gamble more early against lotto players and try to build a huge stack or should i sit back and wait for a hand where i am a big favorite?

I think that it makes more sense to play solid than to gamble early. Even if you are successful (lucky) and score a lot of chips, the others at the table will just wait for a hand and look you up later on when you come in raising, since you just convinced them that you are loose also.

The next tournament that you play, make a list of the top 5 in chips after 10 hands, and see how many of them actually cash. I could be wrong, but I would expect that most of them don't.

all in all you'll have to gamble in any MTT to take itdown sometimes....a lot of pros will tell you that...but really it all depends....sometimes ill gamble with an open ended or flush draw but like i said many do do that and end up big....or out....therefor the word gamble

yeah I've been wondering that myself too lately, when is the best time to gamble a bit and try to double up. I usually like to wait a little until the blinds have started going up before trying anything, even with hands like AK. But with QQ+ I will call all-ins right from the start. But then again I'm pretty new to MTT's so I don't know how much I would listen to me

I like to wait a few levels before committing myself. Let the fish get knocked out and often the bigger stacks are over confident and there for taking.

KenFischer said:

The next tournament that you play, make a list of the top 5 in chips after 10 hands, and see how many of them actually cash. I could be wrong, but I would expect that most of them don't.

Click to expand...

I didn't mean that early so let me clarify. Sometimes I will go an entire hour without even playing a hand because i feel like i can survive off of the blinds. So by early i meant the first 30 to 45 minutes or should i just keep playing how i am.

If the buy in is really low...

In freerolls I like to gamble early because I don't want to waste my time to survive for an hour by playing tight. I play them for the fun of playing the big stack when the gamble works, not for the $$.

I guess if you're playing a buyin which is significantly lower than what you usually play, it's not much different from a freeroll.

gamble early with premimium hands.. build stack..... tighten up.. then steal blinds when blinds are worth it... trust me on this

perfect situation - pocket aces completely unthreatening flop - guy in front of me makes a standard bet - i raise all in - he calls - he had flopped trip jacks - anyway i could have layed this one down - there were no straits or flushes possible.

unstoppable4 said:

perfect situation - pocket aces completely unthreatening flop - guy in front of me makes a standard bet - i raise all in - he calls - he had flopped trip jacks - anyway i could have layed this one down - there were no straits or flushes possible.

Click to expand...

What were the raises preflop? It sounds like you had position, since he bet before you, but I'm having a hard time seeing how you got to this point. Did you just flat call his raise preflop?

I probably would have reraised (but not pushed) on the flop, to see what he did and would just play it carefully from that point depending on what happened. Bottom line is that AA is just a pair, and once the cards hit the board it's not always enough.

Look at the payout structure. If you just play to survive you won't make the final table of most tourneys. Most structures are such that if you take 1st place like 5% of the time and bust 95% of the time it's better than like 30th 100% of the time. You should be gambling and playing to win. Take edges when you can. That's why tourneys have such large variance though.

I haven't had any problem making final tables without gambling early in the tournaments.

You certainly have to open up your game later on, when the stacks shorten compared to the blinds, but I never have consistent success when I try to gamble early (in the first couple of hours).

I play most of my MTT on Full Tilt, so I'll share those numbers as of today:

303 MTTs (9.75 average buyin) - 598 average field size
55 cashes (18.15%)
13 final tables (4.29%)
4 top three finishes (1.32%)
2 wins (0.66%)
ROI 20.83%

Everyone has their own style, and certainly what works for me might not work for someone else. I think that the most important thing for any player to do is to make sure that they review their results objectively to make sure that they are really as successful as they think they are. A lot of people would be unpleasantly surprised if they actually checked their results.

I am pretty tight in the early stages of the tournaments. Sure you have to gamble at some point, but it is not worh it in the beginning as once the blinds are bigger your all-in will be called by a wider range. I tend to find spots where I am a big favortie such as possibly dominating and having trips against a pair,etc in the beginning of the tourney.