What is the best strategy at the start of a tournament (deep stack)?

What’s the best strategy at the start of a tournament when stacks are deep?
Do you play tight and patient, or take spots to build a big stack early?

I think the best strategy in this scenario is to play by chipEV theory, since ICM has very little influence at this stage of the tournament. Having a large chip stack, theory dictates playing many hands, so I believe a conservative approach isn't the best option. Building a large chip stack is the goal for anyone in the tournament, but I don't think taking unnecessary risks to double up early, for example, has a positive EV, except in situations where theory dictates it.

When you are deep you can definitely try more spots preflop to build a big stack, but only when the price isn't ridiculous high to see a flop: for example you can go for set mining more often, you can try to hit great flops with hands like 45s/56s... and the opponents you mainly want to target are players that aren't going to easily let go of overpairs, top pairs... One important note is to play this hands mostly from position as this will make your decisions postflop way easier 💰💸

* PS. If you play online on sites that allow HUDs, try to build decent stats(for example 20%+ VPIP, 15%+ PFR, 10%+ 3BET...), and this are easier to gather when the blinds are low(especially the 3bet%), this will help you a lot late game against recreational and/or bad regs that don't pay too much attention to the tables/players and make decisions mostly on the stats(for example they didn't notice you were LAG early game and went nitty later game... most of the time they'll see 30% VPIP and call your bets when you have top hands, giving you action with marginal hands they usually wouldn't vs. a TAG player and/or fold/not steal enough when you are big blind...)

anasslaaleg said:

What’s the best strategy at the start of a tournament when stacks are deep?
Do you play tight and patient, or take spots to build a big stack early?

Click to expand...

In any case, you can only take risks when there are grounds for doing so. Caution won't hurt, but caution doesn't mean you have to play only 1 hand out of ten
In my opinion, it's better to actively use the early stages, and if acceptable, try to play more hands while the blinds are small. But at the same time, don't forget about the option to fold.

At the start of a tournament, deep stacks are more about information and discipline than pure aggression. I like to play solid, position-aware poker: widen ranges slightly in position, avoid big marginal spots out of position, and focus on chipEV, not hero plays. Early chips are useful, but early busts are expensive. Building a stack is great — forcing it is not.

anasslaaleg said:

What’s the best strategy at the start of a tournament when stacks are deep?
Do you play tight and patient, or take spots to build a big stack early?

Click to expand...

The latter. I go tighter when the bubble approaches.
Or also not if I have a very big stack I put on max pressure at the bubble

I think it depends on the table, I'll usually play "normally" for a few rounds but if I see people making it to the river with J-high and winning I might throw in a BB or 2 and be a little looser with some lower SCs depending on my position just to see a few more flops.

Early in a deep-stack tournament, I lean tight-aggressive and information-focused.
There’s usually no urgency to build a massive stack when blinds are small and mistakes are cheap. I play strong, playable hands in position, value-bet relentlessly against loose players, and avoid marginal, high-variance spots. The goal is to preserve stack depth, gather reads, and let opponents make errors.
That said, if a clear +EV spot comes up—especially against weaker players—I’ll absolutely take it. But I’m not forcing action just to “chip up.”
In short: patience first, pressure later. Early levels are about survival and edge accumulation, not gambling for stacks.

I font take big risks , at least not with very good odds . I try to trap others with suited connectors , pocket pairs for set , or less string hands . With 100 or more big blinds ots easier to see the flop more times , target a weak player and take his stack .

The best strat is to focus on stack building in most cases-You want to ISO weaker players IP and take advantage of their deep stack errors