Early Play in MTT’s – Taking the race

after reading through a couple of hands in here yesterday, and discussing a hand with a friend on MSN the other day, I decided that I was gonna write something on early play in MTT’s, especially risking your chips in situations you pressume are races.

So we all know the situation pretty well. You’re in a $11 donkament and some moron open shoves his 3k stack at 15/30 and you’re folded to on the BB (for arguments sake) with TcTh.

Now, a lot of people in this situation, a lot of very good players, will fold. There reasoning being that it just isn’t necessary to gamble your stack at these levels on a coinflip (this is pressuming that 9/10, the original shover has AK or even on occasion AQ).
They have a point. And a good one too. This early on, it is not essential to gamble your stack on what you pressume is a 50/50. But whats wrong with it?
In my opinion nothing.

Whenever I discuss early tournament play, I always say in my eyes there are 2 approaches.
1) Sit tight and relax, pick spots and make the most of them.
2) Get involved, see pots and gamble in an effort to obtain a stack early.

Now number 1 I wont be discussing here, primarily because it is just basic poker strategy that everyone uses.

Its number 2 that really gets my brain going, and number 2 i’m going to concentrate on.

I would say, these days, in the situation I gave at the start of the thread I will call 8/10 times. The other 2 times being vs a)someone I know is capable of shoving a big PP and 2)If i misclick .

My thought process behind this is pretty simple and as explained slightly above.
In MY personal game at the minute (bear in mind your game should contain multiple arsenals, and changing up every few months or similar, especially against regular opponents, will only do you good) I am looking to obtain chips early and 50% of the time I’m going to win the race and have a 6k stack early on.

Now a few may be asking, “whats the point in having a 6k stack this early” or similar questions, but as I pointed out, if I do win the race I have this stack where I can further see more flops with more debatable hands, and, hopefully obtain more chips early.

My biggest strength is definitely my big stack play. For anyone who has seen me play, or watched any of my hand histories on PokerXfactor, you will know that with chips I am very aggressive and only on a very rare occasion will I give away a big chip lead.

As I’ve been saying all along, if you’re comfortable hanging around and are comfortable playing short stack poker and you also have good knowledge of shove/fold situations, there is nothing wrong with sitting around tight early on and “picking spots” or playing small-ball.

As with all situations in poker, there are times when I will change things, one example off the top of my head would be a live tournament, we all know that on the internet if we go out we can instantly begin another MTT, thus another big reason I am willing to take these risks early on.

My point of this thread was just to point out that there are a number of different approaches to this kind of situation. Neither, IMO, is either right of wrong. It all depends on your strengths and as with all sports and situations that you come across in life, everyone knows that it is important to play to your strengths.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the read & if you have let me know, I’ll see what else I can muster up over the coming weeks.

Matt.