Message Board : MTT Standards

Ed, since you’ve spent considerable time working on hand selection charts for NL cash games, I thought I would ask about adapting them to multi-table NL  tournament play. Recently I was playing in an online tourney with a field of roughly 85 players (with a $26 buyin) and was the chipleader with 30 players remaining. My goal was to protect my chipstack and patiently watch as the escalating blinds caused the field to thin in the third quarter of the event, before the final table took shape. Unfortunately, I blundered and lost two big pots I should never have been involved in and I was eliminated in 25th place.

As far as I can see, I made two specific errors in the two hands.

1) I defended my big blind to a raise with 88 and doubled up a medium stack when I bluffed with my unimproved underpair on a board of K96Q when a possible spade flush came in;

2) I played AT for a raise on the button instead of safely folding preflop. Instead, I flopped top and bottom pair on an AQT flop and lost to a set of tens.

Each time, I called a raise in a dangerous situation and lost the maximum.

So, my question is what hand standards would you suggest (especially if you are calling a PF raise) in the middle stages of a large tournament when the chief objective is to protect a large stack?

Todd said:

 

1) I defended my big blind to a raise with 88 and doubled up a medium stack when I bluffed with my unimproved underpair on a board of K96Q when a possible spade flush came in;

You should re-raise (probably shove) this pre-flop close to 100% of the time as chip leader.  Restealing is vital in the later stages of a tournament. 

2) I played AT for a raise on the button instead of safely folding preflop. Instead, I flopped top and bottom pair on an AQT flop and lost to a set of tens.

That’s poker.  There is no way you shouldn’t go broke there when you probably had less than 50bb in your stack.

I should have folded both hands preflop, is what I should have done.

In the first instance I had 90+ BBs.  There is no reason for me to shove, really, yet I didn’t really have set-mining odds because of my opponent’s stack size. I should have folded.

In the second instance, I had 50+ BBs but I have no quarrel going broke once I see that flop. There was no reason for me to see that flop, however, because I was playing against a stack that was nearly my equal. I should be avoiding situations like that.