Tight Play

[CubsFanSean]

Hello. Basically, I'm a tight aggressive player whose won enough tourneys that I know I'm just not lucky. I am average I think. I'm trying to move up and be better. The key for me is to become a guy who can get a chip stack and use it to bully. I find myself the guy with 1000 chips and the blinds are 75/150. (esp. in my own home game that I run and people know my image well) Thus, i have to gamble and if I get chips, I usually get 1st or 2nd but I'm leaving it all on that coin flip. Any advice on how to change this up/become a player who accumulates more chips early. Am I too tight early.

CubsFanSean

yes if you wanna be the guy that is gettin chips early to push and push people around, which by the way is a good strategy, you should play a lot of hands, nething suited is what i like to do early when blinds are small and you can afford to gamble, you hit big flops or draws and bust people up that play ace king and flop top pair in so forth, then once you have chips concentrate on playing pocket pairs and big cards, ace king, ace queen etc and forcing people to make all in decisions when you hit with those. works like a charm!

i like to do the opposite play tight and just sit and wait for a big hand that way u arent loosing chips in the biggening and the blinds arent hurting u cause there so small

It all comes down to postion. If you got some mid runners and there are still Five players in, Most will have High cards that are no longer in the deck. Maybe one or two have flush draws or straight draws.

You just have to practice and see the results. Then you will know when and where to play them.

[Soupjonz]

Tight play at the beginning is a great strategy...gives you a feel for whats going on at the table without risking too much. But if you go through a few rounds and find that everyone is playing conservative, you could find yourself missing out on pots you could have won. Like said before, position is a great factor. My best advice is to play the opposite of how the majority of the players at the table are playing. Follow through with your aggression as well. You raise preflop, give the pot a good half pot - pot sized bet when the flop comes. Good players will fold if they don't have anything most of the time. Remember, you can't lose if you don't get called, and know your players!

[LouW]

Tight play in this situation is the only answer

[mathewhadley]

The fundamental theorem of poker, introduced by David Sklansky, states that every time you play your hand the way you would if you could see your opponent's cards, you gain, and every time .
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mathew hadley

[trm_shrimp]

Its all about changing gears when blinds go up and knowing how to adjust your game.

Think of tournaments as 2 parts: Early Stages and Late Stages.

During the early stages, blinds are very low and stacks are very deep. So, you have pleny of time play and enough chips to manuever. You can avoid situatins like coinflips where you're either under or just a tiny favorite. You obviously should be avoiding 30/70 and 40/60 situations preflop. Small pairs, suited connectors have a lot of value when stacks are deep because of implied odds while hands like Kx, Ax, etc have very little value. You can play very tight early on and wait for big starting hands if you wish.

When blinds go up, though, stacks are no longer deep (assuming you're sitting on an average/short stack). You have to keep an eye on your stack compared to blinds. The more BB's you have, the tighter/looser you can play depending. However, the less you have, you're more or less forced into playing a lot looser and opening your hand range more. You could play tight, but if you're sitting on short number of blinds it isn't advised.

So, during the later stages you have to adjust your game. While early stages is all about surviving, late stages are about surviving and accumulating chips in order to battle the rising blinds. Now, you make plays like blind steal and re-stealing. Small pairs and suited connectors go down in value if you arent getting the proper odds preflop because of little implied odds, where as hands like Kx Ax go up in value. Where you look to avoid playing 50/50 or 30/70-40/60 situations during the early stages, you're usually be correct to play them at the late stages.

Having a 1K stack with blinds at 75/150-a coinflip is a great situation to be in.

...I just realized I'm replying to a very old thread. LOL.

[T. Azimuth Schwitters]

None of you took into consideration the blind structure. When the stack to blinds ratio is exceptionally high, you can play so tightly in the early stage that you might as well not show up for a while. If it's like FT's Midnight Madness, however, where the playing field is big, the stacks are short, and the blinds are big, you might have to go for some big pots early on.

Crap, I also just noticed the age of the thread. Hope everything worked out well for you, op.

[pokerrocker]

When your poker playing style is tight your great advantage to win is by sitting quiet and then coming over the top can really put fear into some players, especially if they aren't holding KK or better.