Switching Gears: From Cash Games to MTTs

I am BelowAverage, I am from the UK and I have been a lone wolf poker professional for around 10 years. I have played about 95% cash games up to now. I have started to notice the effects of working the night schedule and I am start to feel the need for a bit of a change from the usual cash game grind.

I have decided to switch to MTTs. I believe the main benefits of MTTs are that they are much harder to solve/bot in real time due to the numerous variables affecting decisions. They are softer and more lucrative at the moment and are likely to remain so for a longer period. Additionally, I am craving more structure in my sessions and day-to-day life. The morning schedule definitely helps with this. Waking up at 6 am and being on the same schedule as those around me should yield health and social benefits too.

The major problem being that I don't really know what I am doing......

ICM, Bounties, and Risk Premiums are basically a foreign language to me at the moment. That’s without considering the strategic changes required when you’re 15 big blinds deep on the flop rather than 150 big blinds.

I hope this blog will help offer some accountability and keep me focused and on track with my journey. One of the reasons I believe MTTs are so soft is the huge number of variables affecting each decision, making it an intimidating format to study. Not only do you have to learn CEV strategies for different stack sizes, but you also have to understand how different stages of ICM affect these strategies. Then you add bounties into the mix, and things change again.

My Study Plan

I plan to add structure to my study to avoid being overwhelmed by information. I will segment tournament poker and go through each segment until I have a solid understanding of how it works.

- Preflop
- Postflop
- ICM
- Bounties

These are broad segments and will be further broken down. While you could argue that ICM should be at the top of the list, I view ICM as an adjustment to CEV. Therefore, I prefer to have a good grasp of how the spot plays before adding other factors. However, I am new to this, so I am open to changing my approach based on compelling arguments.

To start with, all my study will be 'Big Study,' where I am looking at my game plan as a whole rather than focusing on specific hands or situations. Spending 30 minutes looking into whether I should bet a specific combo on the turn and blast the river, or give up is wasted time when I am still learning the right bet size and frequency to use on the flop.

Daily Goals

1/ Review my study notes every morning
This will be the first work-related activity of the day, whether I am studying or playing. All the stuff I am learning is new, so I need to refresh my knowledge regularly.

2/ Play 20 Tournaments
To learn effectively, I need to apply concepts at the table and put myself in uncomfortable spots. It’s also important to build an understanding of how people are playing and how far or close they are to equilibrium strategy at different parts of the game tree.

3/ Big Study
Go through each segment of tournament poker and try to understand how it operates. The goal is not to be perfect but to gain an executable understanding that can be refined through future study.

Current Study Focus

All my study will be done using solvers. I plan to do it mostly independently at first before looking into coaching or video content. I have spent about three weeks going through preflop play. While I am making mistakes, I am confident that my ranges are fairly accurate, and in chip spots, I am not often completely lost. I am starting to go through Postflop, starting at the shortest stack depths and working upwards. I will probably study up to 40 big blinds, as deeper than that, I have a fairly solid understanding and that time can be best used elsewhere.

Engagement and Feedback

I am going to try at the very least to do weekly updates and maybe some stuff on strategy, but I will let that happen naturally and wont force updates. I would love feedback, I have really enjoyed reading the blogs on this forum, it seems to be a much higher level of content compared to other forums and I am very open to changing my ideas based on others ideas.

Thank you for reading, if you have managed to get this far, I will post the obligatory graphs of my journey thus far underneath.

$$ Graph

BB Graph