How much value is there in amassing a big stack early on?

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How much value is there in amassing a big stack early on?

I'm not a full time MTT player [I'm not even a full time plo player lol], and whenever I play an MTT I tend to late reg at the last minute and try and get the chip lead or bust very early on. Just wanted to know from some people who are knowledgeable on this, is sacrificing some chip EV to try and get a big stack okay to do, and how much value do we lose from missing the poor players who bust in the early stages of a tournament? like say, early on I am very happy to get it in with ~40% just so I can double up or bust, partly from a time perspective, as my hourly is a lot higher doing this than playing multiple hours just to bubble/mincash, but also because I feel my EV in a tournament is a lot higher when I have the table covered and can steal a lot/run people over. Where do we draw the line on this sort of thing, and what are peoples personal preferences on this subject?

Any thoughts/advice on this would be appreciated, cheers

7 Comments

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Espen Sørlie 12 years, 3 months ago
I dont like it at all. Didn't really understand your point about late regging? Do you mean just to save time? Seems like the beginning of soft tournaments is the best time to run up a big stack (when all the fish are still in). Also you can't really run people over too much with a big stack in the earlier/mid stages because ICM doesn't really matter too much. You are just playing with their stack as the effective stacksize and have to make +ev desicions from that. I would not recommend getting it in with ~40% equity for the gambol, because getting it in with the best hand (or enough fold equity) is often where your edge comes from. So just take all the +ev spots you can find, play against weaker players, try to exploit their tendencies and you will have a big stack before you know it
Sam Lang 12 years, 3 months ago
Very much for time efficiency/easyness as I'm usually playing cash at the same time as tournament, and kind of because I'm more happy/comfortable with antes and lower stack sizes, and find ~100bb non antes to be extremely tedious/boring, and you can run up/bust in a lot less time when late regging but just wandering how much ev we actually sacrifice doing this. I think my success in tournaments comes from good hand reading, and exploiting the relative tightness of players and stealing a lot when we reach the payouts/bubble, as well as perhaps some unbalanced 'trick' type stuff for exploiting certain tendencies, and I loosen up my game a lot at this stage. I don't really consider many ICM things and just try and win the thing from the get go, which is probably bad. The fact I can late reg in a tournament running for 2 hours and bust or get a healthy stack quite soon is appealing to me and why I do late reg. Unless the stakes are somewhat higher than usual, I am too impatient early on to register from the get go
Sam Lang 12 years, 3 months ago
also I'm not necessarily happy getting it in with 40%, but will push close/slightly -ev spots by 4bjamming light etc. or calling it off with 77 or smt
Mark Dillon 12 years, 3 months ago
Do you play deep cash, or cap? Whatever your cash specialisation is will transfer well to that depth of tournament. If you have deep stack cash experience you're passing up a large edge early on.

With that said, if it allows you to play an extra cash table for an hour that may help your hourly rate.
Matthew Hunt 12 years, 3 months ago
If by 'early on', you mean mostly the pre-ante stage, I don't feel like there's much value in it at all. I certainly think it's a good time to play a lot of pots and exercise your edge vs the weaker players while they're still in the tournament, but I'm rarely inclined to get into big preflop confrontations when I feel like I'll be able to pick up chips easily later on. Additionally, I think it's really dependent on our table - if we're at 25/50 and have one guy at our table who doubled/tripled up really early and he's to our right, we might be that little bit more inclined to try to get a double up, just so that we can be 100bb effective vs him instead of 50bb, and basically print money for the next few levels until he busts or we get a table switch. Conversely, if everyone at our table has less than 25bb, there's not really a huge difference between us having 50bb and us having 75bb, so I might be inclined to fold to some reshoves in spots where it might be a little too marginal.
Jacob Smith 12 years, 3 months ago
I personally never late reg. for any tournament simply because your putting yourself at a disatvantage chip wise most of the time. Entering the tournament instead of at the starting point where stacks are eqaul but now guys are going to have tons of chips already. They say you cant win a tournament in the early stages anyways so playing to get a big stack in the early levels in a reckless(gambling) way isnt really a good idea imo. MTT's are for grinding so you should be willing to sit at the table or laptop all day before entering lol.

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