Specific 150 Seat Guarentee Tourny Advice

[Zybomb]

So there right now is 3k people, Im estimating it to be around 4k by tomorrow, meaning a small overlay of a seat or 2 only (which kinda bites)

Being that it's such a large field and such a small percentage of players get rewarded, what changes in your standard tournament game should be made during this tournament

OBVIOUSLY during the bubble play will be much different, but how about in the moments leading up to the bubble?

[Penguinfan]

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you GOTTA build a big stack early, gotta. Once you get to the third hour when it gets down to 300 or so you have to be the one pushing others around who are waiting to double up and won't get involved without AK or better.

I think otherwise you will be sitting there praying for cards, maybe you get them, who knows, but I prefer the first situation much better considering how high the blinds will be when you get to the 200 player mark.

You have to consider in a regular 4000 player field they would pay 400 people, only 150 get "paid" here so you have to play the whole time like you plan on going DEEP, not just make the money, make sense?

[johnp158]

I've read
article a couple of times and it seems like he gives good strategy for playing these MTT satellites for a Main Event seat. Survive and chop away at pots. He talks about survival being much more important than chip accumulation in these sats. He's talking about the sats with around a $650 buy-in; I wonder if early chip accumulation might be a little more important since you have to finish about twice as high in a $370 buy-in.

Thoughts?

[Talking Poker]

I like your theory. I'm certainly no expert on this, but my instinct is that you want to focus more on chip accumulation than survival, early on anyway. When the blinds are but a fraction of your stack, I'm thinking looser player, seeing more cheap flops, etc, is ideal. You'll want to actually be TIGHTER postflop though, and not get yourself in trouble. If you could double up early, that's a huge advantage.

Keep in mind, less than 4% (approximately) of the field is going to cash. If you bust out 4000th or 400th, either way, you get nothing. Hell, 200th is nothing and that's going to be a lot harder to get to than 400th.

For me, I really want to have a nice stack for when we get down to that 400 plyaer level and everyone starts tightening up... that's when you can start playing more aggressively and open up your game. And hopefully by the time you are down to 200, you'll have enough chaip that you can walk away and coast into a seat. Nothing is worse (IMO) than being a short stack approaching a $12,000 bubble. I'd seriously rather bust out 4000th.

With all that said......... In two of the big satellites that I have won, I actually found myself somewhat short stacked to start (I lost about half my chips early on as I recall). After that, I ended up playing tight and very, very slowly building my stack. So that totally goes against everything I said above.

I do very much like this advice from the article:

Actually his list gets even better too, like so:

It should be noted though that this is advice for play approaching the bubble and NOT play early on.

Good article. Worth the read.

[Zybomb]

Do you mean limping in often with hands that you can get paid off with, not playing 'big card hands' which are unlikely to pay off big, generally not doing much raising early on since it's building the pot size and putting pressure on you to CB afterwards?

The MTT start (2500 chips / 20 min blinds) gives more time for patience and letting idiots give you their chips

[Zybomb]

Great article... I think the best thing to take from it, is you are playing to have an average stack and above, NOT playing to be the chip leader! As long as you continue to have an average stack, you should be fine, unless the blinds and antes really catch up

[omahilo]

the field is at 4000 right now with 7 hrs before kick off...

I bet this covers if not more now.

[Penguinfan]

This and the Full Tilt 100 seat guarantee look like they will cover plus a tiny bit.

[Zybomb]

the shitty thing is i would have rathered just played a normal 615 buy in event, pays almost twice as good

3% or so will cash here

5k geez..... no overlay, more than 150 seats being given.... so wack

[Talking Poker]

This one is up to 127 seats and climbing fast. Just about to hit a $1.5 million prizepool with 5 minutes left to go.

Edit: This was a typo - that WAS 127 places paid, but not that many seats. The did add a few in the final minutes (see next post).