Chinook Plaza

by nixter

How to Win a Multi Table Tournament

What follows is a suggestion on how to go about playing a MTT.

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This is not a hardened set of rules to follow, but is intended to provide a suggestion on how to go about winning a MTT or at very least placing in the money as often as possible. Taking into account that a MTT can vary from as little as 5 to as many as several thousand players, there is a very large element of luck in not only winning a MTT, but even placing in the money.

Keep in mind that there is an ever bigger element of skill involved.

There are some very nice reasons to play in a MTT.

If you win, you will win many times the amount you used to buy into the MTT.
In a rebuy MTT, most of the players will rebuy at least once, making the pot that much bigger.
Generally the lower the buy in, the more times your opponents are going to rebuy. Thereby adding to the pot and making it that much more attractive. I have played in a .25 buy-in MTT with a guarrenteed 0 prize pool. 104 players took part. The prize for first place started at 29% (5). By the end of the tournament, which I won, the first prize, at 20% of the prize pool was 1, making the total prize pool 05. It only cost me to buy in and to buy an add on, so I’m sure you can see how profitable playing in MTT’s can be.

WARNING:

Never ever rebuy so many times that it costs you more to play than you will win if you place in the last paying place. This may seem obvious, but it is very easy to lose track of your rebuys.
I use a rule to never rebuy more than 3 or 4 times. I have watched some players rebuy 20 or 30 times in a low buy in tournament, just so they can be in it after the rebuy period is over, just to bust out yet again after the rebuy period is over. It seems stupid, but it happens, and the only thing that it does, is add to the prize pool.

Another nice thing is that even if you don’t finish in the money, you only lose a relatively small amount of money. You would need to win only one in about 10 MTT’s to make a nice profit. If you can win one in ten, you should be a very happy poker player.

Here is an example…

Over the time of a couple of months:

Starting with an initial bankroll of 0:

You buy into 30 – 0 guarranteed .25 MTT’s. Your buy in is .25, you limit yourself to 2 Rebuys and the Addon.

That comes to a total cost to you of 0.00. Seems like a bit of money?

Lets say that you win every 10 times you enter (thats only 3 wins out of 30 entries) and you lose every other time. Lets also say that you were the only other player to rebuy or add on. This will never happen, but for this example and ease of calculations we will do this.

Thats 3 wins out of 30 entries = 5 * 3 = 5.

5 – 0.00 = 5.00.

Here is the breakdown. It cost you 0.00 to enter these 30 MTT’s. You won 3 of them, winning a total of 5.
Thats 5.00 profit in the first 2 months. That may not seem like a lot of money, but as your skill and confidence grows, you will enter MTT’s with bigger prize pools, enabling you to win bigger prizes. In some of these MTT’s you won’t need to rebuy or buy an addon, making the buy in cheaper.

Keep in mind that there will always be rebuys and addons done by most of your opponents. This will boost the prize pool. You may also find that you will also place in the money a few times when you don’t finish first, so these figures are very conservative, but you have to remember that you must play the correct type of game to enable yourself to win.

This is where these suggestions come into play…

Luck…

There are players who seem to be able to place in the money quite often. They are either very lucky or very very skilled in the art of playing poker. Every good poker player knows that luck does play a part in playing poker, but it is what you do with that luck that makes or breaks you. By “luck”, I don’t mean only good luck! Basically, good and bad luck will even out over time. There is no doubt about that, and there have been many studies in that very subject.

When you play poker you should never play as if luck is going to get you through a hand. There are times that you will get good luck in a failed bluff, but if your bluffs fail, don’t rely on good luck to get you through. On the other hand, bad luck is bad luck and you should never be worrying about bad luck while