STT vs MTT

[curleywurley]

Hi all

I've been reading Sit 'n Go Strategy by Colin Moshman and have been having lot's of success playing live €35-50 tournies vs 20-30 opponents (still can't win online, but don't use poker tracker).

I've been wondering about playing some of the mid buy-in tournaments around the place, say for €250 vs a couple hundred opponents in Killarney or wherever and how my strategy should change.

In the book Colin say's that his strategies should NOT be used in the MTT environment, but doesn't elaborate.

So, I was wondering how much adjustment I'll have to make for these deeper stacked and slower paced games and also, why don't a lot of his strategies work in the MTT environment?

[Winning!]

Well STT (Single-Table-Tournament) strategy only really varies in so much as the major inflection points occur a lot closer together than in MTT's, and stacks will generally become short relative to blinds a bit quicker. The standard is 3/9 get paid, or 33% of field, which can dictate a more nitty strategy in an attempt to creep into the money, since there are no massive pay jumps from 3rd to 1st. Whereas in MTT's roughly 15% will be paid, and payouts are massively top-heavy, so amassing stack worthy of a final table push is of more value than simply cashing.

The 20-30 player events you have been playing are MTT's, so if you've been having fair success with them you probably have the basic MTT principles nailed pretty well. Deeper stacks early indicate wider scope for play and making moves etc, which wont really be the case in STT's I guess.

[curleywurley]

Thanks for a great reply -

This is what I have to work on then -

1, I've to play more hands in the early stages than in STT so as to exploit players and build a stack worthy of a final table push. Basically have more gamble (within reason obv) or play closer to a cash game style.
2, It takes longer between moments of action so patience is a good skill for MTT especially if you're playing 3 days.
3, Practice playing the early rounds more e.g. play the double stack tourney online for training.

Any other input would be greatly appreciated.

[doke]

Winning's post pretty much sums it up. The only thing I have to add is that in live stts, early on focus on not just who the bad players are, but what kind of bad they are. This along with how deep the stacks are determines the range of hands you can profitably play against them, and how those hands should be played. For example, facing an early position raiser with 86s, I would:
(1) 3 bet a weak player who almost never 4 bets but peels out of position too much, and plays passively post flop (this is almost 50% of bad live players in this country). Here, you can expect to pick up the pot with a cbet most of the time when you miss, and occasionally you'll hit a totally disguised monster
(2) Flat against a bad maniac. Here I'm usually expecting to lose the pot as I'm basically giving up unless I hit, but I'm playing it for implied odds as I expect to get doubled up pretty much every time I flop two pair plus
(3) Fold against a good player who won't stack off light

Online, you can use HUDs to quickly determine bad player tendencies. Like if a guy has a "Fold to 3 bet" of 0% and 4 bet of 0%, and a "Fold to Cbet of 65%+", he's a (1). If on the other hand he has a "Fold to 3 bet" of 0% and a "Fold to Cbet of 30%-", and high 4 bet and check raise stats, he's a (2).