Hey guys,
I am wondering for any advice on this. I have found it very easy to get about 3x starting chips within the first half hour usually very consistently. But...after that when cards are below average I seem to stay constant in chips and never really increase to stay ahead of the field.

So my question is.. Do you just sit through the crap and play only the better holdings or do you have to stick your nose into pots with iffy hands hoping to catch cards or read them to bluff them out. Any help would be great..thanks.

NUGGET

I think you just have to sit through the bad hands. I have always said that the cards dictate whether or not you can go deep in an MTT. If you get colddecked, you have to fight through it and hope to get some hands. If your table is weak/tight, you can make positional raises and steal some blinds. But mostly, you just need some cards usually.

There's really no good way to deal with being card-dead in online MTTs. The best you can do is try to steal the blinds twice a round. If you're on a bad table or in bad position (with an aggressive player to your right, for instance) you just have to take some risks.

I'm giving this advice on the assumption that you're referring to a common online MTT with an average stack usually at about 20-30BBs. It is a huge mistake to play iffy holdings when your stack is so small in relation to the blinds.

Actually, it's the other way around. U have to raise with more holdings when the blinds are larger. Tightening up when blinds increase is how u find urself shortstacked late.

My mistake. It is a huge mistake to play iffy holdings passively when your stack is so small in relation to the blinds. I suggested stealing the blinds twice a round, and there's no way to do that without raising with some marginal hands.



That's going to happen in the later stages of the tournament regardless of how tight or loose you play. It's the fast tournament structure at work.