This is a strategy that was used in the very early stages of $5 to $10 MTT on Full Tilt. I am wondering if this may be +ev. I will admit, it is basically just moving in preflop, and there is very very little skill involved.

About 8-12 months ago, this is a strategy I used all the time as it was the only way I knew how to play. I feel my game has increased 1000x since then, and I have not really used this.

Heres what I would do:

We all know that there are always a bunch of crazy people in the early stages of these small buy in tournaments. The tournaments usually lose half the field within the first hour. I would just pretty much find any decent hand and move all in preflop, hoping to accumulate these chips.

Facing a raise, if I saw A Q I just pushed all in. Same thing with AK, and even AA. My range of doing this would usually be AK AQ 1010 JJ QQ KK and AA.

The advantages:

You'd be shocked to see the hands people will call off their chips with. I just used this last tournament and had an UTG player raise 3xBB. I moved in with AQ of clubs and he almost INSTA called me with A10o. Of course he spiked a 10, but thats a different story. The blinds with 15/30 and we each had a stack of 1500. There was no excuse for him to call there. The calls people make are atracious. I can only assume that they are aware of the maniacs, and they just think you are one of them. I love doing this with AA because no one ever expects you to play it this way, because you can easily get no value from it.

So just facing a raise I would move all in, if it was folded to me I would make a 4xBB raise and see where we go from there, WILLING to gamble for my entire stack. I have built some large stacks in the first hour using this method.

The disadvantages:

Obviously Its an all or nothing strategy. You could lose value on your big hands and only pick up the blinds or you could go bust in the first 5-10 minutes of the tournament.


So the goal is to either accumulate a huge stack or go bust trying. You'll occasionally run into the bigger hands and you'll go bust.

Instead of being the tight players early, you try to gamble and accumulate the chips that the maniacs are giving away.

Obviously this is NOT a textbook strategy but I was wondering how you guys felt about employing it in the small MTTs?

go pick up a copy of that book kill phil if you got a few dollars to spare.

it kinda describes the opposite of what you are doing where if you are playing players who will fold that a10 there is a pretty decent range of hands you can be pushing with.

Playing very aggressively early has the added benefit of potentially increasing your hourly rate, even as it decreases your ROI.

Similar to this, on the first hand of a tourney, if I get AA or KK, I automatically push.

There is nothing better than having some tool call a 50bb raise with KJo when you open-push from UTG+1.

I called with QQ....

You could also try limping with poket pairs and suited aces and pushing all in on the flop if you hit a set or a flush. I just invented this. I call it Yorke's Strat.

Revolutionary!