Complete Multi Table Tournament Strategy

Playing Multi-Table tournaments is a great way to turn a small investment into a potentially large payday. Online tournaments are available in a wide range of field sizes and buy-in levels. Successful multi-table tournament play involves adapting the stages of a tournament. This article describes how your strategy should change from the early stages through to the final table.

Beginning Stages

During the early stages of any poker tournament players are faced with a dilemma. The number of bad players will never be higher – representing a great opportunity to accumulate chips. Yet those same bad players can often ‘get lucky’ decimating your stack with a fortunate out-draw.
Adapting to these conditions involves looking to play hands with high implied-odds value when it is cheap to enter the pot. These include small pairs, suited connectors and sometimes suited aces. All of these hands can hit a well concealed monster when the flop is favorable and result in winning a big pot. In order to survive the middle stages you will need to accumulate chips. Playing quality hands from good position, value betting more and bluffing less is a sound strategy while there are many weak players in the field.

Middle Stages

As the multi-table tournament progresses the blinds will be higher in proportion to the average stack size. At this point hands with high implied-odds potential go down in value and high card hands rise. Stack sizes, both your own and those of opponents, also take on a significant role.

The key to middle stage tournament play is to be careful what you call with! Raising from good position should be a default strategy as you will often take the blinds uncontested. However if someone has raised ahead of you then stay out of the pot unless you have a quality hand – and re-raise often with those hands.

The Bubble

Just before the paying places at the bubble your strategy is actually determined more by stack size factors than your cards. Here your opponents will usually tighten up in order to make it to the money. Take advantage of this tendency by raising a wide range of hands – especially if you have a big stack yourself. The best opponents to steal from have stacks which are ‘comfortable’, beware of big or very small stacks as they will call more often.
Once you reach the final table strategy considerations must also take the prize structure into account. The top 3 places will usually pay considerably more than the remaining slots. If there are ‘micro stacks’ at the table who are folding trying to move up in the money then you should look to aggressively attack the medium stacks – especially if you have them covered. Conversely try to avoid playing big pots with other large stacked opponents who have the potential to knock you out.

Conclusion

To summarize, playing multi-table tournaments is a great way to turn a small investment into a potentially big payday. Strategy for these games involves adapting to the various stages of the tournament. Early play is focused on your cards, middle game play involves accounting for stack sizes and late game play must also consider the payout structure.