Today, I am going to cover how to run deep in large-field MTTs.
That is one of the main questions that I get from my students. They tell me they can build a big stack in the early stages and even make it into the money, but they never make the final table, never win tournaments, and don't go deep in these big-field tournaments.
They're sick of getting 100th or 300th place, doubling their money, and then going on with their lives.
Watch the video above for more, or read on.
Learn to adjust
One of the biggest reasons for this is that as a player goes deeper into a tournament they don’t adjust.
When you're going from early stages to in-the-money strategies, one of the biggest concepts to understand is that the chips that you stand to gain are worth a lot less than the chips that you stand to lose — the risk-to-reward changes.
You don't win the tournament with 150 left. Accumulating all of the chips in play does not mean that you accumulate all of the money. Because first place might be 15% of the prize pool. So clearly, if you get every single stack in the tournament, you're having diminishing returns.
Understand stack depth
Strategically, what that means for you is that when you get in the money, you need to assess your stack depth and understand the differences.
The splashy style that might allow you to build a big stack in the early stages when you're focused on playing pots in position, making flushes, straights, and better, and playing deeper SPRs (stack-to-pot ratio) where your positional advantage is significant and to your advantage.
Now, all of a sudden, we’re in the money, and the average stack is much shorter. That's going to lead to much tighter and more aggressive preflop strategies, much less calling and trying to cool your opponents, and much more trying to figure out how to pick up six big blinds here and eight big blinds there and losing less when you're behind.
Stop bleeding chips
First off, tighten your strategy. Play more aggressive preflop and stop splashing around and bleeding chips. That is the number one thing that I see that prevents people from running deep in tournaments.
The other thing is to understand how your range needs to change as you go deeper and deeper. Tightening up doesn't necessarily mean playing fewer hands but rather changing your range shape.When you're deep stacked, you want to play hands with high implied odds: suited aces, suited kings, small and medium pairs, and suited connectors.
But as you get deeper into the tournament and stacks get shallower, high cards go up in value. Hands like KJo and KQo go way up in value. Whereas hands like 86 suited, 57 suited, 45 suited, pocket twos, all that stuff goes way down in value because you're not seeing as many rivers.
A tighter, more aggressive strategy is going to be much more based around who can now flop good top pairs and push their equity and try to take down pots.
Tighten up your strategy and focus more on navigating rather than accumulating.
'Navigate and choose your spots wisely'
Understand that you're not going to win the tournament on day three or with 150 players left. The goal isn't to win every single chip with 100 people left.
You need to navigate and choose your spots wisely. Tighten up, play reasonably well preflop, and focus on high cards. I believe those things will help you run deep more often.
Good luck in your games.
Justin Saliba, a professional player with over $10 million in live tournament earnings, is a two-time WSOP bracelet winner and sought-after coach for players of all levels.
For more information regarding coaching from Justin, reach out to PokerCoaching.com and PeakGTO. Follow Justin on X.
