I used to play MSNL 6-max 400NL, 600NL regularly last year. Went into a hiatus, have been playing a few MTTs lately. I feel like I don't understand full-ring that well. I some times get lost in EP and MP and make some basic mistakes.

I know that MTTs with small stacks play differently and push-botting (which I think I can play well) plays a larger role.

I have started playing 200 and 400NL FR and have been learning. The first thing I see is that I am the craziest guy on the table :-) Any suggestions on how to improve my FR game specifically to play MTTs (WCOOP style large stack) later would be great.

Thanks!

I've been playing MTTs lately and I don't feel that FR NL knowledge has been terribly useful. The stacks end up short well before you reach the money, even in tourneys with relatively good structure. As long as you understand how to not stack off in completely ******ed spots and read hands you should do fine at the early stages.

I used to play a ton of tournaments and then got into full ring.

They are wayyyyyyy different. It wouldnt be such a good idea to use MTT strat on FR cash games.

I am not talking about turbo tournies, but live MTTs and WCOOP kind of tournaments. Have you guys seen the blind structure. Some of the WCOOP tournies, even late game average stack was around 60BBs.

WCOOP ME had 25k starting stacks... so when 15% of the field is left (approximately at the bubble), average stack is 166,667. From looking back through the sweat thread, blinds when the bubble broke were either 2k/4k 400a or 2.5k/5k 500a. So average stack was either 41.67 or 33.33 bb. Effective stack sizes are usually less since the median stack size is less than the average stack size, and also antes change the play significantly.

If you really want to practice just for the early stages though, you need to find cash games which replicate those MTT conditions, which means you need to play against 8 donks. Grinding midstakes online is going to teach you how to win a small pot or get shown the nuts whenever you have less than a monster. I think you're a lot better off learning how to fully exploit the complete idiots than learning to avoid getting exploited by professional cash game specialists. It may be worthwhile to learn an unexploitable style and just siphon off a few dollars here and there vs the fish playing 1500 hands/hr in a cash game, but that's not going to get you a big stack to work with in an MTT.

I think playing NL200/NL400 full ring to learn for the early rounds of MTT is overdoing it.

Solid aggro style learned from NL100 might be good enough. Most tournaments players really suck (especially on early levels when all the donks are still left) when they play 100 BB deep so it shouldn't be too hard to get extra 20 bb's. It really doesn't help you that much in tournaments however.

I disagree I think FR cash forces you to read hands more and makes you an all around stronger player and I definitely feel that my mtt game has improved from playing FR cash.

try shortstacking... Still wouldn't help all that much. I started as a tourney donk and I feel like I'm a much better tourney player than I was since I became a winning 6 max player. I don't have that much experience but I know the kinds of things I should be thinking about and am probably better than at least 80% of all MTT players if only because there are so many complete idiots compared to similar stakes cash at every level

I mentioned hand reading, but that's not a skill that's unique to full ring play.

well i'm just saying bc most MTT's are full ring. dynamics are much diff in 6m

yeah but the dynamics of playing against 8 donks is much different than playing against 7 mass-tabling cash game specialists and 1 donk

i dunno what tournies u are playing but aside from the sunday's, there are a lot of regulars in the tournies i play (100 freeze, 109r, 300/150 nightly, 1k's etc)... There are a lot of good tourney regulars.

OP wasn't asking about those tournies though =p

I don't play any of the larger tournies because I don't feel comfortable enough at pushbotting to have an edge in them, but even in random $109 tournies there is shockingly bad play in the early stages.

IMO, FR cash game playing helps even though the dynamics are different in tournaments. I am now much better at figuring out the hand strength based on the position in FR.

Obviously, short-stacking in tourneys makes the post-flop play you learn pretty much useless.

i agree, most tournies are against regs or players that might as well be regs. the whole ****ing 5k wcoop was against players that might as well be regs. i dont think i saw a true donk the whole way except for one guy who ended up making the FT. I dont get why he would ask about things like $22s soah. It only makes sense thar hes asking about tough tournies.