When playing live i can choose between tourneys of two different types of blind structures. On has a starting stack of 40K and the blinds go up rather quickly (50/100 100/200). The other with a starting stack of 20K one has "inbetween" levels (50/100 75/150) both start with 25/50.
The level time is 18 min for both buy-in is also the same, so no difference there.

I´m still a beginner and would guess my playing style is something along the line of tight passive. So which one to pick, do i get more "play" at the slower structure even if the starting stack is lower?

choose a different style friend. tight passive style is a losing style, the only style thats worse is loose passive (a calling station).

i suggest adopting a tight aggressive approach as easier to learn and has less variance or loose aggressive which has more variance and more difficult to play well. either wya, be aggressive, the passive dies quick in poker.

to ans your original q, a slower structure favours skill over luck so it will allow the biggest edge to players with the most skill.

the faster structure allows for less time to wait for premium hands and forces more luck situations (coinflips etc).

given the incredibly deep stacks involved with both, the initial part of the tourney will roughly be the same, altho you will notice the difference with the 20k stack on quicker, where preflop dominates over postflop play.

with tight passive approach, im nt sure either favours, but i prefer to play te slower structures as i believe in my ege both pre and post rather than rely on a luckfest which some of these faster blind structures turn out to be.

Tight passive play doesnt favor anything but mincashes when you are on the money bubble. As munchiedude said, learn to play tight aggresive stat!



This is absolutely correct, so if you were to have a better chance, you should go with the faster structure as it will allow you far greater chances to get lucky.

Learn to play TAG or don't play either one IMO

Once you have learned to play a solid TAG style, and some other things I will mention, then play the structure with slower blind increases, this will be where you will have the biggest edge, as previous posters have pointed out.

You can work on your tight aggressive play at cash games, which will also help you to learn how to play deep when in MTT's, then later you can work on playing short stacked and using ICM by trying a few STT's.

After learning how to play TAG, how to play deep, and how to play short using ICM, then you are ready to tackle MTT's IMO

gl

If your playing tight and passive then do the 40k. Your start off with 400 big blinds and have 100bb after the first hour. Starting start is huge so you'll be okay, but you need to work on your game.

You shouldn't learn to play tag or lag or sag or bag or any other acronym. Rather, learn to identify weaknesses in your opponents and exploit them, whether that requires playing loose, tight, whatever.

If I were you'd play the faster structure, as the edge good players will have over you will be reduced.

Faster structures are not luckfests, but thankfully lots of people think that and thus never make an effort to learn to play with shallow stacks, despite <30bb play being essence of tournament poker. Consider that the first weakness you can learn to exploit since it's pretty easy to learn to shove/fold/resteal on sub-30 big blind stacks.

Play poker mate.

forget all this TAG and LAG rubbish because it doesnt really apply anymore [if it ever did] in poker. This isnt 20 tabling with a VPIP/PFR of 11/11 its live poker, just pick the guy/s at the table who plays the worst, play the most pots in position with him and avoid anyone who is overweight and looks like they have never kissed a girl. easy game

lolwat? so much fail in the last few posts....

OP, this part of the first response you got ITT is really important:

Doesn't matter if it's a live donkament or online, before you can take advantage of any players, or find a weak player to exploit, you need to learn to be a solid player yourself. Otherwise, you will be the fish that all the solid players are exploiting.

How many runners in each? Cos that could make a difference

The way to think about it is in terms of big blinds

Tourney 1 you start with 800 BBs, then 400 BBs, then 200 BBs, then possibly 100 BBs (if it goes to 200/400)

Tourney 2 you start with 400 BBs, then 200 BBs, then 133 BBs then 100 BBs (if it then goes to 100/200)

So basically after 3 levels of play (54 minutes) the extra chips in tourney 1 have been overcome by the better structure in tourney 2.

The question you have to ask yourself is this: "Is most of your game small ball poker where you play a bunch of speculative hands in position early on and try to stack a guy, or do you only play premium hands and raise and reraise them?"

Since you have indicated that you're tight passive this fits neither of those scenarios. It would imply that you just call pre flop with KK and then fold to a single bet when a straight draw or A appear on the flop. (Not profitable poker).

If you play tight aggressive (the easiest useful thing to move to from tight passive) then the second tournament would suit you better. It will give you much more time to wait for premium hands and will result in much less shove/fold poker

The slower structure will give you better value for money, as it should mean you are "alive" longer, so can gain experience, while watching how everyone else plays, so you can learn by watching the winners. You'll have to up the aggression when your stack size shrinks (in relation to the size of the blinds), as you're unlikely to be able to fold your way into the money.

LOL at posters saying don't play a certain style. I play TAG and play it well but at the same time you do have to adapt to play change so in some hands you will play LAG etc etc.

But TP is only correct in certain situations against certain opponents and is terrible as an overall approach/style. Definitely not something a player should aim for.

At the faster structure tourney last time there were about 40 players, starting with 3 tables á 11 players then later 4 tables with 10. At the slower structure there were only 25 and when i arrived at my table there were only three players, the rest came only later. So at the beginning i had to play shorthanded.