Ring & MTT - Seeking Advice

I've been playing the micro Ring games over at UB and have been making a steady profit over the last month. I am dying to move up, but my bankroll isn't sufficient, so I will be staying at this level for at least a few more sessions/weeks (however long it takes).

I do have an inkling to move to some MTT's and see what I can do though.

To get some experience at these, I have played some of the $1 tournies and the freerolls over at UB just to get a feel for them, and usually I make it to the top 400 if there is a pool of 2500 players (finished ITM a few times).

I was kind of wondering, if any guys with MTT experience can tell me if the higher stakes MTT's are much different from the cheap ones that I have played. I was also interested in hearing some other player's experience in trying MTT's while doing well at Ring games.

For now, I will not be trying any of the higher stakes games until the BR is high enough, but I was curious.

Thanks

Ring games and MTTs are two different beasts.

Just to give you an example, I'm a huge winner at NL100 and NL200 (mostly at UB too). I consider myself to be a pretty good NL ring player.

However, when it comes to SNGs (20$-30$ buyin), I'm mostly a break-even player, maybe a little profit but nothing compared to rings.
And it gets even worse with MTTs (10-20$ buyin). I simply can't play them. I probably look like a fish when I'm playing a 10$ MTT but I can beat NL200... go figure!

So doing well in ring is not a guarantee to do well in MTTs. If you are just starting, I think it is a good thing to experiment all sort of games to see what you like and do best. Most players will do better in a particular game. I came to the conclusion that I needed to stick to NL ring for now and occasionally play small buyin MTTs just for fun.

cash games have less pressure than MTTs.

When the cards aren't coming in cash games, you can easily just fold.
In MTTs, you can't do this forever, as the increasing blinds will eliminate you from the tourney.

In the tournaments you really ahve to adjust your playing to the blind structure. I remember playing in my first tournament and making ITM by just 1 place. I was so short stacked from folding folding folding that I knocked out right away and finished right at the cut off... the guy making the lowest amount finishing ITM, was the first person to get knocked out after it was just ITM players.

In ring games, the only important thing is that you finish up for the day, or the week, however you measure. In the tournaments, you have to finish up for the 15 minutes, or however long the blinds take to change. If the blinds are raised every 15, you have to take chance to make yourself a larger stack every 15 minutes, so that when you get to ITM you have a shot at making the final table, then from there have a shot to win.

That's why tournaments count a lot more on guts and luck than on good tight poker. IMO.

It depends on the site/players.

I've been in a tournament where 3 people (2 with large stacks) went all in on my table while in the bubble. I've also seen final tables of smaller MTTs go 10+ orbits without seeing the river. The latter seems to be more common, but only in the late stages of a tournament.

As far as how the competition stacks up between freerolls/$1 MTTs and $5 & $10 MTTs? Not much difference. A little better play, but not enough to notice. You don't commonly see significant improvement in play until you hit the $20 + MTTs, and even then it's not that different.

I have MUCH more luck in 5-10 tournaments then I do in the free rolls or $1 tournaments.

I took first in a $1 tournament a few nights ago (after like 4-5 hours) but only because I took more slight risks than I normally like to take...

In $5-10 tournaments I tend to do decently. I also do better in ring games, but I like the tournaments a LOT because one win is pretty big money normally.

I can play 25NL for a few hours a day and be up maybe 100-150 for the week... if im lucky

I can make that in one single tournament SOMETIMES..

Its obviously going to be more consistent in the ring games.. But the wins are big enough to make me choose tournaments over ring games.

If you get good enough at tournaments you can play all of the cheap seat games to get several seats (rebuys) to a large 200,000 tournament at the end of the month and then have a good chance of winning 10,000 or more at one game.

That is my goal is within 1 year I want to place fairly high in a huge tournament :)