My first MTT on stars

Hey everyone,

I just played my first MTT and phew I am tired from the extreme time it took to complete!

I noticed stars have $1+0 MTT's for a variety of games (holdem NL/PL/L, omaha an stud) so I decided to try the next one on which happened to be a $1+0 pot limit holdem.

What was also nice is that they are satellite tournies plus they have cash prizes for 45th place and up (not bad for a buck I thought, especially for the practice you can get outta them!)

Following what i've read from the tourney forums here I played fairly tight early on and picked up a few choice pots. I survived the first hour just about average.

Anyway long story short I was just under the average chip stack size most the match, nearing the end of the third hour of play my concentration was getting extremely low despite there only being 30 odd players left.

Picked up a few nice pots with a set and then quads but still was falling behind with the ever-raising blinds (they were at $1000-$2000 by now and I had about $14000)

Anyway I got silly and bombed out in 20th place with my 66 losing to the big stacks 88 which made me sad, I wasn't even pot comitted till I try to re-raise his raise for some reason (thought he was stealing then got carried away)


ANYWAY all in all I had a great deal of fun, I found my nerves were shakey for most the tourny though :oops: guess I'll have to play more of them.
I recommend anyone looking to try out some cheap tourny action or just beginning MTT's to have a look. Good experience for $1.


Quick question, there was roughly 400 players. Was 3 hours to get down to 20 players too long? Do they take longer because the buyin was so cheap?

Any tips to not go silly at the end from mental drain? Thank you :D

Also is it worth making a few more moves early on? To get to the top 40 or so under the 'average' stack is surely a poor position to be in for the time invested.


(I won $3 for my troubles haha, if Id stayed in a few more hands it wouldve been $5 boohoo, lol)

Lower buyin means more will go out quicker. Most of the lower tourneys (20 or less) I find you'll lose at least half the field in the first hour. 3 hours sounds about right.

Personally I'm more apt to gamble as the tourney goes on heading toward the cash looking to build a big stack to win - as you note the ITM payoffs are pretty blah when you just sat there for 3 hours. But plenty of others here will recommend you play tight until ITM, then look to double up a couple times in a final table charge. Either way is a solid strat.

hey drmcboy

it seems that way eh, well I suppose at those low buy-in levels I can play around trying both. Im thinking it would be a bit more aggressive mid-tourny to attempt to build a stack also. At least then if you make it to the end you've got a good shot at the bigger money.