I played in a goofy tournament recently where 3 advanced in rd 1 and the tables had only 4 or 5 people. Sure enough, my luck was bad enough that I lost in Rd 1 twice (one rebuy). Both times, the table was hot and 2 of the players tripled their stack with wild play, making the last few hands 1-winner hands, essentially. By playing min bets to begin with, I had about a 50% chance of being the leader and about a 50% change of being in last. My thought after the fact is that when a majority of players advance, the best strategy early on may not be a minimum bet strategy, but rather a strategy that is less aggressive than the most aggressive at the table, but more aggressive than the most conservative players. This would seem to maximize your shot at being BR* in the middle goings and be less apt to require a comeback. Any thoughts?
Go minimum By going with minimum bets to start with you are making the other 3-4 players have to win to beat you. Think about the odds of winning, then think about the fact 75% to 80% of the table has to be winning to beat you what do you think is the best play? Let the house work in your favor, will it work everytime, of course not, but you'll come out ahead in the long run. Even the best players in the world cannot beat just dumb luck and trying to over come bad cards. Don't feel bad about being odd man out, it happens to all of us. Just remember someone always loses no matter how many advance so don't get cocky thinking it is a lock to advance on these type of tables just play your round and hope your one of the three advancing at the end, because it SUCKS when your the only one not to advance...lol.
The issue is setting yourself up to be different from the pack. 40% of the time, the pack will pass you, which is greater than the 25% of the time that you deserve to be in last. I did find a situation early on that I should have capitalized on in retrospect. On a 4-player table, one of the 4 went all-in with $500 when the field was at $1000 This was on the 3rd hand of the session. If I made a greater than minimum bet, it would be a great time for it, since if I lost the bet, I would likely have qualified, since 4th place would have busted. Instead, 4th place won his bet and went on a run.
I'll still take my chances I would still start out low at the begining of the round in hopes that you do have that "Rabbit" that wants to start fast. I understand betting different from the other players to either take the lead or to catch up, but you can do that latter on in the round if you need to. I love it when someone goes all in in the first few hands. Odds are that they will lose and if they win you have almost the entire round to catch them. In the tournament your talking about (with 3 advancing) you don't even have to worry about the rabbit as you still have two other spots at stake. Odds are in a weekly mini tournament another player will break first to try and catch the leader and with only four per table and three advancing I would never bet over the minimum for at least the first half of the round. Each player needs to play the way their comfortable with, this might not be the style you like to play. I won't tell you what is right or wrong (No one knows that) all we can do is try and figure out the highest precentage plays.
Is it worth the risk? IMHO, I like a slightly aggressive mode when three advance. I've been in similar situations and watched some good players get locked out in this format because we sat back and let it get away. Generally, players are very conservative when three advance, making the lead very valuable. However, if you do have some rabbits, you can't afford to get too far behind. In either case, betting more than the most conservative players seems to be worth the risk to me. Toonces, you did miss out on a free shot when your opponent was all in. But probably most of us would have neglected to bet here, hoping he would lose. Odds are slightly in favor of him not losing (44% win and 8% push). That being said, I like your middle of the road approach in the beginning and then work on increasing the gap. Ken has written a nice article on this subject that he calls "Climbing the Ladder". If it's not out now, it should be in the next couple of days. I would be interested in hearing other opinions on how to play this format.
3 Advance out of 4 or 5 Without boring everybody with the math on this.You need to be in the middle, bigger than the small bets and smaller than the Big bets.This will make you a favorite to advance as long as you are not losing as the rest of the table is winning.If that is happening there is nothing to do but find a spot on the re-buy line
as simple as possible Bravo Joe! No questions asked. Simple 'n' easy. For example if someone goes "all in" and you bet half a max bet (say 3 of 4), you have 100% of probability to advance if he'll lose and still good chances in case of win (swing is disregarding). Statistically if you stay on your starting money, most of the time by count down you'll be ahead, so the rest is apon technics.
