Winning a large MTT poker tournament

These days, poker tournaments are getting larger and larger. There are satellites and super satellites and other events that allow you to qualify without even spending any money. What this means of course is that it is very common now for poker tournaments to have very large fields and events with 1000 players or more are common.

At first this may seem daunting to a novice player, attempting to win an event that has so many players seems an impossible task! Well the fact of the matter is, while winning any poker tournament is unlikely based purely on the numbers that are involved, the hurdle isn’t as steep as many players believe it to be.

But the fact remains that the overwhelming number of players will never win a large MTT and the reason why is simply because they play too tightly. Your time horizon is very limited with any poker tournament so you basically do not have the time to sit there and wait for premium hands to come to you.

Let us say that you are playing in a 1000 player MTT and the normal time duration of this event is about six hours at an average rate of around 80 hands per hour. That is only 480 hands of play by the end so essentially what that means is that you simply do not have the time to sit there and play your normal game.

This is where cash games and tournaments differ greatly in so much as to win a large poker tournament, you are going to have to take substantial risks if you are going to end up at that cherished final table. But yet this goes contrary to the mindset of millions of tournament poker players who have a plan of sitting and waiting until the good hands come to them.

This is the wrong approach and while it may allow you to outlast half the field, it will never get you into the serious money places. To get there takes more than just skill, many players have skill. It takes something else and that is nerve…..you need enough nerve to put your tournament on the line when other players would be fearful to do so.

Doing so in the correct way will allow you to amass a stack that is big enough to take you a long way. If you get knocked out then don’t feel too bad because you basically had no chance playing your old style anyway.