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Some key differences between early and late stage multi play

One of the more challenging parts of tournament play is the shifting nature of the tournament itself. Tournaments can be divided into several stages, each determined by the number of players remaining relative to the prize money, and what “good” play is can vary wildly from stage to stage. In this article, I’d like to take a look at some key differences between play in the early stages of a tournament [generally the first two hours of your typical 600 person party multi] and late stage [on and past the bubble]. This article deals specifically with NL multis, although the concepts are generally transferable to any multi game.

1) People just don’t care about their chips as much in early stages. The critical element of no limit play is fear – to be exact, how afraid your opponents are of losing their chips. As the tournament progresses, this fear usually increases. But in the early stages, especially in larger multis, you’ll run into a lot of players who just don’t care, or who have a ‘build a stack early or go out’ mentality [which might not be an incorrect mentality, but we'll get to that in a later article]. When people don’t care, it becomes much harder to pull moves that you might be able to pull with relative ease in late stage play. Some specific examples:

a) Blind resteals: Late in a tournament, if you’re on the blind and someone raises, you have to usually consider a resteal. Early in a tournament, people will call you with way more marginal hands.

b) All in with marginal hands to pick up the pot. In late stages, if you’re near the button and one or two players limp before you, it’s often worth it to push with a marginal hand like a medium pair or two big cards just to pick up the limpers and the blinds. Again, early stage, much more likely that someone will look you up with a hand that they shouldn’t.

c) Blind steals. The blinds are too small and people are too loose.

2) Chips just aren’t worth as much proportionately. A double up in early stages just doesn’t advance you to the money the way even increasing your stack by 25% in the late stages does. Avoid marginal situations accordingly.

3) Preflop raises tend to get a lot more respect in late stages, but you also have to be more aware of short stacks behind you that have to make a move soon out of necessity. In early stages, short stacks tend to be more choosy because they can withstand the blinds longer; in late stages, especially after the bubble, short stacks will push with marginal hands because they become more desperate.

That’s just a quick start to the differences – the thing to keep in mind as you develop your multi game is that you need to shift gears as the tournament does. If you play your late game in early stages, there’s a good chance that you won’t be getting to the late stages.

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