Navigating Massive Fields

Navigating massive fields can seem very daunting. Especially when you start to look at the sea of people everywhere. How in the world am I supposed to get through this? I think it's important to focus solely on your table. It doesn't matter how many people are in the tournament. All that matters is the 8 people sitting around you.

 

It’s also important to take each hand as it comes. Play one hand at a time. We can’t get caught up in the mentality of having to win the tournament right now. One double up isn’t going to ensure you the win. It’s the constant compilation of good decision after good decision. We cannot control the cards or the variance. But we can control our decision making. And we must take solace in that.

 

Those are more mentality things. But from a strategy perspective, winning pots from aggression and three betting is helpful.  Attack the loose passive players, pay attention to who’s on your left, who defends or under defends their button or blinds, etc. But as the tournament progresses and stacks get shallower, you won’t be able to fade those flips or higher variance spots. So building a stack early will help us soften the blow of the times variance isn’t on our side. 

 

Aside from that, we have to play out stack. And play a sound strategy with how many big blinds we have. If we do that, we are guaranteeing we are making plus EV decisions as often as we can. And that will give us the best chance possible of running deep in a massive field.