

If you play 200 big blinds in the beginning of a tournament and somehow you go up to 350 or 400 big blinds, that doesn’t really matter. So, realistically, the big-pot win early on doesn’t really change the way you should play. And there are almost no players who have really short stacks. You win that pot and find yourself in the top 20 of the leaderboard. Do you proceed cautiously or do you now try to constantly put pressure on the other players?ĭaniel Negreanu: In the early stages of an MTT you don’t have a lot of ICM pressure. Scenario 1: You get involved in a big pot in the early stages of a tournament. "Difference between 200 & 400BB is irrelevant"

It's true that you have a lot of big blinds so you can theoretically afford to limp a lot. And exploit that by trying to take pots from them on the flop. If you can identify a player as weak, particularly post-flop, you want to play more hands against them. This forces you to play very conservative. I’m a big believer in the saying that you can’t win a tournament in the early stages but you can lose it.
