Best advice for surviving the early levels of a live tournament?

[Vovk]

I sometimes lose patience when nothing happens within the first hour. Should I play time and wait or mix to build up the stack at the beginning of live MTTs?

 

[CRStals]

I'm biased but we wrote two articles on just that topic - you should give these a read:

• MTT Stack Management: Early Levels in Re-Buy Tournaments
• MTT Stack Strategy: Early Stages in Freezeout Tournaments

 

[Zennnyy]

Depends if it's a casino type game or a local club game that you go to regularly but patience is key when you've just sat down, try getting to know your players as fast as you can, watch how they play, how the converse and try to gauge what type of people they are.

If you lose patience and start looking at your phone, your gunna miss out on information, feel more inclined to play if you're a little card dead and make mistakes.

Just really try to understand your table dynamic as fast as you can and then strategize around that, if you make a mistake, really think on it and learn.

Now losing patience at the other side of a line tournament....when your in deep, is a lot easier to lose patience, your exhausted and mistakes are more prone to happen, get up walk around, go for a smoke if you smoke, get the blood flowing again and waken you up a bit, it goes a long way.

 

[SOLO22]

Very good data, it's the most accurate thing I've read.