3/23/2022
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Created by iopq on July 22, 2009. Stands for Multiple Table Tournament. This usually implies large fields of players. The World Series of Poker is a series of MTTs. Multi-table tournaments are poker tournaments on a large-scale with a huge pool of players. Everyone buys in for the same fee and players are split across multiple tables. The tables are eventually. One of the most important theories in the world of MTT strategy is the M-Ratio or M-Zone (named after the poker player who invented it – Paul Magriel). The M-ratio is an ever-present forumla used in tournaments to help make shoving/folding decisions and determiningyour starting hands.

KK verses QQ for chip lead right near the final table! Wow doesn’t get much better than this! Flop 225. Turn. 6. River…… QUEEN! Oh that’s a bit of bad luck”… Online pro Whiterabbito sighed as he closes the tourney window. ummm, wtf”?Don’t be like that”. “Throw things around, kick your dog, slam the mouse”!

Well generally I’m not a bad loser and it takes several consecutive beats for me to start feeling my blood boil but I couldn’t believe the almost robotic, relaxed way he took it. The truth is he’s developed an ‘eyes over view’ of playing. It’s not a single tourney, it’s part of a lifelong session where there will be times of luck and bad luck. Sounds too easy? Well here’s a few things to consider before breaking that next mouse

1. Variance

Frequently used term but often misunderstood, here’s a definition to think about Variance; An instance of diverging.

Diverging indeed! Sometimes my results go in completely different directions! It’s important to get a realistic picture of variance. Imagine an online tournament grinder playing 40 tourneys a day, 6 days a week. He could certainly experience his share of ‘run bad’ for 2 months.

Mtt Poker Definition

So that means around 2000 tourneys where he’s having a lot of bad luck! Personally I find at least 2 months of every year I go through a ‘run bad’ period. The key thing is to make sure it’s not effecting the way you play.

If it does, you might find you have tilted your bankroll before you even had a chance to experience your next ‘run good’! Which leads to this definition I found -Variance; A difference between what is expected and what actually occurs.

99% of Poker players think they are better than they actually are. If you played Roger Federer in a tennis match you’d quickly realize he can crush you. If you played Phil Ivey, that wouldn’t necessarily be the case. And if you didn’t know it was Phil Ivey, many would just think “who is this jerk getting lucky”!?

That’s because the skills of poker aren’t as obvious as in tennis. Federer has a great forehand, powerful serve, is good in the net and backcourt, he’s fast and powerful.

What make Phil Ivey the best poker player? Hard to describe for many because they don’t actually understand all the skills involved to make a great poker player. Poker includes many ‘invisible skills’. And it seems for some, you may have been living in the Matrix!

Find out more about variance over at PokerBankRollFast.com with Poker Swings and Varianceand Poker Variance Study.

In addition, TopPokerValue have delved into calculating the bankroll requirements for tournaments herewhich is a highly recommended read for new players.

2. Are you in the Matrix

Blinded from the truth? The truth - There’s probably hundreds of skills that you haven’t yet learnt. But you don’t know you haven’t learnt them, because you haven’t even got a clue what they are! Ignorance is bliss! So you continue on your merry way thinking you are totally awesome.

This was me, in 2002, when I won my first poker tournament at Crown Casino Melbourne, I was then convinced that made me 'great player'. I think back now and I was horrendous! And in 5 years I’ll probably look back at my game now and think “wow I made a lot of mistakes back then”!

Accept the truth, you can’t bend spoons with your mind and you know far from everything about poker. Open your mind and keep learning and discovering.

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3. Personal Life

Family Issues? Girlfriend Issues? Favorite pet fish hiding in the far corner of the tank? Some people are more sensitive than others and some handle lifestyles stresses poorly. Try to give yourself an honest assessment of the likelihood personal issues might affect your play and tendency to steam or tilt after getting unlucky. Poker can stir up the emotions! The last thing you need is to be playing poker while already in a semi-tilted mode. If that's the case just take a break.

4. Almost a Rich Superstar!?

Just won the Sunday Millions? Oh and 2nd in the Big $11? “You really are quite a boss”! “Oh that was someone else”? “Sorry to hear that, you’ll have your turn”. Everyone can have luck and cash prizes rain down on them.

And results are not always proportional to skill – Often far from it when considering the short-term. But the truth is often so many come so close to winning life changing money. Just that one river card with 50 players left in the Sunday Millions cost you first place! Luck – That dirty little 4 letter word.

When will you have your share of it? Just like Master Yoda says, “difficult to see, always in motion is the future”. As we spiral through life random events and things we can’t control continually transpire. Just like in poker. So stick to what you can control – Time and skill will avail 99.9% of the time.

Put in the time at the tables and the time studying the game. Keep racking up those small wins, they all add up. And maybe one day, the heavens will open up, the planets will align, and the Poker gods will pay tribute to your devotion to the game!

Want content like the this blog post? Check out the PokerNerve Road to Success Course where we have almost 100 lessons and supplemental videos to help take your game to the next level.

Definition
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One of the oldest debates in poker is whether tournaments are more skill than luck. The argument doesn’t revolve so much around whether there is more skill than luck, but instead whether they luck is outweighed by a wide margin.

When it comes down to it, there is no disputing that MTTs require skill. Long term tourney winners will only be able to maintain a profit if they are able to play well on a consistent basis. The biggest obstacle for tournament players is being able to pin down an actual win rate. Since tournaments are inherently full of variance, the actual rate at which any given player wins is near impossible to decipher. If you take one single win out of a player’s history, the chances are that their overall ROI will drop by a noticeable margin. This is not something that would ever happen to a cash game or sit and go player because one random win does not effect the bottom line in a noticeable way.

The types of tournaments that you play and your actual skill level will both play a decidedly large role in deciphering just how much of your wins are skill and how much of it is luck. The one factor that is ever present is the need for a lot of history. Without a sound sample size, your tournament resume will mean next to nothing.

Look at some of the biggest winners in terms of cash in the history of the World Series of Poker. Many of them are near the top of the list thanks to just one big run. When you look at the most cashes or the most bracelets in WSOP history, however, you will see the same names over and over again. This is a perfect example of how tournament poker has a lot of luck in the short term, but that skill ultimately prevails in the long run.

Now, some players will be luckier than others even in the long run, but aside from the random anomaly, the wins of a luckier player won’t be that much greater than the wins of a player with slightly worse luck. On the other hand, the luckiest player with the same amount of skill as the unluckiest player will find a wide gap in their earnings total. This is nothing more than the brutal reality of tournament style poker.

When Skill Matters

Skill matters the most in the stages of a tournament where there is still room for post flop play. If you can manipulate your opponents with a solid tactical approach, you will gain an edge based on skill alone.

Think about all of those opportunities in tournaments to make a pre flop steal or even a c-bet on the flop. These are the pots that don’t seem like much when you are playing a hand, but they will add up to the point where they equate for a large portion of your wins (or losses). Fighting for small pots in poker never has been and never will be glamorous, but it is one of the easiest ways to use skills to your advantage when playing in a tournament.

Poker Mtt Definition Dictionary

Definition

It may very well take you a long time before you can even properly identify the spots where you can add to your stack with relative ease, but the truly skilled players are able to do this with extreme regularity.

When Luck Matters

Luck matters in all parts of a tournament, from the very beginning to the last hand of heads up play. It is most important, however, whenever it comes to flipping coins and playing with big stacks and even bigger blinds. Tournaments almost always get to the point where they are nothing more than who can run the hottest over a span of 100 hands. If you bust out with TT vs. AK, there isn’t exactly a whole lot that you can do about it.

The fact is that tournament poker is appealing to so many amateur players because they know they can walk away with a big win even if they are not the best player at the table. This just isn’t the case for cash games. A weak player will get eaten alive in ring games, and even if they do manage to get lucky, it won’t be for a massive amount

Poker Mtt Definition Synonym

Luck runs out quite quickly in poker, and this is something that is to the disadvantage of weak cash game players and to the advantage of weak tournament players. Those sub par players can be the most frustrating to lose to in tournaments, but they are also the ones who make tournament play profitable.