Position Play in MTT

I recently heard about Annette Obrestad (the teenage phenom from Norway) winning a Sit and Go tournament without looking at her hole cards. I thought to myself, "this I gotta see!" And fortunately, you can. The video of the tourney is available on YouTube. I am pasting a link at the upper right hand side of my blog. This is fascinating material for anyone trying to improve their MTT play (as I am.) Look at how she plays position, looking to steal blinds and pick up pots in situations where there is unlikely to be any resistance. This illustrates one of the concepts that I am learning and finding very fascinating about tournament play as opposed to cash play: in tournament play what YOU hold in your hand is not nearly as important as what your opponents DO NOT hold in theirs. Look to pick up chips when there is no resistance to your doing so. Use fold equity to do most of your chip accumulation and then only confront other players when you are certain you have the best of it. As you watch the video, you will notice that Annette often makes moves that are not necessarily correct position play, and she undoubtedly gets lucky several times when she calls someones all in with the worst of it. But if you focus on the many good plays she makes as opposed to her suck outs, you will still learn a lot.

I guarantee watching it will improve your understanding of chip accumulation in tournaments and proper position play. The quality of the video is pretty poor so I suggest that you do NOT blow it up to full screen, but you can still see enough of what is going on to gain valuable information. I suggest that as you are watching you just let the video play until Annette enters a hand then you pause it and note the chip stacks of the players that are already in the hand, how many limpers there are, if there was a raise in front of her, etc. Then continue on.