Beating Turbo Poker Tournaments Online
An increasing number of poker tournaments online are played to a turbo format, which is where the blinds and antes increase more quickly than in a standard structured tournament. While both games are played to the same rules, they require different skillsets and approaches in order to be successful.
The main difference between turbo and non-turbo multi-table tournaments (MTTs) is the speed in which the blinds increase. At Betfair Poker, a non-turbo MTT usually as blinds that increase every 10-15 minutes - longer in some of the large buy-in events - whereas a turbo structured MTT will have blinds that increase every 5 minutes. At first glance, this may not seem like it would make much difference, but trust me when I say that the difference is huge.
I spend a lot of my time playing turbo tournaments online, mainly because I have limited free time with which to play poker so the fast pace allows me to fit more MTTs into my relatively tight and busy schedule. They also potentially allow you to win a decent sum of money in a relatively short period of time and who wouldn't like to do that on a regular basis?
As the blinds increase faster, turbo tournaments are played more shallow stacked than a non-turbo MTT. This means the early stages of a turbo MTT pass by quite quickly and you often find yourself with a stack in the 15-25 big blind region. If this stage of a tournament is not your strong point then you should probably avoid turbo MTTs for the most part because you will be in this awkward stack size more often than not.
In order to keep your head above water in turbo MTTs, it is important to steal the blinds and antes and pick your spots to re-steal, often with a three-bet that sets you all-in. Maintaining your stack in order to maximise your fold equity is crucial in turbos, so having a tight image is good in them.
So how should we approach turbo tournaments? Let's break them down into three stages:
Early stages
These are much like any other tournament you have played as you have anywhere between 75-200 big blinds. Personally, I'll be opening with a raise quite tightly because of reverse implied odds, the fact that winning a small pot at this stage doesn't add much to our stack and also because I don't want to be pegged as a crazy horse for when we need players to fold.
By all means play premium hands aggressively, but be wary about going over the top with medium pocket pairs and suited connectors, all of which can win you a decent pot but should possibly be played more passively in an attempt to see a cheap flop and then flop a big hand or draw.
Middle Stages
Unless you have managed to accumulate some chips it is likely that you have 15-30 big binds when the antes kick in - they will start much quicker than a non-turbo MTT. Having antes in play means you should open up your aggression because they add so much more to your stack when you win them, but they are also a drain on your stack if you don't win a few pots. If you're playing at a nine-handed table with blinds of 100/200/20a it is going to cost you 180 chips in antes every orbit of the table in addition to the 300 blinds. Don't play two orbits and that is 960 chips gone and when you only started with 1,500 that is a lot of chips.
During these stages we should be stealing frequently, especially against blinds who are playing tightly. We should also be looking to re-steal late position raises. Often, you will only have 15 big blinds in your stack so your three-bet re-steal should be an all-in bet. While you will sometimes run into a legitimate hand, more often than not your all-in bet will prompt a fold and you will add crucial chips to your stack.
Late Stages
You have managed to continually accumulate chips and are now approaching the latter stages of the tournament and can see the final table in sight. How you approach these stages is entirely dependent on your stack size and that of those around you. If the effective chip stack is 10 big blinds or less - effective chip stack is the smallest stack size of the player who would be all-in - your opening bet should be one that is all-in, some even push all-in with larger stacks of 12-20 but it is player dependent.
Re-stealing is also crucially important in late stages as similarly sized stacks to yours attempt to bully you and accumulate chips; don't let them, re-steal and punish them! Look out for short stacks who are trying to ladder up the payout tables and attack them to stop them doing this. It's your money, go out and claim it!
Due to being played with much shallower stacks than a non-turbo MTT, turbo structured events do have much more variance to them, but don't let that put you off entirely because nothing beats the feeling of turning $5 into $1,000 in only a couple of hours!
Prices quoted in copy are correct at time of publication but liable to change.
