Introduction to Online Multi Table Tournaments (MTT)

Multi table tournaments, or MTTs, are poker tournaments which start out with several tables’ worth of players, as opposed to single table tournaments, otherwise known as sit and go’s, or SNG.

What distinguishes MTTs from SNGs is that multi table tournaments generally have a scheduled start time where players have up until that time to register and buy in to it, where sit and go’s start when all of the seats fill up.

There are advantages to each in terms of scheduling, as MTTs have a set time when the tournament will begin, allowing you to plan around that. With SNGs, it all depends on the popularity of the tournament and the time of day.

Some may fill up in a matter of seconds, with another similar one seconds away, making it very easy to get in on one quickly. Some may take hours to fill, if at all, if there’s not enough people that want to play the particular type at a given time.

With MTTs, the end time is less predictable than a SNG, as with SNGs the entire tournament may average a half hour, 45 minutes, or whatever the case may be. So even if you are in until the end you have a good idea of how long you will be occupied with it.

With MTTs though, end times are far less predictable, and the bigger ones can last for several hours. How long you last in it will depend on how you do of course, but you really need to set aside 4 or 5 hours in the bigger ones in case you stick around that long. Before going into more specifics, lets take a look at the best websites for playing MTT’s online as I know some of you are itching to get straight into the action.

Top MTT Poker Sites That Accept Players In United States

Some sit and go’s are also multi table tournaments, for instance starting out with several tables at the outset. Most are just one table though. Scheduled tournaments are always more than one table and sometimes hundreds of tables.

As players become eliminated, the tables in a MTT are consolidated, meaning that they will eliminate tables as the total amount of tables decreases. This keeps things fair in terms of not having some tables too short while others are full.

As the number of tables decrease though, the average number of players at the tables tends to decrease as well, at least in terms of the number of players that you will have before players are consolidated again. So as the tournament progresses, shorthanded skills become more and more relevant, although the more entrants, the longer it will take to get to this situation.

So simply being able to play well in a full ring game isn’t enough to really be able to do well at these, and as you go along, the combination of seeing two or three less players at your table along with the blinds having escalated quite a bit at this point can make many players uncomfortable.

So having a well rounded game, meaning being good at full ring, shorthanded, and even heads up will all benefit you. It’s actually a good idea to become experienced at single table tournaments to help your multi tournament game, as SNGs quickly develop into seeing less players at the table, and the blinds also tend to go up quicker, so you’ll be able to get a lot more experience dealing with these changing conditions.

Then, when you start seeing your table shortening up a bit, you won’t just be looking to play your normal game like some players do, and in fact will be able to use added aggression to exploit these players, and increase your chances of doing well in the tournament as a result.

Types Of MTT Tournaments

MTT tournaments are offered with a wide variety of buy ins, anywhere from free to several hundred dollars. There are two main formats for MTTs, which are freezeouts and rebuys.

In a freezeout format, once you lose all of your chips, you are out, and play goes on until there is only one player left. In rebuy tournaments, players have the option of buying another stack any time their chips drop below a certain point, usually the starting amount or less. Often times you can double up your starting stack right off the bat.

So if you lose all of your chips during the rebuy period, you can rebuy and stay in the tournament, although you don’t have to. It’s a mistake not to rebuy though, and one of the nice things about these is that not everyone does, and when they don’t, it’s to our advantage.

There’s also what is called an add on which you can add more chips after the rebuy period is over. The add on can be made regardless of how many chips you have, and unless you have a massive amount, this is a good idea as well.

So the play can get pretty wild and crazy during rebuy periods and can present you with some real good opportunities to build up a good size stack. It’s a good idea not to get too crazy here though as it could end up costing you more money than it is worth.

In freezeouts, you want to play as if your life is on the line at all times, because it is. Freezeouts have the advantage of having you know exactly how much money you are risking in an MTT, which is the amount of your buy in and no more.

Aside from these two main categories, there is quite a bit of variation among them, giving players the ability to choose their buy in level, game type, full ring or shorthanded, speed of the blinds escalating, and more. Whatever you are looking for in MTTs, our top recommended MTT poker sites will have it for you.

How Much Can You Win In A MTT?

How much you can win in a MTT vary depending on how many players have entered, the amount of the buy in, and how well you do at it. While the biggest ones offer the most money, sometimes the smaller ones can be profitable as well, especially the ones late at night where the players tend to be both tired and weaker than average. I love playing these in fact.

In the end, how you do in MTTs over time depends on how good a MTT player you are, and how weak your competition is. So while you are working on improving your game, it’s always best to seek out the MTT sites with the weakest players, and in fact this factors very heavily in our recommendations.

Biggest MTTs Online

The biggest MTTs that a poker site has always run on Sunday, and it’s always a guaranteed prize pool. At some sites this guaranteed amount always gets hit, but at others the poker site ends up having to top off things with a significant amount of their own money. This is always a real benefit for us of course.

You’ll always find the best MTT competition a poker site has to offer at these big tournaments, with prize money totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but this competition differs widely depending on the site. The best sites offer big money and relatively weak competition at these.

If you don’t have enough money to buy in directly, you can win a seat to these big tournaments through smaller, less expensive satellite tournaments. One thing is for sure, there’s nothing as exciting as playing for huge amounts of prize money.

Non Holdem MTTs

In addition to Holdem, our recommended MTT sites also offer multi table tournaments in Pot Limit Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, Stud, and even mixed games such as Horse. As a rule, these other variations are easier to beat if you know what you are doing and can present exceptional opportunities for profit for those who have taken the time to get good at these other variations of poker.

MTT Tips

Doing well in MTTs is a matter of adapting better than your opponents do to the constantly changing conditions of the tournament. People use different strategies in MTTs, and what you want to do in particular is to spot opponents who aren’t playing correctly and take advantage of those mistakes.

For instance, a player may be playing wild and crazy, and you often see these players early on in a tournament, since they don’t tend to last very long. MTTs are about managing risk to reward, and the risks are higher compared to a cash game due to the way chips are valued in a tournament.

For instance, in cash games, if you win all of the money you get that exact amount of money, so we could say that the chips are worth face value. In tournaments, the chips are worth less than face value, considerably less in fact. For example if you win the tournament and therefore win all of the chips, you win less than half the prize pool. The rest of the money is divided up among the rest of the people who finish in the money.

So what this means is that you need to play more risk averse than in cash games, and be less reluctant to pursue small edges. So it’s correct to fold some hands where you are only a little ahead, or a good but not great hand against a bigger stack.

On the other hand, this makes aggression even more powerful, especially if your opponents are playing risk averse as well, as they should be. Given that people like to fold a lot anyway, and given that it’s often correct for them to do so, taking down pots is even more important in MTTs, especially as the blinds escalate and your stack to pot ratio goes down.

So it’s fine to go against the maniacs early on but you need to keep in mind that you are going to need a better hand than normal to do it if you are beyond the rebuy period, and discretion is often the better part of valor. If it’s in the rebuy period you can be more aggressive here as your tournament life isn’t on the line.

Beyond that, good tournament players aren’t afraid to push people around, but even here you do need to be careful. It’s fine to look to take down a lot of pots against people who like to fold, but you need to do less of this against looser players. You also don’t want to go to the well too often against even the most frequent folders, as your play may become too transparent and therefore more exploitable.

MTT Bankroll

As a rule, it’s best for players to play MTTs in conjunction with another poker format. If you play MTTs exclusively, you will be pretty limited to the buy in amounts that you can play safely. In other words, the variance is highest with MTTs, since even good players can go quite a while without a significant cash.

Compare that with some SNG formats where you can cash out decently half or more of the time. This is the opposite in terms of variance and has the lowest of any other form. Cash poker is somewhere in the middle of the two.

So even if you have a huge bankroll, it’s generally not a good idea to play just MTTs as this would limit the stakes you could be playing, and therefore limiting your average per hour earn rate. However, MTTs on the side are a ton of fun and can be very profitable as well.

Rake In An MTT

There is no rake in MTTs, although players pay a small fee to enter. So for instance if you see a buy in at $10 + $1, the fee is a dollar. So this is all very simple to keep track of.

All you have to do now in order to get started enjoying all of the fun and excitement of the best MTTs the internet has to offer is just to click on one of our links to the top MTT poker sites, and you can start really enjoying yourself, as well as getting paid real money for trying them out.

Why play in a Multi-Table Tournament

As I said in the opening, MTTs give players the chance for a big score, and this is what is so appealing about multi-table tournaments: This is also what attracts so many poor players to MTTs, and it’s these weak players that have virtually no chance to win –or even make a deep run—that provide solid players with a nice overlay in the tournament.

Think of it this way: If 1,000 players enter a $10 tournament, 25% of those entrants will have virtually zero chance to win, or make the final table. This means that 750 players will be battling it out for a piece of the $10,000 prize-pool ($2,500 of which none of them contributed). Basically it would be like playing in a cash game where the bad players just put their money in the pot but don’t play!