It is common knowledge amongst many players that it isn’t really worth risking your tournament life to steal chips during the early stages of poker tournaments. This knowledge and wisdom applies to large MTT’s and STT’s. However it is something that I do not adhere to and neither do many of the world’s top tournament players. To basically play too tight during the early stages of any tournament is basically to cut yourself off from the opportunities that exist during the early stages of tournaments to pick up chips. If you pick up 300 in chips during the 10-20 blind stage then 300 in chips is 300 in chips when all said and done.
Those 300 in chips will be worth just the same at that stage of the event as they would later on when the blinds are 100-200. So you are not just entering pots to win blinds during the early stage of play but to amass greater amounts of chips during the rest of the hand. Several things can happen when you get busy early on in a tournament and the first one is that you get access to the weak players stacks far sooner. Of course this could also allow you to butt heads with the good players as well but in a big MTT then there will be hundreds of weak players. But if one of them makes a big mistake then you will be there to profit from the opportunity.
