Need Advice for home tournament

[TLR]

Hi

This weekend I am going to participate in a home tourney. This tourney is made up of two different home gaming groups (my group of 14 people and another group of 6 people)
Regarding my regular gaming group I know the people pretty well and I have no problem playing against them
I also have some online tourney experience so I can hold my own against total strangers, but I was never in a situation when I am sitting in the table with a bunch of guys I know and a bunch of guys I do not know but they know each other pretty well.

Any advice on how to handle this kind of table will be appreciated

[chris_1069]

I just did something similar to this last weekend. Except for me it was reversed. I knew about 15 of the 25 people, 10 of whom I had played with before and mabey only 5 regularly.

But I just played my game.... Was a 3 table, drew cards for seats, and I was at a table with 2 people I knew and and another 6 I did not.

I just played my game.

Stayed tight at the begining. Was very observant and watched everyone to see how they played... what they would raise pre flop with, will they continue to bet even if they missed it with overs? Do they min bet or check raise made hands? Betting patterns? Looking for any info that would help me later on when I did get into a hand with them.

Not too much advice I could think of that one could give you... Just play your game.

What is the blind structure going to be like? I got really lucky and for mine it was as follows..

25/50 1st hr
50/100 2nd hr

then it started going up every 30min I think, mabey even 1 more 1hr lvl. This allowed for lots of time to let the newer less patient players to knock themselves out while I stayed out of the all in hands and just picked up a few pots along the way.

Was actually kinda nice being that my best friend was on a dif table, that was way faster than ours. Actually from the 3 tables we only lost mabey 2 from our first 8 and the other 2 tables merged then merged again with us when we were at 5 each. But it was nice not having to play vs him then being able to meet up on the final table like that.

Only downfall to this is that the 5 that came to join us had more chips between them than we did since it came from almost double the amount of people.

[TLR]

Thanks for the advice

The blind structure is:
Every one getting 250 chips

1/2 for 30 min
2/4 for 30 min
3/6 30 min
4/8 20 min
after that it starts to increase more steeply

[chris_1069]

Sounds like you have almost as much time at the start of your game as I did in mine.

We started with 2500chips and BB of 50 (so 50xBB to start) Your starting with 250 and BB of 2 (so 125xBB) So almost double the BB's to start but about half the time at each level.

Personally I am more comfortable playing tight at the begining. I hate limping and hate calling crap raises with junk cards here because I am too inclined to fold once I hit nothing and feel it is a big waste of my chips. Plus this helps my table image for latter. I would rather fold for 3 orbits than limp 50% of the hands. But if I do get cards here I will be in for sure.

Also pay attention to the types of players you have on your table... If you know you have a couple aggs or maniacs on your table them just wait till you have cards and position on them and allow them to just hand over their chips. Worked real well for me last time... nothing better than hitting a hand and having them bet into you the whole way with just over cards.

Anyways best of luck to you! I had a blast at mine last weekend and can't wait for the next one, hope you enjoy yours as well.

[TLR]

Thanks a lot

I am looking forward to mine

We only hold tournament style games every 3 months so it is a big event for us