Later Table Problems

Hey

this may sound silly but i feel almost cursed! i must be doing something wrong every time i get to larger blinds i always get problems! i nearly always do rele well at the start when there is small blinds, i normally end up with a good stack but as soon blinds start getting quite large it all goes to pot every time! i just cant figure what i am doing wrong! any ideas what i could be doing wrong and any ideas suggestions on what i could do to correct this?

Many Thanks!!

JMack986

To me you sound like when the blinds are small, lots of people will be in the pot as usually they are quite passive so if you pick up a draw you usually have the correct odds to carrying on as people are making weak bets for you to hit your hand. You have now built a nice stack early however because of the structure of the tournament with rapid blinds the blinds start becoming a significant portion of your stack. Here the table will also probably tighten up which means drawing out with the correct odds in unlikely. What i recommend is playing small ball poker which is making a raise to about 2 half to 3 time big blind with marginal and good hands(for deception, dont bet more cos you have pocket Aces cos youll get figured out) to try pick up S/B blind(thats if no one has entered the pot yet). If you do get called i would make a continuation bet about half the pot, however if i meet resistance and haven't hit or hit the flop slightly, then am in a decision whether to play on or not(actually good players have started to call my flop bet just to see what id do on turn, but thats another topic i think). However only try this on the middle stacks cos short stacks might go over the top, big stack might call, but medium stack is too scared to call most of the time! If this method doesnt work and im down to about 8 to 10 big blinds then am all in when i sense weakness from limpers from middle and late position, or go all in when im first in the pot with any semi decent hand.

Hope this helped maybe it sounded better in my head though and if anyone thinks i give this guy wrong advice then please correct me cos that means i need correcting too!

i think thats made more sense to me i think at the start i play quite loosely and am happy to bet and thats why i build up a good stack but when the blinds get big i don't like to bet much and end up going quiet tight meaning the blinds keep going up and hurting me + a fold more then ii probely should and rarely raise it. im going to try tonight getting back to the final tables and being a bit more aggressive and raise a bit more! try and steal binds and get people off hands

cheers for the comment

JMack986

anyone else got any good ideas for playing at the final table?

The latter parts of a tournament are all about M, position, and the action that happened before you. Oh... and the payoff schedule.

M is basically how many rounds you can survive if you folded every hand. You add up all the blinds and antes you'd have to pay in a round, and divide your chip stack by that number.

For example if the antes are 1,000 and the blinds are 5,000/10,000 it'll cost you 9k in antes + 15k in blinds to play a round. That's 23k.
If you have 103,792 in chips that means your M is 4.5.

When your M gets to about 5 or less, you're looking to shove any non-contested pot with any hand that has a decent chance of winning (any pocket pair, A/x, etc.)

But there are other considerations as well. You have to consider who's left to act and how many chips they have. And certain hands are more or less playable depending on your M.

Harrington on Hold'em Volume II: The Endgame is a great tool for learning about play deep into a tournament. Of course I highly recommend that you read Volume I first, as it lays down a foundation that Volume II builds upon.

I've been told that Buy.com sells the books the cheapest, but Amazon (where I got mine) and Barnes and Noble and all the other big name book stores sell them as well.
Or you can try the local public library.

ur an average player who needs to work on their mid to end game startegy