understanding late tourny patience

After spending 5 hrs and getting in A position to make the final table. What is the attribute most needed. For me "patience". Others in a attempt to goad you into A play will try to use the chat to antagonize and bait you. sitting patiently waiting on the better hands, even at the higher blind structure is crucial to finishing strong. The better drawing hand will come, even if it doesn't there is no shame in being blinded off, for surely others will have played hands and been eliminated thus improving your cash position. Last week I was in A live tourny and made the final table in third chip position.
The seat I drew was a "cold one" I folded probably the first 60 hands. In that time which was just A little over an hour. 3 other players had been eliminated. Leaving the field at 4. After an hour of never playing A hand I felt as though i was playing to tight, but was still getting not even mediocre hands so I continued to fold watching my chip stack dwindle, the blinds at 10,000- 20,000. Still I dogedly held to the maxim that patience was the key. now the other three players all caught big hands. First 1 bet four times the b.b. the next seat went all -in the chip leader called immediately, and the original bettor also called it was AA against QQ against AK. the chip leaders Aces held and he eliminated the other two. Now I'm short stacked up against the massive chip leader. he put me all in every hand, finally I caught A-7 clubs suited. He had queen -10 caught a queen on the flop and A 10 on the river. The point I'm getting at is that at the final table I played only "1" hand and took second place. It improved my money 830.00 by only playing one hand the point being I didn't call off my chips chasing mediocre draws.:joyman:

Nice!

I totally agree: patience is the key. There have been times I've turned off the chat so I wouldn't get tilted by some jerk. I too have improved my position many times by folding decent hands to overly aggressive players, only to hit a run of good cards and end up beating them all.

The trick is when you do hit that sweet stretch, take advantage of it! Then know when it's over and go back to your regular tight style.

Tuan Lam agrees.

rfdouggie said:

After spending 5 hrs and getting in A position to make the final table. What is the attribute most needed. For me "patience".

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Too many people lack patience in tournaments and that works in favor of the patient players (a'la Phil Hellmuth, and pretty much most pros). Patience is indeed very important, and separates a lot of winners from losers.

The better drawing hand will come, even if it doesn't there is no shame in being blinded off, for surely others will have played hands and been eliminated thus improving your cash position.

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To me, this line is a poisonous line of thought. The hands will not always come. As the blinds increase and your chip stack decreases, certain aggressive moves become +EV. Ignoring (or even not creating) opportunity in favor of waiting for a big hand will bleed you dry and powerless late in a tournament.
Tournaments have substantially larger payouts for those that finish deep, and in order to hit those you'll have to stick your neck on the line to get the chips you need for a big finishing position. As the saying goes, "In order to live, you have to be willing to die."

In my last 3 live tournaments, I had an early knock out, a 1st place, and a 2nd place (we chopped at the end, but he had more chips so he got a little more $). Now, live tournament players in $25 tournaments aren't generally the best players, making ridiculously small bets in relationship to pot size, not stealing when they should, etc. So I did let my M get really low before making moves. (When I shoved with an M of 3.5 the table gasped at my big reckless bet. Ha ha!) But you are *not* going to get those breaks online, not even in a $1 tournament. People online generally play a lot smarter than the people in those low stakes tournaments.
If you just sit back and wait for cards, you are going to get bled to death.

There's no argument that impatience is deadly. But patience to the point of missing opportunity is a slow death that leads to small cashes rather than the big, deep cashes you should be fighting for.

final table

Spoken like a true card player and that same cituation has happend to me in regular sit and go's people get all wrapped around the blins going up and make lets say not so smart calls and raises.

naruto_miu said:

...now the only difference between his approach and mine is I play aggressive as hell on the final tables...

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Which is why OPR has you at a 90% rating with a positive ROI, while rfdouggie's online results are a bit less.

Can you direct me to the online site you quote? Does it rate players from most sites?