I appreciate the honest feedback. I probably do need to push a little sooner than I am...the issue I'm having is others are taking the aggression by shoving before me taking away my initiative bonus of shoving first. I'm pretty aware of someone pushing me around with crazy raising and I can honestly say I haven't seen that yet. I suspect this is a learning curve that I need to figure out. I'm doing something right by getting to a final table. I'll check out the series you mentioned above
Sounds like you've got a tough game. Most of the time I'm up against nits who are waiting for that big hand to bust the maniac(me) but by the time they get there big hand I've stole enough blinds to free roll with there monster.
If it's folded to you and you have 3 M, I think you really need to push ATC, even 72o UTG. Hell. I push ATC at 4 M, which seems to work a lot better than 3M. I play the turbos though so it's different.
This is of course assuming that you're not at the final table, it all goes out of the window then. The final table is basically a STT with 2 bubbles, one at 7th an one at 3rd.
Whenever I get to the final table with a short stack it is incredibly hard to do well. It's simply extremely tricky. I find that people seem to feel very accomplished when they reach the final table, it's sort of like a bubble in their minds; instead of being awarded money they are rewarded a ego boost. If they let me, I abuse the hell out of this imaginary bubble. 3M, defintely ATC, hell 4 M aswell unless people may spike call/are short. The thing is it's not that bad when there's a caller because of all the dead chips. At 5 M I fold 10%, push the rest late, and push only decentish cards mid position(suited connectors/gappers, pair, A-rag, broadways, 2 medium cards, more if there's nits)
At 6 M it's getting a bit much but I still push a fair bit. One must do this to survive the turbos though. I find whenever I push even wider than this I seem to do better. If it works you get to the final table with so many chips that you can take massive +cEV plays without the fear of busting, something that the shorites can't do.
You can also shove over limpers when at the 10BB mark, it works surprisingly well. Oh and if folded to and you have 10 BB in the SB, push ATC. Supringly very +EV play. Not sure if you've read No Limit Hold'em Theory and Practice, particularly the part about SC. Basically, if you have A2o and in the SB when folded to, you can show your opponent that you have A2o(flip it over and show him) you can still push this for 44BB for a +cEV. It's bit of an eye-opener how much one can shove here.
Oh and if someone raises late and you suspect it's a steal, you have about 5-9 times his raise and he's not committed to the hand, you can shove him with any reasonable competent hand(67o) for a fairly big +cEV.
There's lots of places on the flop where you can take cheap stabs at. If you're not sure when to steal on the flop try playing a bunch of HU games, they really help with post-flop steal plays.
"I'm doing something right by getting to a final table."
This is bad logic. I may get to the final table half the time compared to you and consequently get ITM 1/2 less but when I do get ITM, I seem to come first more than any other position.
I just checked out my PT stats for these games.
300 sessions, ITM 18, came between 1 5% 2-3 5% of the time, 4-7 10% and bubbled 5%
Being aggressive makes it more likely to bust around the 18-27 mark but when it works it really works. Kind of like the best players at STT bust the most around the 6 person mark, since that's when they are going to accumulate chips. They don't bubble very often because they have chips, and they use this to ride their way to 1st a decent % of the time
I'm not sure if most of this is obvious or something just I wished someone told me all this when I first started playing these things. It kind of is ridiculous how much fold
equity a lot of these plays have; the funny thing is even if my 57o is called by a strong range I still have 30% equity
