Help with Mid to Latter Stages Tournament Play!!

[Poker Jon]

Hey all,

Just wanted to pose a few questions to you all.

I play in a variety of tournaments online with anywhere between 100-500 players in multi table structure.

Early on, I seem to play well and by the middle stages of the tournament have a decent sized chip stack.

However, once I have the decent stack I can't seem to be able to use it, like a lot of other players do. I try to bully at the wrong times, people constantly go over the top and put themselves all in after my raise which more oftne than not I have to fold. What improvements can I make to my game, to start putting me on final table as opposed to 'in the money'?

1) I raise on hands like A7, A6 etc, but when people come over the to I feel I should lay them down. Am I right or should I be calling them. Whenever I have a big stack on my table, they seem to constantly call with these types of hands - should I be doing the same?

2) When raising, should I be raising more (normally 4xBB I raise). Recently I saw one big stack go all in with 65s to be called by TT and the 65 straightened on the flop to win.

Am I being too cautious. Should I start playing more aggressive with lesser hands?

All too often in say a 200 runner field, when 100 are left you see Joe Bloggs with a massive chip lead, but by the time you get to 50 runners, Joe Bloggs is out!! IMHO this is because they become too aggressive and get caught out on the flop.

I dont expect you guys to let me know all the secrets of NLHE, but just a rough guide with be appreciated.

Jon

[JayKon]

I would say you probably need Slanskey's tournament book. Tournament Poker for Advanced Players (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1880685280/104-2507664-4767939)

While I haven't got mine yet (I went for the free shipping), I do trust the author.

In the mean time, I would say tighten up in the middle rounds, If you raise and someone comes over the top, be prepared to raise them back, or even push your stack in. The re-raise is a common tactic used to see if you actually have something. If you're up against people who see you raise and then fold to a re-raise without seeing the flop a lot, guess what, you'll be re-raised some more.

BTW, A6/A7 open/raising hands when half of the field is still in are crap, unless they are A) suited and B) you're in late position - like on the button, or the cutoff and you're after the anties and blinds. Otherwise, IMHO, it's a calling hand that requires some pot odds, or a read on the bettor.

I suspect that what is really happening is that in the first half of the field, you're up against terrible players and its easy to take their chips. Which is quite satisfying. However, at about half the field, you start to run into better players - specifically, players who are better than you.

This means that you can no longer run over pots with single bets and are more likely to get check-raised with monsters and out-right bluffs. Also, you find players that can sniff out those flopped quads and avoid paying you off, leaving you with the blinds and that single T100 bet. As soon as this starts to happen, the frustration level begins to build and (guess what) A6o looks good from UTG.

Also, you need to be able to put a player on a hand. Have you played with them before? How fast did they call? Have they been aggressive and playing a lot of hands? What has their betting pattern been? What is their stack? Have they been winning, or loosing in the last several pots they played? Do they raise and then fold on the flop to a bet? I realize that your probably playing on-line, but some information is always available.

I'm a fair-to-fairly-good tourney player (and getting better, I hope) and have placed in the money after not having a playable hand for an hour (in a 4 hour tournament). It gets boring.

Getting to the top 10% is 90% skill & 10% luck - getting to the top 1% is 70% luck & 30% skill.

Good Luck, good skill and good reading,
Jay