[kuro]

I've been looking at this same issue lately. Here are my thoughts.

1. People with big stacks tend to aggressively defend their blinds against smaller stacks late in the tourney.

2. If you're going to bet in a blind steal position against a big stack, you need a hand that you would feel comfortable going all in with because they may very well put you all in pre or post flop if they think its a coin flip situation. They know that you really can't afford to coin flip them.

3. If you get into an all-in with them over the blinds and you have a hand that dominates them and you double up then you probably can get away with more marginal hand against them later down the road.

4. If you try a marginal hand and they push you out with a big raise either pre or post flop the same thing is probably going to happen to you again the next time.

5. Sometimes you can try to limp in to see the flop with a marginal hand. If you hit the flop really hard you bet the pot and hope to pick up the antes/blinds when the BB folds or maybe double up against him if he raises you in and you feel you've got him beat. The nice thing about limping at him is that if he makes a big raise from the blind, you can just muck it with out looking like you were trying to steal his blinds and then next time when your raise is 4 times the blinds in the same situation alarm bells should be going off in the big blind player's head.

6. The other thing that you have to remember is that the big stack that moved to your table recently probably doesn't have a feel of how tight or loose you've been playing. It's tough because you've worked so hard developing say a reputation for being tight. You just can't count on being given any credit for your tightness.

These are my thoughts on this situation. I'd love to hear other peoples feelings about these situations.