Blinds start to escalade, what's the optimum strategy?

[aLOWdAkING]

Now obviously, I know that this is very player, table, and stack dependent. But a common occurence that happens with me in high buy-in tournaments is that, I can accumulate an average amount of chips, and then when the blinds and antes increase, I break down. I think "OK, now is the time to try to double up because I've heard my M is too small", or "better start playing a little tighter to raises with pocket pairs" or sometimes I'll have an adaquete stack and start to steal the blinds like crazy. This is all a little before the bubble too. It seems I get too impatient and break down and can't think things through. Does anybody else have this problem? School me MTT forum!

First of all - what is your average open raise? I have found that buy opening for 3x BB for the whole tournament I can conserve a lot of chips (I play on UB where the common open is "bet pot"). Doing this instead of opening for more can save you chips over the long run. I also adjust my continuation bets to be between 1/2 and 2/3 pot, regardless of whether I have it or not. Don't think that you have to pot it every time to get folds from your opposition, because thinking players at higher levels will fold to 1/2 - 2/3 just as readily.

Before the bubble, I'm wildly loose from LP with a avg stack, especially if the table has been tight. You will usually have a player that will limp about 30% of the time at your table, even on the bubble. If you are on his left, raise that limp every time !! If he calls, follow it up with a 2/3 pot bet. That will usually give you some easy change.

Also, recognize other average stacks that seem to be playing loose from LP. Come over the top of them often with decent hands, if they're stealing enough your decent hands will often be good. Don't let anyone limp into a pot! Punish those limpers, you will come out with more chips in the long run.

Of course, most of this assumes an M over 10. If your M is less than that, you want to tighten up slightly more and start playing more big cards from LP. Just remember, you have no postflop moves but a shove at this point if the pot was raised preflop.