Stack management

[Percula]

Of late I have been on a down run, placing just out of the money (or good money) both in regular MTT and SnG MTT. After some long thought, I think I might have come on the answer.

I think it is coming down to stack managament when the tourament is getting down to the end, say for a regular MTT when there are less than 3 full tables left and in the SnG when the bubble hits.

Here is the classic situation...

I come to the final two table or even just before you drop to two tables, I will have a decent stack anywhere from a little above average to somewhere in the top 5. I will get into a massive pot and more times than not get my money in with the best hand only to get sucked out, dropping my stack too low to steal or really be aggressive. Then I end up getting shorter and shorter until I am have to push and push and hope to double up just to stay alive. Or I end up taking on the short stacks and get sucked out on only to find myself short stacked myself and in the same boat as if I had tangled with another big stack.

So what struck me was that during the early rounds a big stack has less per chip value than a smaller stack, but deep into a MTT the per chip value becomes higher than a smaller stacks. Let me try to explain what I mean here...

Big stack early; at this point lets say the blinds are less than T$200 and I have >T$8000 chips. My bet of say T$200 means a lot less to me than someone with <T$1500 chips as T$200 is a much smaller percentage of my stack than the small stack. So I can use the big stack to bully and push the smaller stacks around, chase some draws (play the implied odds), etc.

Big stack late; at this point lets say the blinds are greater than T$4000 and I have >T$120,000 chips. At this point my stack has more value than say the player with a stack of less than 4xBB. If I can hold on to my stack, and increase it I have a good chance of making the final table with enough chips to make a solid run for 1st, but the player with the smaller stack can really only hope to get repeatedly lucky in coin flip situations and move up in money before getting knocked out.

What I have done in the past is mix up my game at this late stage with a big stack, playing aggressive and stealing blinds and pots, taking on the short stacks as they take their Ax stabes with PP and A(face). Sometimes just sit back and curse and only playing the top couple of starting hands, mixing it up so it is hard to read me, stealing blinds at least once every couple of orbits to stay ahead of the blinds.

But what I am thinking now is that this maynot be the best way to manage the valuable assest, the big stack. Lets say you are taking on the short stacks, if you lose the coin flip it is not that big of deal right? They have less than 20%-30% of your stack and if you lose no big deal right? Well I am beginging to think that is the wrong thing to think. What I am getting at is if a big stack loses 2 or 3 of these they are now a short stack and in great danger of not making the final table where the money is much deeper. That it is not worth it to add 20% to 30% unless you know you have the nuts and that means not playing preflop coin flips but seeing flops and making good choices. Stealing blinds to stay ahead but not taking the coin flips. I think there is also a danger in the metality, superman, bullet proof, it doesn't matter if I lose a couple of these little ones, type of thing.

Am I completely off base here? Is it just bad beat mentality?