[pacecar86]

General thoughts on "hitting the wall/mid-round hell". May be more of a variance effect rather than chronic defect in play. Without hard data, one obv can't analyze cause-effect. You may be adjusting properly to differences in table line-ups, cards, situations, etc, and still hit the wall. So, elements out of our control will prevail for a while despite of our best efforts during play, and post-mortem analysis. But, for me, maintaining self-honesty in examining one's game is important. Early tournament career success could be just as much due to variance as later failure.


1 - Early in large-field tourneys (150+ players) – what have you found to be successful in the early stages?


A. I personally prefer small ball approach in deep stack/long round/large field events & long ball in short round/smaller events, but, think it is more of a question of adjusting to player mix at table: weak/tight; stations; lag; tag etc etc...

2 - I’ve heard many highly successful tournament players say that “good tourney players never allow themselves to get too short-stacked in a tourney. They always keep themselves in a position to win the tourney or they go home”.

- When do you consider yourself “short-stacked”? Example: Level 6 – 150 players remaining, Average stack: T$10,300, my stack: T$6200. If I’m somewhat card-dead, should I be getting desperate here? Should I be getting more aggressive to build a stack, or can I still be patient and what for better spots? At what point do you decide….I need to gamble here a bit to get in a better position?


B. Believe that aggression and not desperation is the primary driver...my goal is to do whatever I can to stay well above 30bb's...drifting into the low to mid 20bb zone in these $200-300 events with fast rounds is obv not where you want to be. In the middle/ante rounds with 50-60% of avg stack, we likely have less than M 10, so, are we doing much limp/fold; raise or call/folding? So, positional/situational shoves become top of mind for me. Longer rounds of say, 40 - 60 minutes - different story - ups the patience factor