Poker Tournament Late Stage Strategy

Poker Tournament Late Stage Strategy 2019
Poker Tournament Late Stage Strategy Games
Poker Tournament Late Stage Strategy Tactics

When you are in the late stages of a tournament you are usually feeling a sense of achievement because you are very close to making the money and getting a return for your investment.

New players also get up to $88 free to try out the games (in tokens / cash buy-ins, no deposit needed). See the visibly softer Turbo tournaments at www.888poker.com now! Turbo Poker Tournament Strategy: Antes = Aggression. The antes in a turbo tournament will kick in about a half hour into the tournament. Poker Tournament Tip 1: Steal a Lot, But Don’t Go Overboard “Open small and often.” This phrase drove the pre-flop strategy of almost every tournament regular for years, and it still has some merit. With antes in play, a 2.25BB open has to pick up the pot less than half of the time to show an immediate profit. (And that’s not including. The late stage is all about aggression, and you will need to pick on medium stacks being held by tight players. This is the best strategy to use during the late stages of a poker tournament. Alternatively, you can gamble with short stacks that will be forced to make a desperate all-in. The late stages of a tournament are the primary reason why tournaments have so much variance. You can play perfect poker for 10 tournaments in a row and never end up with anything better than a min cash.

The late stage of the tournament can be defined as the period leading up to the money bubble and after the money bubble up until the final table.

Exactly how long the period before the bubble will vary from tournament to tournament, but in general it will be from whenever there is a change in play from a number of players to being more conservative as they approach the bubble.

Keep Focus

At this point you have been playing in the tournament for a number of hours and it is important to maintain your focus and concentrate on the task at hand … and that is winning the whole tournament!

Remember what I said at the start of this guide, a good tournament player does not play to just scrape into the money, but is playing to win the tournament, or finish in the top 3 at the very least. This focus on the goal in hand will play a big part in how you approach the late stages of a tournament and in particular the bubble.

I’ve been playing Sit&Go’s and Multi-table Tournaments since 2005 and from experience the late stages always boils down to the same things for me. They are, maintaining my focus, patience and aggression.

By this stage in the tournament you’ve been playing for sometime. Of course that time depends on the number of players you started with but either way this is the latter part of the tournament. Some players tend to tire a little, some might start to play very aggressive to ‘finish’ the tournament and some might tighten right up. Its very important at this point to maintain your focus and play the cards you are dealt.

It is also probably the most important time in the tournament to accurately observe your opponents and how they are playing. This is the key time to notice patterns and weaknesses as they change their style now money is at stake and to exploit it.

Focus on your Key Performance Indicators

Just like in the middle stage of the tournament, it is very important to keep calculating your key performance indicators, Time to Play and Average Stack, to know exactly where you stand and for it to drive the way you play.

In the late stages blinds can start to really grow and it is very easy to go from a comfortable position to a critical chip stack in a short space of time. You have to recognise this quickly and change gears quickly before it is too late.

Shift the Pressure onto your Opponents

The gap concept is huge at this stage of the tournament. It takes a much better hand to call a bet than it does to raise or push with. Just like we talked about in the last article about putting good players under pressure to make them do all the thinking, the same can be said for all opponents in the late stages of a tournament.

You must be the player that is putting your opponent under pressure and forcing him/her to work things out and make decisions. The more decisions and pressure put on an opponent, the more likely it is for them to make a mistake.

From experience there is usually a lot of all in bets and folding at this point. Why all in? Well firstly it’s because a number of players will be at a short or critical stack level and enter a pot with an all in because they would probably be pot committed anyhow and they may as well get maximum fold equity from the all-in bet.

The other reason is that it is always better to put your opponents to the test than to let them put you to the test. An all in bet cannot be topped, they cannot come back over the top and put you to an even bigger decision, the decision is firmly put on them. Do they want to call for most or all of their chips? Even if they think they are in the lead, are they really sure? Confident enough to stake their whole tournament on it?

I follow this principle during the late stage of any tournament I play. Key to this though is knowing your opponents but not underestimating their ability to shift gears as well. Most of the time, by the time you get to the later stages you’ve eliminated most of the gamblers and weaker players so you should assume the players left wont be falling for any ‘tricks’ and that they are players with at least some skill.

When the stacks at this point are relatively even it has been my experience that playing in the late stage of any tournament is all about focus and patience and ‘picking your spots’ which will provide you the best opportunities to win.

Remembering the gap concept will help you to pick your spots and perhaps steal some valuable blinds. If you double up at this point in the tournament your usually eliminating someone else getting you one step closer to the lights of the final table.

Select the first article from the section contents below to get started.

Section Contents: Dominating the Late Stage of a Poker Tournament

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Turbo Tournament Strategy Adjustments - How To Profit In Faster MTT Games!

by Matt

Turbo multi-table tournaments are a beast all their own. Especially if you come from a non-turbo background. Some players adjust too much, opening tons of hands at 10/20, only to realize they're busting tournaments left and right. On the other hand, you have guys like me, who sat down at his first turbo sit n go only to watch the entire game breeze by him like he was standing still.

The key is to find a sweet spot. Know when to pick up the aggression so you can build a stack and stay ahead of the blinds, and not have to resort to a push/fold strategy. We want to have a workable stack that we can use to lean on and abuse other players.

That's what I'm going to help you with now.

Key Differences Between Turbo and Non-Turbo MTTs

The first thing I want to do is point out a couple of differences between a turbo and non-turbo MTT.

Turbo MTTs have 5 minute levels. Standard MTTs have 10-20 minute levels.
Antes are in play a half hour into a turbo MTT. Antes are in play 1-1.5 hours into a standard MTT.
Assuming you haven't chipped up, you'll reach a level where you have 10-15 big blinds in 30 minutes in turbo MTTs. It takes about an hour to reach that level in standard tournaments.

What you want to take away from this isn't so much that turbo MTTs are faster.

That's obvious.

What's important to understand is that mistakes in turbo MTTs compound faster. Make a mistake and you have minutes, maybe seconds before the blinds change and (effective) stack sizes and fold equity shrink. That's unlike a non-turbo tournament where you can make small mistakes and have time to correct them before the blinds go up.

So, with that in mind lets move on to some strategy.

The First Couple of Levels, Nothing is Different

Your turbo MTT strategy should be similar to your non-turbo strategy during the first couple of levels. That's to play relatively tight. The reason why is the same. You start with 100, 150 or 200 big blinds, so picking up a 30 chip pot does little to change that, much less your equity in the tournament. To put this into perspective, picking up the blinds with a 2000 stack increases your stack by 1.5%.

Whoop dee doo.

What we want to do instead is focus on building our fold equity. The image we want to project is that we're tight. We'll use our image/fold equity later on when antes kick in to (successfully) steal the blinds, or shove if we have a short stack (10-15 big blinds). So stick to the top of your range, including hands like pocket pairs, broadways, premium/suited aces, (over-limp) suited connectors, etc.

Since you'll have some downtime during this stage, what I recommend you do is check the win / loss records of everyone at your table using services such as SharkScope or the awesome PokerProLabs - and record their stats. Pay attention to who appears to be good/bad too. All of this will help you to develop ranges for later on.

Ultimately, during the early stages you don't want to overcompensate for the faster levels. You can still widen your hand range some, compared to a non-turbo MTT or even a turbo sit n go. But your primary goal should be to create a tight image so you can use that fold equity in the levels with antes.

Planet Mark's Rec: Seeking out inexperienced opponents will make an immediate difference to your results, especially when it comes to Turbo tournaments. For this reason I strongly recommend you check out the soft tournament fields over at 888 poker. This site has many more recreational / amateur players compared to pros than sites like PokerStars. New players also get up to $88 free to try out the games (in tokens / cash buy-ins, no deposit needed) . See the visibly softer Turbo tournaments at www.888poker.com now!

Turbo Poker Tournament Strategy: Antes = Aggression

The antes in a turbo tournament will kick in about a half hour into the tournament. Assuming you haven't chipped up, your stack will be around 50 big blinds.

This is the time that you want to start picking up the aggression. The pots start to actually matter at this point because of the dead money the antes create. We're not desperate though, so you should still be selective based on position, your opponent and effective stack sizes. But go ahead and start opening a wider range of hands to steal from middle to late position. I prefer to open hands that still have some equity (potential) if I'm called. For example, I'll open Ax, Kx and even Qx suited hands, anything that might have high card / showdown value and the occasional suited connector.

Once you get a few levels (with antes) in, the pots are big enough to justify 3-betting your opponents. This is a great move to make to build your stack. If called you can just c-bet the flop and often times you'll pick up a large pot. Reshoves are very effective, too. You'll want to have your ranges dialed in, though, and I don't recommend reshoving until the pots make up 20% of your stack, or more.

Speaking of reshoves, you'll want to be aware of stack sizes to your left when you open hands. Players with 15-20 big blinds are going to look for opportunities to build their stack (or stay alive), and will shove on you with a wide range of hands, especially if you're stealing the blinds frequently. To counter this you'll want to open less, opening with hands you can call off with. But don't keep opening/folding -- that will chip away at your stack quickly.

If you're on the short side yourself (around 10-18 big blinds), don't sit on your hands. Find a good spot and shove. Waiting around does you absolutely no good. The smaller your stack the less fold equity you have. The increasing (turbo) blinds are bad enough as is. Don't make it harder for yourself.

The last thing I wanted to point out is to always check the blind levels to see when they're going up next. Sometimes you'll want to make a wider shove because the blinds are going up in 30 seconds and/or they're going up and you're going through the blinds next hand. So you'll want to shove wide to maintain your fold equity for when the blinds increase.

Late Stages - Before the Final Table (Bubble)

During the late stages your strategy is going to depend on several things. Things like your (effective) stack sizes, your position in relation to certain opponents and your stack size in relation to the other stacks. You need to pay attention to all of this. It's going to affect your opening/stealing strategy, as well as who you can lean on.

Overall, my strategy going into the later stages is the same. Reshove, steal and selectively play pots to build my stack. One thing to add to this list is isolating short stacks. That's another good way to build your stack. However, it's important to have stats/reads on these players so your ranges are close. Isolating short stacks with incorrect reads will do just as much harm as good.

Our goal at this point is to build our stack so we can lean on medium sized stacks during tense situations of the tournament, such as the money and/or final table bubble. We also don't want to get to the final table and be short and desperate. Not if we can help it, at least.