Mid-late stage in the open

F_Ivanovic

OK basically I have no idea how to play these mid-late stages in tourneys.

I'm mainly a cash player and do v. well at i but would like to improve my tourney play. I start off great more times than I can remember and hovering in the top 20 for long periods of time but when it gets down to about 100 left I too often monkey off my chips.. often by being too aggro pre in stealing the blinds and then not being able to fold vs a shove because I'm then getting the odds to call half the time (I think :S )

And then if I lose one hand through that and half my chip stack I usually go on a mini-aggro tilt which never ends well lol

YoungUn

My initial thought would go towards the raise size. In those stages of a tournament I like to bring my PF raise size down to 2.5xBB. Usually you'll find that at the start of the tournament this raise size wouldnt work too well as people always look for an excuse to play, but in the mid-late stages of the game people are looking for excuses NOT to play, so you can get away with stealing for less chips. This should stop you from feeling pot-committed into calling the shove (although it could be argued that you should be aware of the fact that you'll feel pot-committed before you raise) and also if you get someone who's bad enough to just call from the blinds, your c-bet will be significantly less than if you made a standard raise.

You also say you "think" you get the odds to call; by general rule of thumb if I'm getting 3-1 I call with any 2 (so long as we're HU), but as that doesn't happen too often I tend to think what % would I be to win the majority of the time? Eg if I had 78 and get shipped on (as long as the shove was fairly short) they're going to have 2 overs most of the time and so i'm rarely going to be worse then 35%-40%, so i'm looking for at least 3/2. Though i'd expect you to have that basic knowledge in calculating equity?

My primary thought, though, is not to worry about it too much. The structure of the Open is such that you shouldn't be too concerned with your results as in those stages you just have to be a rack or avoid a cold-deck to progress. My advice would be to not play it, but thats only because I almost never play it myself

beaneh

lol ivan learn to resteal and not open it's all about stack sizes and not about your hand. On sky who cares just open shove AQ+, 99+ lol