Poker Tournament Late Stage Strategy

• 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.
• Now some poker tournaments allow late registration on Day 2 where you sit down with 25 big blinds or less and many professional players consider it the optimal strategy to buy in late. Made day 2 of #EPTBarcelona 10k high roller with 25 bbs on one bullet.

Like a single table Texas Holdem tournament, a multi table tournament is depicted by three stages: An early, middle and late stage, all of which you must adjust your strategy to. There is a difference however. Strategy that is played in a single table Texas Holdem tournament is played a lot more extremely in a multi-table tournament. Deep Stack Tournament Strategy. Because deep stack tournaments run differently to regular online tournaments you need to slow down your game. The first thing noticeable in deep stack tournaments (e.g. WSOP) is that aggressive players who are not used to the format will make too many re-raises and all-in moves pre-flop. If you play a decent amount of tournament poker, chance are you’ll often find yourself with a stack ranging from 8-25 BBs (big blinds) when the tournament has gotten down to about 20% of the starting field. When you are in this spot, there are two questions you absolutely need to know the answer to.

Late Stage Tournament Strategy

Your strategy needs to be related to where you want to finish. You can play tight-agressive (TAG) for an ITM finish.

If you’re playing to win however you’ll need to play more loose-agressive (LAG) and take bigger risks, for example, shoving pocket pairs early.

In small tournaments e.g. Full Tilt’s 180 man MTTs, I always recommend a LAG approach – mostly because the prizes are so top heavy. Similarly, in satellite tournaments or Steps tournaments there is far more emphasis on a coming 1st and playing loosely.

Big Stack, Mid Stack and Small Stack Strategy

Play according to your stack size. Big stacks with over 30xBBs should play agressively and make use of blind-steals, squeeze play and bluffing. You need to bully small stacks sitting on the blinds and don’t be afraid to call them down pre-flop when you’ve got a marginal hand like suited connectors or high Ace.

Mid stack players with a stack between 15 – 30BBs need to play slightly tighter than a deep stack but still bully small stack players take advantage of other tight players in the same position. You shouldn’t be pre-flop shoving so much from early position without quality hands, but stealing and re-stealing is still really important. Most action should come from mid-late position and very importantly you need to avoid becoming pot-committed against deep stack opponents. There are more cost effective ways to build chips then getting into pre-flop coinflips vs chip leader.

Let’s be honest – small stack players need a miracle at this point. If you have less than 10xBBs than you really need to be jamming your top 50% of hands as early as possible. This article moving all-in as a short stack is a good read – it identified what hands to move all-in with. Most of your game at this point will depend on luck and taking big risks.

Keep Stealing/Defending the Blinds

The value of blinds (and antes) is massive and that makes pre-flop pots important to steal.

I try to steal the blinds as often as possible from position and take advantage of tight/weak players on the blinds. As long as you’re raising or bluffing with hands that have “outs” (suited connectors for example) you can still get called and hit a monster.

Defending blinds needs to be adressed. To defend blinds properly you need to be re-raising or folding to loose opponents. Calling is a big No No because you’re totally out of position and it’s very unlikely you’ll can catch up. Read playing/defending blinds for more details.

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Using a Poker HUD on the Final Table

Well-timed aggression and a poker HUD is essential to beat the final table. You gotta know what your opponents are 3betting or re-raising with and their positional hand range. I honestly believe poker tools are the most important factor to the outcome of your play. A successful player using a strong tool like HUD or Poker Office will be better equipped to break down their opponent’s style and shoving hands.

Most pots will go down pre-flop because of the size of the blinds and antes. This leaves little room for what I call “real poker” and your advantage at this stage will come from knowing players’ starting hand ranges and 3bet hands.

Poker Tournament Late Stage Strategy Tactics

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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.

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.

Poker Tournament Late Stage Strategy Games

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.

Poker Tournament Late Stage Strategy 2019

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.

Poker Tournament Late Stage Strategy 2020

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Section Contents: Dominating the Late Stage of a Poker Tournament

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