Short Stack at Tournaments

[holdmepoker]

So I've played a few sngs lately and here's the common trend:

Start at $1500. Blinds 10/20

By mid stages I'm sitting on medium size stack (2500-3500) and all is nice and comfy.

By late stages, when the blinds go up to 200-300 (this is with the blinds starting at 10-20), I start going downhill. My mid sized stack drops quite quickly on the face of $300 bbs.

Eventually, in order to avoid being blinded out, I am forced to go all in on just semi decent hands like AJ, KJ, J10 etc and more often than not, I'm out.

Now I know I'm supposed to play my position in later stages and steal blinds with raises when I'm holding semi-decent cards.

But the problem is:

a. I'm not usually the chip leader and am therefore unable to bully most without committing myself dangerously as well.
b. Majority of the times when I have the position in my favour, I get crap cards. 45s, 37o etc. This along with a. prevent me from bluffing too much.

The simple solution seems to be to avoid being below average when going into final rounds. This I've been completely unable to achieve.

How do I change this trend?

Dropping out of money 5-6 times in a row simply because of big blinds is very annoying.

[Garoen]

the solution is to play more loose and aggresive. make a lot of plays on people, accept that sometimes they are slowrolling and you will have to fold turn or river. you will go out a lot. but the payout for making final tables 10% of the time is far greater then going deep 50% of the time. the blind structure does not cater to a tight, smart player (although he may be an extremely profitable cash game player).

[Garoen]

a. I'm not usually the chip leader and am therefore unable to bully most without committing myself dangerously as well.

define dangerously. are you firing back at the raiser while you're oop and have completely whiffed the flop? obviously common sense prevails. there are ways to bluff using position and flop selection to limit your risk.

b. Majority of the times when I have the position in my favour, I get crap cards. 45s, 37o etc. This along with a. prevent me from bluffing too much.

Your poor cards prevent you from bluffing? The core idea here is that these cards are never being turned over. If you've decided to bluff your opponent you're trying to represent the best hand. obviously its nice to connect in some way (ex. holding 4-5 suited on a J-4-6 board) but not neccesary imho.

[jimmer]

If you read Harrington on Holdem volume 2, he explains your problem in great detail. It's all about Q's and M's and not making your M drop too low.

I will explain the basics to you, but not now as I have to catch my train.

Start finding the tight players as well.

Some players like to fight for the blinds, others will fold with the sniff of a raise. Learn who theses players are and target them.

[holdmepoker]

Learn who theses players are and target them.

But... that's ME!!!

In any case, I await the summary of Harrington's book.

Thanks for the advice so far.

[jimmer]

I admit this is probably not explained as well as it could.

The basic principle is quite simple. For now, just ignore the “Qâ€