Playing the end of a big poker tournament involves some interesting decisions. If you are down to the last few players out of a large field, there is some serious money at stake. The difference between being the next one out and moving up two more spots (possibly to finish first or second) is going to be huge. So how should you play it? Is there a specific strategy that helps give you an edge? Today I am going to discuss what you should do in this situation to maximize your expectation. I just hope you have the heart to follow it.

The money at stake is going to rattle your opponents. You need to not get rattled. You should forget about the money and try to win the tournament. That usually means doing some aggressive gambling to try and win some chips. Being as your opponents figure to be screwed down to extremely tight play, that shouldn’t be too hard.

Your goal is to get a big chip lead and then stop playing for a while. As long as nobody has a big chip lead in the game, you should steal early and often. Make aggressive preflop raises and take stabs at the pot post-flop with reasonable sized bets. If you run into resistance in the form of a raise, give it up. Very often you can start building a decent chip lead this way - as your opponents are probably not going to be in a gambling mood. They are waiting for AK, AQs, or a pocket pair before they do any coin flipping.

If there is a large stack at the table, forget about everybody else and try and double through that person. Start pushing all-in preflop against them with any suited ace, A9+, any pocket pair, and any suited connectors or one-gappers above 3-4. Yes, that means push all-in with 57s as long as you don’t know that you will be called. If your opponent is in there with AK or AQs against you, you still have a 40% chance to win. Even if they catch you while they have a big pocket pair you still have a 20% chance. The fold equity makes the play worthwhile, so make sure you have some when your push.

If your steal attempts fail and you get short-stacked, start pushing preflop with all the hands just mentioned as well. Fold everything else - don’t play KQs or anything like that. Wait for one of these hands and shove preflop.

If you succeed in building a large stack stop playing. That may seem silly to a lot of players, but it is your best move. Don’t click the out button as that is kind of rude. Just sit there and fold everything except aces and kings until the other players knock each other out, and you are even-stacked after a couple more eliminations. That way you can play for first place at the end - where the real money is.

This is a bit of an unorthodox approach, but it’s a heck of a lot better than sitting there scared and waiting for the nuts as the blinds rapidly increase.

Technorati Tags: Poker, Poker strategy, Poker tournament

Online poker is the one form of poker where note-taking can really pay off. That is, assuming you actually use the notes that you take, and further assuming that you took useful notes in the first place! Those are some pretty big assumptions. Most players, even those who consider themselves to be skillful, don’t take useful notes on opponents. If you aren’t going to take notes that help you with critical decisions later on, you are better off not even taking them at all.

And that would be a shame. Because the note-taking feature is largely responsible for what makes online poker so profitable to become skilled at. Now I’ll admit that if you play $.50/1.00 NL at Stars it can be a long time before you see the same player again. But if you get in the habit of taking useful notes it’s only a matter of time before they show up again someday to help you. Think of it as a large pipeline that takes a while to fill, but once it fills up you have something quite valuable.

So how do you take useful notes? Let’s start with what not to do. Don’t classify types of players in your notes. That is not useful. Calling them a fish or a maniac in no way helps you the next time you play them. Besides, they may not even be in the same mood then, or might not have had as many drinks next time. Don’t waste your time doing that.

What you want to do is record what they did in a critical situation without including any kind of bias or colorful comment. In other words, keep your notes spin-free. The reason for this is that you simply won’t appreciate your own humor or slants down the line when you need help making a critical decision. Here are some examples of useful notes:

• Called a large all-in preflop raise with AQs

• Collected bullets the whole session

• Called his stack off with one pair

• Folded & showed set to a bet w/ 4-flush on board

See the difference? No matter what frame of mind you are in next time you find one of these players in your game, you will be able to formulate strategies against them based on your notes alone. That gives you an instant edge which might otherwise take quite a while to develop.

Technorati Tags: Poker, Online poker

If you are a serious online poker player you no doubt have a Poker Stars account. The largest online poker site in the world is also the best, for a variety of reasons. For one thing the game selection is unbeatable, which is the number one concern of a professional online poker player. The second concern is the rake, and not by coincidence Stars also has the lowest overall rake. There isn’t a whole lot of reason to play anywhere else, truth be told.

But the real attraction here are the tournaments. It doesn’t take an online poker player very long to realize that MTT’s are where the real money is in online poker. You simply aren’t going to have a $20,000 payday any other way (outside of being one of those rich knuckleheads who play the really high stakes games). Besides this, tournaments are a better deal than cash games. If you are selective in which ones you enter you will have an automatic edge in every one that you enter. This is very difficult to do in cash games because of the rake.

When in comes to MTT’s the bigger they are the better for the serious player. This may run counter-intuitive for some, as large fields seem like a lottery at first glance. But it’s the large fields that create the overlay, as many people simply have no chance of cashing whatsoever. Also, the tournaments shrink at an exponential rate so all the extra tables really do is sweeten the prize pool. Just play smart and hit your hands and you’ll be fine - which is what you must do in a smaller tournament anyway, so you may as well play for a heck of a lot more prize money.

Here are the best ones for your buck:

• Daily $32,000 at 12:00 noon EST ($20+2)

• Daily $80,000 at 3:00 pm EST ($50+5)

• Nightly $70,000 at 10:00 pm EST ($10+1 with rebuys)

…and of course the huge Sunday tournaments with the bigger buyins, which you may need to satellite your way into.

Then there’s the special events like the WCOOP and the January Caribbean Adventure. You’ll want to keep an eye on these and play satellites for them as the events approach. Scoring a high finish in one of these special events should be your ultimate goal, using the dailies as a stepping stone. If you do well in the dailies your bankroll should finance them comfortably. Even if your satellite efforts fail, you might want to buy into some of the special events directly.

Technorati Tags: Poker, Poker stars, Poker tournaments, Poker strategy, Online poker