It goes without saying that as an MTT player, the late stages of the tournament are when it really starts to matter. It’s not just the final table, either – depending on the size of the tournament, you may find that the dynamics change with as many as 100 players left. So how can you take advantage of this shift in playing styles to ensure the highest possible ROI for yourself? Here’s a look at a few ways.
What is it that makes applying pressure profitable?
First, we have to understand why it is that we can make additional profit by applying pressure. The main reason is simply that most players in your average tournament – particularly at low stakes – are likely to be tighter than they would usually be in spots where their tournament life may be at risk, either immediately or at some future point in the hand.
This is less true in the case of professionals or high-volume grinders, since they play a lot of tournaments and will be more accustomed to the the late-stage environment. However, most recreational players simply don’t have a great amount of experience in the late game, and are too results-focused – they would rather fold their way into a decent score for a 15th place finish than risk the disappointment of a bustout in 35th for a smaller cash.
Thus, recreational players should be the target of our aggression wherever possible – when we have the right kind of stack size to push them around, we should be looking to do so relentlessly. Their desire not to bust the tournament will be guiding the majority of their decisions (at least, in the case of most recreational players – some have a little more gamble in them), so we can certainly start taking advantage of that factor.
Making bigger raise sizings preflop
Ordinarily most people will keep their preflop sizing within the 2x-2.25x range for the bulk of situations in the MTT late game, but there are times when this can be to our detriment. As a big stack or medium stack in the late game, it’s in our interests to create spots where there is an increased likelihood of smaller stacks having to put in their whole stack if they choose to play a hand, so bigger sizing can benefit us greatly.
If we make it a simple 2x minraise, players in late position have the freedom to flat-call fairly liberally, and the big blind gets to defend with a wide range and realize some equity in an attempt to double up. But if we were to make it, say, 2.5x or even 2.75x, then the eventual pot is likely to become 20-30% bigger than it would have been if we minraised, and this will cause stacks shorter than our own to play significantly more cautiously.
It also cuts down on the frequency with which players can 3-bet light versus us – a player with a 30bb stack might feel comfortable making a 3-bet to 5.5x or 6x over a 2x open, but that same player might find it more difficult being comfortable making a 7x or 8x 3-bet bluff. By the same token, we can also size our 3-bets bigger – versus weaker players, we can even adopt a very unbalanced strategy of 3-betting bigger as a bluff and smaller for value.
Firing more barrels postflop
It almost goes without saying that we should show greater postflop aggression in these situations. C-betting the majority of flops in spots where we do go postflop, being less orientated towards pot control, and recognizing that big pots are going to create more difficult turn and river spots for our opponent are all crucial factors.
Imagine a spot where you raise to 2.7x preflop, get called by the big blind, they check-call a 40% of pot c-bet, and then fold to a 60% of pot turn bet. Based on the eventual pot you would drag in when this line is successful, it needs to produce this exact result 65% of the time in order to win about 7 big blinds of profit, and that’s assuming we have zero equity in the pot whatsoever, which is obviously never true if we’re thinking about our whole range.
If we add an 80% of pot river barrel to the equation, then the three-barrel line only needs to get through roughly 71% of the time in order for you to capture roughly 17 big blinds of profit without needing a showdown, and that’s not even considering the times you three-barrel for value and win a huge pot. These pots can be invaluable in helping you to build a stack going into the final table.
Bluffing with a greater portion of your range
When we get to spots where a showdown is possible, we will often be evaluating these spots in terms of where our current hand sits in our range. In situations where we have a hand close to the bottom of our range, it usually benefits us to bluff in a great number of situations, particularly on the river. However, in these late stage spots, our opponents’ tendencies to fold the middle parts of their range rather than making ‘hero-calls’ can lead us to want to bluff with a greater frequency.
Take a spot where we get to the river with a third-pair type hand. This might be a spot where we would expect to win at showdown with some frequency, depending on the board. In the late game, however, we might decide to turn this hand into a bluff in order to get our opponent to fold some of their second-pair or even weak top pair hands, and take advantage of our increased fold equity at this stage. This is particularly true in spots where we might consider employing large overbets on the river – it’s very difficult to call off a 1.5x pot bet with second pair when the pot represents a big chunk of your stack.
That old Doyle Brunson cliché…
Finally, it’s worth revisiting an old cliché that still holds a lot of weight – the great Doyle Brunson once said that “they key to No-Limit Hold’em is to put a man to a decision for all of his chips”. This is never more true than in tournament poker, where calling off your tournament life sometimes means coming up short in a quest for glory or a big score.
If you can improve your grasp on the spots where you can apply psychological pressure to your opponents and force them into situations where their willingness to trust in their own game and make a tough decision is called into question, you’ll be able to force mistakes out of even some very good players. Depending on the tournament, even the best players can crack when the pressure is on. Just make sure you’re not one of them.