Mike Sexton – Here’s My Crucial Advice For Navigating The Mid and Late Stages Of A Tournament

On May 11, 2014 – PartyPoker is having a guaranteed $500k tournament.  Click here for more details and how to enter and over the next few upcoming weeks I’ll be providing you all with some pointers on how to help survive these long tournaments.

Half Way There Buddy…

Okay listen up last time around I talked about how to crush the early stages of any tourney you can read it here. Now it’s the middle levels where players start separating themselves in terms of chip counts.  By now, antes and blinds are worth going after and you could/should be doing that.

You should know how the players at your table are playing and take advantage of that knowledge.  One thing I would tell you – never worry about being a chip leader (or who has the chip lead) during the early/middle stages of a tournament as it means nothing.  If you have average chips, you’re in good shape.  Wouldn’t you love to have average chips at any final table?  I sure would.

Don’t Worry About What’s Going On Over There

Also, NEVER worry about what’s going on at other tables in a tournament.  Just focus on your table.  Understand that if you beat your table, you’ll move forward in the tournament.  Just beat your table and you’ll survive and advance.

2 Places You Need To Take Advantage Of…

There are two places in a tournament where good players take advantage of the situation – and you should too:

1) when you are close to the money bubble and

2) right before the final table.

Good players understand that the vast majority of players tighten up at both of these times in a tournament and they become more aggressive and pick up a lot of blinds and antes.  Most people that get that far want to make the money and thus shut it down close to the bubble and the same applies right before the final table.

Been Caught Stealin’? Never….

Years ago, I was watching ‘Treetop’ Jack Strauss (1982 World Champion) play a big tourney at the Tropicana Hotel in Vegas. Only nine players made the money and there were 10 players left (5 at each table).  They were dealing ‘hand for hand’. Jack was in 8th chip position when they reached 10 players.  He could see no one was playing a hand as they all wanted to make the money.  (They would all fold and look at the other table hoping someone would go broke.)  So, Jack started raising every pot – and I mean every pot (with 8-3, 10-4, J-2, it didn’t matter – and I was sitting two feet behind him and saw all his hands). He just stole pot after pot.

His chip stack kept growing.  Finally, Jack was in the BB and the SB (on the extreme short stack) moved all-in.  Jack looked down, found two Kings, called, and busted the guy. Everyone was high-fiving and as they took a little break, I congratulated Jack on his play and on making the final table and he said, “Mike, I made a big mistake.”  I said, “What are you talking about? You went from 8th place to second chip position by stealing all those pots.”  And he said, “Mike, nobody was playing a hand.  I should have folded the Kings and let him have the pot. I could have stole a lot more money before we got to the final table.”  Now folks, who would even think of that?  That was Jack Strauss – playing above the rim. Good luck to everyone on May 11th!

The brand new partypoker Sunday tournament schedule!

The all new partypoker has introduced a new Sunday tournament schedule. The key changes are the addition of an action-packed fun $10K Super Bounty and a wide range of new low buy-in tournaments featuring the best of the old but also new speed, rebuy, add-on and PLO tournaments – a great Sunday mix if you want to win top prizes and have fun playing tournament poker.

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