Decided that as I had been playing very little poker recently I would find a cheap buy in on Coral and try my hand. Also I wasn’t wanting to watch England v Kosovo and listen to chants of “Are you Scotland in disguise” from English fans.
I picked a 5 Euro Mega Deepstack, 50K starting chips, with 7 minute blinds and almost immediately found myself 15K down due to having AA beaten by Q 10 off. I slowly recovered having hit nothing but c-betted quite aggressively.
As seems to happen I hit a short but very productive streak. It`s great when someone pushes all in on a 7 high flop when you are holding pocket 7s. Over valuing AK off again. I also had AA twice in two rounds.
With almost 2.5 hours of late registration it was always going to be a long night but eventually after more than 3.5 hours I hit the money…. A profit of 1.35Euros. 36 places paid from 197 starters and quite a lot of re-entries
By midnight I had made the final table and was guaranteed at least a profit of…… 16Euros. At this point I was sitting second and feeling very comfortable. My JJ held out against two players with AK off and suddenly there were 4 players left with me having over 50% of the chips.
This is where I need some help. I tried to be aggressive with my stack but saw it dwindle away as I was re-raised on a number of occasions post flop. My natural inclination is to play tight but with blinds and antes so high I was needing to get involved with moderate hands. With 3 players left and some extended play I found myself in 3rd from being a massive chip leader. I would welcome some advice from the Group on better strategies in this position.
I got lucky hitting a straight on the turn and finding an opponent who did not believe my all in shove. Eventually I finished heads up with chips flowing both ways and as there is no mechanism for a deal on Coral we both got it all in on a 5,6,8 flop with 2 spades and me holding 6,7 suited, not spades, the baddie called my all in with J3 of spades. I was ahead at the turn but of course the 4 of spades comes on the river completing both our hands and I finish in second for a profit 116Euros. Not bad when all I wanted to do was avoid watching football. I suppose I could look at this as being able to avoid the next 23 Scotland or England internationals
So here comes the questions:
In these types of tournaments, given the payout structure, should the strategy be super aggressive to build up a stack early or go out and therefore not wasting too much of your time?
How do you successfully ladder up without your stack becoming low?
As chip leader should I try to use my stack bully the table or continue playing the game that got me there?
All advice gladly taken
