About half way through the sit and go tournament, you should have a rather accurate profile of your remaining opponents. Whether you do this by intuitive observation or use a poker calculator like a holdem indicator that tracks key player attributes for you, the information can be the same way to train your opponents in the last stages of a tournament, especially when the action heads up.
If you’ve been playing yourself to the head of contention , then that’s good for you. You have out-going 7 or 8 others with a bit of luck, luck and hopefully some skill too. The thing is, now the stage is set to dynamic play in that a good number of hands won from here on in, will have little to do with your hand strength, as opposed to position, stack size, and blind level.
If the blinds are high and your stack is low, you’re basically looking for an all-in-one chance. I’ll be waiting for a Sklansky Group 4 hand, maybe 5 or better, basically strategizing for live cards and undominated up matches. In this place, it is a very good practice to know what some of the key scenarios match up.
When short stacked, I play passively, either folding or checking for aggression. If you allow your opponent to be aggressive most of the time, you can trap him into underdog hands. Whether you win or lose a hand should not matter to you. You’ve done your job as little pile as you can. It’s kind of like holding a pocket knife under your leather jacket. He can’t exactly see what you’re up to, but just at the right moment, you scare him out of his wits, then he’ll be more careful than you second hand.
When you stack big, you should raise most hands, especially off the button. And I mean – the most hands on. Which inherently means you’re going to play weak, even hole cards don’t make sense. hand strength therefore, should only come into play when your opponent chooses to call your raise, or reraise your raise.
If he’s just a call and the flop gives some hope, like say a draw or pair, then you’ll either use your chips here to take him out of the pot, or use your odds and your math skills or your poker calculator to determine your odds of winning the hand should you need to. contact all opponents in the bet. Your main strategy here is to basically take your opponent’s breath away. Sooner or later they will all be low-handed, and you will do your job as the commander in the table.