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It doesn’t get much better in poker than to reach fi nal table play as the big stack. However, there’s a big difference between coming to the fi nal table with the chip lead and knowing how to use your stack to take control of the fi nal stages of a tournament.
There are many players who don’t slow down once they reach the fi nal table with a big stack — I’m not one of them. By the time I reach the fi nal table, I’ll have already played a number of hands against about half of the other remaining players. I’ll have developed reads on their games and they’ll have done the same with me, which makes this a good time to switch gears. If I’ve been hammering away aggressively before the fi nal table, I’ll often slow things down and be much more selective as the fi nal table begins. This way, players might bust themselves against me by over-committing their chips in a spot where they think I’m being a bully although I’ve really got a hand.
Even more important to my success here, however, is that I begin paying very close attention to the size of my opponents’ stacks. I want to know who’s likely to be playing conservatively in order to try and move up a few spots, and who is shortstacked and looking to get chips in the middle with any two cards. I’m more likely to play pots against the conservative players and avoid the gamblers.
Let’s say the majority of the players are sitting on somewhere between 40 and 50 big blinds each, but the short stack only has about 15 big blinds in front of him. He’s going to be looking for any chance he can to double up, which means I’m not going to raise his blinds unless I’m holding a hand that allows me to comfortably call his all-in reraise. While doubling up the short stack probably doesn’t hurt me in the long run, it’s simply not worth risking chips that I can put to better use against other opponents.
When there’s a logjam of players who all have about equal size stacks, I’m willing to play a fairly wide range of hands against them, so long as I’m in position. For example, say I’m chip leader with about 100 blinds, and a smaller stack with about 40 blinds open-raises for three times the big blind. I’ll call this raise from the button or from late position with hands like 4-5 suited, 7-9 suited, or J-10 suited if I think I can pick up the pot after the fl op.
I know that I’m not often going to fl op anything better than a single pair – if I connect at all – when I call with these kinds of hands. Yet I’m still comfortable making this play because I know my opponent will miss often enough that I can steal the pot with a post-fl op bet. This is especially true against players who completely shut down their games if they miss the fl op, because I can use my big stack to force them to commit a sizeable portion of their stack if they want to contest the pot.
When I do decide to play against the short stacks on the fi nal table, I’m looking to do so from position and with hands that aren’t going to be easily dominated. If I don’t have to worry about someone entering the pot behind me, I’ll play coin fl ips against the short stack all day long because I know I’ll win enough of these hands over the long run to be profi table.
The times I won’t make this play with my big stack are when I think someone else may try to squeeze me out of the pot by raising all in behind me, or when doubling up the short stack could drop me from being the chip leader back down to an average size chip stack. In these cases, I’ll look for better spots and let the shorter stacks fi ght it out amongst themselves.
While having a large chip stack is a weapon in itself, you’ll get better results if you know how and when to use your stack to your best advantage. Put your stack to good use and apply pressure in the correct situations, and you’ll turn your chips into something much more valuable when the tournament is over.
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