I find this situation very frustrating when i'm in it. Last night for instance i was about 10th in chips with about 20k blinds 500/1000, 80 of around 600 runners left, top 60 get paid (although weighting very much favoured to the top places). My table consisted of about 4 players with very similar stack sizes to my own ranging from 15k-30k biggest, and the other 5 stacks ranging from around 4k-10k.
Every hand followed the same pattern, one of the small stacks went all in and with little joy at picking up anything reasonable i could not call. It seems that no one has any guts, someone must have picked up at least a reasonable hand as clearly the small stacks were pushing with any kind of mediocre hand and hoping their aggression got rewarded.
Tournament then followed its usual pattern, i was playing for the win because of the prize structure, a small stack went in, i called half my stack with Aq and was then raised by the big stack (great!) he turns over ak and spiked a king (small stack had a4!!!). came in 57th and got paid the mighty sum of $31 for my $15 buy in after about 3.5 hours play.
After playing these tournaments constantly for the last 2 years my advice would be to limp in at every oppotunity early on when the blinds are small with creative little pairs or connectors and just try build a monster stack so calling peoples all ins just becomes a joy as they cannot damage your monster stack. every tournament seems to be hugely weighted money wise to the top end so coming in 5th 5 times is no where near as good as 1 victory so take the risk and take it down!!!
Aggression in the middle of the tourney is definitely essential, especially against other big stacks as they know you can damage them and normally will fold unless they have already committed a large propotion of their stack!  |