Over the last couple of days I’ve made my first two videos for the training site www.pokersavvy.com. The first one I made yesterday followed my run in the Tilt $150 and 30 rebuys as well as whatever random tables I brought over. The $150 is a pretty wild video since I’m in the 5-12 BB range almost the entire video and every chance I get to get a hold of some serious chips I get 3 outed down to 1.5 BB’s (seriously it happened twice and I just kept sucking out to come back) and arrive at the final table with all of 4 BB’s, swearing about how stupid it all is. Today’s video goes on a much more smooth ride as I turned it on with about 8 left in the UB 30 rebuys and ended up winning the tournament for just under $5,000.

Meanwhile Kyle (Edmond Dantes) has made coming out to the LAPC as alluring as possible in order to promote the new ‘Live at the Bike’ internet video feed we’ll be doing. To be honest though I’m pretty exhausted of travel and I told myself after getting home from Gold Coast that I’d really settle in and start doing some very serious tournament grinding, which having done so has been a major success. I think I’m up something like ~$8,000 this week, though considering how many tournaments I play anything from 6-10,000 wouldn’t surprise me. Besides, I have the Joe Hachem $2500 deep stacked semi shoot out event on Wednesday and Valentines Day on Thursday. Besides, I have flabby pounds to shed and sitting around on my ass in a plane and at the poker table all day isn’t going to help.

Meanwhile I finally got to see ‘There Will Be Blood’ last night, the last of the ‘best picture’ nominees I had yet to see. The film is both miniature and enormous, and highly metaphorical, but is so violent and gritty that it never comes off pretentious. Day-Lewis deserves all the awards he’s got coming this year, though the film is certainly not for those who only see films for the relaxing, escapist amusement they so often are. ‘Blood’ is a very serious film almost entirely devoid of amiable characters, a film where the characters spend so much time spewing hate and violence at each other that you could never think of naming anyone in the film ‘the good guy’.

Meanwhile, Dhubermex, who does the Podcast interviews for www.pocketfives.com has asked me consider writing two articles a month for them. As much as I enormously enjoy creative writing (especially if it results in my attention whoring side being lauded) the one thing I get concerned with is being repetitive or unoriginal. Even though I was quite happy with how ‘The JJ Diaries’ turned out, I get the feeling that all my comedic writing thus far (outside the ‘upcoming live poker article’) has been very similar. Outside writing an ‘upcoming live poker part 2’ as soon as the APPT schedule comes out, I’m not sure I’d write anything comedic again unless something really jumped out at me or I had some idea of how to do something in an entirely different style.

As far as strategy writing goes though, the ‘things it took me a while to learn’ series will certainly continue for quite some time, as there are so many facets of tournament poker strategy we can delve into, as well as the potential to do a number of articles that are nothing but example hands to clarify certain points. I’m in the process of writing part 15 on table image and I imagine that will get finished either tonight or two days from now (seeing as tomorrow is Sunday in the states I can’t see having enough energy or being in the mood to write afterwards.) Even strategy though is a little tougher to write than before. When I started the series I had some very concrete ideas about what I wanted to write about, the most obvious flaws in play I constantly see. At this point we’re running out of major topics to talk about and are soon approaching writing about certain small leaks that need to be plugged.

It seems to me that the vast majority of poker strategy writers are either lazy, hacks, or both. I see so many articles in the largest publications, that even if appealing to beginners, are amazingly shit or repetitive. As much as I have always thought Mike Caro’s book of tells was an excellent piece of work every article he’s written on tells for the past 10 years has been the exact same fucking thing. I read an article in ‘Bluff’ magainze a while ago by ex-FBI agent Joe Navarro, another ‘tells’ guy. In his article he advised players not only go to the poker room to play poker but to simply stand around for a couple hours watching the game and observing peoples tells. ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS??? Whatever tiny EV you gain by knowing peoples tells ahead of time is massively negated considering the opportunity cost by not playing at the same time you are watching people. Besides, tells are clearly the most exaggerated piece of poker strategy in the history of the game. Technical and mathematical knowledge is oh, I don’t know, about 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times more important than knowing if some guys pupils dilating slightly shifts his ranges weight towards the stronger end. Looking at that number again, I’m probably missing several lines of zeros.

Sometimes I think the majority of poker literature out there is published by a big group of guys who got together and decided “Well, we better not let the fish get their hands on any good information. Let’s publish the same shit over and over and over until we’ve reinforced all those terrible habits to the absolute maximum and we’ll all be rich forever! HAHAHAHAHA!” I imagine they all then ate several live puppies.

My imagination brings up another important question, am I ‘tapping the glass’ too much? By making quality information (though yes, I’m sure some of it is flawed in some regards) available for free and putting it in the area where the absolute maximum amount of unskilled but wanting to learn players will look, am I only hurting my own and other good players bottom lines? Maybe, maybe ever so slightly. Assuming anything more would be highly arrogant about my own writing prowess, the quality of my strategy, and the audience I reach. It’s not like staying ahead of the curve is all that hard. Besides, for every one guy who wants to learn and incorporates said information into his play, there’s 100 more that will either never find it or even if they do completely fail to understand or execute it. The final table I made today was a perfect example of that, I mean holy God every single player on that table was just totally incompetent about so many aspects. As far as I can tell, over the last six months tournaments have gotten softer, not tougher. Sure there was a stage post UIGEA where it did seem like they were getting a bit tougher, but the paranoia about that has died down and there’s way more tournaments with big fields today than I could have ever imagined a year ago. Just look at the 100 rebuys on Sunday, that thing used to get like 200-250 players. A few months later and the thing is getting 500 fucking guys! That’s just insane to me.

Anyway, my would be 1 page blog entry has turned into a four and a half page rant. Tomorrow is Sunday which means I need to get to bed early, and I’ve got some very serious Halo 3 to play before bed time.

I recently did my post Aussie Millions numbers for my deal with Timex. Going into the Aussie Millions I was in fact not the player with the largest make up, and there was another threatening behind me, though with the guy in the lead making a solid cash in EPT Dortmund I may have overtaken him now. For the time being the make up’o meter grand total sits at….$121,122 US dollars.

Seeing as I don’t have any very serious live poker series coming up until the World Series in June-July I can’t imagine that number will change all that much unless I get very lucky in one of the small APPT events leading up or the $2500 Hachem deep stack series coming up next week. Outside that there’s not enough opportunities to think I can take a major dent out. Not that Timex minds of course, having just won something like 1.3 million fucking dollars over in Germany I’m pretty sure he’s way to busy running around the hallways of his mansion screaming “I’M RICH, I’M RICH! HAHAHAHAHA!” then diving into a pool filled with 100’s to be bothered by my miniscule losses.

Outside the make up I added up my finances and came up a few thousand shorter than I thought there’d be. To be honest that vacation was likely a bad idea, and the more I think about it the more I realize I really hate being away from poker/my computer/the internet/easy access to Asian food for that much time. I really need to be concentrating on rebuilding my bankroll after having broke off with Rob (my original online backer) and the expenses that live poker incurs. This time last year I did nothing but hide out in an apartment in the middle of nowhere in Shanghai playing online poker all day with nothing to distract me. That seems like a good idea at this point since I made a ton of money over that period and this time I’ll get to keep all of it. Unfortunately, it is going to be required of me to do some more serious travel previous to the WSOP, which is a whole other potential nightmare.

As a result I’m forcing myself into a pretty grueling routine for both poker and my health. From the point I wrote the blog entry ‘Hey Fatass’ up until I went to Macau my fitness level had done nothing but get better and I was really starting to feel like my old self. After all the travel and big dinners with friends and nights of casual drinking I’ve now slipped into arguably the worst shape of my life and I’m not going to tolerate it. From now on my routine looks something like:
Up at 10am, go running for ~20 minutes. Get home, do abdominal routine.
10:30am, shower, have breakfeast.
11am through ~8pm, play poker. Try to win money.
8pm, hit the gym for an hour.
9pm, have dinner.
After dinner I’m free to do as I like, and I imagine I’ll mostly do something like see movies, study poker, or write. I need to be asleep by 1am in order to get an appropriate and healthy amount of sleep. I’m not going to let any late nights, travel, or desire for enormous Indian restaurant meals get in the way of this. I’m going to get in much better shape and I’m going to push my bankroll over the six figure mark. And one of these days I’m actually going to get rid of that make up.

This is odd. I almost never write a real blog entry, the kind where I ramble about what I’ve been doing with my life and what I’ll be doing upcoming. For the last week I’ve been on vacation in the Gold Coast and an island off Brisbane. It was pretty good though to be honest I don’t much like being away from poker, my computer, and my favorite Asian restaurants that long. I arranged it so I got back in time for the FTOPS which starts up tomorrow morning. I got home from the vacation and found out my new horse Charlie has won something like $8000 on the stake I gave him, essentially doubling the roll I gave him only a few weeks ago. I also managed to sneak in a few tournaments during the break since I’m incapable of going entirely without, and in my one day of play managed to win about $4,000.

Meanwhile I’ve been asked to come do guest videos at Pokersavvy where fellow MTTC’ers Jurollo and Ansky put up videos. I’m pretty excited to get involved with a training site as I feel like that seems like the next logical step in providing education to the poker community, though I’ll still put out the things it took me a while to learn articles for free.

The Joe Hachem deep stacked series is coming up as well, and the $2500 two day 6 max is one of my most anticipated events of the entire poker year considering how soft the field promises to be and the awesome structure that goes along with it. That’s a week from today and hopefully I finally run good in a liveament without a Q3s related implosion.

Outside that the reception to my JJ diaries parody article has been pretty good, but outside doing another ‘upcoming live poker article’ I doubt I’ll be doing anything really satirical or parody angled for a little while since I can kind of feel the well running dry on funny ideas. I’m also attempting to write my entire Aussie Millions trip report into one weaving story, a trip report epic if you will, called ‘There Will Be Spew’. I’m about a quarter done at this point, though I have a lot of time to write coming up since I won’t be doing any travel for two months. Outside that I’ll be doing a lot of online play, posting on 2+2, strategy writing, and of all things, updating this blog with more real blog entries. How odd.

Authors Note: After having read Ansky’s inspiring post I realized too long had I stood by and done nothing about the online cheating situation. I decided to take the initiative and do what I always do in these situations, make fun of everyone and everything involved. I give you ‘The JJ Diaries’, enjoy.

First Entry, January 01, 2006: I’ve decided at the start of this near year that I, Josh “JJProdigy” Field, online pokers best donkamenter, should keep a diary to track my tournament success. I’ve had a wonderful 2005 and I really feel 2006 is going to be a break out year for me, I’m going to win thousands in tournaments, get my braces off, and maybe just maybe break the five foot mark without having height enhancing shoes. This diary will log the people I meet, the tournaments I play, and everything that happens in my daily life. Talk to ya soon diary!

February 12th, 2006: Today started out wonderful. I fired up the Sunday tournaments and logged in my forty-seven accounts into the Party Poker Sunday major. One of my accounts, ‘Ablackcar’ managed to take down the win for $140,000! : ) ! Unfortunately, near the end of the tournament some ass wipe leaked onto to 2+2 that it was me on the account! Luckily I came up with an incredibly clever explanation, it was my grandmother playing on the account. I think it’s the perfect explanation, I mean whose grandmother doesn’t play online poker? Everyone 80+ I know is online non stop, using phrases like “IMO” “TTYL” and “LOL donkaments” in their daily lives. Surely all those stupid idiots on the forums will fall for this.

February 17th, 2006: They didn’t fall for it. Those big mean jerks took all my money! Like Party Poker really needs the money more than I do!!! God this is so totally unfair, I run sooooooo bad. I’ve had $180,000 confiscated, been demoded on 2+2, and all my friends won’t talk to me anymore. What could I possibly have done to deserve this? I mean seriously, multi accounting is not that big a deal, white collar criminals steal from their companies all the time and their friends never stop talking to them! Well from this point forward I will make those assholes pay for what they did to me. I’ll multi account and account buy on such an enormous scale I’ll have 80% of the entries in every Sunday major online! I’ll buy every account at the final three tables and check raise myself for the rest of the tournaments! I’ll show those stupid investigative assholes who the fucking man is! Or is it whom the man is? My computer is putting that little green squiggly line under who. Fuck it! I’ve got tournaments to play and/or buy!

August 8th, 2007: So I haven’t written in here for a while, but I guess it’s pretty hard to do when I’m 87 tabling so often. Getting new accounts has been going perfectly, and I’ve got GB ‘slave boy’ Mantis, as I like to call him, to set everything up for me. He’s a good little bitch and I throw him a bone of knowledge every now and then, though I don’t think it’s helping. Today I had my biggest success so far, one of the various donks I back, Plattsburgh, went deep in the FTOPS 300 rebuys. Watching him play before I took over made me wonder what the fuck I was thinking backing him, but once he got deep enough to interest me I ‘took the controls’ if you will. I crushed those donks and showed the bastard ‘Menlo’ who the real tourney superstar is, even if he never finds out about it. I ended up winning $209,793 for the first, my biggest win, and there’s no chance it gets confiscated this time. I’m such a genius, it’s beautiful. God, now if only I could break the five foot mark already!

December 22, 2007: I realized today it’s getting pretty close to my 18th birthday and the PCA. I can’t wait to play live poker and destroy all those stupid donks, too bad I can’t buy anyone’s stack deep in the tournament. It occurred to me that there might be a lot of people really pissed at me in the poker community, so I should put something up on the forums to try and pacify the masses. I wrote this nice long rambling post where I’m all like “oooh yea, I was young and stupid, and I like, totally love the game and shit. I’m like really sorry or something. Probably. I won’t play online again for at least, you know, like a week or something.” All those fucking idiots will totally buy it. I posted it myself over on 2+2 but I had to have ‘slave boy’ throw it up on P5’s since they banned me. I’m pretty sure they’re gonna welcome me back in with open arms. Anyway, I should go ten account the nightly $150 now, bye diary! Write to you next time in the Caribbean!

December 27th, 2007: FUCK!! FUCKING SHAN FUCKING FAT FUCKING BASTARD FUCKING DEEB! YOU STUPID MOTHER FUCKER!! FUCK FUCK FUCK FUUUUUCK!!!YOU STUPID FUCKING BASTARD I’D KICK YOUR FUCKING ASS IF I WASN’T FOUR FUCKING FEET TALL YOU STUPID FUCKING FUCK!! FUCK IT! I’LL JUST GET PLATTSBURGH TO EAT YOU, YOU MEDDLING FUCK!!! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!

December 28th, 2007: Well I guess it was kind of obvious from the last entry that something went wrong. That stupid “wafflecrushing” asshole Shaundeeb went and started a campaign to get me banned from the PCA and those cocksuckers over at PokerStars listened to him. I bet he doesn’t even care that I cheated, I bet he only did it cause he’s worried having me there will cut down on his equity cause he knows I’m the best fucking donkamenter. God, what is a ‘wafflecrush’ anyway??? Instead I’ve decided to head to Australia for the Aussie Millions, where I hear they ride kangaroos to the casino! So cool, I can’t wait!

January 8th, 2008: So I arrived in Australia today, it’s so exciting! I can’t believe I finally get to play big live poker and prove to the world just how good 87 tabling makes you. I get to play in the $1000 rebuys tomorrow, which I feel I should naturally do well in since being able to rebuy is pretty close to having multiple accounts. Wish me luck diary!

January 9th, 2008: I played in the $1000 rebuys today at the Aussie Millions. Early in the day Pokernews interviewer Amanda Leatherman pulled me aside and asked me to do an early interview. She asked me some really tough, sweat inducing questions like “What’s your favorite color?” and “How old are you? Like 12?” I thought things went pretty well and was getting kind of a vibe, so at the end of the interview after they turned the camera off I decided to ask her out. Unfortunately she said she has a policy of only dating men taller than her. So unfair, she’s probably just making excuses, she’s like totally a lesbian or something. I ended up getting seated next to this really talkative and annoying 2+2 mod ‘Bond18’. He wouldn’t shut up about “You shouldn’t cheat anymore, if you don’t this’ll all blow over” blah blah blah blah. I was way too busy being lost in the eyes of Anna Wroblewski, I mean she plays poker, drinks like a sailor, and I think I’m a half an inch taller, what’s not to love! I also got to meet that stupid fuck head Shaundeeb who greeted me with “Hey asshole.” God, what a prick.

January 14th, 2008: So I got invited by Bart Hanson, Joe Sebok, and Gavin Smith to join them on an episode of poker road today. I thought the interview went really great and it went down a little something like this…

Bart: So today we have Josh ‘JJprodigy’ Field with us here today. Josh, thanks so much for coming on the show. You’re the best man, like, I totally love your work. We’re so appreciate of you to come here and you seem like a totally cool guy.

Josh: Thanks Bart.

Bart: So can I get you anything. Coffee?

Josh: No that’s okay.

Bart: We could order you some food, or have one of the masseuses come over and relax you a bit, knead those aching shoulders.

Josh: Nah, I’m okay.

Bart: Or if you like we could have Gavin suck you off.

Josh: Oh yea actually that’d be great.

Bart: Gavin, get to it. Not like you say anything intelligent on this show anyway.

Gavin: Sure thing Bart.

Bart: So Josh, let’s talk about what made you famous. I hear you got caught multi accounting and then just recently came out and apologized for it.

Josh: Yes, yes I did.

Bart: Wow, that must have been very tough for you. It took real maturity to come out and apologize like that. Is there anything you’d like to say to our listeners about the whole incident?

Josh: Yea, I’m probably really sorry about all this. Like totally, my bad here people. Now if everyone could just get the sand out of their vaginas and chill out about this whole thing, not like I’m the only guy whose done it, then I think we can all move on.

Bart: Very well said Josh, Joe, your thoughts?

Joe: Oh, I really don’t know much about this sort of thing.

Bart: You don’t know much about anything do ya Joe?

Joe: Not when it comes to poker Bart.

Bart: Gavin, your thoughts down there?

Gavin: Arh beh dos gahs who toff bah abot youf didy too.

Bart: I think what Gavins trying to say through his obstruction is that he imagines everyone who’s come out and criticized you has probably multi accounted in their day as well, haven’t they Josh?

Josh: Oh almost certainly, like, totally. I’m pretty sure like 90% of 2+2 and P5’s is multi accounting in their spare time, I mean how else do you explain the Stars Million getting like 7000 entrants, do you know 7000 people who play poker?

Bart: Your right, I do not, great point there Josh. Your thoughts here Joe?

Joe: I, I don’t really know.

Bart: Okay then Josh, thanks so much for coming out on the show today. I think you’ve really proven what a stand up guy you are. Is that about it then?

Josh: Nah, give him another minute down there.

I think that interview is going to be a real hit and do a ton to repair my reputation on the forums. Now with the main event coming up hopefully I can solidify my reputation as a player by making a real run at it!

January 15th, 2008: Well, unfortunately I busted in the main event today. I really thought I was gonna make the best of this one, and I tried to buy back in with a fake mustache and glasses but the staff got suspicious and I just ended up running for it before they processed the buy in. I guess it’s back to the online game for me, and with the FTOPS only a few weeks away I think I’ve got a very bright and rich future ahead of me. Until next time diary!

Authors Note: Some of you may notice that part 13 in this series is missing. Part 13 is on the topic of ‘ranges’ and has been finished. Long story short P5’s offered to pay me for articles and I’m A-okay with selling out as long as it doesn’t compromise integrity. So enjoy part 14 while I go blow my money on an unnecessarily expensive shirt.

Classic poker literature circulated an enormous amount if misinformation about playing a chip lead or big stack. Many wrote that when you have so many chips you should avoid confrontation since it’s ‘unnecessary’ and ‘you have time to wait.’ Yet again, strategy like this is complete bullshit. In situations without sizeable $EV considerations you should never pass up + cEV situations, regardless to the size of your stack (yes there are occasionally spots you (although there are occasionally spots where you would pass up a marginal, high variance spot if it means it would cost you later +cEV spots but that’s another discussion.) Proper chip lead strategy means being able to find what +cEV and +$EV situations exist that could not exist if you had a smaller stack. Many of the best players intentionally take gambles early in order to set themselves up for having a larger stack later in order to create more +EV spots because they are aware of this concept.
Still, it’s important to keep in mind that the size of your stack doesn’t give you a license to do just anything. During a hand the most pertinent detail is still what effective stacks are. For example, if you’re on the CO with 80 BB’s and all three players behind you have 15-20 BB’s, your opening range shouldn’t really be that much different as to when you have 15-20 BB’s as well. Will there be a difference in some spots? Sure, but it won’t affect things nearly as much as some other situations. Let’s take a look at how things change when having a big stack at certain stages of the tournament.

Early Game: Say in the first couple levels you’ve run well and stacked two or three players. You’ve now got one of the largest stacks in the tournaments and are the chip leader of your table. How does this change things? To be honest not all that much. Stacks are still quite deep and nobody’s strategy has changed all that much. There’s no antes and there’s nothing for you to gain by ‘applying pressure’ or anything like that. Very often in situations like these effective stacks will be still very deep and people are playing in a fairly straight forward manner, so getting highly creative solely for the reason that you have more chips will likely result in spew. If you get a large stack and come up against another large stack on the table it’s more important to have a good grip on deep stacked play than have any illusion that you’ll get a ton of extra folds just because you’re both big. Cash game experience will help in situations like these, though they are mostly rare.

Mid/Late Game: At this stage having a large stack begins to be important. When the average stack goes under 50 BB’s (and will soon get considerably lower) and when antes come out you now have some power. To be honest before antes come into play my open raising standards don’t really loosen that much based on the size of my stack, but once they do having a large stack will make a considerable difference. Just how much you loosen up of course still depends on factors like image, players behind you, stacks behind you, etc. My opening range is going to be a little bit looser compared to having say, 25 BB’s, but not necessarily an enormous amount. When you’re on an 18 BB stack it’s better to resteal someone with 20 BB’s than someone with 80 unless you know for a fact the guy with 80 is opening very loose due to his stack size. However, when you’re the big stack it’s the other 15-20 BB stacks who need to be cautious with restealing on you.


One thing that does change considerably is my 3 betting of other large stacks. This is a valuable weapon in the arsenal because
A. Very few players are capable of 4 betting light.
B. Very few players cold call reraises (especially if you do it to players when you have position.)
You should watch for which kind of players will 4 bet light and which will just call reraises light, but most are making a push/fold decision based on whether they think their hand fares well against your 3 betting range. I especially think there is some merit to 3 betting stacks in positions where they wouldn’t expect it. For example, 3 betting an active but not maniacal player who’s opened MP1/MP2/HJ with 45 BB’s when you have 75 BB’s and position behind him can be very good and deceptive since he’s not anticipating a lot of resteals when opening from these positions, especially if you’re not too late behind him.

Bubble: Playing the big stack at bubble time is one of the true pleasures of tournament poker. In spots like these you can bend the rules of stack sizes and position against players who to a degree value the bubble. There’s certainly a difference having the chip lead on the bubble of 100r and a 50 FO, but both still allow a level of aggressive creativity.

On tournaments that play tighter on bubble time you can open an enormous range of hands, especially if the table doesn’t show willingness to fight back. On some tables opening 50% of hands (or even more) can certainly be profitable. I’m willing to raise into a number of resteal likely stacks with a wide range of hands I can’t call with because often their resteal range will be reduced. I’m also watching keenly for other active medium-large stacks to three bet or flat call wide pre in order to make their lives hard post. A few examples of how I may get creative that sort of ‘breaks the rules’.

Example 1:
Hero has 70 BB’s. Villain has 33 BB’s. Hero is CO with 75s, villain is MP2. Blinds 500/1000 with 100 ante. The tournament is on or near the bubble.
Preflop: Folds to MP2, MP2 opens to 2700, folds to hero, Hero 3 bets to 7600.

Now, being in position here as well as on the bubble we can make a small reraise that doesn’t commit ourselves for his stack but still puts a lot of pressure on him. I’m normally not 3 betting people with a 33 BB stack light, but when you get an opportunity like this on the bubble and don’t have an insane image, go for it.

Example 2:
Hero has 70 BB’s, Villain has 25 BB’s. Hero is button with QTo. Villain is HJ. Blinds 500/1000 with 100 ante. The tournament is on or near the bubble.
Prelfop: Folds to HJ, HJ raises to 2700, folds to hero, hero calls.

This isn’t really a standard preflop call. However, the villains stack is too short to 3 bet so that option is out. Instead, consider calling wide in spots like these and making more moves post. On a bubble you’ll even get a higher % of players simply check folding to you. Also consider semi bluffing a wider range of flops. There are some various obvious semi bluff boards like KJx, J9x, 789, but in this spot I’m always jamming over a C bet if it comes 89X, 7JX, J8X, 786 and considering a float on Axx or Kxx type flops.

End Game: A lot of playing the big stack in the end game comes down to being highly player observant (as is important with any end game situation.) What kind of opponents are willing to gamble as opposed to just trying to move up the pay ladder? Which villains are playing higher than normal (use OPR people) and which are in their comfort zone? You need to find a balance between aggression/table control and spew.

If we talk strictly about the final table in terms of end game we can get into more specifics. First of all, if you want to continue to play highly aggressive I recommend doing it having just entered the final table and picking on medium stacks whenever possible. This is because the bottom few spots of final table pay outs are often still pretty small. However, once there’s about ~6 left, players have moved far enough up that they’ve secured a decent score and aiming for first suddenly becomes realistic.

You need to be aware that in final table situations cEV and $EV begin to diverge. I’m not mathematically knowledgeable enough to bring out equations or give you an exact point of gambles you should and shouldn’t take (though perhaps I’ll ‘write’ a future article where I simply employ MikeJ to do exactly that) but I can give a fairly obvious example:

If you’re at a final table with 50 BB’s, the other chip leader has 50 BB’s, there’s a medium stack of 25 BB’s, and two short stacks of 5 BB’s you need to have a very significant edge to get your stack in against the other chip leader. You give up a ton of equity if you bust to him, and playing a marginal +cEV spot verse him is going to be massively -$EV over the long term.

Once you get very deep having the big stack allows you to open a little lighter but overall you’re mostly playing a game of effective stacks. You should be aware of the stacks and players you’re able to pick on and which methods of doing so. Against small stacks open shove when appropriate. Against medium open raise into them a lot and semi bluff more post. Against big stacks three bet pre and put them in an awkward spot.

Alright then, that’s all I have for now. As always if you have questions or want me to elaborate more on something feel free. I’m doing nothing but online for the next couple months so I’ve got plenty of time around here.