shifting gears

[Maryna]

[EscapePlan9]

Welcome to BTP! Good to see some fresh faces.

Looks like you got the early game down good.

Middle game is very tough to summarize. If you have a slightly larger than average stack, you want to continue playing tight. What exactly to do depends on the stacks, players remaining, blinds, your hand, and their hand ranges. Post a few specific examples and I'll give you a better response. When your stack is somewhere floating around the average stack, you should NOT attempt blind-steals unless you have 12x BB or less and it's a +EV shove situation. I'll give an example:

6 players remaining
50/100 blinds
You have a stack of 1400.
Folds to you in MP (right before CO). You hold .

Raising to 300 would leave you with 1100 chips remaining, and if someone calls your raise (def not uncommon with donk-n-go players), the pot will be around 650.

Folds to the BB, and he calls your raise.

The flop comes
BB checks and you c/b for 400

You now have 700 chips remaining
BB moves all-in. The pot is huge but you're probably behind and don't know which outs are clean. You fold.

You've now gone from a relatively healthy 14x stack to 7x in the course of blind-stealing with one marginal hand.

This is a fairly common situation in the middle game. Lay off the blind stealing when you have a moderately healthy stack. When you're bigger stacked you can afford to run over the table a little more (don't get carried away obv, but def open-raise QJs there).

I hope that helped somewhat. Post some specific examples you've had where you were unsure of your play.

[Maryna]

[EscapePlan9]

Trying to organize your info a lil...

You: 8500
Vil1: 1200
Vil2: 3000

Blinds 100/200

This situation is tough for you because Vil1 is desperate to gain more chips and already has cleared the bubble so he will call fairly loose. (How loose depends on the player. Hopefully you have some type of read on him.) And also, Vil2 still has a healthy stack, so you can't dominate with shoves yet. The disparity between Vil1 and Vil2 stacks means Vil1 will likely play more loose-aggressive than Vil2. And your typical Vil2 will be playing tight here hoping Vil1 goes busto.

This is def against the typical TAG playbook, but try open-limping a couple moderate hands on the BTN. Most players won't play back at you. You have the best position, Vil2 is playing tight, and Vil1 will tell you something about his hand soon enough since he's desperate. If they check to you, throw out a 60% c/b on ANY flop. Vil2 will fold like 100% of the time. Vil1 might be a little looser, but won't be loose enough cuz he knows you pretty much have to call his all-in.

If Vil1 won't let you do this, then go to standard 3-handed play (and Vil1 will have a slightly increased stack which also tends to make him play a little tighter - he isn't as desperate). Raise to 3x BB with any hand you'd typically open for 3-handed. Call when you feel you are ahead of their range if they shove back. Standard c/b situations. GL

[EscapePlan9]

Double-post...

Once again, post specific hands for more specific advice.

[Maryna]

Here is one. Sorry, hand converter doesn't work for me (does anyone knows why?)
Maybe this is an obvius call, dunno.

Stage #748227367 Tourney ID 60582 Holdem Single Tournament No Limit $800 - 2007-05-15 08:21:02 (ET)
Table: 13614562 (Real Money) Seat #9 is the dealer
Seat 1 - T****** ($1385 in chips)
Seat 2 - D... ($2230 in chips)
Seat 5 - K... ($4215 in chips)
Seat 9 - L... ($5670 in chips)
T***** - Posts small blind $400
D... - Posts big blind $800
*** POCKET CARDS ***
Dealt to T***** [Ks Jd]
K.... - Raises $2400 to $2400

??
the guy was pretty tight up to this point.

[EscapePlan9]

[Maryna]

Yes, but this was just after a bad beat, smaller stack went all in, I was BB, I insta-call, he had KQ and got a str8. After that I was crazy and crippled, so didn't know what to do...