Middle Stages

I've been in basically the same boat as you. I do really well building a stack in early stages of tournaments. But through the middle stages, it dwindles, and more often than not I'm limping over the bubble and playing the late stages with a short stack.

I don't have any great advice that will unlock the game for you. But I've been doing a little better since watching Phil Galfond and Jonathan Little's youtube channels. Nice concise, sub-20 minute videos with digestible tips

Yeah, I was going to say "It's hard to say what you're doing wrong without seeing actual hands or a tournament history," but if you're consistently finding yourself too short in the middle stages, then this is a smart place to start.

Can’t really explain very well, but it’s like if I take a beat early, I play the short stack well and spin it back up.

But when we reach that stage where everyone is playing a relatively short stack, I seem to make the wrong move.

A couple common leaks short stacked:

Calling too much with speculative hands when stacks are under 30BB.

Not calling re-jams wide enough when stacks are under 20 BB. Like if you open 77 in early position and face a jam from the blinds, it's a GTO call (with no ICM in play).

Again the solution is to look at some GTO charts at different stack depths. You still want to adapt to your opponents. Don't call off a nit with 77 just because the charts said so, but it's good place to start.

I recently began playing in WSOP Circuits a few times (Las Vegas, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and South Lake Tahoe) and the fields are fairly decent. I am not a circuit crusher (yet...).

There are two things about early play. The first is that all of the bad players have starting stacks. The second is that there are a bunch of wild players that want to get it all in early so that they can double up or buy back in with a starting stack. One guy got knocked out like 7 times early in one of the tournaments... So there will be all in bluffs on the flop and players who will call largish bets on draws.

At most of the circuit events I doubled up virtually every time at some point. A few times I quadrupled up before the money. And once I had about 7 times a starting stack. And I did make the money a few times but didn't go really deep.

The problem in general and very much so at WSOP Circuit events is that late in the tournaments before the money a significant majority of players are very good. So its going to come down to luck and reads. There is often nothing you can do when you get it in good. On about 10 occasions in the past year I either was knocked out or lost a huge pot after getting it in good (with like 70% to 80% or better chance of winning) and then got sucked out on. On other occasions I was faced with extremely large polarized river bets when I had a set and called to find out I was up against a flush or straight. Now there are times where I am calling bluffs but on backdoor flushes and straights its just very hard to let go with a monster.

The ICM thing can be important near the money and I did get knocked out in Baltimore on the bubble of a multiday event where a guy folded JJ (with a lot of chips) against my 14 blind all in but I got called by 99 and I had A9s and the flop was A93... So life. The right decision would probably have been to fold preflop in the HJ but I didn't care about a min cash. I also noticed that a lot of players were tank folding (really good hands) because they were very ICM oriented. So the key is to know that going all in vs medium stacks will work a lot more often (especially if you are an older white man) near the money than earlier.

For me the key in these events is knowing opening ranges of the players (so determining my 3 bet range vs each player) and also understanding which ones will be very aggressive in the blinds squeezing OOP. The other key is learning who overbluffs and who underbluffs and then of course who is a GTO/Solver. I often will directly say to young aggro players that they are GTO solvers and on 5 different occasions they said "I don't even know how to spell GTO" which is extremely funny but also points out the obvious. A lot of others say things like "I don't know much about solvers...". Thing is they are going to be very balanced in what they do and also very aggro.

The one thing I have learned through pain near the money is that when I open with AQ and get 3-bet it is time to let go even if the opposing player has folded a few times to 4 bets. Similarly not to 3-bet with AQ (or worse hands) against players who are opening in EP even if previously their range had been very wide. Because near the money ranges tend to be very strong. This is also true when at or near the final table and the money jumps are big. I have similar opinions about 3-betting in the SB or BB. I stop using my full range in these spots because the late opening ranges will likely have shifted except for monster stacks and I am not interested in getting into large pots with monster stacks in these spots.

Would say just make sure you are opening enough and wide enough (especially in unopened pots from late position). To win/ make deep runs in tournies, you really can’t pass solid RFI spots. Would say to download preflop + / solver plus (free) app and make sure you are opening wide enough when stacks are on the more shallow side.

Also would open for a min raise when most of table has say 50bb or less. Make sure you are playing effective stacks. Idc if you have 120 BBs, if everyone else has say 40-50, just play to their stack depth. It burns me inside when I see people openi 2.5-3x late in a tourny when stacks are shallow, you can get away with min raises.

Hm make sure your post flop aggression is high in good spots. Say you open 57cc to a min raise from cutoff and bb defends. Flop is say Kxx or Axx, I’m auto cbetting 1/4 to 1/3 pot. Say we got one club on board and cbet, and turn is a club. Def betting again. Maybe betting again also but 1/2 pot when a sticky bb might call with 2nd or 3rd pair. We wanna give idea that we going to fire a big chunky river bet and they will have to decide for their tourny life even though maybe we just shut down the river with no equity. Think far too many live players don’t cbet enough or in these really good spots where the hero has a clear range advantage.

Also make sure you are 3 betting enough. Think far too many mtt players will call instead of 3!/ fold a Hand, I love to 3! In position bc it encourages others to fold and really strengthens our hand range. Remember it’s much easier to win vs 1 villian instead of 1-2 more if you just flat. Aggression is killer in poker and can be leveraged to really build a stack when we run into fortunate spots where villians fold hands that are actually better than our hand. Really study 3!/ fold type hands and take advantage of say bb vs cu or bb vs button spots where we can 3! Certain hands that do kinda poorly as a flat.