The final table is what every poker player that enters a tournament wants to reach.
It’s hard work to get there, so whenever you do, you definitely don’t want to go out first. Especially if you know that the real money is in the top 3 places.

So whenever you’re at that precious final table, make sure you play your best poker of the whole tournament.

Depending on what stack you’re having, you’ll have to change your strategy, because you can’t just play anything with a low stack and high blinds. So when your low stacked, it’s probably best to go all in preflop whenever you have cards like AA, KK, QQ, JJ, 1010 and even 99. Also suited AK, AQ, AJ or non suited AK can be played like this. If you get called, you probably have the highest chance to win the pot. And if you do lose, well to bad, cards are unpredictable. But if you do win, you’ll double up and you’ll have another chance to play some more cards and finish higher. So key play here is very tight!

If you’re mid stacked, you can play a bit more hands than if your stack is low, but you’ll have to be careful whenever you play a hand. Especially against a player with a high stack. They tend to try and scare other players with making big bets, even if they don’t hold anything. So only call those bets if you’re more than 80% sure you can win it. Otherwise it isn’t worth the risk, you can start to play the low stack strategy again before you knew it.
On the other hand, if you’re playing a low stack, you can make some small bets to see how far he’ll follows. Mostly they fold after the flop if they don’t have the highest or 2nd pair. If they didn’t fold on the flop, try again on the turn, but make your bet a bit higher, make sure he won’t get the river card for free. If he still call’s this bet, he’ll probably have a better hand than you, so check on the river if you can as it could cost you more if you don’t.  Only make a bet here if you’re pretty sure you’re holding the best hand.

If you’re high stacked, I feel it’s probably best to first observe how your opponents are playing. Only play top hands at first and let them think you’re playing very tight. An advantage of observing is that some impatience players will go all in after a few hands and hopefully loose, making sure you’ll end up higher than the 9th place. Another strategy is to play against the low stacks. Make big bets, almost pushing them all in preflop. They only call with big hands. And if they don’t call, the blinds will shrink their stack play by play.
After you observed your opponents, you probably recognized their playing style and you can adjust yours to beat them. What I try to do is always stay in the top 3 stacks at the table. Don’t take too much risk, but do call a hand sometimes (if it doesn’t cost too much) even if you know you’re losing, just to know what they’re playing. You can use this info later in the game.
If you came to the river against a low stack, always go all in if you think you’ll have a 60% of winning. If they call and you win, it’s a player less to worry about. If they win, too bad, but it didn’t cost you much. If they don’t call, congratulations, you won another pot.
Playing against mid stack players after the river can be played like this also, but here you’ll probably be 90 to 95% sure you’ll win. This will cost you half your stack if you lose, and we don’t want that.

Before you’ll know it you’ll be playing heads up.

What about you, do you change your strategy once you’re at the final table?

If you're new here or if you like this post, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or get your blog updates by email . You can also find out what I'm doing right now by following me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

2 Responses to "Final table strategy"