Late SNG situations – Be Pushy!

By far the biggest hole in most 먹튀검증업체players games (after they become reasonably competent) is in dealing with low M situations. I understand why it is, and how it happens because it was my weakness for a long time as well. When you are playing a tight solid SNG strategy you are very often in a situation with 4 or 5 people left where you are in trouble because of the blinds. Usually there are other players in trouble as well, and the temptation is strong to fold hands and try to slip into the money unless you catch a big starting hand. Unfortunately this is the wrong attitude.
Luckily for you the rest of the table probably feels the same way. No one wants to go out before the money any more than you do, so you can take advantage of this by being very pushy.
I assume you’ve been watching your opponents closely and have a pretty good idea if there is a calling station on the table. You have been watching your opponents closely haven’t you?
As long as there isn’t a calling station yet to act the following logic applies –
If you push you are highly unlikely to be called. If you steal the blinds it not only adds to your stack, which puts pressure on other players, but it takes chips away from someone else, doubling the pressure. If you push all your chips in the middle people do not want to call you. The top 3 or 4% of hands are a good default to assume your opponents will call you with, but from watching them so far you will have an even better estimate.
What if you are called? Well first of all you weren’t pushing with 92o, you aren’t that foolish, but you may have been pushing with K9 or JTs or even 67s, all of which play fairly well when you get to see all five cards. If you steal the blinds you increase your equity quite a bit. If you are caleld and lose that sucks, but your equity wasn’t that high in the first place if the call sends you to the rail so you haven’t actually lost that much. If you are called and double up your equity skyrockets and you are usually in very good shape.
Things to remember –
Watch the stack sizes carefully. If the BB has 1/3rd of his chips in already because of hte blind you don’t want to steal with 67s, but you may want to steal with A4o because you will probably end up heads up with him with a better hand.
You aren’t looking to call all-in unless you have a very big hand. Pushing is VERY different from calling.
Going out on the bubble is not a disaaster. You didn’t cost yourself at least 3rd place money as you may think. Because you certainly weren’t guaranteed to make the money anyway you only cost yourself a fraction of that, and because you may have won the hand where you got called, the fraction is even smaller.
Working with Sitngo Power Tools or an ICM calculator will help you to make those late stage decisions correctly, but as a general rule controlled aggression is definitely the way to go.