Mid Stages of a Freeroll
First and foremost, there is one key thing that you need not to do in this part of the tournament. Don"t worry about your placement or the average stack size! So what if your stack is smaller than the average stack! Your goal throughout this part of the freeroll, as well as the first, is to try to get as many chips as you can while conserving what you"ve already made. Worrying about how many chips you have compared to the average can only stress you out just that little bit extra to where you"re calling when you shouldn"t be (in hopes of a good hand) and overbetting all in order to try and increase your stack to where it"s over the average line. Worrying about all this will put you on tilt! Remember: Your goal throughout this part of the freeroll, as well as the first, is to try to get as many chips as you can while conserving what you"ve already made.Now is the time to be a little more aggressive yourself. Not as many people will be chasing hands with overcards that don"t hit or lower pairs, but there will still be some, so lookout. I want to share with you something that I didn"t get for a long time though, and once it finaly sunk in it really helped my game.
Don"t try bluffing your way to victory. Unless you have a big chip lead to everyone else you shouldn"t be trying to bluff almost every pot your in, and even then you should be careful. A lot of people will just pick a hand where they"re going to try and bluff it to victory. I"ve seen people raise big preflop with 2-5 off and then continue to try and bluff post-flop in order to win the pot.
Bluffing in Texas Hold"em is to be done only at opportune times. With bluffing, timing is everything. Capitalize on the weakness of your opponent. If you sense weakness in your opponent, strike! Do NOT try bluffing at any other time!
Also, semi-bluffing is better than bluffing outright. You"ll have outs, so this is a better time to bluff or represent the flop. You also have to know that in order to bluff you"re going to need to give up some chips. Know that the chips you"re putting out there may not come back. A minimum bet, however, is not going to bluff anyone out of anything. You won"t get bluffing right away, it takes time, patience, and practice to know when and how. It"s especially hard to get to know how and when to do it on internet poker, but it IS a skill that can be learned.
You might be thinking, "Well, hey, if bluffing is that risky and takes that much time to learn how to do effectively, I just won"t do it!" That"s an even bigger mistake than bluffing too often and at the wrong times. A big mistake a lot of mid-stage freeroll players make is not bluffing enough or at all. The blinds are getting bigger in comparison to your stack as you go on. Your cards are usually not going to bring in enough on their own to keep you completely comfortable. You"ll need to bluff now and then to help you out.
Sometimes your stack seems to diminish throughout the mid-stage of the freeroll. In order to keep it from disappearing, don"t let it diminish to the point where you can"t bluff someone out of a pot. If you have 1500 and the blinds are 100-200, now is the time to start being very aggressive instead of waiting til you"ve been blinded down to 600, which would be a normal three times the blind raise. It"s better to go out of a tournament betting than to be blinded out!
This last part is good to remember in the final stages of a tournament as well.