Quote Originally Posted by TheHaversham View Post
Obviously it'd be nice to cash every time, but that is fairly unrealistic. If you set that as a your goal, you will end up the player who seems to bubble every time (or just before, or just after). In freerolls, perhaps that is a decent starting point, but you can't stagnate like that and expect to build a real bank.

At a certain somewhat predictable point in nearly every tourney, players either go into "fold to the money" mode or "build a stack to play with in the money" mode. Once you realize that min-cashing is essentially the same as not cashing, the bubble becomes far less relevant, except as a spot to chip up.

Too many otherwise-solid players screw it down tight when they can see the bubble approaching, thinking that they will unleash their aggression once they've cashed. But then, by the time the bubble bursts, they are so short, and have attained such a predictable image, that they've lost any semblance of fold equity, much less playability. These are the guys who complain in their "I finally got Aces but some huge-stacked dipshit called my shove with J9o" threads.

What you want is consistent TOP 3 finishes, when you cash. You settle for less knowing you were making plays toward that end. If you're not in a position to play your full game by the time the bubble bursts, you have left it up to luck and prayers. You're praying to get lucky and finally see a hand, and praying that some "donkey" doesn't get lucky against it. If you ramp your aggression at the right time, you can exploit all those sitter and squeakers, and be the guy with the stack that can easily snap off with J9o, knowing that it's but a small dent to your stack at that point.
I have seen players in many tournament with 100k stacks get beat down in the final 10. So no the leader going into the final 10 usually does not win it.