You've made it through the first hour to the break and you have roughly the average amount of chips. How should you continue to play?

The problem with trying to define play in poker is that there are so many variables and so many different situations that in an article like this it's only possible to generalise on the type of play to make and the possible outcomes. There is no substitute for experience.

"Experience is a hard task master, it gives the practical exam first and the lesson afterwards".

I'm not sure who said that but I remember the quote very well from a long time back. Experience gained is extremely valuable and it's equally relevant to playing poker tournaments. Once you know how to make it deep in big field tournaments you can do it again and again and again. It's like learning to ride a bike.

When I first started playing big field events I would always bust out in the first hour or be one of the first to bust until I came to realise that the game is not about trying to bluff people or get it in with the worst hand and hope to get lucky. It is about patience and "picking spots", these two attributes will see you through the middle stages of a big field tournament.

First of all you don't need to play many hands to go very deep in a tournament. In fact the fewer hands you play the more chance you have of making it to the money. I'm not talking about "live" face to face tournaments here, we are just concerned with online play.

Too many people like to try and bluff. I used to be like that until I realised that tournament play means that you will nearly always be coming up head to head with someone else who has been patiently waiting for a hand to play and so if you are taking nothing to the heads up battle you'll bust out.

The biggest learning curve to overcome is to understand the time and related patience factor that you need to be successful.

Winning a big field tournament means taking it seriously and taking it seriously means that in a big field event you are going to be playing for five hours if you make it to the final table, depending of course on how quickly the blinds rise and how many players we have. it is this allowance of time that undoes many people and it's perhaps the reason that many good players don't enter the big events on a more regular basis simply because they don't have the time to devote to doing themselves justice.

The maths says that roughly once every sixteen hands you'll be dealt a pair and once every 240 hands you'll be dealt AA. So if you get dealt AA a couple of times then you'll be doing well and if you manage to double up both times then you could be looking at getting close to the money.

With your smaller pairs you are looking to get into the pot for the minimal amount of chips hoping to hit a set. If you hit you will often triple up because you managed to limp into a family pot. The higher up the stakes you go the less you want to chance your arm with a lower pair as the percentage increases that callers or raisers are more likely to be playing higher pairs and therefore the chances of being busted by a higher set increase.

If you get dealt KK then roughly 1/24 times someone else will be holding AA. And if that person is floppingmad holding the Aces you'll bust him :-). Don't worry about moving it all in with KK as the odds are highly stacked in your favour. The further around the table that players fold the more confident you can be that your kings are good.

In lower stakes tournaments you can often move all in with AK and expect to see your opponent turn over AQ or even KQ. In the middle stages of a tournament your AK is a powerful hand and I'll often push with this if I'm shortstacked to try and make up the pace. If you have a big stack then conversely pushing with AK against another big stack will often bust you out of the tournament and this is why it's important to take it seriously and focus on your opponents chip stacks. If someone raises all in ahead of you with say 5,000 chips and you have 20,000 looking at AK then it's an easy call to make. However if a player behind you raises all in for their full 50,000 you are now in big trouble and probably need to get lucky if you want to continue playing the hand.

This is why it's important to ISOLATE your opponents hand. Isolating an opponent is a very important tournament play and one that you need to master and understand to keep making final tables.

As well as understanding the basic maths showing you what types of hands you are likely to dealt throughout the life of a tournament you also need to play close attention to your POSITION on the table when making your play.

For example UTG raises four times the blind and you are in mid position with KJ. It's an easy fold because you are most likely crushed and anyone can move in over the top behind you to force you to let go of your hand and relinquish your chips.

Yes - other players will make the call with KJ in this spot and sometimes you will see them get lucky busting AK when they hit trip Jacks or even KJ or even flopping the straight, but the percentage play says to pass here.

Once it's folded to you on the button and you have KJ a raise will normally take the blinds if you have been a tight a player and are not perceived to be stealing. You also have to consider whether the risk of attempting to take the blinds is worth the damage to your stack if either of the blinds moves all in and you have to fold.

The best way to make it through the middle stages of a tournament is to always play with a made hand and always fold your hands when you are out of position. Folding nice looking hands get's easier the more successful you get at playing tournaments because once you've built yourself a nice stack and are sitting pretty after a couple of hours play it hurts bad to watch all of your chips ship over the table.

For example you can be cruising along quite happily when you look down at KQ hearts suited. You are first to act, but you haven't played a hand for several orbits as it's been rags, rags, rags. You raise it up four times the blind and watch it fold all the way around to the big blind who moves all in. You call and he shows AK. Yuck!

And that's essentially the problem with being good at tournament play. In the blink of an eye you can lose several hours work by being too quick on the mouse trigger!