I play in one live tourney a week that has a medium paced structure and 100-110 players. Over a twelve week period, I cashed seven times including winning the tourney twice and two seconds. Since then, its been almost three months and I haven't cashed once. I still feel like I'm playing my same game, but I am getting monstrously frustrated.

I'd appreciate any advice for getting back to where I was. It couldn't be simple variance that I did as well as I did for a period, nor could it be variance that I'm now doing as poorly as I am. My biggest struggle now seems to be accumulating chips in the early stages in order to be able to play my game in the middle stages.

Thanks for all advice

Tell us a bit about the key hands in your recent plays, and about your approach to the game. Also, do you think you have any leaks? If so, what?

You probably are being too passive. That or you just hit a good stretch early - the long term is heckuva lot longer than three months.

Mostly I find that I'm not building a big enough stack to play a strong aggressive game. Recent examples from last week:

Blinds 100-200 no ante - I pick up 7,8 hearts one of the button raise to 600. The small blind re-raises me to 1500, and I know that he has nothing, but I've only got 3,200 so if I push all in he'll be getting the right price to call even if he thinks I've got a monster.

Blinds 200-400 no ante - I'm in the small blind with 10, 10. The table chip leader raises to 1000 from the cutoff. I've got 3,800. If I push it in, he'll call with any big or medium ace and any pair eights or better. So I can't push it in. I call, flop comes J, K, 4 rainbow and I have to shut it down.

Last hand I end up all in with A-J against Kings, but I was short stacked so what could I do?

Anyways, the real problem is with the amount of new players playing in the last few months, its hard to build up a stack in the early going by playing aggressive, because they'll call anything.

The problem is you being afraid to push all in with pocket tens. What are you afraid of his pocket eights 20 percent chance of winning or his ace with a weak kicker 30 percent chance of winning or maybe his ace king 50 percent chance. You're going play scared you're not going to win. He may have jacks or higher but you have to take that risk.

I guess my fear is this. He has say four realistic hands that I dominate. 8s, 9s, A/10 suited or A/9 suited. He then has three hands that are a coin flip with me. A/J, A/Q or A/K. And he has four hands that I am crushed against. AA, KK, QQ, JJ. The only hands he may fold would be real weak aces or K/J, K/10. So I guess my problem is that I see that I have about 45% equity in this pot and I would rather not commit all my chips with this equity in the pot.

Looking back on it, I guess you're right though. Its either push all in or fold. That call by me was horrendous. Sometimes I think I might overvalue my ability and try to play after the flop too much.

Thanks for your input.

unless your opponent is the other good player at the table, I'd push. You'd be surprised the crap some people call all in with - heck, you may have an overpair to his cards - even if he doesn't have a pair!

If he is a solid player - I'd just wait for a better opponent to tangle with and try to trap a weak player postflop.

Yeah I know what you mean. Sometimes I give other players way too much credit. Like I'll find myself carefully selecting my bet size to either price a dominated opponent into a pot or price a drawing hand out of a pot. And then that player will do the exact opposite and I'll look at him and wonder why the hell I even bother. Pot odds, what are those?