A friend had a huge-ass poker night yesterday, with about 15-20 people showing up. Eventually thirteen ended up playing poker around eight. I got knocked out at 1230 as the 5th place finisher, I could have lasted a bit longer but I had to get home by 1.

Mostly in big tables, patience is ideal. I won the second hand with A's and 10's, then didn't win a hand for over an hour. We used an ante system, so while I did lose some chips, I managed to avoid bad losses that usually happen when 6+ people are in on a hand.

Definitely agree with the patience comment...

Last weekend one of my friend commented on how he plays too many hands and I agree with him...he does play way too many. I am very patient at the table, but not too patient. There's a big difference from being patient to playing soft. If you think you can take it, you have to move. Most of the time the player who is the most aggressive wins, but you have to be able to know when to pick your spots.

I was about to go grab a magazine during our Top 10 tourney here on GF.

I am aggressive, big bets and all, but only when I got something good going. If I have the top pair after the flop, four of one suit after the flop, or an open ended straight draw, I'll get aggressive. Otherwise, I won't call huge bets just for the purpose of looking at cards.

The thing with big table games is that bluffs usually aren't worth it, because some punk will probably call everything.

I was patient in our tournament here a couple nights ago, but I just wasn't getting cards. The few times I had good cards I got beat on the river and couldn't recover from it. It's frustrating seeing other people play every single hand and get rewarded for it. One of the hands I lost on the river, the other person had something like 4-6 off-suit and called my raise before the flop, then called my bets after that with 6 high.

Patience is definitely a major factor in your poker strategy, there is a point though when you have to bluff though or else people will know that you have something if you only go in when you have something and then people will fold across the table and you just wasted your good hand, it's better for me to slow cook a pot or do something a bit different depending on who I am playing poker with, because everyone plays differently.

I couldn't really afford to bluff in that tournament since I was the short stack almost the entire time. Plus, there were so many people playing all the hands that someone almost always had something.