I also think my weakness tends to be mid stage. Maybe that is a function of better players surviving, perhaps I am not shifting hand selection and flop betting well enough.

As a matter of fact my mid stage – bubble is where i seem to punt off most of my stack. The last two tournements ive played ive built huge chips lead on one bullet, just to bust near the bubble. APT stage simulator here i come!

Great point about the ability to grow stacks against weaker players early. In fact, this weekend I tripled up in the first hour when my set turned into a boat on the river. While I was in against one strong regular (who in fact was ahead with Broadway on the turn), I also got the stack of a new player who somehow called all the way down with pocket 4s. Most of the places I play also have unlimited re-entries until first break. By mid or late tournament, most of the bad players are out and you have to take a different approach both because of shorter stack depth but better opponents.

Playing lower buy-in tournaments, with their high percentage rake (20%-28% usually), it’s very tough to play very profitable poker in the long run. My goal is to cash at a good enough rate to make it affordable long run for my entertainment. That means I do have to play well, and keep improving, if I want to money around a 20% rate, and make sure there are some top 3 finishes each year in there.

Some years go better than others of course!

It’s good to see an analysis from the point of the recreational player. Saving two hours of one’s life by not playing poker may make sense for a pro, but it doesn’t compute for me. I play poker primarily for the fun of it and the fact that I have a positive win rate is just icing on the cake.