At this point in the tournament there’ll generally be five players or less, which puts you tantalisingly close to the cash. Two big factors come into play now. Firstly, hand values increase dramatically. Hands like A-10 that are eminently passable with ten players are now huge. Secondly, your opponents’ desire to make the prize-paying positions is a weakness you can prey on as nobody wants to go out on the bubble.

At this stage it’s extremely hard for anyone to call an all-in with no hand, and the ‘no hand’ scenario is going to apply to most players most of the time. In fact, when you consider any pocket pair is a 16/1 shot and the probability of any player holding an Ace in a four-handed game is only 50 percent you realise that pre-flop exploitation is now by far the best way to accumulate chips.

If you can identify a player who’s nursing his chips with a desire to simply make the money, start religiously raising his big blind and only stop when you push him to the point where he’s going to be forced to call with any two cards – unless you have a genuine hand that is.

Similarly, the player holding the big stack will probably be of the opinion that he can afford to lose some blinds while holding onto his lead, hoping that the smaller stacks will battle it out and drop away. This is another potential victim ripe for exploiting.

In fact, the only ill-advised play now is that of ‘fearless calling’. That’s never a good idea, even if you feel someone’s on the take. You could well be right but calling an all-in holding the likes of Q-6 is foolhardy and could undo in a second all the hard work you’ve put in for the best part of an hour.

You’ve probably got the message by now – the later the game the more aggression you should show. You’re not going to get paid off by waiting for big hands when you’re down to two or three players, and if you’re serious about playing sit-and-gos you shouldn’t be happy limping into the final three by nursing your ever-dwindling chip stack.