Poker players know all too well the tournaments where you hit a couple nice hands early on and all of a sudden, you find yourself at the top of the leader board by the middle of the tournament. However, you find that as the tournament nears the deeper stages, your stack has become either average, or even below average.

You ask yourself how this happened, and realize you have let your big stack go to your head. You begin to make mistakes pushing your stack-weight around, and along the way you convince yourself that you have chips to burn.

Over aggression as a big stack eventually leads the medium stacks to use this aggression against you. They wait for the right opportunity to check-raise, or re-raise light, because they feel it's time to make a stand. I know this story is one many are far too familiar with, and many of my poker buddies have shared their similar experiences with me.

Playing a big stack in a tournament involves stack management as much as it involves aggression. The pressure of being one of the big stacks often leads to foolish play. You feel the need to maintain your stack, and as your adrenaline begins to rise, you begin to think to yourself, "I must keep up this pace in order to continue to build, otherwise I will just dwindle this stack down to nothing."�

Poker is about switching in and out of gears, constantly changing the game plan to keep up with the table trends. You have to be able to put the pressure on your opponents often, while gaining information about them. You can use that information to know when to slow down against them. You want them to feel like they have to play back at you, yet you want to have a real hand when they finally decide to make their stand. Aggression got you to that point, but turning that gear off when you're on top is probably one of the more valuable skills in poker tournaments.

Every chip you put into the pot should have a purpose. You should never raise for the sake of raising. If you are stealing the pot, then have a plan if someone comes over the top of you with a raise. If you are value betting, make sure the bet makes sense. You have to think of you chips the same way you think of your bankroll. You wouldn't put the majority of your bankroll at risk in a game where you didn't have a significant edge. The same line of thought should go into how you manage the chips in your stack.

Avoid allowing the size of your stack to go to your head. Take a deep breath and continue to use the focus that got you there in the first place instead of getting over emotional and forcing yourself into hands you shouldn't be playing.

When you find yourself in this situation, try to think with your head, instead of your heart. It's natural to feel like this could be the beginning of something big and you want nothing more than to keep the run going, but in the end, a bigger stack means a different attack plan to work with.