Absolutely, those blinds become extremely important. I personally am not a fan of the way the blind structure works, I know I may sound odd for saying so, but I really believe there should be an absolute cap on blind levels at a certain percentage of the total chips. The other day we had 3 people left and I was chip leader and big blind was 8% of my stack, I just think that's ridiculous. For the two low stacks it was so many chips that we didn't see a flop for about 12 hands in a row. When we finally did I wrote, "What are those cards in the middle? Wow if I knew we got more than these two I would have played differently " lol. I just think it's ridiculous, oh of course it helps the poker site to finish up the tournament and get us all to pay another buy-in so they can make more rake, but it also reduces the skill drastically and just makes it about a lot of luck if the blinds get that high. "Ok hmm I have queen high and the big blind hits me next time, eh, ALL IN!" Fold. Fold. Next guy is like, "Well I have two cards that are almost next to each other, just one card between 'em, sure I'm ALL IN!" Fold. Fold. Repeat process until some trainwreck like A-K against A-J suited or something, etc. I just don't like it. I think blinds should be capped at 100-200 in an SnG with 13,500 total chips. Let the players play the game and may the best man actually win (most of the time). I am not complaining much because I always do well but I just think it becomes a circus and everyone at the table knows it. It's probably the #1 funniest thing about poker -- you can raise with anything, but you can't call with anything. I can raise confidently with A-3 offsuit to steal blinds but I don't even want to call a raise with A-10 suited because if I miss the flop then I just wasted chips, and I don't usually feel like pushing all-in with A-10 suited over his raise because I figure the blinds will simply be much easier to steal next hand, why get into a battle with this hand? lol. That's why you don't see any flops that late in a tournament. Heck sometimes everyone just folds to big blind.

I think the one thing that has made me much better in SnGs lately than I ever was before, and I'd love to hear what everyone else does here, is realizing that with 4 players to go even if I'm 2nd in chips but it's a relatively tight field (even 4th has enough chips to play, for instance), I MUST be aggressive and steal those blinds fairly often. Because I remember as a newer player I just thought, "Ok I'm 2nd in chips now I don't want to be stupid I'll just fold any hand that isn't really really good and hope the other players do something stupid." Then suddenly the blinds pass a few more times and I go, "Uhh, wow. I'm all of the sudden the shortest stack." Now I realize especially at low levels with inexperienced / bad players, they are all thinking just how I did before, so I punish the blinds especially if I'm last in chips. I go by the saying, "The most dangerous man in the world is the one who has nothing to lose." I'm 4th in chips. I'm not going to cash if I finish 4th in chips, so might as well go out swinging, haha. And somehow the more aggressive I am, when at first you think you're being stupid for putting your tournament on the line by raising all-in with A-3 offsuit or J-K suited, etc., the better I do. I would say my aggression increases drastically throughout the tournament, from almost a total rock at the start (watch the donks donk each other, hehe, like I saw 4-4 all-in against A-Ko first hand last tournament, 4-4 won), to aggressive in the middle stages, then when I'm in the money I play to win so I raise frequently and put the pressure on the other players. It's really tough to do in my opinion because I feel so nervous raising with mediocre hands but I realize that someone has to have a much better hand than I do to call.