How to play with different stack sizes in an MTT

Introduction

In this article

• How you adapt your play to different stack sizes
• Don't think in rigid categories - think outside the box

The first part of this article deals with the understanding of the concept of different stack sizes. This is the single greatest leak that almost every MTT player has. Many players do not understand how different they have to play with 20, 30 or 40BB stacks. MTT players tend to focus more on stack sizes as they gain experience. Nonetheless, many internationally known players have amateur level leaks in very basic game situations.

Strategy presets are only guidelines. Tournament Poker is constantly evolving, and nothing is ever black or white. There are many special situations where something completely different from the “conventional” solution is the most profitable. The very best tournament players will be able to think outside the box, and won’t be afraid to make special moves. If you want to reach the top however, it is important that you learn the basic moves and treat them with respect.

1-14 BB

With this stack size the options of any good player are limited to folding or shoving. In low stakes tournaments you can consider playing an exploitable game and open 2.5 BB from a 10-14 BB stack with your premium hands. Note however that any player with the slightest poker skills will realise if you only open with your monsters and they will adjust to it. You can never raise / fold such a short stack - this is a terrible play in every way. It’s not even worth playing your strongest hands that way with the intention of slow playing. Indeed, if you just raise, you’re more or less lost on a 876-style flop. Strategy with this stack size is really simple: push or fold. Push-or-fold charts are a good tool to learn pushing ranges. The same can be done, for example, with the SNG Wizard.

14-20 BB

With this stack size you should generally not open pots with hands that can’t stand a 3-bet. If there are only really weak players sitting at your table, who will only 3bet the top of their range, you can still open and fold if you get action. In most cases raise / folding with less than 20BB is more or less a bad game. The closer you get to the 15BB mark the less profitable opening with the intention of folding to 3bets becomes. The closer you get to the 15BB mark, the more you should avoid opening and then folding.

Interestingly with this stack size you should mainly enter pots with a 3-bet instead of an open raise. With a stack like this it is suddenly no longer profitable to be first-in, because there will be virtually no post-flop play from your part. You have to understand that your starting hand doesn’t really make any difference, only the opponents. For this reason, if events dictate, you will sometimes have to open fold with a 20BB stack with hands like 77, AJ or KQs, but you should be happy to 3-bet with the same hands. It is essential that you are the first who commits his stack.

One of the most important notes you should make about your opponents with these stack sizes, is how often they fold to a 3-bet. If they fold often, you can continuously 3-bet all sorts of hands. A surprisingly large number of internationally known players in the world of tournaments have this leak. On the other hand you have to take into account that most regulars will be aware that such a stack is optimal for re-steals, and they will pay your evident re-steal 3-bets quite loosely.

It is also very important to take notes and find out who understands the concept of different stack sizes at your table and who doesn’t. For example many weaker players would still go for set-mining with a stack of less than 20BB, when they clearly don’t have the odds for it. In my experience 95% of the players, even at mid-stakes, will still make a lot of raise/folds with 20BB stacks, which is why we can 3-bet them very loosely.

The situation is especially profitable if a weak player who has little idea about the adjustments he should make with these stack sizes, flat-calls the initial bet. In this case, the pot is typically dead money and is worth up to 40% of your stack (2.5 x Opening, 2.5 x call 1xBB, 1xSB, antes = 8BB). Because your fold equity is through the roof, your 3-bet shove range should be quite loose.

You should also recognise the players that are really good and understand the logic of stack sizes. An extreme example is a hand I remember from the 2+2 forums’ High Stakes MTT-section. In a 500 dollar tournament, a good player opens 2.5BB from MP with a 30BB stack (Hero) - another very good regular, with hundreds of thousands of winnings, flat-calls with 19BB from the CO. Hero was on the button holding AKs and he ... folded. Yes, you read that correctly. Hero was just absolutely convinced that the highly skilled regular would 3-bet shove his whole range except his absolute monsters, that he would flat just to catch some action. What makes the situation even more difficult is that Hero blocks a card for both AA and KK. Still, it was not possible to put villain on anything but those hands, so hero folded and at the end of the hand villain shows AA. This is an extreme example, and AKs should be an easy shove here against almost anyone.

A couple of examples for playing with a re-steal stack:

Blinds 500/1000, ante 100.
Hero has 20k.
There are several players behind with the same stack size. Hero is in middle position with 33.

Right here the typical move is to fold. If anyone shoves, we won’t be able to play the hand any further. If someone flat-calls we are rarely going to hit a set and in general the flop will have 3 over-cards to our hand. The only good thing that ultimately may happen is that everyone folds. Since we have a re-steal stack and the players behind us have a similar stack size, they will generally shove or, if they are weaker players, flat-call with a very loose range. This scenario is not going to happen often enough to make opening +EV.

Blinds 500/1000, ante 100.
Hero has 18k and looks down at 77 under the gun.

The correct action here is quite often open-fold, for the same reasons as above.

Blinds 500/1000, ante 100.
Hero has 18K and holds A9s in the hijack.

All the following players have a stack about 20BB. Such a situation is often more complex than the above. The reason is that against some opponents the best move is a raise / call and against some a raise / fold. If you assume that the CO, BTN, and BB are moderately active regulars, the raise / call is automatic, since their ranges will have enough worse hands in them. If, on the other hand, SB is a weak player who does not 3-bet bluff ever, we certainly cannot pay off his push.

The essence of this situation is that to open with a stack of 18BB, we must be willing to pay most other player’s shoves. If we have the same situation, with hands like A3s, KTo, or 22, the best choice again is probably going to be an open fold, since those hands are not enough to pay anyone’s shove. With a hand like 77 we usually have at least a flip against the push range of most villains so we can easily raise/call against anyone except the SB who is a nit.

It is therefore not necessarily a crime to raise/fold against certain villains with such a stack size, if the situation requires it. For example, if you consider that you are in the bubble of the WSOP Main Event and all players behind are playing extremely scared money, so would 3bet only AA and KK, you should definitely open 100% of your hands in the above situation, including 72o. The reason is simply that you win the 2500 chip pot with a normal 2.5BB raise often enough to make it profitable (it needs to succeed only 50.1% of the time in order to be profitable). Similarly, if there are 2 nits and one LAG player behind, you can still raise/fold with any two cards in most cases. Even if the lag owns you with a 3-bet as often as 20% of the time, you still make a profit if the others only play premium hands against you.

Summary: Do not raise/fold with an under 20BB stack, unless you have good reasons to do so (in practice, you are followed by nit villains). This is the single most common mistake which otherwise pretty good players make.

20-30 BB

You no longer have a re-steal stack, so you can open with significantly more hands. Before opening, however, it is extremely important to take a look at the stack sizes remaining to act. Tournament Poker is not so much about your nominal stack size as it is about your effective stack. If you have a 30BB stack and you are followed by only 20BB re-steal stacks, the situation is not very different from when you have 20BB’s yourself. You open tight unless everyone else is a nit.

On the other hand, when the effective stacks are 25-30BB you can safely work with a very wide opening range. This is simply due to the fact that those behind you won’t be able to do much about it (if they understand the importance of stack sizes). Of course you still have to open tight against the calling stations.

Blinds 500/1000, ante 100.
Hero has 30k with 86o on the button.
Both blinds also have at least 30k.

You should raise this all the time! It is extremely difficult for the villains to adjust, even if they are aware of the fact that you open very wide. This is because their most important defensive weapon, 3-betting is disabled - they cannot 3-bet bluff shove because they simply risk too much (30k to win 5k). The options of an average hand, even as strong as KJ will be to fold or call. Even if they know you are stealing they can’t do anything without the top hands. When they decide to call with KJ, they will miss the flop two out of three times, and you can take it down with a c-bet.

When you encounter a 3-Bet from a 20-30BB stack that is not a shove, you should be more or less worried about the possible monsters. A good player is virtually never folding after a 3-bet with such a stack. For example, if you open in the previous case with 2.5K and the opponent raises to 7.5K, it really is hard to imagine him folding with 22.5K left to a pot of 62.5K.So do not 4-bet bluff in such situations. Also be prepared to raise/fold some good hands if the situation requires it.

Here are some examples that happened recently in a $109 tournament on Stars. Both players are quite active and know what they are doing.

Blinds 500/1000, ante 100.
Effective stacks are 27K.
CO opens the pot with 2.5K with 77, BTN folds, SB 3-bets to 6.8K and the BB folds.

CO should have an easy fold here despite the fact that he knows SB is an aggressive player. This is simply a very bad spot for SB to 3-bet bluff therefore he won’t have a 3-bet / fold range at all (he would be getting too good odds to call a 4-bet). His 3bet / call range however will not have a lot of worse hands than yours. In this case CO got the situation wrong and shoved, SB snap-called with TT. I like SB’s game a lot here. He could also have 3-bet shoved, which would easily be a profitable move (note that, even though a stack close to 30BB is usually too big to 3-bet bluff, it’s still often small enough to semi-bluff shove with hands such as AJo). With a smaller 3bet we however give the opponent the possibility to make a maniac move like what happened here. I would really like the opener’s 4-bet against the aggressive SB, if the stacks were for example 37BB when SB has more fold equity.

How do you play such a stack then when you are not in the role of the opener? We can usually not set-mine, unless the pot already has more players. We cannot 3-bet/fold, so essentially we would have to play very tight in pots that have been opened. When you have a hand you can go broke with, mostly you should use the so-called stop-and-go method. This means you should use a 3-bet size that leaves you about a pot-sized stack on the flop, and shove virtually every flop. If your opponent 4-bets, you pay.

Blinds 500/1000, ante 100.
Hero has 27k. CO opens 2.5k, BTN folds, Hero is on the SB with AQo.
Hero 3-bets to 8.5K, BB folds.

If CO shoves, it is an easy call. Although we may not be excited about being far ahead, since CO has shown strength, but with the odds we are getting it is a mandatory call almost every time. Most of the time however CO will fold and we increase our stack with 5K, which is about one fifth of the original. In the lower buy-in tournaments the most common scenario will involve CO flat calling in which case you need to shove every flop with your eyes closed.

With one opponent calling, the pot-size on the flop will be 8.5k + 8.5k + 2k (BB and 10xante) = 19k and we have 19k left behind, therefore we cannot possibly check/fold any flop. Even on a completely horrible board, such as 987 with a flush draw we still have to push. If your opponent has hit the flop, there is not much you can do about it (and you still have two over-cards). We do profit on this in the long run however because the fishy opponent will fold missed flops and goes broke with worse top pairs or other pairs. On a side note, if you hit the flop it may be the perfect move to check and hope your opponent takes a stab at the pot. Since you have less then a pot-sized stack left behind and three streets to get it in, it might be worth letting your opponent make a bluff or hit the turns.

30-40 BB

It goes without saying that with such a stack size we should open raise a lot more than with the smaller stacks. Raise / folding does not cost us a lot of compared to our stack size. To determine your opening ranges it is crucial that you are aware of your own post-flop skills. A less experienced player should still play tight, because he won’t be able to take advantage of the opponent’s post-flop leaks. Such players will stack off too easily to the opponents monsters, and also won’t know when to fire two or three barrels as a bluff.

The better post-flop skills you develop (a good way to improve these skills is playing cash games and watching instructional videos), the more you can open, and late position raises can be as wide as any two cards. I know some Finnish tournament players who will raise nearly 100% on the button against anybody with this stack-size. Remember that position combined with initiative is such a great advantage in poker that it must be utilised.

The closer you get to the 40BB mark the more 3-bet bluffs you can make. In many cases 3-bet bluffing with a stack closer to 30BB is still wrong because you risk a larger portion of your stack. The closer you are to 40BB you can have excellent opportunities more often.

Blinds 500/1000, ante 100.
Effective stacks are 40k.

Opponent raises from the CO to 2.5k, Hero 3-bets to 6.8K on the button with 64s. This is a good bet size from position (you should generally raise more often and 3-bet bluff less often OOP). The opponent should not flat, as his remaining stack relative to the pot is too low and flatting is clearly -EV. Even if your opponent knows that you 3-bet bluff here often, what can he do? A 4-bet bluff would risk his entire big stack so he simply can’t flat. So he will have to fold a lot of hands that are ahead of your range.

The above scenario may still be a decent spot for the CO to 4-bet bluff. If the he holds something like A3s, and thinks that hero 3-bet very light (in the bubble for example), he could jam in his whole stack. A suited ace is an excellent hand here since it is almost always at 30 percent even for a call. When making 4-bet bluffs you must always ask yourself whether you really have enough fold equity. The answer is rarely yes when you are closer to 30BB, as it was demonstrated in the above 77 vs TT example. But when the stacks are big enough, you can easily find enough fold equity to make 4-bet bluffing + EV. 4-bet bluffs are still in no way mandatory for a profitable MTT player.

It should come as no surprise that such a stack cannot flat-call a 3bet with virtually any hand. Stack-to-pot ratio is still too small so you shouldn’t even flat with a suited connector trying to hit something. The same applies to set-mining odds. It is also almost always wrong 3-bet/fold your good hands. For example, in the above CO vs BTN scenario it would be a really horrible game to 3-bet/fold with AQ from the button. If the opponent comes over the top with a 4bet, you are forced to play. Firstly you get pretty good odds, even against a tight range, and a LAG player can easily have a worse hand, since the usual ranges in a CO vs BU situation are pretty wide. Before 3-betting such a stack you need a plan. The best plan is often to not 3-bet in the first place, but just flat call because a 3-bet effectively makes your good hands stand out.

Live tournaments

In live tournaments the concept of stack sizes is often blurred considerably. First of all, many players are completely unaware of both their own and the others stack sizes. It is therefore important to monitor the game constantly and to find out who is able to play accordingly to his stack size and who isn’t. I know many players with six-digit winnings who raise/fold less than 10BB stacks (so you can 3-bet bluff them, which you could never do online). As a general rule you should continue to follow the above rules, but be more liberal about them, than in online games.

Conclusion

In this article you have learned the basic strategies to adapt your play to different stack sizes. You need to internalise these strategies if you really want to make it to the very top.