Stages of the Game: Part I Introduction

One of the most basic factors that influence our decisions in a STT is our effective stack size. However, until about a year ago I really thought about it as either "push fold strategy" or "not yet push fold strategy."

In the "not yet push fold strategy" zone I was just playing super strong hands and waiting for the "push fold strategy" zone where things became straight forward. I still do not consider myself an amazing deep stack poker player but a little more complexity with STT's in the early blinds is still warrented.

The purpose of the next few articles is to look at the stages of the SNG strategy in a less granular way and examine small changes you can make at every stage to improve your game. By adding an extra minor level of complexity, you may find that your results improve dramatically. But before we do that I want to discuss an important topic that affects your strategy at all points in the game.

Effective Stack Strategy:

The goal: To build up a stack that is dominant and pwn your table.

In the world of STT's a dominant chip stack is usually something like a stack that is 2X the size of your nearest opponent. Having a dominant stack means that you can play with impunity. When you are not playing for your tournament life but your opponents are, you can basically suck equity off the table since opponents do not want to tangle with you.

ICM tells us that the extra chips we earn are worth less than the chips we have. So if we have 4500 chips in a STT and everyone else has 1500, then doubling someone up is not nearly as bad for us as losing their 1500 stack is for them in terms of equity losses. If we have 3000 chips left in the tourney and are doing just fine. The bigger our stack size is the more indifferent we are toward ICM and we can apply pressure!

In his book Poker Tournament Formula 2, Arnold Snyder incorrectly claims that the value of each chip actually increases due to the extra pressure that we can apply. We gain more flexibility in how we can play without risking our tournament life. Although his assertion is incorrect mathematically (ICM dictates that chips decrease in value as you gain more) his conclusion is correct which is that by having a large chipstack we are able to more effectively scare our opponents with elimination. By using our large chipstack to our advantage, it becomes easier to play our hands because our opponents must avoid us without premium holdings.

It is easy to reconcile the apparant paradox of Snyder's assertion that chips go up in value as our stack grows with Sklansky's assertion that chips lose value as we gain more through the following thought experiment. If chips are worth less to us when we have more, than when we lose a few it also hurts us less to lose some chips than it hurts a shorter stacks to lose the same amount. Therefore, once we have more chips we can bully shorter stacks because we do not worry as much about losing some devalued chips. Snyder's slight misstep in explaining this message though, should in no way diminish his contribution towards discussing a majorly under-discussed and important topic. Snyder's PTF2 makes a major leap forward in describing an important dynamic in tournament poker.

When we get a dominant chip stack we want to pwn. (pwn: "To dominate the table" for those who do not know the lingo) This means shoving wider, taking some close gambles, attacking players because they can not easily call when we resteal etc. When we have a dominant stack poker becomes easy.

So what happens when the poker gods don't bless us with tripling up in the tourney early? Part II will deal with that very topic.

Good Luck at the Tables!
Greg