Poker Strategy Deep Stack Tournament

1. Deep Stack Poker Tournament Strategy
2. Poker Strategy Deep Stack Tournament Game
3. Poker Strategy Deep Stack Tournament Strategy

There are a lot of guides and study resources to help you understand and conquer medium stack tournament poker play. There are even more guides and tools to help you master short stack tournament play. The phase of the tournament that seems to get the most neglect, though, is deep stack tournament play.

This may be because it’s more challenging for people to bust out in this stage, so they think it’s less important. You have more chips, so you feel like you have more room for mistakes that don’t cost you your tournament life. It may also be because most players assume they are playing correctly, when in fact they aren’t. Even more, it could be because it’s one of the tougher stages of play to master. Whatever the reason might be, it’s insanity to neglect such a big part of a poker tournament.

So while tournament only players may get plenty of practice with push/fold strategies or decisions that end either preflop or on the flop, they sometimes struggle when money is really deep. In this article, we are going to address preflop strategy adjustments for early stage/deep stack play, and in my next article we will address post flop. There are several important strategic considerations to remember when playing deep-stack tournaments such as the World Poker Tour’s Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic last year at.

In this guide, I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know to start tackling the deep stack stages of Texas hold’em poker tournaments. While I couldn’t possibly attempt to cover every instance or hand possibility involved in deep stack play, I’m going to do my best to cover the major strategic implications that you need to be aware of.

Deep Stacks Versus Structure or Other Players?

One of the biggest misconceptions that I see from tournament poker players is the understanding of what it means to be deep stacked. When I’m talking about being deep stacked from a strategy perspective, it ONLY refers to how many chips you have in relation to the blinds. If you have 100,000 chips, your opponents all have 10 million chips, and the blinds are 300/600, are you deep stacked? The answer is yes! You have over 160 times the big blind. It does not matter that your opponents have monster stacks. You have a smaller stack in comparison, but you’re still deep stacked relative to the blinds.

Deep Stack Poker Tournament Strategy

Anytime you have somewhere over 70 or 80 times the big blind, you can consider yourself deep stacked in a tournament. The more big blinds you have, the more deep stacked you are. If you notice, this is different than in cash games. If you have 100 times the big blind in a cash game, it’s said that you have a normal stack. Anything over that 100 big blinds starts to move you into the territory of being deep stacked. Tournament play is viewed differently. Anything over that 70 or 80 big blind mark starts to be considered deep stacked.

Please make sure that you are not making this distinction based on your opponent’s stack sizes. While they will have the ability to put more pressure on you with larger stacks, it does not change whether or not you personally are deep stacked.

The only time that it does matter how big your opponent’s stack is happens to be when they have a smaller stack than you. If you are heads up with an opponent and you have 200 times the big blind, and they have 30 times the big blind, are you deep stacked? Technically, you are, but the hand is not going to play out that way. The effective stack is only 30 big blinds, so you are not going to be playing a conventional deep stacked pot.

Is being deep stacked only in the early stages of a tournament? Nope! The only reason I have that listed in the title of this guide is that it’s much more common for everyone to be deep stacked at the beginning of the tournament. Technically, you can be deep stacked the entire duration of the tournament as long as you continue to accumulate chips. This rarely happens, though, thanks to the ebbs and flows of tournament poker, but there have been people who have gone wire to wire before without ever falling out of the deep stack range.

Remember, it ONLY matters how many chips you have in relation to the blinds. It has nothing to do with anyone else’s stack or what level of the tournament it is in.

Chips Ripe for the Pickings

One of the best parts about deep stack play (especially when it occurs early in the tournaments) is that there are usually a lot of bad players who have tons of chips they are looking to give away. Are they consciously looking to give them away? No, silly. I just mean they’re not very good and are inevitably going to spew their chips off. They have problems making necessary folds and just don’t know how to play with so many chips in front of them. Think of it like this. If you gave a clueless investor $10 to invest, how big of a mess could they make? If you gave that same clueless investor $1,000,000 to invest, now how big of a mess could they make? Mo money, mo problems.

If you’re a sharp player, this creates a great opportunity for you to exploit these players’ mistakes and pick up some easy chips. How should you adjust your play? Well, you should be looking to play more pots with these deep stacked fish. You should be getting in there with more speculative hands and trying to snap them off when they have a bigger hand they can’t fold.

I’m going to talk later in depth about how the value of certain hands increase and decrease as the stack sizes changes. Most recreational players are not aware of this, and it creates a lot of problems for them that you should be looking to take advantage of.

The reason this is so important early in a tournament is that the recreational/bad players are less likely to make it to the later stages of the tournament with a lot of chips.

Most of them are going to gift those chips away before they know what hit them. This means that you need to actively be in there trying to get your hands on some of these chips before the other sharks scoop them all up.

Don’t Get Too Splashy

While the above tip to go after the fish early is important, it has to be taken with a heavy dose of discretion. It can be tempting when you have a lot of chips to put all of those chips to work. It’s completely fine to use your chips to continue building your stack, but you can’t try and do it on every hand. You still need to be conscious of the fact that it’s just not possible to win every hand. Pick your spots wisely and don’t overextend yourself. You can take some shots, but protect that big stack.

Something else I often see that you should not be doing is getting too passively splashy with a big stack. This leak can cause your entire game to sink. Instead of fighting for chips, people will passively see flops and play fit or fold. If they hit the flop, they’ll push forward, but if they miss, they’ll give up and not look for spots to try and win the pot. The feeling that this is ok comes with the idea that they have so many chips it’s not going to hurt to “see a few flops.”

Don’t leak off your big stack. Use those chips ACTIVELY to fight for pots.

The Decreasing Value of Big Hands

Pocket aces are a huge hand, right? AK on a K-8-2 board is a big flop, right? While these are big hands, the deeper the stacks, the lower their value is. When you’re sitting on a shorter stack, one pair hands and overpairs are monsters. With 30 big blinds, you’re usually ecstatic to get it in with top pair and top kicker. With a deep stack, though, if you’re getting 100+ big blinds in with one pair, you’re usually going to be in a world of hurt.

Here’s the problem with hands like aces when you’re sitting on a deep stack. They are hard to fold and rarely will win a big pot deep stacked. You’re destined to win a smaller pot or lose a bigger one. This usually is the fault of the fact that it’s hard to fold a hand like aces.

To backtrack a few steps, I am not saying that hands like aces and AK are bad hands. I’m not even saying that they’re bad hands to get early or when you are deep stacked. What I am saying is that their value based on the tendencies of common players make them a potential hazard in deeper stacked situations.

These hands may put you in some tougher situations and will require a lot more correct decisions to play properly when you are deep stacked. You need to be prepared to fold these hands and do so without a lot of resistance.

Remember, as the stack sizes increase, the value of these one pair type hands decreases. As the stack sizes decrease, the value of these one pair type hands increases.

The Increasing Value of Speculative Hands

Just as the value of the strong one pair hands change with stack size, so do the speculative hands that have the capabilities of flopping sets and making five-card hands like straights and flushes. As the stacks get deeper, these speculative hands grow greatly in value. Why? Well, first of all, they have the ability to snap off the hands we mentioned in the section above. Too many people struggle to fold one pair hands deep stacked, which makes the ability to take advantage of that huge with these hands.

Second, these hands are extremely easy to fold when you miss or only hit somewhat. For example, most people aren’t going to go broke with 8-9 suited on a 9-6-4 flop. You may lose some chips, but you are going to be able to get away from it if you need to.

As stacks get shallower, these hands lose value because you don’t have enough chips to be speculating. The implied value just isn’t there because people’s stacks are usually too short. However, when stacks are deep, these are the kinds of hands that you should be looking to win some big pots with. Remember, though, don’t get too passive trying to make a hand. You still want to be in there fighting for chips.

Putting It All Together

Here are the main ideas you should be taking away from this. Let’s review.

• Whether or not you are deep stacked is dependent on your chips in relation to the blind level. It has nothing to do with how many chips your opponents have or what stage of the tournament it is. The only time it matters how many chips your opponents have is when everyone in the hand has fewer chips than you and the effective stack shrinks.
• Overpairs and other one pair hands lose value deep stacked because they are tough to fold and are rarely good in big pots.
• Speculative hands that can make five-card hands like flushes and straights and snap off stubborn one pair hands rise in value the deeper stacked you are. These hands are easy to fold when you miss and even when you hit, making them much less of a liability. They become especially high in value when you’re playing against worse players who struggle to make necessary folds.

Ideally, deep stacked tournament poker play is going to play much more like a full stacked cash game than it is a tournament. There will be some tougher decisions to make as you’ll be playing more on later streets than when you are shorter stacked, and the chips get in before the later streets. Just make sure that you are always aware of how deep your stack is and how that should affect your play. Deep stack play is one of the most neglected, but can be the most important in your quest for tournament glory.

One of the regular struggles for tournament only players is how to navigate on deep stacks. The reason is quite simple… unlike their cash game brethren who tend to play a lot on deep stacks, tournament players just don’t get that much exposure to it. The stacks are typically only deep early in a tournament, with most middle and late stage situations involving medium or short stacks. So while tournament only players may get plenty of practice with push/fold strategies or decisions that end either preflop or on the flop, they sometimes struggle when money is really deep.

In this article, we are going to address preflop strategy adjustments for early stage/deep stack play, and in my next article we will address post flop considerations.

Let’s use with the following scenario, which was recently posted in a public forum:

I really would love your opinion on this whether my move was a bad beat or a bad decision:

Early in a 2.6k$ buy-in 1M$GTD tournament (250 big blinds deep). I Opened 2.2BB with QQ from UTG, folded around to the button. Got 3-bet 10BB from the button. I made it 30BB. He made it 80BB. I jammed. He snap called with AK then he flopped the K and got me busted. Did I make a huge mistake considering 250BB? Should I have folded to 5-bet? Is my move profitable in long run?

Poker Strategy Deep Stack Tournament Game

Okay, so let’s break this hand down at each action point.

“I Opened 2.2BB with QQ from UTG”, certainly we are opening QQ from any position, but 2.2BB is way, way too small. This is a typical sizing for MTT players that is quite effective in shallower stack situations. When the effective stack is 25bb’s, 2.2 puts adequate pressure on opponents (it’s 8.8% of the effective stack) while leaving you some room to maneuver. On super deep stacks, however, like this tournament, not only does it not put any pressure at all on players, it actually invites them to take a shot at you very liberally because it’s less than 0.9% of their stack. They are investing 2.2 big blinds, with a potential windfall of 248 more on the offering. It’s no wonder players will call this open (correctly) with all kinds of marginal, speculative hands. With this depth of money opening for 5-6BB is more appropriate, it builds the pot with your stronger hands and charges people a more reasonable (for us) risk/reward ratio for getting involved with us. 2.2x is just giving players a dirt cheap shot at us with massive implied odds.

“Got 3-bet 10BB from the button.” This is a nice sizing. The “standard” advice you hear is to 3-bet to 3 times the amount of the open raise, which in this case would be to 6.6BB. While that advice is a reasonable starting point, it’s important to adjust up or down from there for reasons that make sense. In this case, because we are super deep stacked and the initial raise is way too small, an upward adjustment is ideal. I think we could reasonably go as high as 12-15BB’s in this spot, but 10 is certainly a lot better and more appropriate than 6.6 would be, or the common tournament player’s small sizing to something like 5.1.

Poker Strategy Deep Stack Tournament Strategy

“I made it 30BB”. A common starting point for 4B sizing is more like 2.2x the 3-bet size, or 22BB to go. Given the depth of money and playing out of position should this go post flop, sizing up a bit from 22 makes some sense. That being said, when we are super deep stacked it’s important to think ahead, about how we will respond if re-raised. Let’s continue, since that’s exactly what happened.

“He made it 80BB. I jammed. He snap called with AK then he flopped the K and got me busted. Did I make a huge mistake considering 250BB? Should I have folded to 5-bet? Is my move profitable in long run?” So our hero responded to the 80BB 5bet by shoving all in for 250BB’s. There is really only one hand that is truly worth this much preflop because it’s the preflop nuts. And when you are playing on super deep stacks, you should generally only be looking to get all the money in with the nuts, or really close to it. KK is really close to it preflop, and yet against many players getting it all in with KK here would be a mistake as they will only join you in the middle with the one hand beating you. Getting all in preflop with QQ for a 500BB pot on level 1 of a super deep stacked event is not a good strategy at all as you will be up against KK or AA most of the time when the opponent goes along with you. Try not to get confused by the fact that the opponent in this handmade an even bigger mistake and stacked off AK in the same situation. Both players handled the preflop action very poorly for this depth of money.

The poster then in a results-oriented fashion (because he lost the hand) asks if he should have folded to the 5-bet. The relevant point here is that you want to be asking yourself this question before making the 4-bet to 30bb’s. How will I respond to a 5-bet? If the answer is easy fold, or easy continue, then have at it. But if the answer is I don’t know what I’ll do, that will be a sick spot and I’ll want to throw up… then choose a different course of action. Raise smaller to make folding more acceptable. Raise larger to encourage your commitment to the hand. Or, as the hero probably should have done here… don’t raise. Given the depth of money, I think calling the button’s 3-bet is best. The giant 4-bet will only tend to fold out any 3-bet bluffs (which we are crushing) and get continued action from a strong range.

To answer his question directly, yes he probably should fold to the 5-bet to 80bb. 4-bet/folding preflop with a hand as strong as QQ, not a desirable outcome. Had the hero flatted the 3B, he would have likely called once on the king-high flop, then folded to further action, costing himself around 20BB or so. And moved on with 230BB, more than most other tournaments even start with. Additionally, he keeps his opponent’s range as wide as possible, keeps the pot smaller playing from out of position, and has some real disguised strength working in his favor as well.

When you’re playing tournaments, instead of just making bets and raises in robotic fashion, think about the depth of money and what you’re hoping to accomplish, and size accordingly. Also think ahead, have a plan for your hand and how it may play out, which will lead you to make decisions proactively rather than reactively.