Managing Your Stack In a MTT Part 1: Early Levels of a Re-Buy

[CRStals]

Our December Learning Series will focus on managing your stack through all stages of a multi-table poker tournament. We are going to look at strategies, tips, and things to consider when you are faced with a decision at every point along your journey from the opening hand to winning heads-up!

Here's what you can expect for this series:
Lesson #1 – Early levels of a re-buy tournament
Lesson #2 – Freezeout / Middle Levels
Lesson #3 – Approaching the Bubble
Lesson #4 – In the money and on your way to the win

Let's Get Started!
We begin by focusing on the initial levels of a tournament. For this lesson we are going to assume this is a re-buy or re-entry tournament. If you are looking to incorporate these articles for a multi-day flight tournament that you can enter, treat the tournament as a stand-alone event for the purposes of building your stack.

Initial Starting Phase
So, you have sat down at the table, the tournament director has announced to the dealers that they can shuffle up and deal, and you get dealt your first hand. Now what? Well, there are a few things you should immediately take note of:

• How many big blinds do you start with?
  You should note how many big blinds are in your stack and try and keep a note of this. Are you playing a shallow tournament, starting with 25 or 50 big blinds; a more standard tournament starting with 100 big blinds, or a deep stack tournament where you have 150+? This gives you an idea of how wide your guardrails are for making decisions in a pot: do you have room for speculating or do you need to be more disciplined because in a shallow tournament, your room for error is so much smaller.
• Is your table full and if not, how many more seats could be filled? Do you need to adjust your initial playing range for a short-handed table, or are you starting with a full table right away and can play accordingly? More importantly, do you need to be nimble with your ranges if others sit down? Were you able to scout your opponents beforehand? If yes, new players sitting down become wild cards that you may need to approach cautiously until you gain more info.
• What type of tournament is this: a single re-buy, multiple re-buy, or unlimited? Is your strategy for re-buying? How many bullets are you prepared to fire? Are you going to approach initial bullets differently than your final bullet? If your answer is yes, know what your plan is going into the first hand.
• What is the level length?
  Are you playing a turbo where you will need to play faster, or a slower structure where you can take your time and be more methodical?
• How fast can you calculate the effective stack* in a hand? This applies through the entire tournament, but when players enter a hand, you should have a reasonable idea what the effective stack is going into any hand. You’ll want to know if you are the effective stack, or, how much of your stack is potentially at risk if the effective stack shoves on you.
  *Effective stack is the shortest stack at the table.

Get Reads on Your Opponents
Before late registration, it is going to be rare to see your table break, so it’s important to get a read on not just who your opponents are, but how they are playing. Are they playing loose and aggressive – probably because they are trying to double up or bust to go and re-buy? Are they looking to play big pots early or are they treating this like a freezeout? Knowing your opponents and what their initial plan is will help you understand when it’s right to make a move and play for a bigger pot, and when you may need to pull back knowing that getting involved is going to result in a big pot early – which may or may not play into your plan for the first levels.

Let’s dive into that more – for this lesson, let’s assume that you are playing the first level of an unlimited re-buy tournament, with a 20k starting stack and blinds at 100 and 200, giving you a starting stack of 100BB playing 30 min levels. The re-buy period is open for the first four levels of the tournament, and by that point, blinds will go up as follows:

• L1: 100 / 200
• L2: 150 / 300
• L3: 200 / 400
• L4: 300 / 600
• L5: 400 / 800

A re-buy is going to net you 100BB in the first level, but only 33BB in the fourth and last level of the re-buy window. This is important to note because it should provide a range to say whether it’s actually worthwhile buying back in on the last level or not. If you are seated at a table where players are playing aggressively and trying to double up, and you bust on level 4, will it make sense to buy-back with a 33BB stack when there have been 10 re-buys already, putting the average stack to 42k chips? You essentially will look like a short stack at 33BB, and that becomes 25BB on the first level after the re-buy. Conversely, if the re-buy period lasts where a fresh buy-in gets 50BB, even if you are against big stacks, 50BB is enough to re-enter and have enough runway to be patient and wait for a spot to get into a big hand.

Early Tournament Play Considerations
Early in a tournament when the re-buy period is still on, the easiest way to manage your stack is to manage the size of the pot. Often players early in a tournament will play more loose knowing that they are deep, and potentially re-buying if they bust. This seems simple in theory, but in practice could be more difficult because of factors like:

• Blinds relative to the average stack are small so players are more likely to attempt to steal, or re-steal, 4 bet bluff, call in position, defend blinds more and attempt more semi-bluffs. Identifying players early on who will bloat pots and wait for premium hands to get into the pot will avoid getting pushed off hands with a four bet, or an all-in move
• Players who are intending to re-buy often will most likely be hyper-aggressive, so ensure you avoid pots with these players to avoid getting chips into the middle in speculative situations

What this means in practice: know your table and play pots with players that you are comfortable playing. If you lose a few big pots early, reset and ensure you are setting your sights on players who won’t put you to the test. And in every tournament, not every player will be an all-in machine at your table.

Building a Big Stack Early
On the other side, if you get lucky early and build a big stack, let's say 200BB+, and you are still in the re-buy period, you must be careful not to get over aggressive yourself. You have amassed a large amount of chips, and there is no reason to get involved with marginal hands to build an even bigger stack. Aggressive players will look at you as a source for chips and potentially target you even more knowing that you can double them up fully. Know who you are against and where they are in position to you before deciding to enter a pot and adjust your hand range accordingly.

Remember these keys to managing your stack in a poker tournament early on:

• Know your stack relative to the blinds
• Know where your stack is relative to the other players at the table
• Identify those who are looking for a double up or a re-buy and adjust your range
• Identify those not looking to re-buy and play more to your standard against them
• Early mistakes are not critical – don’t sweat them
• Understand when the re-buy period ends and plan for when it makes sense to re-buy and when it does not.

Next week we are going to continue this series by looking at ways to manage your stack after the re-buy period ends! But for now, best of luck to keeping that stack big! You can get this article now here --> Managing Your Stack In a MTT Part 2: Early Stages in Freezeout Tournaments

We hope you are enjoying our Thread Learning Series! Check out all our series, including our November Pot-Limit Omaha Series right here: CardsChat Learning Poker Thread Series Index

 

[eetenor]

I think your contributions here are excellent---I am wondering though if there is just too much data all in one post for the target audience that would most benefit from this? I could see one single post on stack size in MTT and strategy from that--- again for the beginner.

 

[najisami]

Awesome input. Thank you very much Chris .

 

[CRStals]

I think your contributions here are excellent---I am wondering though if there is just too much data all in one post for the target audience that would most benefit from this? I could see one single post on stack size in MTT and strategy from that--- again for the beginner.

It's a valid point - I'll admit when I began putting this together i saw it more like the length of the PLO topics week by week but this one took off with the amout of info I ended up pulling in - and if you've read part 2, it's even broader there. What I'd suggest is chunking these out and studying it in 2 parts and going from there.

What this has illustrated to me is that there is a LOT that goes into managing your stack without considering the actual poker hand you are in, and the amount of info that is available, specifically to online players, is probably way more than meets the eye.

 

[CRStals]

Awesome input. Thank you very much Chris .

Glad you liked it Sami - would love your comments on this!!

 

[najisami]

Glad you liked it Sami - would love your comments on this!!

Well, I can certainly say a couple of things, but could I say them better than you already have is the question .
Anyway, most of the time we sit at a poker table and start trying to get reads the other players, which is important of course. However, most of us (me included) don't really pay attention to some crucial info/data you have pointed out in the "Initial Starting Phase". Those are some important factors that could dictate the way we'll be playing. I already promised myself to to take those in consideration in every MTT I'd play from now on. Thank you again for the great helpful job.