Open pushing in later stages

[A_PLUS]

I like the open push more than the next guy, but an M of 10-13 is way too deep for this, unless you have someone who likes to play sheriff in the BB, and you have a hand that you want to show down.

Without antes, an M of 13 is almost 20xBB. Pushing when you are that deep is rarely very profitable.

The beauty of the open push is that the preflop pot becomes such a high % of your stack that, it is worth committing to.

When we are short, the value of the open push, is from the size of the pot relative to our stack. We dont need people to always fold, and we dont always need to have the best hand. When the 1.5xBB in the pot would increase our stack by 30%, we arent that upset as long as we have '2 live cards'.

As we get deeper, our F.E. begins to increase, so if we hold our hand constant, our equity in the pot (when we are called) goes down. This is b/c we are called less often.
For example, when we have AT, UG. Pushing with 6xBB is a no brain play. Pushing with 12xBB, is a bad bad play. In the 12x example, we have enough chips that , we can usually limit the range that calls us to hands that absolutely crush us (and a few coin flips), we arent getting called by A9, or KQ with a push that large. The problem is we have to weigh two aspects of the play.

F.E.: How often are the players being a dealt a hand that will call?

Equity: What is my equity in the pot when I am called.

As your stack goes up, the second part of the equation dominates. If you get to the 20xBB level, it completely overshadows your F.E.. Winning 1.5xBB some large % of the time doesnt properly compensate us for the small % of the time we are showing down in a 41.5BB pot with 20-30% equity.

[Rizen]

[ QUOTE ]
Without antes, an M of 13 is almost 20xBB. Pushing when you are that deep is rarely very profitable.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree with some of this. I think the discussion was around an M of 10. Now, depending on the structure (read: does the site have antes, if so how big are they at this level?) ~10M can be anywhere from 15BBs (100/200 no antes with 3000 chips) to it's worst (the 100/200 25 ante level on stars where it would be 5250 chips at a full table) 25+ BBs. I think thinking of your stack in only terms of the big blind is flawed. I also think thinking of your stack purely in terms of M is flawed. You should be thinking about the pot size in relation to your stack, the amount a standard raise will take away from your stack (in addition to what size your standard raise should be), as well as how the size of the pot post flop is going to impact your continuation and/or value bets on future streets. Using all of this information combined you can then formulat a plan on how to best play a given hand. This doesn't really just apply to ~10M either, this should be a part of your thought process at every phase of the tournament, as it can have an impact on your decisions on all streets with any stack size.

-Rizen