When You Have Less Than 20BBs in Your Stack...

[KramerTM]

... don't get too fancy!

This may be painfully obvious to the high aptitude players on this forum, but I thought it was an important enough thought to start a thread on. Unfortunately, I've had to learn this the hard way in my last few MTTs.

Pretty much when the field is down to the last 20%, I find myself getting "bored" of waiting for solid opening hands and pretty much going out of my way looking for a spot to make a creative play and get someone off their hand.

The lesson I have taken away from this is...

...when you have 10BB-20BB in your stack, you should be looking to play ABC poker (for the most part; obviously you should never revert to strictly ABC poker). With more than 20 or 25BBs in your stack, well, then you have some room for fancy-plays-gone-wrong. But with 18BBs, it's simply too risky to put 1/3 of your stack at risk to try to get someone off their hand. Especially when this leaves you with slightly more than 10BBs and in a much more desperate situation.

<10BBs = look to push PF with a solid holding or solid opening position (or both, if you're lucky)
10-20BBs = be patient, wait for solid holdings and well-timed stealing opportunities
>20BBs = More freedom to speculate and make some moves. Playing strictly solid poker won't hurt either, obviously.
30-50BBs or more = Look to bully the medium stacks... not the short stacks or the other big stacks.

I apologize if it sounds like I am preaching, as I accept that plenty of what I said is both subjective and arguable.

Anyway, just venting after a bad run at MTTs resulting from some poor mid-late pre-bubble game on my part. Hope I can strike up some discussion on this topic.

Peace.