Q. about average stack #

[arkady]

How important is it during the tournament to be at the level of the average stack?

Is it more important after 50% of the players are gone? 70%? 80%?

[benneh]

I think the more important question is what is your M. I rarely ever look at Avg. stack. It doesn't really tell me much.

[TomHimself]

I guess you can use it to figure out your Q, which I forget what exactly that is. but i uslaly jsut look at M like ben said

I like using M as well.. They usually correlate to one another though.. so if ur Q is <1, then your M is prolly low too.

Yep, your M, or relation of stack to blinds is what dictates your gameplay. The average stack number often fools inexperienced players into making bad moves, picking bad spots, or playing too passively. M is basically your stack divided by sum of antes + blinds. So if you have 2000 chips, and blinds are 50/100, you have an M of roughly 6 and a half. Even if your chips are well above the average at a certain point in time of a tournament, your M may be low enough to dictate certain moves you would not usually make with a higher M. But yea, being at or near the average stack usually doesn't mean much.

[arkady]

thakns for explaining what M means hehe, cuz i was lost [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

at any point after the money if M > 9, is that still enough playable chips?

[Simplistic]

M>9 you're in good shape

[benneh]

M > 10 is playable, though you dont have much room.

M < 10 is generally all in or fold poker, and M < 5 is getting close to pushing any two, as long as you're the first one in.

I suggest you read HOH II. It's great. It helped my tourney game tons.

Lets say you have 18000 chips, and blinds are 600/1200, going up to 1000/2000 in 2 minutes. Your current M is 10, but in 2 minutes it will be shrinking to a mere 6. Splashing around in pots is no longer an option. You can't afford to bleed chips, you are trying to conserve to be able to double up for as much as possible. You can't limp hands you would normally in early positions, and you often have to give up on decent pot odd situations with hands like connectors. You also have to be aware that other player's hand ranges for moving all in become drastically bigger. For example, a Player pushing all in from middle position with 9000 chips can often be safely put on a range of any PP, Any two face cards, A8+o, and often players in this spot will push any suited ace. This is considering it was folded up to him. A big stack that can afford to risk the chips for a call calls with Ace/10. Ace 10 is often considered trash early on, but now it dominates or is a coinflip to most of villain's range. Paying attention to M will improve your tourney success more than anything else. I hope I don't sound to much like ol' Harry, but he pretty much summed M up perfectly in his book.

[ QUOTE ]
thakns for explaining what M means hehe, cuz i was lost [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

at any point after the money if M > 9, is that still enough playable chips?

[/ QUOTE ]

At a full table, if M (how many times the pot you have) is > 9 you're still okay, but optimal is >20 (I actually lower this down to 15 in internet poker because there aren't many people who have 20 times the pot late into tournaments).. 6-10 goes into possible push mode.. the higher end of this I just conserve chips and wait to strike (and not necessarily all-in).. lower end I might push with a decent hand.. <5 I push with almost anything if I'm first to enter (almost anything).. Especially with internet poker when you have say 9 or 10 times the pot, think about what you'll have in 10 minutes when the blinds go up again..

Most important part when playing with <10 times the pot is: Don't play poker. Don't make moves based on pot odds.. Don't make your defensive bets to try and win pots, don't play marginal hands because you're in position and think you can outplay your opponent on the flop, don't call out of the small blind, no "moves" that take away a good portion of your stack, just get a hand and be prepared to go all the way.