Q: Do you have goals in terms of stack size? As a cash player, I’m comfortable with 100bb or so, but in tourneys, I find myself between 10bb and 20bb a lot of the times. Trying to get near 100bb is impossible in the mid game so should I just be satisfied if my stack is above average?
If my stack is below average, is it time for aggressive all ins/raises, assuming we are around 10-20BB? When do you start feeling a little safe, when you are around double other people’s stacks at your table or double the average in the field?
A: My goal is to have 1,000,000 BBs at each level. As you might imagine, it’s a goal I rarely achieve 😉
Despite the winking emoticon, that’s not really a facetious answer. I’ve heard good players talk about setting goals like this in a tournament, but to me it makes no sense. I make +EV plays when I believe they’re available, and otherwise I fold. No raise is more or less profitable because of the average stack size at that moment, except perhaps in some of the bubble situations we discussed in last week’s mailbag.
A goal should motivate desirable behavior. I don’t see any way in which a goal like this would cause you to play better or make better decisions.
What I do see is potential for a stack size goal to motivate undesirable behavior. The very wording of your question implies that you might start getting desperate if you slip below your goal, resulting in -EV shoves, or complacent when you have a large stack, resulting in missed opportunities.
Here’s a quote from a post I wrote at the beginning of last year entitled “Setting Effective New Year’s Resolutions for Poker Success“:
[Y]our resolutions should be entirely within your control. Don’t resolve to earn a certain amount of money or maintain a certain win rate. That’s nearly as foolish as resolving to take fewer bad beats this year. You can’t guarantee those things, and building your resolutions around them is setting yourself up for failure. Recognize the things that are under your control and think about how you can use them to maximize your chances of seeing the results you want.
If you want to set goals in a tournament, I would suggest focusing on things you can control: Look left before acting (in a live tournament). Re-evaluate table dynamics whenever a player is eliminated, a new player arrives, or a large number of chips change hands. Be conscious of your table image.
Any of these things will have a bigger effect on your tournament success than will using the average stack size, or any other number for that matter, as a benchmark or target. Play each hand to the best of your ability and let the chips fall where they may.
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Andrew, thank you for your response, I agree now that setting goals for something that is out of my control is unrealistic. I think one of the questions I was trying to ask is this: “When is it more EV+ to just shove as opposed to raising your regular 2.5BB raise?”
Is there a general rule, if your raise is x% of your stack, then you might as well shove?
Also, what stack size do you find ideal for restealing?
Thank you for your time, appreciate any help you can provide!
If your normal raise size would pot commit you such that you could rarely or never fold pre-flop after raising, then you might as well shove. That may depend on factors such as who is behind you and the size of the antes.
Restealing is a combination of showdown equity and fold equity. The more equity you believe your hand will have against his calling range, the less fold equity you need. Generally the larger your shove, the more fold equity you have. So if the BTN min-raises I’ll shove any Ace for 10BBs when I’m in the BB. I don’t expect much fold equity, but his options are either (a) fold often or (b) call with hands worse than Ax. Either way I win, and you might not even count that as a resteal. If I’m shoving K5s I’d probably want like 14-16 BBs, but that too depends on what I think of the opener and his ranges.
Andrew,
What do you think some of the MTT pros who play a high variance “go big or go home” style think re: stack size goals? They play very aggressively to get big stacks early so I was wondering if stack goals was part of this.
An example I thought of is when Shaun Deeb posted on how to play 180’s he listed his stack goals for each level.
I think your site doesn’t accept links on post, but the deeb post is
forumserver twoplustwo com (slash) 23 (slash) small-stakes-mtt (slash) shauns-beginners-guide-180s-827
I doubt anyone is deliberately taking a -EV spot except during the rebuy period (even that doesn’t make sense to me) or perhaps in something very small buy-in to them that they don’t want to waste time/screen space limping along on a short stack. Basically whatever they’re doing probably is something you should try to imitate. I looked at Shaun’s post and I don’t see him making any mention of how the stack size goals influence his play. They’re tacked on there but don’t seem to be integrated into the guide at all, which would seem to support my point.