Chip Stacks in MTTs

[Thunder]

1) How much relevance (if any) should be give to the average chip stack in a tourney? If you're behind the average, should you be worried, looking to at least keep even? Or is it irrelevant as the average may be a false representation due to extreme big/small stacks distorting things?

2) Middle stages. The early and late stages I feel ok with (but we can all get better). Where I will make or break is in the middle/late middle period. If I go card dead, or am forced out due to shorter stacks pushing pre flop, I can easily go a level or two without taking a pot - or I can be stacked enough not to need to get frisky with junk - and thus my stack starts to dwindle, especially if I do enter a pot and lose.

Case in point was a 600 runner MTT the other day. Top 80 paid, 68 left, blinds just changed to 500/1000, I had 26k and the average was 13k. I raised pf with KA to 3000, was called, made a 4k c bet into the 7500 pot and was reraised off the hand, and getting short.

The times I have made the FT, I have always doubled up at about this stage and have gotten lucky on average 2 times when the money has gone in. If I don't get lucky or get the hands to break someone, I find it hard to get beyond the early cash levels.

Long story short, is the above the norm and everyone needs a break of some kind? Or should I be looking at being more aggressive - say stealing at least 2 pots per orbit? Or should I just aim to get hands, hit flops and make the occasional play?


Thx

[herschelw]

1. Number of BB's or M tend to be much more relevant to your decision making that how far ahead or behind the avg you are. # of BB's generally gives you a better feel for the amount of pressure you have on you to make plays in order to succeed. If you do want to consider avg I would suggest instead looking at where you stand in the field(i.e. 150th of 300 left) rather than avg number of chips.

2. After you lost the AK hand you should have been looking for someone to reshove over rather than looking to raise,steal or waiting for a hand.

If you learned how to incorporate reshoving effectively in your game you find much more success in middle levels.

[Phantaroth]

I really try and just focus on my stack relative to the blinds. Often, especially in lower buy in events, the average will increase at an abnormal pace, where you might make some mistakes trying to keep up.

Often I have a big stack, then steals fail, or card dead, and it's no longer a big stack - it sounds like we probably have similar problems.

Often the difference from a big stacking becoming a bigger stack and a big stack becoming an average stack are one or two marginal situations. So I wouldn't assume you are doing anything wrong, but of course you can always tighten your game up.

If those one or two marginal situations don't go your way, I think it is important to keep up the energy. I find myself not wanting to make any risky plays because I -had- a big stack, but really, you gotta go after it.

I know all of the above sounds very intangible, sorry :P

[Thunder]

Lol no worry, just glad you took the time to reply.

It's funny that you talk about tightening up as I see myself as too tight. Once I have got that decent stack, I am loathe to risk it, and am far tighter than in an SNG where I have even less BBs.

Suppose it's just a case of pushing if I go card dead but then if I push with a marginal hand and get called by a better hand then I'm going to be kicking myself for playing like a donk, lol. Ah well.

And you're right about seeming to have similar problems.

[Deafmann]

About point 1 I would say, that it also depends a lot on the structure. This is including the amount of players.

The faster the structure the more relevant it is. Your Q that is. Because if your under Q and still have a decent M, the blind level quickly destroy it. While a slower tourney you can sit and wait waaaaayyyyy longer and your M is even more dominant over your Q then

Still like Harrington said it let your M be the dominant factor at all (most off the) time.

But consider the structure, cause it is important in really determing your tourney position.