Been working on my tournament game lately, especially endgame and finishing strong, I’ve been having so good fortune lately and been making deep runs in HSMTT’s, but I’ve been constantly plagued by the debate of when to shove with a medium stack.
Like if I’m 4/7 with 8BB’s and chip leader has 19BB What kind of range should I shove with, and furthermore is it more profitable to make these shoves and go for a win rather than fold my way into a comfortable 4th place, hoping to generate and sort of related discussion, cheers!
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i have 0 clue how you can get to 7 left and have a chip leader with only 20bb, is your entire table playing insanely passive or something? Generally though, don’t shove anything aside from Aces or Kings when you have medium stack. If there were more normal blinds in play (chip leader has 40bb medium stack 20) you should shove anything in the top 50% of hands under 5bb, and any ace / decent kings (KJ+ risky though depends a lot on table) or pocket pairs under 10bb. Medium stack can be frustrating to play but you need to play fairly passive because the big stacks can put you in really awkward positions if you play too many hands. Chip leader’s advantage becomes less and less as more people get busted, so i’d fold into 4th place and go from there, if he tries to bully you 4 handed you can do a lot more than if he bullied you 6 handed or even 9 handed (seeing as you said you were 4/7 i guess you played 9 handed)
On this site i’ve also seen a lot of people that mentally shut down or something when they arrive at the 15bb mark, where they don’t go all in at all but rather fold all the way down to 2bb. If you see this happen (will only happen with bad players) then you might want to change up your game plan and start bullying as if you were the big stack.
TL;DR Main problem when playing medium stack is that you usually have 2x or maybe 3x the stack of the smallstack, which means you have to respect his all in’s, big stack doesn’t have this problem and can just bet then fold when the small stack shoves. It is too costly to try and outplay the small stack as a medium stack, and you’re always in fear of the big stack shoving over you.
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Have you played tourneys on here haha, last night k was in that very spot, the blind structure is simply to quick. But thanks for all the strategy analysis was helpful!
Some tournaments have a quicker blind structure than others, blinds can start higher or go up faster, the mins of a blind level can be between 4 and 10 mins, most tournaments have ante, some not.
When you click on Blind Schedule (tournament lobby) you can see if a tournament has a quick structure or a slower structure.
So true, I’ve never seen that elsewhere. But I don’t play many tourneys so it might be a common pattern at micro stakes MTT.
the times of the tours starts 5 min later then it says please fix it
Patience is key here; you don’t want to undo all of the good work that got you to the final table.
The smaller stacks are under a lot of pressure, and will usually go bust very quickly. You should be focusing on position more than relative hand strength when thinking about getting aggressive here. For example, I would shove any ace from the button or the cutoff if I knew that the players behind me weren’t total donks and could find a fold. But I would not open shove AT or 77 from early or middle position. I might even consider limping from late position with a pretty weak range of hands if the table is passive and it’s unlikely to get raised, just because I know there’s a good chance of getting the blinds to fold to a bluff post-flop.
It can be crucial to win the blinds with aggression once or twice when they equal 10%+ of you stack, but in general it’s probably best to stay tight and pick an ideal hand or situation and just wait for your opponents to make mistakes.
Hey Joe good to see ya again 
Hum I guess it depends on what you mean by a weak range but I’m not a huge fan of limping LP at a final table with a medium stack. I guess if the table was very passive and you noticed that SB+BB liked to see flops an fold a lot later you might have a point but it’s far less profitable than just raising pf.
Most of the times a min raise will do here or 2,1x/2,2x not necessarily a shove. Besides if SB and/or BB called pf you’d still have some room to maneuver on the flop since the SPR doesn’t matter anymore in that situation.
Good to hear from you. I agree with what you are saying about limping, and limping in these situations is not strictly a good decision. However, when your opponents generally fold when they miss the flop, especially in the blinds, it can be a relatively low-risk approach.
For example, if I have 10k, and the blinds are 1k, and I am on the button, I might limp with let’s say J9s (or any hand with a T or higher in it), if I know that I am likely to end up seeing a flop with only the BB who also has 10k and will fold unless they crush the flop. Now I can win a ~3k pot if I hit any piece or by betting basically any flop, particularly if there is a paint card on board. The only risk is that I lose my 1k limp, but it seems to be profitable in the long run if you can pick the correct situations. Raising with a weak hand in an identical situation would be risking a much larger portion of your stack just to win the blinds.
Hum your 1BB limp + what you’ll bet later on so at least another BB which makes it 2BB pretty much the same as min raising pf (except the pot size obviously).
But I get your point though if you know it’s gonna be a fold at the SB pf and an almost certain fold on the flop from the BB it could make lot of sense.
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Yeah, the 2nd 1k bet is a situational decision based on additional information (I could choose to check/fold an ugly looking flop or if my opponent leads out), while raising preflop would be committing even more of my stack (I would raise at least 2.5x) without as much information.