Stack Size Dynamics

Stack dynamics affects what hands you can play and who you should be playing them against.With stack dynamics, there are three relationships between stack sizes. Let’s take a look at each of them:

Criteria One

Your opponent can bust you without risking a large percentage of their stack. This player is particularly dangerous because they have the capability of putting you to the test for your entire stack. Even if they lose the hand they won’t go broke, so their fear of busting is removed.

That’s a powerful weapon to have at your disposal. Let’s look at an example final table scenario and see what players would meet this criteria.

Blinds are 1,500/3,000 with a 500 ante. The average stack is 60,000 and we are ten-handed at the final table. Here are the stack sizes by seat:

Seat 1 has 10,000
Seat 2 has 50,000
Seat 3 has 40,000
Seat 4 has 35,000
Seat 5 has 120,000
Seat 6 has 80,000
Seat 7 has 50,000
Seat 8 has 45,000
Seat 9 has 70,000
Seat 10 has 105,000

In this example, every player falls under the first example for seat 1. For seats 2,3,4, and 7, seats 5 and 10 also have this dominating advantage. For seats 5,6,9, and 10 there are no players that have this domination. The two big stacks, seats 5 and 10 have the biggest advantage here.

This is ideally where you would want to be. Seats 6 and 9 are in the middle ground as the two big stacks cannot automatically get them to fold a hand with sheer pressure because their stack could cripple them.

On the same note, seats 6 and 9, while having larger stacks than 2,3,4, and 7 have the same problem as any all-in call by those four would be a big blow to their stack.

Clearly, seat 1 has the worst position of the group. There is not one player he can cripple and if he moves all-in is likely to be called.

Criteria Two

Here, your opponent is close to or equal to you in chips. The biggest mistakes are usually made under this scenario. Players will often go to battle with players they have covered thinking even if they lose they will still have chips.

What these players don’t realise is that the loss to their stack will be so much that it will put them in the position of seat 1 above. Using the same example we see that seat 1 has no player that falls into this criteria. Seats 2, 3, 4, 7, and 8 all meet this criteria for one another.

Any all-in confrontation between these players will eliminate or cripple them. Seats 5 and 10 also meet the second criteria for one another. This is the biggest issue a big stack needs to evaluate when they are playing a pot at a final table.

They need to recognise these opponents and avoid confrontations with them unless they know they have the best of it. Too often you will see big stacks taking each other on and this is usually a mistake.

Seats 6 and 9 meet the second criteria for each other and while they want to avoid confrontations with seats 5 and 10, they also need to be careful about challenging each other.

Criteria Three

This situation is one where you have a player well covered (their stack is less than 50% of your stack). These players are the ones you want to be confronting and taking marginal risks against.

They cannot bust you, so you have a level of comfort. This is almost the exact opposite of the first criteria. Looking again at our example, we see that seat 1, as expected, has no player that meets this criteria.

Seats 2, 3, 4, 7, and 8 all have seat 1 in their third criteria. Seat 5 has all seats but 6, 9, and 10 covered. Seat 6 has seats 1, 3, and 4 covered. Seat 9 has seats 1 and 4 covered and all players but seats 5, 6, and 9 meet the third criteria for seat 10.

Now that we have a better grasp of the third criteria, let’s look at a couple of hand examples using the above chip counts as our basis with the blinds at 1,500/3,000 with a 500 ante.

Criteria One And Three

Seat 9 is the small blind and seat 10 is the big blind. Seat 1 moves all-in under the gun for 10k. Seat 3 also moves all-in for 40k. The rest of the players fold. Seat 1 has pocket fours and seat 3 has A-K.

When seat 1 moves all-in, every player at the table meets the first criteria so it is extremely unlikely that seat 1 will win the hand without getting called. Seat 3, while short in comparison to most of the players, has seat 1 in his third criteria so they can make this move without fear of being busted or crippled. This is an easy play based on stack dynamics.

What if we were to reverse the situation a little? Let’s say seat 1 folded this time and seat 3 opened the action to 9k and seat 10 re-raised out of the big blind to 27k, having seat 3 well covered.

Seat 3 this time is the one with pocket fours and seat 10 has A-K. Now the situation is completely different as it is seat 3 being put to the test for all of their chips. They would have to risk their tournament with a hand that is most likely at best to be a coin flip. If they lose, they are out.

Seat 10 can lose the hand and not even lose half their stack. They are using their position and stack to force seat 3 to make a very tough decision, Most often a player in this situation will fold pocket fours.

You will often see this situation late in a tournament between a player who is facing someone who meets the first criteria. The decision to call or fold here is often the difference between winning or losing the tournament. Based on stack dynamics, this is a very difficult call to make and you could make an argument that folding is the best option.

Criteria Two

In this example, the blinds are 3,000/6,000 and seat 3 has 46k to start the hand and opens for 18k. Seat 7 has 26k and moves all-in. Seat 3 makes the call for an additional 8k. Seat 3 has K-J and seat 7 has K-10. The board doesn’t help and seat 7 is eliminated.

Seat 7 in this instance, should have realised that seat 3 had put in almost half his stack and more than likely had a hand that had K-10 in bad shape. In addition, seat 7 had no folding equity and should have waited for a spot where they could open-shove as the initial aggressor.

Seat 3 wasn’t without fault though, should have moved all-in to apply maximum pressure rather than making a standard raise as they are not going to fold (at least they shouldn’t) if a player comes over the top of them.

Having a player in your second category should also impact the decisions you make. For example, let’s say you are at a six-handed table and you have the second biggest stack at the table with 150k with the blinds at 4k/8k and it is folded to you in the small blind.

The big blind has 200k and is the only player at the table who is within 80k of you. You have Q-10 offsuit, which normally you would raise with but because of the stack dynamics you opt to fold.

The Power Of One

When players are in your first category, you have a lot of power. For example, let’s say you have 160k and it is folded to the small blind who completes. They have 50k. You have a very marginal hand in K-7 offsuit but you move all in.

The small blind folds and you pick up the dead money. The reason this play works is because the small blind knows that if they call and lose, they will be out of the tournament. The fear of elimination is a huge weapon in no-limit hold em tournaments.

Stack dynamics dictates how you should play based on the players that are already in the hand or are left to act. If a player is in the big blind and they are in your second or third category, you should be more willing to steal.

If a player is in your third category, you should be more willing to call a raise. You should fold to a re-raise from a player in your first or second category unless you have a legitimate hand.

If you are in everyone’s third category, you must know that if you play a hand you are most likely going to get called. If you are a big stack, you want to avoid playing hands with other big stacks, players that are in your second category. You should instead be going after players who are in your third category.

When you use stack dynamics together with depth of money dynamics, you’ll start to see that the key to getting deep in tournaments is all about selective aggression based on the players’ stack size in relation to yours and the depth of money in relation to the blinds.