Marginal Spots in Tournaments

Have you ever had a tough decision with what do do when you get dealt a hand like KJ, KQ, 55, 66, etc. under the gun? I've had this problem early in my career, and it's been a learning experience ever since. First and foremost my advice will depend on a couple of things. The first will be your chip stack. Let's take time to break down how to look at how your chips look in relation to the blinds.

One of the simplest measure of your chip stack is to see how many big blinds you have. Take your stack and divide the total amount by the size of the big blind. Usually a healthy stack is around 30 BB's, it allows you to raise plenty of hands, and still have enough chips to get away if you face some heat. M-zone has become my preferred way of looking at your chip stack, since it takes in account the size of the antes. To calculate your chip stack based on M, take your total amount, and divide this number by the size of the blinds and antes that are in the pot preflop. If you are playing online this is usually very easy to do, since you can see the size of the pot at all times. Your M number should be lower than your BB number, so here a healthy stack would be anything 20+. Medium stacks are about 10-20, and anything below that you are getting short stacked.

This picture should give you a good idea of what I'm talking about.

An M of 0-5 should alert you to start shoving all in preflop.  At this point you just need to get chips, so any decent hand you have you should look to put it all in.  An M of 5-10 is another problem stack.  At that point I would not raise or call with any marginal hand in early position.  I would look to open up in late position when most of the table has already folded.  Lastly an M of 10-20 will depend on how the rest of your table is playing.

So we have our chip stack out of the way, but one other major factor to examine is how many players are at your table.  Typical tournaments will be 9 handed, but there are many 6 handed format tournaments online.  My advice will look at 9-handed tournaments since this is what you will probably be playing if you play live as well.  Now a closer look at our table.  It is your job to pay attention to your table and observe your opponents tendencies.  By noticing what your opponents are doing you can more easily adapt to a more optimal strategy.  My best advice is to consider what your opponents see you as.  Did you make a bunch of raises that you folded to a reraise to?  Have you been playing really tight and folding most of your hands?  If you don't take a moment to look at your own play, you will be unaware what changes your opponents are making to combat your strategy.  It is true that not all opponents will change their play, but knowing who is will be a great benefit to you.

Let's look at an example.  You have an M of 15 and your table is playing particularly tight, also under the gun raises have been getting a lot of respect, then you should lean towards raising with your hands like KJ, KQ, A9s, or any pocket pair above 4's.  My cutoff is 4's because when you have 4's you are very likely to see an over card on the flop, making your decisions not as clear cut.  If however, you have been raising relentlessly and your table is tight, but you notice there are two very good players in late position, then I would lean towards folding your mediocre hands under the gun.  It is pretty easy to work out the strategy for every situation, so I won't waste your time explaining what to do.

Hopefully this will help you out when you are unsure what to do when you get one of those hands.  If you find that you are still confused, then my best advice is to continue to study your opponents play.  Take notes if someone is doing something crazy, and again think about your image to the rest of the table.