From The Felt: Stacked
Monday, February 16, 2009 - John Greene
Last time, I reviewed short-stack strategy in games and how it can help you out, now let’s talk about a more pleasant problem to have during a poker tournament: maximizing the time you spend having the biggest stack and how you can hold onto it.
The big stack means that you’re the Boss Hogg of the country that is the poker tables and everyone else is them Duke boys. Sure, they may be able to zip around and nip at you, but you can have throw them in the pokey before they know what happened. Make looser calls and limp into the hands that you’d turn your nose up at most of the time. (They’re very likely to not break out without the help of dynamite, either.) You’d likely never dream of playing 6/7 or 7/8 at the beginning of a tournament, but if you can afford to run the odds and play loosely, do it.
Forcing your opponent to put their whole stack out there when you have a good starting hand is also a must. If you’ve got KK or QQ, go for it and make them pay if they want to play against you. Having a big stack means that you can lose a bit on hands like that if they do have something better and it means that every move you make intimidates the competition.
Later in any tournament, using your stack as well as your cards is very important. While you shouldn’t go all-in on every hand, being able to confidently work your way up from the bottom of the final tables. The more chips you bring in from the bottom, the more you can pay against succeeding levels.
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Tags: big stack, playing with a big stack, Poker Strategy, stack strategy
