The Deep Stack starting chips strategy can differ from player to player. Some players want to continue with a squeaky tight image and reduce the risks they play till the blinds get a little higher and the weaker more aggressive players have chipped out. Others like to play a more aggressive, or even simply playing many more hands.
The Blind Levels
With the bigger starting stacks, often you are given more time between blinds. Many of the online deep stack tournaments will give 15 or 20 minute blind levels. The average tournament is between 8-10 mins. The longer the blind level means more orbits (hands) will be dealt with the cheaper small and big blinds, less risk to play marginal hands.
Hand Values in Deep Stack Tournaments
The starting hand requirements drop immensely for some players. More common you will see small pocket pairs and even low suited connectors limp in. So don’t be surprised with seeing set over set, and flushes vs straight flushes, vs a full house. The deep stack tournament makes it more probable that these out comes can happen. The average wining hand is 2 pair, so if 4-5 players see a flop and your faced with a raise or bet on the river, think with your stack.
Good players know that players are limping in with those marginal hands, so consider what value your hand really is when it gets re raised pre flop. Those drawing hands look better when you can see cheap flops. The AA and KK hands are often well over bet pre flop, and really have no value at all with limping in, they get cracked more often so don’t be shocked when you see it.
Pot Building and Position
With the larger starting stacks, and the marginal hands players come into the pot with, the pre flop raise is not the key issues to worry about. You have the chips to call the x3 – x4 BB raise preflop raise with ease. Players know this, so what happens is they want to build the pots up with betting on the flop/turn and river. Just think about it for a second if you double up first hand in a deep stack tournament, how comfortable it would be to play.
The position is the key to deep stack tournaments because with all that betting going on, you will start to see the pots all of a sudden got huge by the river, and now your facing a 150-200 Big Blind bet. You want to be in position because you will have less of an idea of say for example your top pair top kicker is any good.
When your unsure of what decisions to make on the turn or river because your out of position, in the deep stack tournament your going to end up making more mistakes, which cost you a lot of chips.
Bluffing
With the pot building that has been going on, they say the bigger the pot the more profitable it is to bluff, which is true. Getting your hand caught in the cookie jar once to often not only cost you a lot of chips, but will put you on the defense very quickly. All of a sudden, your desperate for aces or kings while everyone else can’t wait to limp in and see a flop with JT suited.
Try to be a little more selective on your bluffs, as usual finding the right players to bluff at. I should add in this section about blind stealing and defending the blinds. If you have 5000 starting chips and the blinds are 100/200 you really don’t need to protect your blinds with total junk hands, but don’t let people get carried away knowing they can steal your blinds later on.
I never really considered the starting stack in my strategy.
Now that you mention it though, more people do tend to see the flop with weaker hands, and I’m left wondering how they got into that hand in the first place.
Maybe I’m playing these games a little too tight and should try playing drawing hands more often. In position of course
Would this blog be useful in a rebuy tournament too?