The Three Stages of a Tournament

Cash games tend to be relatively static. The blinds don’t change. The stack sizes can vary, but they tend to vary from fairly deep to really deep. And, after any hand, you can get up from the table and cash in your chips for dollars. So, each chip is always worth to you at least the face value of the chip.

In tournaments, these things — blinds sizes, antes, stack sizes, and chip values — are all variable, and mastering the changes in strategy due to these changing variables is the key tournament skill. This brings us to this question from a reader:

“According to your book, Getting Started in Hold’em, the early phase of a tournament is regarded as similar to cash games, and the bubble and prize phases are regarded as similar to sit-and-gos (SNGs). Therefore, although my primary focus is on multitable tournaments, working on my cash game and SNG game would help with my early-phase play and bubble- and prize-phase play, respectively. The middle stage (which you define as an average stack of approximately 10 big blinds) is regarded as similar to satellite play. But in the tournaments I play, the average stacks are rarely 10 big blinds. They are usually more. If this middle phase exists, I would want to work on satellite play. Should I therefore practice all three games — cash games, satellites, and SNGs — to improve my tournament play?”

Well, indeed, in live tournaments, it’s quite common to have average stacks of around 10 big blinds after a few rounds. But that actual number isn’t so important.

In Getting Started in Hold’em, I briefly describe tournaments as having various stages, and discuss roughly what to expect from each stage. The book is written for newer players, and that section is meant only as a rough outline of what to expect. There’s nothing special about average stacks of 10 big blinds as opposed to 15 or 25 big blinds.

I would say there are two overall changes that most multitable tournaments go through, and they both happen gradually as the tournament progresses. First, the average stack sizes drop from the 50-150 big blinds range to around the 5-25 big blinds range (depending on the tournament structure). Low buy-in live tournaments tend to undergo this change the fastest, but it’s a universal aspect of tournament play. Second, the strategic focus shifts from purely chip accumulation to a balance of chip accumulation and survival.

Generally speaking, when the stacks are deep, your style should resemble cash-game play. You’ll be seeing flops, and there will be plenty of play after the flop. In the first round or two, you will often see lots of six- to eight-handed pots, which you’ll also see in loose, soft cash games.

When the stacks are shallow, your style should still largely resemble cash-game play, but it should resemble how you’d play a cash game if everyone started the hand with 10 big blinds instead of 100 big blinds. These stack sizes call for aggressive preflop play, and the preflop open-raise and the preflop shove over a raise are the two bread-and-butter tactics.

Tournament play begins to differ significantly from cash-game play once the bubble begins to approach. When the prizes are far off, your main goal should be to accumulate chips. Since that’s also your goal in a cash game, the strategies align. Once the bubble nears, however, you must balance chip accumulation against survival, since merely existing at the table now has some value. Also near the bubble, you can take advantage of the fact that many of your opponents might be putting too much emphasis on survival for the sake of taking home one of the small prizes. This factor adds value to aggressive chip-accumulation plays.

My model of viewing a multitable tournament as a series of three phases — cash game, satellite, and sit-and-go — is an intentional oversimplification of what’s really going on, but it has some intuitive appeal. Early in a tournament, the prizes are far off, and your goal is to accumulate chips. Since that’s also your goal in a cash game, the stages are similar.

In the middle of a tournament, the stacks are more shallow but your main goal should still be to accumulate chips. In that way, the tournament is like a satellite, since satellites usually are winner-take-all (or close to it), and often are played with shallow stacks. In a multitable tournament, the prizes right after the bubble are small, so while raw survival has some value, it’s not usually worth giving up a chance to accumulate chips just to slide into one of the small prizes. Some players dramatically shift their strategy in and around the bubble to one that highly treasures survival over chip accumulation, and that drastic shift is usually a mistake.

So, I would say that the satellite period lasts from the time people start thinking about the bubble to the time the really worthwhile prizes start to come into play.

Then, the final stage of a tournament is sort of like a sit-and-go, where surviving one or two places can represent an extra 3 percent to 5 percent of the prize pool. In this stage, chip accumulation is still important, as always, but sometimes survival becomes the more overriding concern.

The bottom line is that most tournament players overvalue survival throughout most of a tournament. The same player who takes risks and is aggressive in a cash game is cautious in a tournament, even during the middle stages when the prizes are still far off. This isn’t the right way to play! With a few situational exceptions, your primary goal in any tournament hand should be to win chips, not to ensure survival. Remember that early in a tournament, you should play as if it’s a cash game. And in the middle of a tournament, you should play as if it’s a satellite. If you do that, your strategic focus will be correct, and you’ll give yourself the best shot to win a top prize.

Ed is a featured coach at StoxPoker.com. Also check out his online poker advice column, NotedPokerAuthority.com. He has authored four books on poker, most recently, Professional No-Limit Hold’em: Volume 1.