Mid Stakes Poker Tournament Strategy

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There is a reason we use the auto-rebuy feature. Correct strategy changes significantly depending on the amount of starting chips we have for our hand. Most of us have invested our time learning correct strategies for 100bb poker. As such, we want to spend as much of our time possible playing 100bb poker where we have the biggest edge. It doesn't necessarily make sense to let our stack dwindle to 70bb where we have not developed our poker strategy to the same level. This is why we can often identify fish when they don't use the auto-rebuy function.

Poker Tournament Strategy Video
Poker Tournament Strategy Live
Mid Stakes Poker Tournament Strategy Chart

Does this mean that we should therefore ignore basic poker strategy for all other stacks sizes? Definitely not. Unfortunately we are going to be forced to play against players who have varying stack sizes. Only the shorter stack in a heads-up situation determines the effective stacks. So if we have 100bb and we are playing against a player with 50bb, we are playing with 50bb effective stacks whether we like it or not. If our opponent has developed a strong 50bb strategy and we are out of our comfort zone then he is going to have an edge.

This article will cover some basic pointers regarding play vs mid-stacks which will help us to neutralise that edge. We will look at preflop situations and postflop situations.

Most of us spent a lot of time learning a proper strategy to play 100+ big blinds deep. For this reason, even many good regs make mistakes when they find themselves in a situation where they have to play against shorter, mid-sized stacks. This article aims to improve your mid stack poker strategy and help you understand and implement some important adjustments needed for these types of situations. The main profit of tournaments is to be made in the late stages: in low/mid-stakes very few of your opponents are competent in ICM spots, shorthanded game, let alone heads-up your primarily goal should be to avoid early-stage clashes and get into the late stages as often as possible, even with a short stack, so you can actually profit on the serious mistakes they make. Tournament poker rules don't change from level to level, but your strategy should as you move through the different stages of a tournament. Keep in mind that the middle stages of multi-table.

Early Micro Stakes Tournament Strategy In tournaments with higher buy-ins, your plan should be to play a lot of hands early on. There are two reasons for this: Most high buyin tourneys start out with deep stacks (200bbs+) which means you are getting the right implied odds to see a lot of flops.
Beginners Circle; Small Stakes NL Hold’em; Full Ring NL Hold’em; Short-Handed NL Hold’em; Tournament Poker.

Preflop

The first mistake players make is playing too tight vs preflop aggression. 50bb stack opens and we hold part of our standard 3-bet bluff-range. Many players might say the following,

Correct strategy changes significantly depending on the amount of starting chips we have for our hand. Most of us have invested our time learning correct strategies for 100bb poker.

“Normally I'd 3bet here but this guy doesn't have a full stack so I fold”. A similar thing might happen when facing a 3bet from a mid-stack. “Normally I'd play back with this holding but my opponent doesn't have a full stack so I fold”.

But if we were to read articles or watch videos on learning to play a mid-stack strategy we'd see that the advice is to 3bet very aggressively. This is exactly the same for us when we are playing with 50bb effective even if we have a 200bb stack. We actually confer a huge advantage to mid-stacks and short-stacks if we only 3bet them with premiums and fold to most of their 3bets. This is one of the reasons why mid-stacking and short-stacking is still profitable. Many of the 100bb regs don't know how to properly adjust because they have spent their time training with 100bb stacks.

3bet/4bet Game

The first thing to understand is that we should be prepared to stack of lighter with 50bb stacks. This might increase our variance but if we don't do this we are going to find ourself undefended. We should always use stats where possible since not all mid-stack players are good aggressive mid-stacks, some are simply recreational players and might not 3bet that aggressively.

So in a situation where we'd normally stack of with QQ+/AK we might now be stacking off with TT/AQ. This is just our value range, it's important to have a bluffing range vs the hyper aggressive opponents.

One of the confusing things about playing vs mid-stacks is understanding whether we should 4bet to a regular size or simply 4bet-jam. This is actually very close and dependent on the sizings used so there is not set answer to this. However it's useful to consider some basic poker maths so that you can make your own decision. The general idea is that if we are priced in after we 4bet even with our bluffs then we may as well be jamming. By not jamming we give our opponent the opportunity to 5bet bluff with very high equity hands that he would otherwise be folding vs our 4bet jam. It works out more profitable to 4bet jam in this instance even if it's a bit of an overjam.

Ideally when we open-raise knowing that there is a mid-stack IP on us, we should be using a 2bb sizing rather than our default sizing. (Just continue as normal if 2bb is your default sizing). If our opponent raises to 7bb and we 4bet to 15bb, we'd need to call an extra 35bb into a total pot of roughly 100bb. This means we'd need 35% equity to make the call. If we had bluffed with a high equity hand like A5s we would have 31.23% equity vs a value range of TT+/AQo. Folding is clearly still a valid option with our bluffs.

However, what happens if we make a few tweaks to the situation? Opponent makes a large 3bet to 10bb. We 4bet to 22bb. We'd now need to call an extra 28bb to win the total 100bb pot. We need 28% equity to make the call and are priced in with all of our bluffs. It likely makes sense to directly 4bet jam over our opponents 3bet with our value and bluff-range. We are guaranteed to fully realise our equity in this scenario and often prevent our opponent from realising his.

Something similar might occur if the effective stacks are 40bb. This is not technically mid-stack-strategy, however it's a very common stack size on some networks. 20bb used to be the official amount of chips used for short-stack-strategy, but after some networks set the min-buyin at 40bb then 40bb became the new shortstack strategy. While 40bb and 50bb play are extremely similar we can see that we are very close to the threshold where we decide whether to use a non-allin 4bet sizing.

There is no trick for this, we must make a decision on each individual hand. However it's useful to note that when facing a 5bet with 50bb effective stacks, the amount of big-blinds is exactly the equity needed to call. So if we need to call a 30bb allin 5bet from our opponent, we need 30% pot-equity to make the call.

3Betting Equity

We mentioned earlier that we should still be 3betting aggressively vs mid-stacks. Does this mean that we'd use exactly the same hand-range as we would against a 100bb opponent. Not at all, we should definitely make some adjustments.

Since we are always closer to an all-in when playing 50bb effective, our pot-equity starts to become more important than if we were playing 100bb stacks. Low equity hands like 67s are still very playable with 100bb stacks since we can put pressure on our opponent postflop. We can still put pressure on our opponent with 50bb stacks but not as much. Very often a 50bb hand will end on the turn in a 3bet pot.

Equity is therefore more important than playability with 50bb effective stacks. Depending on the sizings used as discussed earlier we will either be

5bet jamming (where the only thing that matters is pot-equity)
Facing a 4bet all-in from our opponent (where the only thing that matters is pot-equity)

So high equity holdings like Axs or Pocket-Pairs go up in value, while low equity speculative hands should be folded more frequently preflop vs a 50bb opponent. Axs and PP's make excellent 4bet and 5bet bluff jams.

Postflop Strategy

The easiest way to begin understanding postflop strategy with 50bb stacks is to think about how the bet-sizings differ from 100bb poker.

Firstly we don't want to be bloating the pot too much preflop. The more chips we can leave behind for postflop play, the more our results will be a function of our skill rather than a function of variance. So we should

open-raise to 2bb when there are mid-stacks still to act
3bet to 7bb when facing a 2bb open

So let's assume a BB vs SB situation we will have 43bb left in our stacks and there will be 14bb in the middle. There are generally 2 sizing plans we can use, the 2 street and the 3 street sizing plan.

2 street plan – So if we bet around 10bb on the flop we will set up roughly a pot-sized bet. There will now be 34bb in the middle and we will have 33bb left in our stack. We can now shove the turn depending on the turn card.

The main determining factor in whether we take this line or not will often be the board texture. If the board texture is drawy and we hold something like an overpair we want to get the money in fast. We'd prefer to be all-in by the turn rather than giving our opponent a free river card.

We don't want to do this purely with value-hands however unless our opponent is a calling station. We should mix in some high equity bluffs. A good starting point is to take our decent back-door flushdraws, fire the flop, and shove the turn if we pick up our draw.

While balanced play is outside the scope of this article we should obviously be checking back some of our very strong hands on the flop. Also while it's likely +EV to 2-barrel a flopped flush-draw, balanced play involves checking these hands back with some frequency.

3 street plan – Many players are not actually aware that it is possible to 3-barrel in a 3bet pot with 50bb stacks. It's completely possible and should be a useful trick in our arsenal. We simply need to be very careful with bet-sizing in order to employ this strategy.

So using our previous sizings -

43bb stacks

If we bet around 1/3rd pot on the flop 5bb. The situation will be as follows -

37bb stacks

If we then bet just 1/3rd pot on the turn, i.e 8bb.

29bb stacks

Balanced strategy would involve using this line both for value and as a bluff. The exact ratio of bluffs to value will depend on our opponent as usual.

We have now set up a pretty decent shove for the river. As before the board texture will usually dictate which of the two lines we will take. This line is useful for very dry texture where we are not concerned about giving free cards to our opponents

Balanced strategy would involve using this line both for value and as a bluff. The exact ratio of bluffs to value will depend on our opponent as usual. There is little point 3barrel bluffing against a calling station, we can simply weight our 3barreling range purely towards value.

Single Raised Pots

Let's briefly explore what is possible in terms of sizing for single raised pots.

Let's assume we make a 2bb open in the CO and SB calls. BB folds. There will be 5bb in the middle and 48bb effective stacks. Let's use a standard 2/3rds pot size bet on flop and turn and see what this achieves by the river.

We bet flop 3bb.

45bb stacks

27bb in the middle

So we see that we potentially might need to overbet here if we wanted to get stacks in. Let's see what happens if we make a slightly larger bet on the flop and turn

We bet flop 4bb

44bb stacks

34bb stacks

So we see that we actually have to increase our sizing slightly on flop and turn to get the stacks in by the river. Assuming our opponent open raised to a large sizing and we were the cold-caller we could get the stacks in with a 3barrel without the need to increase our sizing.

So in summary,

Be prepared to fight preflop
Be prepared to stack off lighter
Understand correct sizings postflop

Everyday players are sitting down at the tables and consistently making fundamental mistakes because of lack of knowledge, misinformation or failing to maintain focus.

Even just a small strategical adjustment in poker can potentially save you a huge amount in the long run.

In this article we will point out some of the best live and online poker tournament strategy tips you can use to improve your game as quickly as possible.

Poker Tournament Strategy Video

Tip 1: Play The Right Starting Hands

Whether it be lack of patience, or an unfamiliarity with opening ranges, many tournament poker players still open too wide. This is especially true when it comes to early and middle position opens, where there are still many opponents left to act behind who can be dealt a strong hand.

The problem is when called, wide openers are often at a range disadvantage. Often being dominated by their opponents, they are vulnerable to 3 bets since they frequently won't have a holding strong enough to continue under pressure.

Furthermore, although opening a hand like 7 ♠ 5♠ might at times not be a terrible strategy from early or middle position, speculative hands like suited connectors and gappers, as well as small pairs, work best with deep stacks behind.

These speculative hand types infrequently connect strongly with the flop, so those times they do you want to have deep stakes behind to have the potential to win a huge pot. Modern day tournament structures often only see deep stack play occur during the first few levels of play. This leads us into the next tournament poker tip, being stack size aware.

Learn which hands to open raise in MTT's - Watch lesson 6.1 from the Road to Success MTT Course. A power-packed 50 minute video below, just use one of the button options to unlock it and get instant access.

Tip 2: Be Stack Size Aware

Effective stack size plays a critical role in a tournament players success.

Having a deep stack, and therefore expanding an opening range to include a lot of speculative suited hands and small pairs is a tournament strategy that is going to be punished if a number of short stacks are yet to act behind. This most notably occurs in turbo tournaments where the average stack size is quite short.

Poker Tournament Strategy Live

Short stacks will be in push-or-fold mode. Being short, they don't have time to wait and will be looking to take any opportunity they can to move all-in. This high rate of all-ins will leave wide openers frequently being forced to relinquish their hands, without even having the opportunity to try to hit a nice flop. Problematic hands often include; J8s , KTo and weak Ax hands.

It's not just short-stacks that can cause a problem, aggressive players will be looking to attack wide-openers. This is especially true when a player opens with a vulnerable M8-M14 (20bb-35bb) stack. 3 bets get good leverage against this stack size, since continuing in the pot represents committing a significant portion of a players stack.

Wide openers would be wise not to commit a large percentage of their stack with marginal holdings, and so will be forced to fold, or face being in a high-risk situation. Staying aware of your own stacks utility, as well as anticipating how opponents will utilize their stacks, is an important tournament poker tip to keep in mind.

POKER TIP: If you are currently using BB to calculate stack size, here's a look at why using 'M' is a better MTT strategy.

Tip 3: Be Careful Overplaying In The Early Stages

As a stack gets deeper, the less willing a competent player will be to put their entire stack at risk since they have more to lose. It's rare to see good players all-in during the early stages of a tournament with hands like AKo or JJ preflop.

Smart players recognize that their counterparts aren't going to be risking their entire stack with weaker hands like AQo . Therefore, even a strong hand like AK could be at a significant equity disadvantage facing a deep stacked opponents all-in range. Could you fold QQ here?

Rather than putting in an extra raise, often times just calling with even very strong hands in the early stage of a poker tournament has great benefits.

Allows your opponents to continue with hands they were folding to a re-raise that you have crushed.
Disguises the strength of your hand and keeps you unpredictable.
Prevents you from getting all-in facing a super strong range where often times you're crushed.

Tip 4: Continuation Bet Aggressively But Not Always

Players have learnt the value of c-betting, but it's a strategy that is often misapplied. Being the preflop aggressor shouldn't lead to a mandatory c-bet and double barrels.

This is especially true in multi-way pots yet players continue to make fruitless c-bets with weak holdings into multiple opponents.

Even in heads-up situations, key factors to consider include;

How does the flop texture interact with players ranges?
Who has the strongest range?
Who has nut advantage (the biggest share of super strong hands)?
How passive or aggressive is the opponent we're facing?
How does the stack size/SPR allow us to operate on the flop and future streets?

The following hand illustrates the effect nut advantage can have on profitable continuation betting and how it applies to this tournament poker tip:

Tip 5: Be ICM Aware

The Independent Chip Model or ICM, is a great model players use to make more profitable decisions when deep in a tournament and especially at a final table.

Unlike in cash games, chip values fluctuate depending on the stage of the tournament and the competing opponents stack sizes. At it's most extreme, ICM strategy can make A♠A♣: an easy fold preflop.

Imagine a situation in a satellite where 9 players get a World Series of Poker entry and there's 10 remaining. The action folds around to a player with 100,000 in tournament chips who moves all in from the small blind. You're sitting in the big blind with A♠A♣: and also 100,000 in chips. You look around and see a few opponents with only 1000 chips left, which is the size of the current big blind. Obviously one of these short stacks is likely to bust very soon.

Mid Stakes Poker Tournament Strategy Chart

Obviously one of these short stacks is likely to bust very soon. Moreover the chance that they collectively out survive your 100,000 stack is extremely remote. You'd likely be a 99% chance to get a WSOP entry, so why would you call with your A♠A♣ and risk busting next around 20% of the time?

Aside from calling too wide in spots when the most profitable strategy is to proceed tightly, the opposite can also be true when it comes to pressuring your opponents. ICM allows players when they have the opportunity to assert pressure on there opponents stacks, to go ahead and do so liberally, since thinking opponents counter-strategy is to play a tight range of hands.

Here's an example of how drastically a hand range can change when the opportunity to assert pressure at a final table exists. 5 of the 6 remaining players at the Pokerstars Sunday Millions have 15bb's, whilst the UTG player has a short 2bb stack. Since the 15bb stacks wants to avoid busting out next and missing out on a large pay jump before the immanent bust out of the 2bb stack, the small blind can adjust their all-in range. Instead of the profitably 57% all-in range in normal play, they can move all-in with 100% of hands to apply pressure on the big blind.

Whilst the big blind should adjust their calling range from the regular 36% to just 10% of hands to account for the ICM effect in play.

The PokerNerve Road to Success course teaches players how to master ICM situations, which is key to tournament poker success since ICM comes into play as the prizes become significant. If there was only one tournament poker tip that you take away from this article, it's that you need to know ICM!

Tip 6: Bet The Appropriate Size

Strong players are capitalizing on their opponents tendencies to bet too big or too small in a number of different situations. With some similar considerations to that of continuation betting, when selecting a bet size important aspects include;

Which player's range does the board texture favor?
Who has the greatest nut saturation?
How does SPR influence our betting strategy

There are many great articles online about bet sizing. You should be sure to check out ThePokerBank's and the Pokerology's to learn more about this tournament tip.

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Tip 7: Take Equity Realization Into Account

Possibly due to the popularity growth of Twitch, many poker players approach to big blind play has evolved. The current trend is to defend the big blind with virtually any 2 cards, as some top pros elect to do, and the justification for this is taking advantage of the excellent pot odds being offered.

While the inclusion of antes combined with commonly seeing a small open raise size does offer the big blind generous pot odds, this has led to a fundamental flaw in the way many players approach big blind play in poker tournaments. The key concept overlooked, is equity realization.

Equity realization reflects a players ability to take a certain hand, and win their share of the pot, frequently enough, to make it profitable in the long-term. Although some top pros have the ability to win their equity share of the pot even out of position, less skilled players rarely do. This leads to a large chip loss in the long run.

It is quite difficult to realize of your equity when out of position, with no initiative and a weak range. This means them glorious odds you are being offered aren't quite as good as you think!

The following article explains this crucial tournament poker tip in more detail; Equity Realization.

Tip 8: Don't Miss Double And Triple Barrel Opportunities

'One and done' is the plight of many aspiring tournament poker players. Everyday at the tables I see players missing profitable opportunities to double, or even triple barrel. Understanding what turn and river cards are advantageous to a players range, along with opponent tendencies, are crucial parts of a winning barreling formula.

The most common scenario at the table, is a heads-up pot where the big blind calls an open-raise. And this happens to be a great spot to barrel. Big blind defenders have a wide range, and it's important to pressure this wide range, especially on only partially connected board textures with one or multiple high cards.

RedChipPoker has a great article on spotting profitable double barrel opportunities which you can read here: THE +EV DOUBLE BARREL GUIDE

Tip 9: Check-Raise More Flops

The biggest difference between the current tournament population, and the future generation, will likely be their approach to check-raising the flop. This opportunity typically occurs in a heads-up pot, after defending the big blind verse an opponents raise.

Currently, MTT players only check-raise the flop in this situation around 7-8% of the time, when closer to 20% is a more optimal strategy. On certain flop textures, check-raising close to 25% of the time is an extremely profitable strategy. And if players are getting out of line with their c-bets, then check-raising at an even higher frequency could be a profitable exploit.

By giving up too easily on a wide range of board textures, or taking a more passive approach and simply calling, c-betting can be done with reckless abandon. However, by selecting a nice mix of check-raising hands, combining some strong hands with some good semi-bluffing candidates, a check-raiser can become tricky to play against and exploit the average players tendency to over c-bet.

POKER TIP: Applied correctly and check-raising becomes a super powerful weapon in your arsenal leading to more profitable poker results. But also think beyond the flop, there's plenty of check-raising opportunities you may be missing. This video demonstrates an interesting turn check-raise situation.

We discuss check raising strategy in more detail in our post over on unfeltedpoker.com.

Tip 10: Develop A Good 3betting Strategy

Whilst 3 betting aggressively is a strategy many players employ, especially in online poker circles, failure to apply optimal 3 betting strategies has certainly led to a lot of spewy poker. Simply attacking opponents who are suspected of opening wide doesn't cut it in the modern poker world.

Players have learnt to deal with 3 bets more profitably, by mixing in some calls with timely 4 bets. Moreover, the role stack size plays when it comes to 3 betting it still largely misunderstood by much of the poker community.

Sure there are certain stack sizes where 3 bets gain a lot of leverage, but how about the role blockers play? And when is 9♦7♦ a better 3 bet candidate than K♦T♠ ? These are just some of the considerations when it comes to a profitable 3 betting strategy. See how to design strong 3betting ranges in this article by Donkr.

Bonus Poker Strategy Tip: Avoid and Deal with Downswings

As a poker player you want to earn your money as easily and as stress-free as possible right? Well, understanding ROI, variance and bankroll management can help (see TopPokerValue's article on bankroll management).

All poker players at some point experience downswings. In some cases, this can affect their play, volume or state of mind.

You'll be miserable, hating poker, playing less and earning less per tournament as your play will suffer.

Along with finding ways that work for you to keep a positive mindset, taking pro-active steps can help keep you confident by knowing you are dealing with the situation like a professional whilst at the same time taking positive action to get back on track and winning.

What is ROI and variance?

Every tournament you enter has an EV associated with it. So if you enter a $10 tourney, as a good player maybe you have a 30% ROI, so you make $3. So it doesn't matter whether you brick that tourney or win it for $5000, you make $3 in the long run.

Now, of course, you don't make $3 each time. 80-85% of the time you lose that $10, some percentage of the time you win a little bit, and some very small percentage of the time you win a lot. How small those ‘small percentages’ are primarily depends on not only your skill edge, but also the field size which is an extremely important concept that is often ignored.

Variance is a factor of two things:

1) Your edge

2) The field size

Example 1)

You play the Hot $55 which has $30K guaranteed, every day for a year on Pokerstars. It has 1600 runners and you have a 5% ROI, because turbo ROIs are small. Your average yearly profit is $605 however you will lose money on the year 55% of the time.

Example 2)

You play a $20 tourney with $3K guaranteed on a softer site every day for a year. It has 200 runners and you have a 30% ROI, because it's a normal speed tourney and you’re against an easier field. Your average yearly profit is $2400 and in this case you lose money only 12% of the time.

A lot of people would look at those two tournaments and make a decision based on the buy-in and 1st place prize money as to which was better to play, and it would be grossly wrong. Once you accept all the above, you realise that the 'up top' number is largely meaningless.

Yes, on the same site bigger fields may mean a lot of fish have registered to play, but you'll find a lot of small field, soft, non-peak hour tournaments have a great pro-to-fish ratio and hence are great value. Of course once you consider other sites that have smaller fields, you'll often find they are a better choice than what might be running on Pokerstars.

So what can you do?

When players start losing money and along with that, confidence, not only does their game deteriorate but they often compound that problem by failing to make rational decisions. Often losing players, or players on a downswing, go 'bink chasing' and decide to take a shot to win all their money back in one tourney. Or load up some quick $82 hyper-turbos to try to turn it all around quickly.

People get overly fixated on what's 'up top' and wanting to score big in one tournament. That’s a sure-fire strategy to fuel a down swing. If your house got knocked down would you try to slap it back up in a week? Take that opportunity to rebuild a better, stronger house.

Make sure you're adding in some study and keep focused (see Sky's Matsuhashi How To Study Poker series), and stay fresh and positive as you approach each session. Be smart and get back into profit quicker instead of enduring a 6-12 month variance rollercoaster!

Closing Words On Tournament Poker Tips

Poker is a multi-faceted game which makes it fun but challenging. Challenge yourself to factor in the relevant concepts, and make more profitable decisions. Tighten up from the big blind, and in general around the table. This tip often quickly improves a new players results, or those that have a got a little sloppy with their play.

Calculate stack size using 'M'. Always be aware of your own, and your opponents stack sizes so you don't get yourself caught in awkward situations. One awkward situation that often comes up is when you hold an overpair to the board and an opponent puts the heat on you. Don't be afraid to make big lay downs to preserve your stack, especially in the early levels.

Be aware of your cbetting frequency. There's no need to waste tournament poker chips cbetting every time, especially when the pot is multi-way. Pick your spots to make profitable plays. Remember when it comes to the final table, regularly profitable playing ranges might alter due to the payouts. ICM is the key when it comes to those final big decisions.

Another key to success is knowing when to fire multiple bullets at your opponents. Barreling, especially against a wide big blind range can really help increase your non-showdown winnings. Finding ways to accumulate chips without always having the best hand is what top players do. This is why check-raising and having a good 3 betting strategy is so important. Correct use of these strategical concepts and the other tips outlines will get you winning more at the tables.

Now that you've acquired some great holdem tournament strategy tips to help you achieve MTT success, go out there an implement them!

One of the quickest way to improve your poker game is to take on a poker coaching, a course or join a poker training site; if that is something that interests you be sure to check out the PokerNerve road to Success Course for some advanced poker tournament strategy or you can check out HowToPlayPokerInfo's guide on poker training & poker courses to find the right option for you.

Any other poker tournament strategy tips? Leave them below in the comments, we would love to hear them!

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