How low in chips to go

AcidJoe

Your in a tourney and the blinds are 400/800 and top 60 get money. 64 people left and your on the bubble. I let myself get to 2400 after not getting a hand in about 70 hands to be able to see a flop with. I managed to recover from it when I moved all in with JQ suited when I hit the straight on a 4 way all in. Did I let myself get to short chipped? Or is that about as low as you can get. Can you afford to go right down and wait? At the bubble you basically recover your entry fee so I wasn't worried about that, but still wanted to leave myself enough chips to mount a come back if at all possible.

AcidJoe

Ended up going out in 16th, I guess that's a long way from the bubble.....

westside8

I usually try to steal the blinds and antes once per round, and I try not to go below 5BB as other than that it wil not be too big of a raise to be called.

SirWatts

Generally that's too low. Occasionally it will happen but for the most part you should be making a stand on 5-6xBB not 3xBB since you have no fold equity with 3BB. You want to be moving all-in with pretty much any 2 cards from late position when you get to 4-5BB

AcidJoe

I try not to get below 6 BB however I think the best hand I had was 7 4 suited. I ended up letting the blinds go through me then ended up moving. It was a prima tourney and was hard to steal as there was usually a raise and a couple of calls long before it got to late position. It was only my all in with AJ spades that hit the nut flush when 2 others called my all in that kept me alive. In this case I was glad I waited but I wanted to hear other people's opinions on it.

SirWatts

Maybe there wasn't much you could do about it in this case. It happens sometimes.

BBC Z

I'm no tourney specialist, but with the release of Harringtons NL book, everyone is talking about M ratio this and M ratio that.. (For deciding when you are shortstacked). You may wanna do some searching about it and find out what they're talking about.. (I don't know offhand).

the_main

M is simply the ratio of your stack to the current total of blinds and antes.

Example - blinds are 100/200 with a 25 ante...9 players at the table and your stack is 1,600

9X25(antes) = 225
100+200(blinds)=300
300+225=525
1600(your stack)/525 = 3.04

your M is about 3

Harrigton suggests with an M under 5, your only move is all-in - this is called the 'red zone' ... anything below an M of 1 is the 'dead zone' and should never be reached....