Protecting Your Stack

Whereas there is plenty of advice available for players who find themselves short-stacked in a multi table poker tournament, there seems to be little guidance on offer for players who have started a tournament well and find themselves up amongst the chip leaders. Maybe the belief exists that players with the biggest chip stacks no longer need assistance, but novice players who find themselves in this happy position can often freeze – like rabbits staring into oncoming headlights – and quickly lose the advantage they have built up so well.

The way to consider your chip stack when you are amongst the leaders in a multi table poker tournament is to regard it as if it were your whole bankroll. When you are “well ahead”, you would not put your whole bankroll on the spin of a roulette wheel, so why do it on the turn of a card? Refrain from playing marginal hands (like you probably have so far) and maintain a tight table image. This will allow you to occasionally steal blinds as they increase, and avoid the scenarios where players take you on with their marginal hands.

As a novice, you should not try to bully the shorter-stacked players. Although playing loose aggressive poker is a strategy you may wish to utilise on occasions at the final table, abandoning your opening hand selection during the middle section of a multi table poker tournament will destroy your tight table image and the whole table will identify that you have loosened up. You will find yourself being bet into by anybody and everybody who wants a piece of your stack and you might find that you are unable to isolate players when you are dealt a premium opening hand. Loosening up before the fringes of the bubble is the fast-track to losing your stack.

A further useful tip is to think of your relative chip stacks in terms of time. The bigger your chip stack, the longer you have before you have to make a decision, and the pressure will be on the short-stacked players to win a hand to stay in the tournament long before it becomes a problem for you. If you can continue to win the occasional hand, you are buying more time – and the more time you have, the deeper you will run into the tournament.

Protecting your stack, rather than risking it, is the way to stay ahead of the pack in a multi table poker tournament. A football coach with a 2-0 lead at half-time, would not remove his defence and play with ten forwards / neither should you!

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