Q&A #107: Classifying Tournament Stages

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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 your chips in for dollars. So each chip is always worth to you at least the face value of the chip.

(It’s argued by some people that cash game chips in capped buy-in games can be worth more than their face value when your stack is above the cap. For instance, if the cap on a buy-in is $500, and you have $800, and two bad players have $1,500, then your chips between $500 and $800 are worth somewhat more than $300 because you can’t easily replace them and you can expect them to increase in value over time as you play hands with the bad players. This viewpoint has theoretical merit, but my opinion is that in most practical situations this slight extra value shouldn’t change your play very often because you can never count on those bad players remaining at the table or keeping their stacks. So I tend to ignore this argument except in extreme cases, and I tend to view with skepticism anyone’s argument for sweeping strategic adjustments based on this effect.)

Back to the main point. Cash games tend to keep some values relatively constant: blind sizes, antes, stack sizes, chip values, etc. In tournaments these things are all variable, and mastering the changes in strategy due to these changing variables is the key tournament skill. This brings us to today’s question from CJDCR.

In GSIH, on page 176, the “Middle Phase” of a MTT is defined as when the average stack = 10BB. At least on PokerStars, I am not seeing this happen in most of the MTTs I am playing. The average stack is always > 10BB. Can anyone coment on this? By this definition, all of the MTTS go from the “Early Phase” to the “Bubble Phase.”

I placed 10th in a 360-seat turbo last night on PokerStars and noticed that this time, it did reach an avg. stack of 10BB. However, I believe it was after the bubble burst. Again, GSIH mentioned this would happen between the early phase and the bubble phase. It also mentioned it usually happens after 2-4 blind levels.

Are there a significant number of tournaments I am not playing – either live (very limited experience) or online – where the phases occur as mentioned in GSIH? Or is there a more useful guideline than 10BB?

The reason I ask is as follows:

According to GSIH, the early phase is regarded as similar to cash games and the bubble and prize phases are regarded as similar to SNGs. Therefore, although my primary focus is on MTTs, working on my cash game and SNG game would help with my early phase play and bubble/prize phase play, respectively. The middle stage (avg. stack = 10BB) is regarded as similar to satellite play. If this phase exists, I would want to work on satellite play to help with my middle phase game. However, if this middle phase is virtually nonexistent in most tournaments, I would not bother practicing with satellites.

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

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