How to play 20BBs Deep in MTTs

As well as how far away the 5 minute toilet break is, one of the most important factors that an MTT player will need to consider during his session will be his stack size. It's at the heart of everything we do. Some stacks arm you with the ability to crush whereas others cripple your options, forcing you into a shove or fold scenario. One of the biggest things I've noticed over the past year or so is how often people with around 20 big blinds are crippling themselves with failed blind steal attempts.

Raising with the intention of folding from a 20 big blind stack used to be completely fine (and often it still is). People didn't understand how to manipulate weak ranges and use concepts of fold equity as well as they do today, and as a consequence, re-stealing was reserved from premium hands and stack sizes of around 20bbs. 

Nowadays however, people understand the poker maths much more thoroughly and better players understand that those who are trying to steal the blinds more frequently that normal are widening their raising requirements in doing so, and in turn weakening their overall opening range. This should makes sense, but if it doesn't, remember, unless your a card mechanic or convincing with a felt-tip pen, it's impossible to increase the percentage of premium hands that you are dealt and therefore the only way you can open more often, it to open more non premium hands; hence, the average strength of the hands you open raise is weaker.

These wider opening ranges mean that attentive players have adjusted by beginning to 3bet and/or re-shove with wider ranges themselves. They are able to profitably re-shove with medium equity hands (such as Suited Aces and Broadways) to punish the original raiser's weak opening range because they can expect a lot of folds against most opponents. Similarly, because people open so small nowadays (usually min-raising), players with 13-16 big blinds now have the ability to re-steal with far more fold equity than they used to have against a 3 or 4 big blind raise, simply because the odds they give their opponent to call become far worse.

As everything does in life, poker has changed. You no longer need 20 big blinds to re-steal because people are opening with smaller sizing and the risk to reward ratio of a big re-shove is reduced. For the record, I actually think somewhere closer to 15bbs is a better re-shoving stack in most situations, but the fact of the matter remains, people are able, and willing, to re-shove on us much wider if we are min-raising with a weak perceived range.

Look at the following spot, I've ignored the hole cards because they are irrelevant (we'd usually be opening to call a shove with premium and folding to a shove with trash). Play around with a few hands here. What you would open? What wouldn't you? Is this a good spot to go for a steal with a hand like JTo for example?  

Generally, unless the table is pretty tight, I think this is an awful spot to try and steal for a number of reasons:

• Our Stack Size - We have 20 big blinds so a raise fold will constitute a 10% loss of our stack (losing any chips from this stack size is painful).

• Villains Stack Sizes – We have 20 big blinds which means we need to have the goods to be able to call. It's tough to get good hands.

• Position - We are in middle position, so our perceived range won't necessarily be super strong here 7 handed, plus there are a lot of players to get though.

• Villains - We are raising into four re-shove stacks who will be looking for any attractive shoving spot, especially given the extra fold equity they have due to the pressure they can put on our 20bb stack.

However if we do tighten up our range in these in these spots, we need to make sure we accumulate chips elsewhere. In my opinion, you are much better off raising stronger hands for value with this stack size you are trying to steal. Passing on this kind of a spot saves you enough chips to look for good squeeze and re-shove spots yourself.

Not only are the pots you win re-stealing bigger than they are when you get a steal through, you get far more folds, and get to realise your equity when called. 20 big blinds is a frustrating stack size, and I think too many people waste chips trying to bully their way to a big stack without an effective bullying stack. Be careful and have some patience because raising/folding from 18-20bbs can quickly turn a health re-stealing stack into a micro stack, especially if the blinds go through you and the level increases. Don't let your opponents cut your hand of for stealing, instead, maintain and use your re-shove stack and in turn remove profitable re-steal spots from aggressive opponents.