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Online Deep Stack Tournament Strategy

250 big blinds deep. 30 minute levels. An M constantly hovering in the 50’s. This is commonplace in the Poker Stars styled “Deep Stack” tournaments.

With such a massive amount of play throughout the entire tournament, these tend to be some of my most profitable types of tournaments to run during a long session. But, there are some nuances specific to the deep structure that will give you a big edge over your opponents. We’ll go over a number of them in this article.

The first thing to point out, and the most important, is this. Prepare for a LONG day if you plan on playing one of these, especially the $11 variety. Some people will undertake the challenge of playing one of these for the first time, only to discover that, 7 hours later, the money bubble still hasn’t broke yet. The $11 versions can run for upwards of 20 hours! Make sure, if you plan on running one of these, that you start it at the beginning of your docket of tourneys for the day, and make sure you have no engagements that you need to attend to later in the day; I’ve seen plenty of players make it to the final two tables, then mysteriously vanish from play; they probably had to go to work, leave the computer lab, etc.

Also, make sure you’re prepared for the long grind of play, with only five minute breaks to catch up. This means that, for you to win the tournament, you have to stay in top form for almost an entire day of play. If you’re not used to running lengthy tournaments, you may want to reconsider taking on the challenge of the deep stack, at least until you play more big field tournaments. Making one mistake in a tournament can spell your doom, but when you’ve spent 8 hours grinding a tournament, that one mistake can now bust you without a dollar to show for it. Keep this in mind when you make the late stages of one of these tournaments.

Early Stages: Deep Stacks vs Standard MTTs

Raising amounts. When you open, you probably should stick with your normal earlystage opening amounts; 3x or 4x is about right for a standard open in the first few hours of play. But, when reraising with your premium hands, a larger than average three bet may be in order. Where as a standard three bet of a t60 open may be t180-t250, I’m much more inclined to make my three bet t300-t400 instead. By only popping it to t250, you offer your remaining opponents inviting implied odds to crack your aces; you still have t4,750 sitting behind your original open, and if other people get involved, it makes it a trivial call by the time it gets to them. But, the stiffer three bets make it harder to justify the implied odds calls, and make it far easier to make a bet on the flop that chases out draws effectively; with t500 in the middle, you can continuation bet t300-t500, but with t800 in the pot, you can start to bet the bigger amounts (t500-t800) that can discourage drawing and cracking your monsters.

Hand selection. Your implied odds to hit hands go up exponentially thanks to the huge amount of chips every has behind them. Look to take flops with pocket pairs and connected hands as much as possible. Suitedness matters, but not as much as it would in a more shallow stacked tournament. If a flush hits, and you get into the fourth or fifth bet after making it, you’re probably going to be staring directly at the nuts; suited aces are the only “suited hand” that have a big value, flush wise. If you make a flush in a deep stack, be cautious with it, especially if there are multiple players involved in the hand. Way too often, you’ll see a player flop a flush with 56h and get 250 BB’s in the middle, only to find themselves drawing dead to A2h. Look for hands that make the nuts or close to it, so that when you do make a hand with them, you can extract maximum value from them. I’ll happily take a flop on the button with 56o and 79o for t60 in the first level; the potential pay off of t4,940 is too much to pass up for taking flops.

Hand Ranges.This early in the tournament, I’m taking flops with any pocket pair, any suited ace, and most suited connected or connected cards bigger than 45 for any bet that doesn’t represent more than 2% of my starting stack (t100) and hoping to flop a monster. I’m raising very few hands, myself, however; just big pocket pairs and AK; and I’m looking to isolate with those specific hands. I’m three betting with only three specific hands; AA, KK, and QQ, and that’s it; AKo and JJ do not go in my three betting range, ever in the early stages of a deep stack. I’m also only four betting AA/KK; you want these reraises to be big, isolating reraises that deter multiway action. You’re just looking for spots to get a significant amount of chips in as a big favorite; these hand ranges will generate the kind of hands that either completely brick the flop, or give you a draw to the nuts, which is the easiest way to tap your opponents for big chunks of chips.

Bubble and Endgame for Deep Stack MTTs

These strategies will serve you well through the first 4-5 hours of the tournament, while the average stack will start to decline for the super deep realm to a more manageable M20-M25 average, at this point. When you see the stacks start to fall to Earth a bit, usually beginning around the 200/400 level, you may want to shift your strategy from hitting flops with drawing hands to a more straightforward game; blind stealing, lighter three betting, and your usual MTT game can now be implemented effectively, as if you were the big stack at your table in a regular field MTT. This will continue on until around the 6th or 7th hour, around the 500/1k blind level. This is where the bubble kicks in, and the bubble, both for the money and for the final table, are incredibly tricky spots for players.

You’ll find that deep stack money bubbles bust significantly slower than your normal MTT bubble; your short stack may have 15 BB’s remaining, allowing him to sit and wait three or four orbits before being forced to make a move. This would normally mean that, with a big stack, you could simply run the table over, but a unique problem comes into play; everyone at the table is likely to be M10 or deeper! This forces you to rethink the normal approach of the bubble that you’re used to taking and use a slightly different plan of attack for it.

When the actual bubble hits, play will slow to an absolute crawl, compared to your normal MTT. Let your table play a few hands once you’re two or three spots from the money, and observe which of the big stacks suddenly wake up and start raising a lot, and which of them seem content to sit back and wait for the money to burst. Using that information, you can pick on the habitual openers with liberal three bets and stay out of the way of the conservative openers. Many players believe that everyone plays tight on the deep stack bubble, and as such, adhere to being rock tight until it busts, even with a monster stack. Instead of using chip counts to determine our plan of attack, like we would in a general MTT, however, we have to use player activity to determine who to pick on and who to stay away from.

Expect the average stack size to hover between M15 and M30 from this point until the final table. Final table play will be a bit unique; many players will completely shut down playing anything but monster hands, simply because they don’t want the 9-20 hours they just played in this tournament to go to waste because they misplayed a single hand. Others will be furiously raising and reraising, trying to bring the tournament to a conclusion for them as quickly as possible, either by winning the tournament or busting out quickly.

Take an orbit or so to determine which players are playing which way, and adjust your game plan accordingly. Remember; unless you’re M7 or less, you’re not short enough to have to just shove preflop; you still have plenty of play with a 20k stack when the blinds are 600/1.2k/(125), even if the average stack is more like 60k. Recognize when you’re genuinely short, instead of panicking when you have a third of the second stack. These tournaments allow you plenty of leeway if you do slip up, even at the final table. Just be patient and find the spots to attack, and you can make a long run to win one of these marathon tournaments.

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