M in bring in games

How do you calculate your "M" in ante games such as stud?

When you're playing stud tourneys you should be thinking about how many hands you can play to showdown, or how many big bets you have in your stack.

Generally, it takes anywhere from 4-6 big bets to play a hand out to showdown. So you should be thinking about your stack in increments of 6 BB's. So if you start playing a hand and you've got 7 big bets, you need to recognize that you're pretty committed to the hand. And in stud 8 for example, once you lose the ability to put raises in on 7th street (less than 6 big bets), you need to alter your hand selection (since low hands decrease a lot in value).

Also, winning chips without showdown & knocking players out of pots is key in limit tournaments, so you really need to have fold equity on 5th street. Once your stack goes under 4 big bets, you just need to pick a decent hand with a scary up-card & play it.

And as always, steal like your life depends on it. With limit hold'em games, steals from the button against the blinds have to win more than 57% of the time to be immediately successful. But in most stud structures, you only have to have your steal be successful 45% of the time or less to show a profit. And in games like razz, its almost always incorrect for the bring in to defend. So you should be stealing with a super wide range.

I just got 4th in a horse tourney, your post helped.

While you should be stealing with almost anything HU vs. the bring-in in razz, if the bring-in knows this then there are some correct spots for him to defend. DUCY?

Also, I agree that stack sizes should be measured in chunks of 4-6 BB like you said, for the reasons you said. Still when your stack is extremely short, it's useful to think of it in terms of M, which in this case would be (stack size/3rd st pot after bring-in). So if you had 500 chips left at an 8-handed table with antes of 50 and a bring-in of 75, your M would be a little more than 1.

Yeah, obviously there are some spots worth defending against, depending on your upcard, villain, ect, hence the "almost always" part of my post. But I'd say razz is probably the game where stealing is easiest, because its easy for opponents to just say "Oh, I have a king up, I'm folding". However, with stud & stud 8, the bring in can actually have a strong hand, but with razz, having the highest door card on the board automatically puts your hand at a disadvantage.

+1