The Death Sandwich? How to Survive?

Played a tourney last week. I ended up short stacked and on the left is the second biggest chip holder in the tournament. To my right is the biggest. So I start playing very tight. Eventually the blinds basically eat me and I go under.

What's the best way to navigate this situation? The guy on my right was pretty aggressive and running fairly well, the guy on my left was call happy. Yikes.

Weisssound said:

Played a tourney last week. I ended up short stacked and on the left is the second biggest chip holder in the tournament. To my right is the biggest. So I start playing very tight. Eventually the blinds basically eat me and I go under.

What's the best way to navigate this situation? The guy on my right was pretty aggressive and running fairly well, the guy on my left was call happy. Yikes.

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death sandwich is a yucky situation.

Use the stack to your right as leverage against the stack to your left, what I mean is if the guy to your right opens, and you have a playable hand or you think he is opening light; then just shove over the top. The guy to your left won't want to call for fear of the only other bigger stack in the tourney still having action.

Consequently, if the stack to your right folds, just open shove your playable range into the guy to your left...call happy players usually just want to see a flop and they are less inclined to call if its an all-in...at least it's my experience. But if he DOES call and you've shipped with a decent hand, you probably have 40-60% equity which ain't great, but your table position dictates these type of gambles....

missjacki said:

death sandwich is a yucky situation.

Use the stack to your right as leverage against the stack to your left, what I mean is if the guy to your right opens, and you have a playable hand or you think he is opening light; then just shove over the top. The guy to your left won't want to call for fear of the only other bigger stack in the tourney still having action.

Consequently, if the stack to your right folds, just open shove your playable range into the guy to your left...call happy players usually just want to see a flop and they are less inclined to call if its an all-in...at least it's my experience. But if he DOES call and you've shipped with a decent hand, you probably have 40-60% equity which ain't great, but your table position dictates these type of gambles....

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+1

When you're stuck in a bad seat with a small stack, you don't have many good options, if any. The blind to stack ratio is a factor, but basically, I'm going to look for a spot to shove sooner rather than later. If it happens to be against the guy on my right who's opening fairly wide, fine. But I'm also going to consider shoving if someone else opens in front of him.

There are too many possible scenarios to go through them all, but suffice it to say they're not all so bad, and the shorter you are, the more willing you need to be to accept situations that are moderately negative overall. The more the blinds have eaten / are eating you up, the more you have to consider simply sticking it in and hoping. Sometimes, all you can do is try to find a situation where you have the best chance to end up with just one opponent.

Good advice! Especially the leveraging. I froze up because my right get opened up a lot and I didn't have enough to make any kind of decent plays post flop. But thinking about it coming over the top with just enough to string bet if I hit anything decent might have been a better play. Especially since there was a lot of folding since we were getting down to the cash bubble.

Weisssound said:

Good advice! Especially the leveraging. I froze up because my right get opened up a lot and I didn't have enough to make any kind of decent plays post flop. But thinking about it coming over the top with just enough to string bet if I hit anything decent might have been a better play. Especially since there was a lot of folding since we were getting down to the cash bubble.

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You might want to look up the definition of string bet since it's something you should never do. It's only possible live though.

Arjonius said:

You might want to look up the definition of string bet since it's something you should never do. It's only possible live though.

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I think he means a stop n go, not a string bet?


either way, i wouldn't recommend seeing a flop if he is as short as it sounds...exert max pressure vs. the big stacks by shipping your entire playable range...unless maybe he picks up QQ+ then he could raise preflop and ship on any flop I guess. I'd probably just ship preflop though, unless I had M=20+

that is horrible to be in the short stack and sandwiched like that. you just have to go all in and hope for the best!

If you are really short stacked, you usually won't have a lot of fold equity vs the two biggest stacks. What they may fear is doubling (or tripling) you up. I wouldn't consider post flop play so much till I had some leverage to work with.

In my experience only way to survive this has been waiting for a spot you feel comfortable and look for your double up to BEGIN being able to play with the big guys.