Down but not out..........

Hi guys,

When you take a big hit in a sit n go, and are left with a small chip stack early on, what is the strategy from there onwards.

For example a loose player whittles his way down to 1000 chip stack (1500 starting) in the first 10 hands or so, then goes on to bust your aces, leaving you with around 400, and 12 big blinds.

Should i carry on playing tight, looking for big hands because the blinds are still relatively small. Or am i looking for any double up i can get. Am i happy to take a 50-50 now?

When this happens to me, i find people will call to knock you out with quite marginal hands , because they are just not that bothered about losing 400. Say if you have vs villains , should i willingly take this spot??

It doesn't matter if the blinds are small. What matters is their size in relation to your stack. If, like you said, you are down to 12x the big blind, you should be ready to go in with hands that you don't normally go AI with, just because you no longer have the time to sit around to wait for the good ones. I'm not say go AI with 69o, but 12x is not a large amount. If you pushed with that 77 in late position, that seems like a good move to me because you can't do much else. If you raise 3 or 4x the big blind and get called you're almost pot-committed no matter what shows up on the flop. Stealing these paltry blinds might seem pointless, but it's something that must be done.

Pushing with that 77 UTG with 8 people to go after you could be questionable, however. Just like in your normal game where you raise only maybe QQ, KK, AA, and AK UTG, but widen it up as you become later in position, you will still want to keep the same concept in mind with your small stack. The less people you're pushing on, the less likely you are to run into a monster.

At this point, a coin flip is the best you can hope for (unless you catch a lucky hand), because no one is calling you with 92o, and the only way you're going to get back into the tournament is through a double-up.

I like your question, starky - it is a dilemma we all have at some point. Assuming I still have 12-15 BB I like to be patient and wait for that big hand to get my chips in. Like you say we are going to get more callers when shortstacked so we want to make sure we have a proper hand. To get in with a chance of winning/cashing we are going to need some luck (which usually means winning two coin flips just to get back to par) - I am happy to take the 77 against overcards, especially if there are some dead chips floating about.

One good tactic when our AA has just lost to rubbish is to open/raise shove the next hand if it is a premium. People will call light not just because they aren't worried about the smallish call (as you say) but because we are displaying classic tilt behavoir. But make sure you can turn over KK to their K9o...

usually i would play just as patiently but I'm coming to the conclusion that depending on table image it might be better to just push all in if you can get HU. As long as they aren't ak or pp'ed or card dead you would seem to be getting close to the right pot odds no matter what. I think about doing this was 69 or even 65 in middle position because you are likely to at least know you have live cards. I'm not saying go all in wanting a call, but maybe doing this twice to attempt to steal blinds knowing you still have decent outs.

Im new here but from my experience, with a csi of 8(12bb) and far from the money just use the guides, given in "kill everyone" in Appendix 1. These are Equilibrium pushes and have served me well. Please not these push reference is if its folded to you in x-spot. Example: 5 off button with no ante, ant it folds to you, you fold 77 vs pushing 4 off button with 77, if their is an ante(usually later in the game-tho) 5 off button is a push, while 6 off is a fold. If you dont have the money, for the book just go to book store and study the appendix, your get the idea of correct push ranges 3 to 8 csi (csi = m, depending on your perfered author)

I usually wait to have 10 blinds or less before i go into playing loose, anyway 10 or 12 not much difference, but at that stage i would expand my range of hands and try to get back on the game. Ofcourse as mention before don't do anything stupid like 72o but try to get hand that my be life and run with it.

found that if u play the best hands for a few levels the donks go out or u catch 1 with a realy good hand and u get doubled up