Going Mediumer?

[Absolution]

Ya, that's a word. Look it up.

I've been reading the Going deeper and Going shallower threads and there is a lot of great information there, but what about the medium? Has there been a thread on that yet or is it just pointless?

I'm talking about tournaments where you have maybe 75BB to start, but the blinds are raising every 15 minutes. So, you have some room to play like in the deep stack play (e.g. you can limp more, you can make some laydowns, you can make continuation bets...), but you also have to consider that you are losing a good portion of your stack with every play (maybe 6-9% if you raise 3x, make a continuation bet, but then have to fold to a large reraise). How far do you play TPTK in these games? How much does pot control matter here?

This situation also comes up a lot in the mid-late play of low-buy tournaments with a 75BB structure. You may be sitting on a stack of 60K, but the blinds are getting in the 400/800 range. This is a similar ratio as to the beginning of the tournament, but now the dynamics are much different. Most of the players left are better for one thing. Metagame and image are starting to matter. But, you're still in that gray zone where you can play, but are risking good portions of your stack with every play.

These situations come up more often for me anyway. The going shallower stuff/short stack comes up sometimes in these tournaments when you take a few hits and the going deeper stuff comes up late in these tournaments, but the majority of the time is played at the 50-75BB range.

I'm probably not the one to start a good discussion thread so if I regular thinks it has any value maybe they could. Or, is this just the area where most posts are anyway and that covers most of this?

[Holdemphile]

I think the point you are making is that the quality of the hand you should be willing to get all your chips in with is corellated direct with the size of your chipstack relative to the size of the antes. So, at some point, you have to try to get all of your chips in with something like AQ when a Q flops, whereas you don't really want to get all in with that hand if you and your opponent both had 100BBs to start the hand.

I think most people instinctively know to get their chips in with TPTK or TP second best kicker when they are getting shortstacked. One of my major flaws in the middle of tourneys used to be when I was doing well and was a well above average stack, getting all my chips in with hands that were good enough to beat the range of hands a short-medium stack might be willing to go broke on, but not another larger stack that didn't need to risk everything with one pair.

I think it's important to avoid playing starting hands with weak kickers in the middle stages, especially in raised pots. Alot of players go broke with AJ or A10 in the middle of tourneys by playing pots that are way too big for one pair with a weak-medium strength kicker.

Not sure if this is what you were getting at.

Holdemphile