Stacking Poker Chips One Hand

Posted on 4/11/2022by admin

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Stacking Poker Chips One Hands
Stacking Poker Chips One Handle

A skill that is commonly overlooked by novice tournament poker players is that of chip stack management. Managing your chip stack refers to an awareness of the number of chips you have and how your stack size compares to those of your opponents. The changing blind levels and how this relates to your stack and those of your opponents also need to be considered.

The first step is to equate the size of your stack to how many big blinds you have available. This is calculated by dividing the current big blind by the number of chips you possess and dropping any fraction. Thus, a player with 2250 chips at a 50/100 blind level would consider himself to have a 22 big-blind (or 22BB) stack.

Many players typically buy-in to a cash game for around 100BBs, but poker tournaments can vary greatly from that number. For example, most SNGs will start with anywhere from 75 to 150BB stacks while large online tournaments can offer as much as 200BB stacks to begin with. Live deep-stacked tournaments often start with as many as 300BBs – so there’s quite a difference. The depth of stacks will have a significant impact on the strategies you employ at the poker table.

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Effective Stack Size

Before we mention how stack sizes influence our play in certain situations, it’s important you understand the concept of effective stack size. As a poker tournament progresses the stack sizes will vary considerably. You may have more chips or fewer chips than an opponent at any given time. The shortest of these stacks is what is considered the effective stack size of the hand since this is the most chips that either player can win from each other. You might have a 50BB stack, but if your opponent only has 10BBs available then your strategy needs to reflect that fact.

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Put three fingers on the side of one pile, and the thumb on the side of the other pile. Gently squeeze the chips together. Put your fore finger in-between the two piles and run it upwards causing the chips to interlock one by one from alternate piles. Push them together into one big stack, and then separate them, ready to go again.
This trick is when you are holding a small stack of chips sideways in your hand and moving the front one to the back - and repeating. Start with four chips. You can do this trick with two or more chips but it is easier to do it with about 3 to 5 chips in your hand. Hold them with all your fingers, except for your pinky.

It’s now time to examine how the size of your stack size will affect your play. Let’s start by assessing the strategies you can employ when you’re sitting there with a deep stack.

Large (45BBs+)

You have room to play your normal poker game. The early stages of tournaments can often reflect what you might see in a ring game, particularly if the players are really deep-stacked. With this many big blinds in everyone’s stacks your full bag of tricks is in play. You can re-steal and still fold to aggression, 4-bet bluff, call in position and speculate with suited connectors and small pairs. You have room to manoeuvre with semi-bluffs, traps and speculative hands without much fear of severely crippling yourself with a mistake or bad read. You have leverage but once the ratio of your stack compared to the blinds starts to get smaller many of these plays can become inefficient. If you are in the 45-60BB range then you also need to be acutely aware of any potential blind level increase.

Medium-Large (35-45BBs)

With this sort of stack size you still have most of your plays available. However, you should generally avoid re-raising in a spot where you would not be willing to call a 4-bet/shove. You will most likely be committed to the hand at this point when comparing the pot odds to the range of hands most opponents would play back at you with. An exception to this would be when you’re playing against someone who will fold a very large portion of his opening range. This player is probably raising light with his weaker hands (in an effort to steal the blinds) and will only commit all of his chips with the very best of holdings. Against random opponents you will usually not have that read so avoiding the situation is usually best.

Medium (23-35BBs)

With this stack size you have some breathing room but will need to be cautious in what hands you decide to open raise with. Limping small pairs and speculative hands is no longer an option as your implied odds are just not available with this stack size. However, this isn’t to say that you can’t raise with them in the right situation. Just be very selective when you’re in early position. In late position you can be very aggressive, especially if the players in the blinds are not liable to re-steal or re-raise very much. Also, if you’re considering a re-raise from the blinds with the high end of this size stack (30-35BBs), a good tactic may be what is known as a “go-and-go”. This is when you make a re-raise to roughly 30% of your stack and, if your opponent just calls, you can shove on any flop – unless you happen to flop a very strong hand. A hand like A-Q or A-J is ideal for this tactic.

Medium-Short (14-22BBs)

Almost any hand that you decide to raise with should be one that you are willing to go with all the way, should you be re-raised pre-flop. In fact, this is very often the ideal stack size to re-raise all-in with. If you are going to re-raise then it will be for at least half of your chips. By doing this you are committing yourself to the hand so you might as well go ahead and get it all in. This also means you can take advantage of any fold equity you might have, which is your ability to make your opponent fold and take down the pot uncontested.

Short (8-13BBs)

You’re now a short-stack and don’t have much room to play with. Your aim should be to double up and get back in the game. Any move you make pre-flop that isn’t a fold should be an all-in shove. While you should be somewhat selective with your hand ranges, you don’t have time to wait for Aces of Kings. Other factors may determine just how wide your range of shoving hands will be (like the bubble of a SNG) but you should not be afraid of playing for your stack. If antes are in play then shoving when you have as many as 15BBs in usually correct – since the size of the pot is that much larger and worth fighting for.

Very Short (4-7BBs)

When you’re this close to the felt you will need to act fast. The blinds (and antes if in play) are going to take a significant chunk of your chips so you need to build your stack back up and out of the danger zone. If you play a hand then it must be for all your chips. You have no room for traps and tricks. In fact, things like limping and min-raises will draw more suspicion from your opponents than an all-in move would.

Critically Short (under 4BBs)

If it folds to you then you’re probably going to have to shove with any two cards, no matter what your position at the table. Unless there is a very good reason (the bubble of a satellite for one) the best thing to do is to push-and-pray, especially if it is still early in the tournament. Clearly, you have no fold equity and won’t threatenanybody with your stack. The odds are that you will be called by just about anything and will have to win at a showdown.

Conclusion

Realize that many poker players at the lowest levels will not know about the concept of chip stack management. They will instinctively know that it’s correct to shove a short stack or call a bit wider in some spots, but you will find many of your opponents to be generally unaware of how their chip stack should be used.

Your chips can be used as weapons and are often more important than your actual cards. The more weapons you possess, the more options you have available to you during the course of a poker tournament. A large stack gives you the most flexibility while a short stack will constrain you greatly, often limiting you to a push-or-fold strategy.

Keeping track of your chip stack and be able to effectively adjust your playing strategy is perhaps the most important skill a tournament player can possess, especially with regards to the endgame or final table play. With practice you’ll be able to master this skill and have a considerable edge over the vast majority of your opponents. Take the time to recognize these situations and good luck at the tables.

Related Lessons

By Rick 'RyckyRych' Perlini

Rick has been playing poker since 2007 and is a low-stakes online SNG specialist. He has been a highly active and well-respected member of the Pokerology community for several years.

Martin Harris

As a tournament reporter for many years, I’ve spent a lot of time eyeing players’ chip stacks, enough to develop all sorts of ideas and opinions about the significance (or lack thereof) of how a player chooses to stack his or her chips.

There are varying degrees of tidiness displayed in chip stacking. Some players are very meticulous about lining up their stacks in perfectly constructed, uniform towers. Meanwhile others tend always to have a few strays laying around, or even have “dirty stacks” with chips of different denominations mixed together in a single column.

It’s tempting to perform a kind of “profiling” simply from the way a player stacks his or her chips, which like other assumptions based on, say, clothing, appearance, or the player’s sex or age might indicate something meaningful about a person’s playing style. Or not.

We might be tempted to place the guy who lines up the markings on the edges of the chips so all are perfectly aligned in a category of “tight” players who never make any moves without having calculated risk-reward ratios to the nth degree. And the guy with messy chips in differently-sized stacks that always appear on the verge of toppling over might be thought of as more “loose” with his calls and raises.

New players may find themselves distracted by such speculations. But more often than not when it comes to stacking and handling chips, they’re going to be more focused on what they are doing with their own chips than with worrying about how others are stacking theirs.

Stacking Standards

The symbolism of stacks may be debatable. That said, how players stack their chips is not without meaning. And for new players, it is probably worth knowing some of the standards for stacking.

There’s a whole generation of players now who got their first experience playing poker online which means when they do finally try playing in a live poker room the whole idea of having to deal with chips might well be altogether new. They might know all about starting hand selection, the importance of position, and the odds of drawing to a flush or straight, but stacking chips isn’t necessarily something they’ve faced before.

It might seem like a trivial thing to learn, and in truth it doesn’t take long to become familiar with how to stack chips. But for new players there are a few factors to keep in mind going in.

The great majority of players stack their chips in a similar way, with stacks of 20 being the standard most often employed. Some prefer building 30- or 40- chip high stacks (or more), while others like to stack them in 10s or even in lots of short stacks of five. But 20 is a convenient stack size — not too high or low, and easy for counting, too.

What Are the Rules?

Most cash games and tournaments have a rule in place acknowledging the necessity of allowing opponents to be able to see your stack clearly enough to have an idea what you have in front of you, although the rule generally still allows players certain freedoms with their chip caretaking.

For instance, in the Poker Tournament Directors Association’s most recent set of TDA Rules currently used in many tournament series, there’s a rule noting that “Players are entitled to a reasonable estimation of an opponent’s chip count; thus chips should be kept in countable stacks.” The rule goes on to say “The TDA recommends clean stacks in multiples of 20 as a standard” and that “Players must keep higher denomination chips visible and identifiable at all times.”

These are guidelines often followed by many in tourneys. They are followed in cash games, too, and thus for new players are worth knowing.

Chip stacks don’t have to be 20 chips tall, but keeping stacks of 20 (or multiples thereof) is what the TDA “recommends” (as do others).
However tall your stacks are, they should be uniform and easy enough for opponents to count simply by looking at them.
Higher denomination chips always should be visible, too, and not hidden behind lower ones or in other ways — that also is part of making it possible for opponents to make that “reasonable estimation” of what you have when a hand begins or at any point during the play of a hand.

As a tourney reporter, it’s always handy for me when players follow these guidelines as it makes the job of counting their chips and reporting those counts much easier. Take a look at the picture to the right. The yellow chips are worth 5,000 each and the grays are 1,000. How many chips does that player have? How long did it take you to count them? (See below for the answer.)

Some of my colleagues occasionally complain about players not stacking chips neatly or in amounts other than 20. Of course, the players’ obligation to each other and the fairness of the game is certainly greater than their obligation to reporters. It’s essential that everyone be able to play hands knowing how the stacks compare because such knowledge directly affects the strategy employed when deciding whether or not to fold, call, raise, or shove all in.

Conclusion

A lot of times new players don’t want to give away the fact that they aren’t experienced when they sit down in a live game for the first time. It is easier said than done, but inexperienced players shouldn’t worry too much about being pegged as a newbie. Everyone was new to the game once, and if you can try to focus on playing hands as well as you can and not fretting too much over making “rookie mistakes,” you’ll enjoy yourself a lot more while gathering experience to help you going forward.

Know, though, that if you stack your chips in 20, keep your stacks relatively orderly, and be sure to keep the big chips up front and visible, you won’t be drawing attention to yourself as someone unfamiliar with how to stack chips.