Do you ever feel uncomfortable with a medium stack?

I’ve noticed that having a medium stack in tournaments can sometimes feel harder than being either very short or very deep. When you’re short, decisions become simpler, and when you’re deep, you have more flexibility.


But with a medium stack, it feels like every decision can seriously impact the rest of the tournament.


Do you also find medium stacks awkward to play, or is that actually your favorite stack depth?

I tend to agree to your point of view.

When you know which hands to push and which to fold, short stack play becomes pretty easy.

Similar with a big stack, when you feel more safe to take a risk or make a reasonable bluff catch on the river. When you loose a pot, it doesn't hurt as much as when you're less deep.

For me, medium stack is probably also the depth where I struggle the most - except on the FT when I'm usually able to be patient for the shorties to bust. 🤓

Nesehorn156 said:

I’ve noticed that having a medium stack in tournaments can sometimes feel harder than being either very short or very deep. When you’re short, decisions become simpler, and when you’re deep, you have more flexibility.


But with a medium stack, it feels like every decision can seriously impact the rest of the tournament.


Do you also find medium stacks awkward to play, or is that actually your favorite stack depth?

Click to expand...

I play for money, I think every decision I make is very important regardless of my stack size. It's just a different approach to the game. Of course in poker there can be easy and difficult decisions, but in my opinion they definitely should not correlate with the size of your stack.

I agree, medium stacks can feel really awkward to play. With a short stack the decisions are easier, and with a big stack you have more freedom. But with a medium stack, one mistake can change the whole tournament.
What helps me is playing a bit more patient, avoiding risky spots against big stacks, and trying to steal blinds when I get a good chance. I also try not to get too attached to average hands just because my stack still looks “okay.”

In situations with ICM-pressure like MTT final tables or SnG bubbles, the mid stacks (relative to other stacks) are supposed to play the tightest, because they need to try to outlast the short stacks. So this is indeed not an advantageous situation to be in. In top of that a 15-25 BB stack is usually to deep to open jam (or setmine) but ideal for other players to rejam over your opens. Which is again not an advantageous situation to be in, because it force you to either not enter pots or min-raise and then fold a lot to rejams.

So yes I agree, that a mid stack, both relative to other stacks (in ICM situations) and in the absolute sense like being 15-25BB deep, is the toughest to play. With a shorter stack you can mostly limit your decisions to pushing or folding preflop. And with a deeper stack you have much more room to play "real poker" postflop. A 3-bet is usually not going to be all-in, so you can call and see a flop. And in single raised pots you can put in 1-2 bets without risking an unreasonable large percentage of your stack.

Absolutely, I hate having 30bb.

The worst part about doubling up right after you get into push/fold territory is having 25-35bb lol

This is why I max late reg for everything but KOs, to skip the awkward middle phase and jump straight into shoving and ICM bullying.

I will say the early reg field feels a lot softer than the late reg field so at least in micros/ low stakes there might be some value from the donks and giga punters early on.

30-40bb can be uncomfortable, but I usually know how to choose my strategy well.