Poker Tournament 101 - The Stages of a Poker Tournament

Poker tournaments have two very distinct stages: Fast and Slow. These stages are the periods of time where players are either desperate to stay alive with little to no margin for error; or have a deep-stack that has the capability of playing a few pots. Since these two stages are basically polar opposites, knowing how to adjust your play is crucial to tournament survival.

A Slow stage is anytime during the tournament when the average chip stack is over 25 big blinds (BB).

A fast stage occurs whenever the average chip stack falls below 15BB.

Anytime the average chip stack is between 15-25BB you’re better off looking at your individual tables average stack-size than the tournament as a whole. This is fairly important to do in general, since tournaments don’t balance tables based on stack-size, but the majority of the time your table will have a strong resemblance of the tournament as a whole, so long as the average stack falls outside of the gray area of 15-25BB.

Slow Stages

Generally, the slow stage of a tournament is the first few levels. Most tournaments give players a large amount of chips in relation to the blinds during the first few levels, and it’s these levels -where you have a very deep stack-that allow you to play the tournament more like a deep-stacks cash game.

During slow phases you should be looking to play hands with good implied odds, and not over-commit to medium-strong hands like top-pair top-kicker. And with so much risk, you should respect almost every player until you have reason not to.

An additional issue with slow stages is that the blinds are not worth as much as they are during a fast stage. This is where tournaments greatly differ from cash games: Winning four 200 chip pots early in a tournament is about as useful as stealing a single blind later in the tournament. Stealing blinds, and making plays at small pots, is typically not worth the trouble during the slow stage.

Fast Stages

During fast stages you have to understand that you are more likely to get called by any player approaching the 10BB threshold. At this point these players are becoming desperate, and most poker players would rather go out with a bang than a whimper.

You also need to realize that players with real deep-stacks are also likely to call short-stacked players, because they know these players are getting desperate. Additionally, deep-stacks use these stages of the tournament to attack mid-stacks, knowing they don’t want to jeopardize their tournament without a really good hand, and mid-stacks aren’t desperate like short-stacks.

Finally, players with mid-size stacks are more likely to stay uninvolved unless they have a really strong hand. They not only have to worry about a short-stack taking a sizeable portion of their chips -which suddenly makes them a short-stack-but they also have to be concerned about a deep-stack waking up with a hand and busting them.  Because of this, you should give players with 15BB-25BB more credit than you would a short or deep-stacked player.

The first fast stage of a tournament begins when the average chip stack starts approaching 15BB. At this point a substantial number of players will still be playing deep-stack poker (with 25BB+) but a similar number of players will be approaching the “push-or-fold” strategy that kicks in when you have under 10BB. It’s imperative that you recognize when the tournament is approaching a fast stage, because even if you’re at the same table, with the same opponents, it basically turns into a completely different game.