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Learn GTO

Unit 9 · Tournament

Tournament play

Forty big blinds changes every chart you just learned.

One idea, then 8 lessons that drill it until the answers stop needing thought. Everything below appears inside the lessons themselves; this page is here so you can read it without playing, or come back to it after.

Forty big blinds is a different game

The rule

A short stack is not a deep stack played carefully. It is a different chart.

Speculative hands are worth what they can win when they hit. Small pairs and suited connectors miss most flops and pay for themselves on the rare ones where they stack somebody. With forty big blinds behind, there is not enough left to stack anybody, so the payoff those hands are priced for never arrives.

So the range tightens toward hands with immediate strength: high cards, pairs, hands that are simply ahead when the money goes in rather than hands that might get there. The same reasoning keeps going as the stack shrinks, until eventually raising and folding costs more than moving in did.

Read more: stack depth, implied odds

The 8 lessons in this unit

  1. 1Shallower stacks, tighter opens8 questions
  2. 2Opening at 40 big blinds8 questions
  3. 3Defending short8 questions
  4. 4Facing a 3-bet with 40 behind8 questions
  5. 5Paint the tournament range3 questions
  6. 6Short-stack equity8 questions
  7. 7Every seat at 40 big blinds10 questions
  8. 8Unit review10 questions · review

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