Stack size is one of the most difficult concepts to grasp when playing tournament poker. There is a certain stack size that makes your decision extremely hard when you’re playing. At 15 big blinds, you’ll get put into a lot of marginal situations, where you don’t know whether to raise, fold, or shove.
How do you answer the question and survive this limbo? Well it really depends first on table texture. You need to know whether or not you’re playing with a table full of aggressive monsters, or if you’re playing with some passive rocks.
Once you have that determined, you’ve solved half your problem. When you’re playing with the aggressive table, and a normal preflop raise is likely to get reraised, then your decision becomes fold or push. At that point, all you have to do is calculate your equity.
If you’ve determined that you’re playing with a bunch of passive poker players, again you can simplify. If you think a preflop raise will get the majority to fold, then the simple preflop raise is all you need to do. After that, you see the flop and reevaluate from that point. One more tip when playing with the passive players, it’s necessary to notice whether or not the passive player is a calling station. They are great trappers, so you may be raising into a trap.
What it really comes down to is this, what it comes down to is to know your table. After you know the table, you can take the route that will either get you out of the limbo and give you some breathing room, or you can gamble it up and let the cards decide your fate. Look out for this when you play poker online.