Chip lead in the bubble micros MTT

If it's a bounty tournament, then flipping with short stacks from a big stack is usually correct.

Can you post the specific hands? It's hard to say whether anything was right or wrong without knowing the exact decisions you faced. And it may not be a problem of overall strategy, but one where some decisions you made were right and some were wrong.

Here are a few hands from PT4 :

And it basically went down to that last hand

I didn't upload the entire downhill but these are the spots that led me to bleed and bust

I would not be calling most shoves with the hands that you played or reshoving as you did to play heads up. I would prefer to be raising those hands and making others commit so that I had some possible fold equity. That being said, you were unlucky in losing most of the flips.

You basically called away your chips and should have tried to regroup when you were knocked back down to average stack as I’m sure all the money was at the final table.

Thanks for the input, yes maybe I should've played it more conservative in these spots.

Should I mostly call the low stacked with better hands? And maybe be more aggressive towards mid stacks?

Midstacks will want to gamble with you the least. Small stacks don’t have much choice.

I was mostly trying to avoid the mid stacks because I thought they could actually take a lot from me but I guess I did it wrong

Thanks a lot, I would take any other advice!

My other thought from reading the hand histories is that you were at the point where the blinds and stack turn the tournament into shove or fold. Every normal tournament reaches this point: as your table did w 80k, 40k 40k 20k 20k 10 k stacks. If the shorties double up they now have average. Middle stacks if they lose becomes short. It’s all coin flip hands.

Sometimes you just get crushed in 5-6 hands when the blinds are 2-3k.

I don’t know that you did it wrong but it turned out wrong for you. I tend to gamble less preflop as my stack gets bigger and we get deeper into the money and try to just put the small stacks in jeopardy. I never let a small stack limp into a pot if I am a blind or the button, even if it’s just a min raise.

Is this a regular KO or a PKO? How big the bounties you're playing for definitely matter.

Some of these calls are OK when pursuing bounties if the bounty is big enough. Some are not and are putting too much at risk even considering that, like the A6s call.

If you're on the bubble I think just ripping the A2s is better than raise/calling it.

It also depends how deep into the tournament you are. You generally don't want to take big risks with your stack the deeper you get. If you're just on the money bubble, no big deal. If you're nearing the final table and the bounties are negligible compared to the pay jumps, you definitely shouldn't be calling wide.

Calling off your stack with 44 is pretty bad IMO.

We were starting to be deep in the bubble so yeah the blinds were already high enough for most of the players to adopt a push/fold strategy. Maybe I should've considered the pushing ranges since in micro people tend to wait for the juicy cards to do it, folding everything else so at that point I was already behind when I called most of the times

I probably gambled a bit too much thinking my stack was already big enough without considering it goes down reaaally fast

It was a PKO tournament I think? The ones where everyone start with a bounty on their head being the equivalent of half of the buy-in and when you "kill" that player, half of his bounty goes into yours and the other half on your bankroll

I think we were coming close to the final table at the point that I could definitely make it if I were to play passive. I would've ended in the FT with a super short stack doing so but I would've probably made it..

I definitely didn't consider the payouts since my brain thought "get the kill!!" without thinking how much it would affect my stack

Is there some general rule like not risking more that 1/10th of a stack to call an allin or something similar?

The 44 was definitely inexperience and mostly "panic" since the blind were already high I thought I wouldn't get another chance to double up before losing most of my chips

Should I just put more pressure on the middle stacks and leaving the short stacks eat each other?

Thank you all for the help!

Hang on. What do you mean by "deep into the bubble"? The bubble is the period of time before the payouts start, where the last few people need to bust before people get paid. There's no such thing as "deep into the bubble." Do you mean deep into the money?

Because there's also a difference in how you should play based on how deep in you are. If there's 1000 runners and 150 paid, the answers to what to do with 140 left and with 14 left will not be the same.

Oh yes my bad! I meant deep into the money. Basically we were 100 players left, jump in payouts every 15 people eliminated approximately, with the final table being 7 players.

Does that make more sense ? Sorry for the confusion

Yes, it does, thanks.

The size of the bounties you can win matters on these hands, as well as whether you are on the bubble, in the money, or deep in the money.

The A6s I think is a clear fold; 17BB is just too much to call and you're very often drawing to three outs. The bounty would have to be massive to make calling as a 2:1 dog profitable.

The A2s I would just open shove if we were on the bubble. I might anyway ITM with the bounties. I guess it's fine as played, again depending on the bounty size.

KQo / JTs are close, depends on the bounty size and where you are in the tournament (the deeper you get, the less inclined you should be to risk chips in marginal situations).

44 I think is a definite fold, you just do not have good equity against a 16BB shoving range, and with 13BB calling off hoping to flip is a mistake. You could call it off if you have like 5BB.

a6s is a fold for 17bb
a2s you can openjam but raise calling vs 10bb is fine esp with bounty
kqo you have to only call cause there are two big-ish stacks behind and you kind of usually cooked against utg range since they usually fold lower pairs and shove ATs+ 77+ something, kqs would be a snap call
jts vs utg is also close depends once again on bounty and its only 1/6th of your stack but you have BB behind you which is ok since there is only one player left to act but ingame I would prob also call

the bustout hand is a punt.
you are always atleast flipping v utg range and more often than not you gii against an overpair and you have to get down on your knees and pray for a 2 outer for your tournament life.

Thank you all for your replies helped me a ton !

Really hard to answer without knowing the size of the bounties because they can impact the ev significantly.