I regularly find myself building up huge stacks only to blow it before the final table. I just busted a 600 man tourny in 6th place and took 70th because I stacked off with A9 pre. Pretty stupid, but I just watched V shove Q5s all in a few hands before.

If I believe I have a large edge over the field, should I not ever be shoving when deep stacked with anything but a huge hand? Even if I have an equity advantage is it worth putting the tourny on the line when I could be waiting for better spots instead of 55/45 coin flipping? Sure doesn't seem like it.

Starting to think that I should be folding to any preflop shove by another deep stacker before the FT unless I have AKs, QQ, KK, AA, even if he has shown he can do this with junk before. What would a reasonable calling range be here? Are you ever folding even QQ?

I guess the solution is to just be patient and not get it in with anything but a monster vs a deep stacked shove, and focus on stealing blinds and outplaying post-flop...

the whole point of having big stack is that we don't have to take marginal spots and gamble...the bigger we think our edge is the lesser we should gamble...

try to play more small ball poker with less variance when deep... instead of stacking pf with TT-QQ, AQ+ when deep try to play more postflop, rather call 3b's and play postflop instead of 4b, etc..

Very good points..

I wonder if the hundreds of double ups I've played recently skewed my tourny play and lead to me playing a more push/fold game. That may have transitioned over into my MTT strategy and I am not adjusting when deep stacked.

Need a bit more info. How exactly did you stack off with A9?
If he's 4 betting light for example and you 5 bet jam with FE might not be so bad.

But as a general rule - yes you're edge over the field should lead you to play a lower variance game.

Ok i get about not blowing your stack in marginal spots.
But i dont get "the bigger your edge is the less you should gamble"
So if you getting 6/4 on a 50% shot you shouldnt risk your whole stack?
I know tourneys are about survival but should you pass up good EV that much just to "survive" ?

You really need to work on ranges, position, and stack sizes before you can say that have a bigger edge than the field.

It's the marginal spots that will make the difference, and if it's a breakeven type of spot where it's EV+ to shove Q5s as opposed to folding pre is what takes you to the final table.

Do the maths before you start to be a nit.

yep it's good ev, but if we are good we will utilize that ev by picking good spots to 3b, 4b light, or outplaying weaker opponents postflop with wider ranges, without risking that much of tournament equity or our tournament life... pretty much my GII range is KK+, with everything else i'm seeing a flop
also it's not that big of a difference between 80-100bb and 150-200bb stack.

wow, what tournaments are you guys playing in? in the tournaments tha I play in after about the 10th level nobody is this deep.

somehow i deducted that we are talking about 60-100bb stacks... sry if i missunderstood...

but if you play this way wont the big stackers just bully you around?stealing your blinds,restealing your steals and then moving well ahead of you
This seems way too conservative to me

maybe but I guess my point is, if you want to win a tournament, you're going to HAVE to make some preflop decisions much more marginal than never getting it in with less than KK+ or w/e you said. I'm sitting in a 1k guaranteed right now with about 15 people left and avg stack is ~ 25bb. not much room for postflop play and certainly not much room to 'outplay' anyone post flop with these stacks.

wait, wait...
everything i said was for when the effective stacks are 60-70bb and more... of course that i gamble with 20-30bb's stack....

I should have clarified the OP. I am not talking about short stacked play with a push/shove game. I am referring to 50+BB play when there is post-flop play. Sitting with 70k and the blinds are 500/1000, etc.

playing a big stack is easier when you also playing the stacks of the players around you too

Lets see some hands.