General wisdom is that we should take risks a bit before the bubble, cause it's very valuable to have a big stack at the bubble.
I was wondering : how much is a big stack exactly ?
It's not easy to think in BBs here, cause the blind levels will change several times.

I didn't find any articles, so I came up with my own rule of thumb.
I'm curious about what you guys think.

- 15% of the field is in the money, so average stack at the bubble is 6.6x the starting stack
- any stack-size above that average is good enough to enjoy the bubble, still the blinds often etc.
- So when there are still - let's say - 50% to bust before we reach the money, my goal is to reach 7 starting stacks.

Does that make sense ?



PS : Of course I do know that "taking risks" doesn't mean going completely out of line

Poker is a math based game, and what actually matter near the bubble (or on the final table) is to have a lower risk premium than your opponents. If you are only playing for 10-20% of your stack, your risk premium is almost zero, and you can essentially play like, it was a cash game or winner take all event. This is also called playing in chip EV mode. You are just trying to accumulate chips, and dont care about outlasting other players. If on the other hand your opponent is playing for all his chips, his risk premium is very high, and this mean, you can pressure him. If its blind vs. blind, and his stack is 15BB or less, maybe you can jam any two cards, and he can only call with very strong hands. The gap between the jamming and calling range become very wide, and this is, what create value for the big stack.

So its actually not enough to be just above an average stack for this effect to be profound. If the opponent has 15BB, and you have 20BB, you can still jam wide, because he is one last to act and therefore responsible for avoiding the confrontation. A bit like the old game of chicken with the twist, that one driver has taken his stearing wheel off and is now holding it out the window for the other guy to see. The other guy then has to drive into the ditch (and lose), because he know, that otherwise they will crash and both get killed. However in poker the other guy will sometimes call, and if this is for 75% of your stack, this is almost as bad for you as, if he had you covered. So you cant jam as wide as, if you have several times his stack.

This is the theory behind ICM, but for me this is not something, I really worry about in game. Its not like, we can plan to become the chip leader, or at least not without making some -EV decisions along the way. So the important is just to understand, that future play will tend to favour the big stack, and for that reason we are sometimes justified to be a bit less risk averse, than the pure ICM model suggests. For me this typically mean, that if an open jamming or rejamming spot is close, then I usually prefer to take it instead of passing and risk blinding away. And the same can sometimes be the case when considering a hero call on the river, and folding will leave me with a significantly below average stack. Then maybe its better to just make my stand now and live with the result, if I bust.