I play a number of local tourneys that have very fast structures (20 min blinds with big jumps) and no antes. The fields are incredibly soft and the rake is very reasonable so despite the poor structure, I still think they are worthwhile.

The problem I have is playing short stacks when the whole field is short.
We usually get around 200 runners with 20 paid. With 40 left, average stack is usually around 10-12bb. On the bubble it will be around 7-8bb and on FT it will be 5-6bb. These numbers can be skewed by some players clinging onto micro-stacks for dear life due to the lack of antes.

So as an example, it's folded me in the CO with QTs with 40 players left, average stack of 11bb and I have 10bb. In a normal tourney, average stack might be 25-30bb at this stage and antes would be eating away at us so QTs would be an easy shove. However, under these conditions my M is 6.6 and my stack is relatively 'healthy'. Shoving hands like QTs, 22, A7o, KJo etc always feels really spewy.


So rather than just thinking about the number of BB we have, should we be taking average stack size into consideration as well in these circumstances? How would we work out a shoving range for a spot like this?

The usual push/fold charts and ICM calculators like ICMizer are still relevant. Although your stack is quite short in an absolute sense, if your opponents are "clinging on" to try and make it to the money, your shoves will have even more fold equity than usual, so you should be able to steal plenty of blinds. Just be careful of jamming light when the BB is very short, as he'll be priced in to call wide. Conversely, don't jam light if there are much bigger stacks than yours that can "afford to" call a jam.

To add to this it's very hard to give very specific advice when ICM is dependant on many things. To be slightly more specific QTs is an easy shove in that spot a lot of the time.

I'm unsure (it's been a while) that the BB calling very wide as a very short stack affects our shoving range all that much and we certainly wouldn't be folding a hand like QTs as a result.

A good idea may be to look up strategy for hyper-turbo SNGs and hyper tournament play, most cash game players will give dreadful advice when it comes to these structures.