Preserving the Bubble

In another tip we talked about “abusing the bubble.” Briefly, the idea is that when you're a smallish stack and you're approaching where a tournament starts paying out, you should tighten up some to try to make it into the money. On the flip side, when you're a big stack, you should be running all those short stacks over with aggressive raising. In a single-table tournament, where only the top three get paid, the big stack can actually intentionally keep the short stack alive to keep stealing blinds from the medium stack.

*Once the bubble has burst and everyone's in the money, the medium stacks can stand up to the thieving big stack. This kind of play comes up in all kinds of poker, from pot limit Texas holdem to limit 7-card stud.