Okay, this is quite literally the 4th time I have tried to sit down to write this today and it will be the charm. If I don't get this out of my head it may explode. Where did this come from, well I was having a conversation with a member in chat last night (who I was very glad came along because I was starting to get pretty lonely in there by myself) and over the course of our conversation I was realizing that the root of a lot of the trouble we were talking about was from a lack of understanding about Deep Stack Poker and how it works. So what I thought I would do is share some of my thoughts on the basics and considerations I use when I play with a deep stack (be it cash or early in a tourney). You will notice first that I didn't include those times when I am beasting the hell out of a tourney or table and have a deep stack and there is a very specific reason why,
1. Deep stack strategy evolves and changes with the depth of the tables (or villains) stacks, not just because yours is big.
Point #1 is a biggy and needs to be paid attention to. If the folks you are involved with or potentially going to be involved with don't share your stack depth then deep stack strategy doesn't apply. Effective stack size is a crucial concept in poker and understanding it will keep you from making huge mistakes. What do I mean by this? Well remember that as stacks deepen concepts like implied odds become much more powerful, as a corrollary to that relative hand strength also tends to move around some. Let me give you a couple of examples so I can show you what I mean.
You: AKs on the BTN with 70bb
Villain: has 13bb in the CO and jams. SB and BB have 10bb and 13bb respectively.
In this situation your AKs is a very powerful hand in its absolute right. How you ask? Well note that the stack that is jamming is very short and most likely is shoving a Ax, Kx, Qx or any PP types of hands, you have two of those combinations dominated putting you in a very solid favorite position to win the hand for most of his holdings and racing against the pairs most likely with 2 overs. Losing 13bb doesn't much change your position. 57bb isn't hugely different from 70bb given how shallow everyone is. Change the picture a little and see what happens:
You: AKs on the BTN with 70bb
Villian: has 24bb in the CO.
Your AKs no longer wants to call a jam there if that is what the villain decides he wants to do. You are really looking to play your AKs more as a draw, get to the flop see what develops. You are looking to get to the flop to see what your equity is and then exploding for the remainder of the stack (roughly 21bb assuming a standard 2.5x open in this example). Take this one step further to nearly equivalent stacks and see what happens:
You: AKs on the BTN with 70bb
Villain: 75bb in the CO opens for 2.5x
Now you aren't in a position at all to go crazy with your AKs and it will be much more like a drawing hand than the monster it was two examples ago. The hand takes on a very different character. Most likely you call, perhaps the blinds fold and you go HU in position. Once the flop comes you are going to evaluate the texture and his actions, maybe float a c-bet and see what the turn brings. There are two critical ideas here about the change in strategy with the change in depth
2. Hand Strength is a function of Position and Stack Depth
3. The deeper the effective stacks in a hand the further you need to plan.
Point #2 should be pretty straight forward, we all know for tourney play that position is king and will create more opportunities to win pots than anything else. That aside the depth of the effective stacks will allow you to change what you play against players from various positions (with you staying IP hopefully) and will introduce more value from suited connectors to hit subtle hands and then exploit for maximum value. I don't know too many players who are keen on playing 78s with 15bb, but almost all are pretty happy to see a flop with it at 75bb. This is the concept that results in people who aren't generally familiar with what is going on to say "oh its really a game of straights and flushes". They tend to ignore the basic mechanic that TP/GK and TP/TK type hands are only particularly strong with stack depth is shallow and there is pressure applied to make a move, in that absence you are really only going to see big hands get shown down because there is no point in pressing that far if you don't have too. The 3rd point is one that I think a lot of tournament players struggle with and I know I have battled it a ton and still continue to on and off now adays. The deeper your stack the farther you have to plan. If you have 10-15bb your plan is PF. That's it. Or so I hope. No one is looking to figure out how to manuever to the river with that stack, you just can't do it. With 20-30bb your plan gets to evolve to the Flop, maybe the turn with a jam at the top end of the spectrum. It really isn't until the 50+bb range where the river starts to enter into the equation plan wise (for the most part, there are obviously exceptions to every rule). With deep effective stacks you have to be prepared to anticipate what is going to happen given what cards appear all the way through to the final round of betting. You plan needs to become more elaborate and account for more. Knowing what cards change the texture, what cards are consistent with the story you have been telling, what would make no sense. These are the keys to playing deep stack pots, your situational awareness must grow and you need to be thinking out in front. Chess has a lot of good parallels to this idea. If the effective stacks are deep you need to be thinking out in front of your opponent, think about what you are showing him and what he could be thinking or afraid of. Here is a quick example that happens a ton:
You: 100bb AsJs in the CO
Villain: minraises from MP with 100bb, everyone else folds
Flop (4bb): Kh 8h 4c Villain bets 3bb, We call to float.
Turn (10bb) 2s Villain bets 5bb, We call again representing the draw (double float) looking to take away the pot if any A or any heart peel on the river.
River (20bb) 6h Villain checks, We bet 13bb, Villain folds.
Overall in that hand we had invested 23bb with junk on a double float to steal a pot. Without the stack depth that exists there it really can't be done. If you are on a 25bb stack you potentially call the PF min-raise and can possible float the Flop, but by the turn you need to make up your mind then and there as it is going to get expensive to continue and your stack is effectively butchered if the plan misses. In the example as is you have 77bb, which in terms of effectiveness isn't terribly different than 100bb, 123bb is nicer thought and gives you even more maneuvering room.
So wrapping up remember effective depth is key. The deeper that is the more room you have to work. The more room you have to work the more options you have to work with but the farther out you need to think and plan. I hope that this was reasonable helpful. Shoot me a PM or leave me a comment if you have questions or want to talk more, I am usually in chat in the evenings EST is you want to talk live morea about deep stack play as I have spent a lot of time turning myself into a bit of a deep stack specialist (love those tourneys and miss the Super Stack and Stars Deep Stack a ton). This is the Gman signing out!