I've recently started to play the layover and garunteed tournaments. I've found that you can pretty much limp for a lot of them and be ITM.

My question is what kind of chip stack do you want based upon the number of entrants and the blind levels to maximize your potential for placing?

I remember someone saying there was a mathematical way of figuring this out, anyone know it?

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-Chris

Pick up the Harrington on Hold'em books if you already haven't. Volume 2 has a huge section devoted to something called "Inflection Points." In it he talks about something called M, which is basically your stack size in relation to the total blinds and antes for that hand.

Here's an example....
8 players at the table.
Blinds are $100/$200.
Antes are $50.
Total pot before the hands are dealt = $400 (total antes) + $200 (BB) + $100 (SB) = $700.
I currently have $14,000 in chips.
My M = $14,000 (my chips) / $700 (total pot) = 20.

He goes on to talk about how this number really dictates which style of poker you can and/or should be playing. 20 and above, the worlds your oyster. You can play anyway you want and make all kinds of moves. 1-5, you're in all in or fold mode. You need to pick any hand and stick all your chips in the middle.

Its obviously more complex than I could ever lay out here. Like I said above, if you haven't gotten his books, do so NOW.

Will do, I've already read "Theory of Poker" and "Small Stakes Hold'em" form 2+2. They didn't cover tournaments but rather straight up play.

I'll check out the harrington book.

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-Chris

Easily, the best poker investment I've ever made.

I'd also highly recommend Kill Phil . . . it's one of those "must have" tournament books along with HoH . . .

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Jason75: Ok, you check and the button bets 400. Now what?
Beavis68: You play poker.
Jason75: Darn, I was really hoping for canasta. Maybe Gin.

simple formula for figuring this out.

desired stack = number of entrants x starting chip stack

I found Kill Phil book a bit of a dissapointment, the strategy is already well used as far as I can see. It is very good if literally you have never played before and want to optimise chances of success, but really that whole book could have been written in 1 paragraph as far as I am concerned:

Pro players would far rather avoid calling all in bets without the nuts and dont even like gambling all in preflop as 80% favourite if it can be avoided.
To exploit this you should move all in against them as frequently as possible. This will both unsettle them and remove their post flop advantage over you.

Isn't this also the principle behind Sklanky's "SYSTEM" for less experienced poker players when playing against others.

Beavis68: I should have expected that kind of formula

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-Chris

And its Overlay, not Layover.

You can't figure that out, its soooo style dependant, way to many incalcuable variables. In reality, you need to adjust your style of play to your stack/blinds/structure, not the other way around.

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the vegas airport has layover tournaments.