We have glossed over this subject a few times in other articles, but it’s something we wanted to highlight in a full article as it’s very important in how we play our hands in different situations.
Stack to Pot Ratio or SPR as it’s known is the ratio of how big our stack is compared to the size of the pot.
For example, if we take a flop and we have 2000 chips and the pot has 1000 chips in then the SPR is 2:1.
We will look at 3 types of SPRs
A Deep SPR over 10
A Medium SPR of ~5
A Short SPR below 3
Deep SPR Over 10 Pots
In general, when the SPR is over 10 we will want to play small ball with our holdings, even hands like top pair top kicker we will want to keep the pot on the smaller side as if we try and play a large pot with a deep SPR we will nearly always be crushed with a one pair hand.
With hands like flush and straight draws whilst it is always good to play aggressively and have the betting lead in general in poker it can be a good idea to play a reserved style in pots with a deep SPR so we can try and realise our equity.
For example, if we end up stacking off with a Ten-high flush draw with an SPR of ~10 we could even be up against a better draw or just be crushed by hands like Sets that want to play for all the chips.
As you can see our equity with low flush draws against a better flush draw is very poor with us dragging the pot only around 22% of the time. The same goes with a flush draw against a set, we will only win this one around 1/4 times with our holding giving us 27% equity.
So when we are playing with a deep SPR we don’t want to be playing for all the chips with holdings like this as we are going to get action from much better hands too often and never be favourite.
We want to treat deep SPR spots like a cash game where we are looking to decide how much value we can get from our hand and tread cautiously in these spots, whereas we can make more moves in a shallower SPR spot as we will explore.
Medium SPR ~5 Pots
These hands will usually take place in a single raised pot when playing around 30BBs effective, or in 3Bet pots when we are a little deeper around the 100BB mark.
In these spots we are going to be doing some check calling whilst out of position and want to be looking to build the pots whilst in position to try and play for stacks, typically with this Mid SPR we can look to get 3 Streets of value from our good hands or fire a triple barrel bluff if we miss our hand.
Let’s look at an example of a Medium SPR pot where we are in the Big Blind fairly deep in a tournament:
$215 Sunday Million Tournament, Blinds at 500/1000 with a 100 ante
Our stack is at 39,000 chips
CO: Raises to 2200
BTN: Calls 2200
SB: Folds
BB: T♠ 9♠ Calls 1200
Pot: 8100
Flop: 8♠ 2♠ 4♥
HERO: Checks
CO: Bets 4500
BTN: Folds
HERO: ?
So in this exact situation, the importance of SPR is that if we raise here with our draw we will be getting the right odds to call off and hit our hand, however, we want to try and have the last bet in these situations.
So an ideal play here rather than raising or making a huge overbet jam is just calling. We have a good draw, we want to realise our equity and we can look to represent some hands if we miss by just calling on the flop.
We do just this and call the 4500 chips and its off to the turn…
Pot: 17,100
Turn: K♠
Hero: Checks
CO: Checks
Gin card for us!
We make our flush, now how do we play it? So we have a SPR of around 2:1 with our stack being 32,300 and the pot now being 17,100.
We want to get the most value possible and try and play for stacks, now we could lead out on this turn card, but then all our opponent’s bluffs are going to fold and this play looks pretty strong… so in the attempt of faining weakness we continue in our Check to the aggressor… sadly they check back and it’s off to the river.
Pot: 17,100
River card: Q♣
Final Board: 8♠ 2♠ 4♥ K♠ Q♣
HERO: ?
So it’s pretty much a blank for the board, there are no straights possible just the flush which we have, so we decide our best way of extracting value here is to go for a check-raise, this allows us to do a few things:
Allow our opponent one last shot at bluffing if they don’t have a hand they want to take to showdown.
Get in a check-raise against our opponents when they have a value hand they want to bet on the river, allowing us to get maximum value with a line that could be a bluff after we check twice to our opponents.
Since the SPR is still 2:1 the most value we can ever get is around a pot sized bet but that forces out our opponent’s bluffs and limits the amount of value we can get from our flush!
HERO: Checks
CO: Bets 11,000
HERO: All in for 32,300
CO: Calls 21,300
In the end our opponent had two pair with K♥ Q♥ hitting top pair on the turn they decided to check back and play a little pot control but once we had checked twice to them on by the river they have an easy value bet, but sadly for them we have near the top of our range in this spot and scoop the pot with our flush!
Short SPR ~ Below 3 Pots
In Short SPR pots we are going to want to have a lot of check-raises when out of position or just looking to get all the money in the pot within 2 streets of action if in position.
We can do this in a balanced way by having strong top pair or better hands as well as just draws, as un like our earlier situations where we are much deeper stacked we are not going to want to play post flop poker with a low SPR, we simply want to get the last bet in and look to force our opponents into a mistake of either calling with the worst of it or folding a hand with a decent amount of equity.
Let’s look at an example from a recent $22 Hyper Turbo 6 Max tournament:
Blinds 100/200 with a 25 ante Our stack is 4,200 chips
BTN: Raises to 540
SB: Folds
HERO: 9♣ 6♣ Calls 340
Pot: 1330
Flop: 9♥ 2♦ 7♠
HERO: Checks
BTN: Bets 850
HERO: ?
So here is the spot, we defend with a suited gapped connector in the Big Blind getting a good price on our call, we flop top pair with a weak kicker with a backdoor straight draw… So how do we play this hand?
Well in a deeper situation we could definitely warrant just calling a bet here and playing small ball Poker Vs a bunch of holdings we are behind. However, we have a SPR of 2.75 with our stack being 3660 and the pot being 1330 by the time we take the flop, so the best thing we can do here is to just check-raise all-in.
Our reasoning is defined in a few facts, we have a fairly strong hand that is vulnerable in the way that there aren’t many good turn cards for our hand, so to avoid us getting in trouble on turn cards we are just going to want to push our opponent off their equity whilst we can.
We can balance in this spot by sometimes having hands like T8s JTs 68s so when we move all in here we can get action from worse hands like underpairs and just Ace high hands that are putting us on making a move with a draw.
Sum Up on SPR
The key is to play your hand accordingly to how deep you are, if we have a one pair hand in a deep SPR pot we don’t want to be looking to play for all our chips, however in a short stacked pot where the SPR is below ~3 then we can look to play this aggressively and make it a one street hand by getting all in on flops.
We want to always try and have the last bet on our opponents, try and think of the SPR as your playing your pots and work out if X or Y happens who will have the last bet, this can be an important part of your thinking process before making a raise if you don’t want to call a re-raise for example. Try and think a few moves ahead and get an advantage on your opponents!