trigs;292353 wroteI was motivated to write out my strategy that I use for turbo STTs (specifically on stars in relation to their blind levels). Hopefully some can learn from it and others can critique it so I can learn more. Enjoy!

10-20 blinds:
I play very tight in the first level. I will pretty much only play decently strong hands (AQo+, AJs+, 77+ although seeing a cheap flop and set mining with lower pairs is also a good idea at this point). Due to the fact that it is a turbo and the blinds are still very low, some players will take chances to try and double up right away or else start another tournament. Therefore, you should be playing your premium hands very aggressively since there's a good chance that someone with too aggressive of a style (i.e. someone who thinks turbos are all luck and coin flips) will be calling/pushing with a less than best holding.

15-30 blinds:
Blinds are still pretty low, but by now you should be able to see two distinct types of players at the table - those who are extremely tight and haven't played a hand yet, and those who are extremely aggressive and have been playing many pots. In my experience, there is usually mostly tight players with a few over aggressive ones sprinkled in.

At this level, you're still looking to play strong hands, but I will start to pick on the tight players who have folded everything to this point. I will raise weaker holdings against them when I can open preflop as I know they will fold everything but premium hands still. I will also try to punish the aggressive players by playing back at them when I'm in position with a decent holding. Bluffing overly aggressive players in the early levels is a great tactic if you can take advantage of it by labeling the villains early. They are expecting you to play tight like most opponents so a well timed raise/reraise can knock them off the hand and win you a decent pot early. Even a 200 chip pot at this point is a very nice hand. I do suggest exercising caution with this though as you really don't want to be bluffing off a lot of chips in the early going.

25-50 blinds:
At this point, you should still be relatively close to your starting stack unless you managed to hit a big hand early (in which case you may have the chip lead and that makes single table tournaments so much easier). I will begin betting 2.5 x BB preflop to open since 125 chips is probably a significant portion of your stack (as opposed to 3 x BB in the first couple levels).

You still don't want to be getting too crazy yet as there is still some play at this blind level. You want to really start putting pressure on your opponents and that means open raising preflop in position when you get the chance. As mentioned, many micro turbo STT players are way too tight. Stealing a few blinds at this level can make a huge difference later on as every chip counts.

Your stack size plays a huge role. When entering a pot, you have to consider the size of the bets to come and your overall stack size. Let's say you have 1250 and are holding an AJ in the HJ. It's folded to you and you throw in 125. Button calls, BB calls and you see a flop with 400 in the pot. BB donks out 300 on the flop to bring the pot to 700 and you have 1125 left. These numbers are huge. The pot is almost the size of your stack already and it's only the flop!

My point is that your commitment to the pot is relative to the number of chips you have in your stack. I'm not going to give specific ranges and ICM calculations (you can find those online if you want.) You really have to consider what your actions will be on later streets with the pot growing very large compared to your stack. Generally, it might be the right play to over bet push a flop to win a pot around 50% of your stack. You might be losing some value here by pushing off a weaker hand that may have paid you off more, but the limited chances of that happening plus the additional advantage of having a bigger chip stack for later play offsets it.

My advice is to have a pretty tight calling range and a relatively looser opening range preflop. This is probably the number one mistake I see opponents make in turbos - they call off much lighter than they should since the increasing blinds start to get them worried. The simple fact is you need to have a much stronger hand to call than to raise. Obviously it depends on the specific opponent, but this is generally a good style of play for turbos, and mastering it essential.

50-100 blinds:
If you've made it this far, you've either won a few hands and are sitting comfortably, or you've lost or been pretty tight and now you're low on chips. Relatively speaking, now the blinds are huge compared the stack sizes. This is when the push or fold tactics really start to emerge.

Personally, if I have a stack of around 1300+ I will stick with my regular 2.5 x BB open raise. Anything less and I'm looking to push it all in preflop. My rationale is that the players don't have the stack sizes to be fooling around in pots. The majority of pots will fall into the extreme categories of just stealing the blinds or multiple opponents pushing all in. I am more than satisfied just winning the blinds at this point and adding 150 to my stack.

Position is extremely important still as you will want to attack in late position in unopened pots. Depending on the style of the opponents to your left, you should be looking to play aggressively with almost any two cards. When folded around to you and you have around 10 BBs or less, you should be more than willing to push it in. Again, I don't really want to reference a specific range since you can easily look up ICM calculations and decide on your own general range.

It also slightly depends on how many players are still left in the tournament at this point. If you have a full table of nits who haven't played a hand yet, then you may be able to take it a bit slower as the blinds won't hit you as often. If you are at a table with multiple hyper aggressive players who have already knocked out a few opponents, then the blinds may be coming around quicker and you might have to open your pushing range a bit sooner. This is probably a very fine line, but in any case I'd suggest that leaning towards the aggressive side is generally a better idea.

75-150 blinds and up:
The BB is now 10% of the starting stack size which is astronomical. There is little to no action preflop that isn't an all in (and this includes some of the opponents with big stacks who don't realize that pushing it all in is just a risk not worth taking at this point).

The best strategy I can offer has already been mentioned earlier, but now is more prevalent than before. Obviously, if you have a premium hand you're pushing (possibly even against multiple opponents depending on their levels of aggressiveness up to this point). Your pushing ranges in unopened pots in good position should be almost infinite - yes, that means if you look down and see a joker and a deuce of horseshoes you still should still be pushing all in if your stack size calls for it - i.e. around 10 BBs or less. In general, I will push if my stack is around 1800 or less at the 150 BB level and 2300 or less at the 200 BB level and I have something that even remotely resembles a hand. With a bigger stack, I will open with the regular 2.5 x BB but 2 x BB is okay as well if you prefer (I don't - in fact I hate the min raise).

You have to realize that at this point, you may open push and get called by a better hand and lose. It happens...a lot. You will experience a lot of variance in turbos. However, you can't be worried about it happening. Your best chance to win comes from staying aggressive and pushing the action. You want to force your opponents to be put to a decision for all their chips. If you lose, at least you went down fighting.

As mentioned previously, the biggest mistake I see is players calling off light against all in preflop pushes. There are two main reasons for this: 1) players feel that in turbos weaker hands become stronger because of the quick pace of the blinds (this is true in a sense, but it does not directly correlate in the way many may think); and 2) they are not taking the villain's previous actions into account (calling an all in from a very loose player is completely different than calling an all in by someone who has played zero hands up to now).

One can easily see that calling an all in is a much more difficult decision than pushing all in. Therefore, trying to avoid this decision when possible and forcing your opponents to make it instead is a great strategy. Once again, I suggest finding an ICM calculator online and fooling around with some hands and ranges to find what works best for you. Knowing when to call an all in and when to fold and wait for a better spot is one of the most difficult skills you will have to master to do well in turbo STTs and it is usually very opponent dependent. However, I will again suggest to lean to the side of aggression (in that you should be the one pushing more often) and fold against most pushes until you feel more comfortable about where you stand against your opponent's range.

I also want to mention something about opponents' stack sizes. You really want to be picking on the smaller stacks if you can. Stealing from the smaller, tighter stacks is a great way to chip up. If you manage to get a big stack early, you should be looking to punish everyone at the table. An early double up can lead to a completely dominating style of constant aggression with the smaller stacks just trying to avoid you. Also, opening your calling range against late position small stacks is usually a good idea at the later levels. At certain points, even the tightest players will have to push with any two cards to avoid blinding out. My general rule (when I don't hold a premium hand obviously) is that I will allow myself to call a short stack push if three conditions are met. 1) I am last to act (or almost last which will most likely make me push over top of the short stack to isolate), 2) if losing the hand still leaves me with at least 8 BBs, and 3) I have reason to believe that the villain is pushing light (this could be a variety of reasons usually from previous experience with the opponent).

I may also add a section on bubble and ITM strategies at some point if I feel up to it.

tldr and why is it in bold...the part I did read at the start sounded like a copy of a 2003 sng strategy