Online Poker Tournament Strategy - M Ratio
In my introduction to Cash Poker I briefly mentioned M Ratio, which is a concept often used by good tournament poker players.
M Ratio is a simple sum and set of guidelines that tells you how healthy your chip stack is, how to play it, and what you should be focusing on doing next. M Ratio was developed by Paul Magriel, renowned backgammon expert and poker player, who like Gus Hansen and many others, found the switch from backgammon to poker relatively straightforward as they proved time and time again with WPT and WSOP victories.
M Ratio
The principle is explained on countless websites and blogs, but is perhaps best illustrated in Gus Hansen’s book “Every Hand Revealed”, where he shares with the reader every ‘played hand’ on his way to his winning the 2007 Aussie Millions.
M Ratio simply refers to the mathematical way of calculating the numbers of ‘rounds’ you have left, if you don’t bet at any hands. A round being a full ‘lap’ of the table by the Dealer button.
The calculation used to calculate basic M Ratio is:
“Chip Stack” divided by “Cost per round”
So let’s pretend you’ve reached the latter stages of a tournament, the blinds are now $1000 / $2000 with a $300 Ante and there are 10 players per table. Your “Cost per Round” is 1 x Big Blind, 1 x Small Blind and 10 x Antes. $2000 + $1000 + $3000 = $6000.
If you have a chip stack of $150,000 your M Ratio is calculated as:
$150,000 divided by $6000 = 25
You have 25 rounds left, with a full table of 10, that is 250 hands of poker, assuming you never made a bet. That’s a lot of cards.
An M Ratio greater than 20 means you are seriously chipped up, you have a deep stack and you are flying, cruising at altitude, you can be very much in charge of the game. Dan Harrington calls this the Green Zone.
An M Ratio between 20 and 10, the Yellow Zone, means you are still cruising, you will probably spend most of your ‘tournament life’ in the Yellow Zone.
An M Ratio between 10 and 6 is the Orange Zone, you are starting to limp a little, not necessarily critical yet, but choose your next move carefully, try where possible to preserve your chips, you haven’t got many to spare.
An M Ratio between 6 and 3 is the Red Zone, your only real move is All In...or fold.
An M Ratio of 1 or less is the Dead Zone, it is now down to pure luck as you push All In to an empty pot, get your chips in and put your coat on. You’ve got 1 (or less) rounds left. Goodbye.
So using the tournament stage as illustrated above, with a cost per round of $6000, with our $150,000 chip stack, we can categorise the following players and how we should play against them.
Chipper1 has $200k chips, he is way over M Ratio 20 so be careful, I’d focus on taking on someone else if I were you.
CaptainHappy09 has $80k chips, he has an M Ratio of 13, and is probably not going to be playing those low to mid pairs he keeps getting dealt, he might be taking a stab at a few, but you can put him under pressure easily enough. Just be careful, if he is on his way down as he has probably tightened up, so that bet might be for real, however, if he has recently moved up from a lower M ratio he might be feeling rich and is trying a few moves.
SallyUK has $45k in front of her and an M Ratio of 7.5, Orange Zone, she is likely to be playing very tightly, you can pressurise her if you are betting before her, and watch for her checking as she hunts for that free card, don’t let her see it....unless you already have the nuts, obviously.
United99 has $20k in chips and a low M Ratio of just over 3, aptly enough in the Red Zone. United99 is your target for putting under serious pressure, is likely to be making moves with average hands and it’s my guess that as soon as he sees a face card with Ten or above, he’s going all in. Take advantage.
Fishgirl has $4k chips left, the Dead Zone, she’s gone all in from 3rd position, it would be very rude not to call wouldn’t it?
So that’s a basic M Ratio explained, but surely someone has got to have made it more complicated haven’t they? Of course they have, and that someone is called Dan Harrington.
Effective M Ratio Calculation
In Harrington’s excellent “Harrington on Holdem: Volume II The Endgame” he adds an extra dimension to the calculation. The dimension being: “the number of players at the table”. Whilst the original, basic M ratio pays no attention to the number of players, Harrington’s version does, and does with good reason.
The shorter handed the table, the quicker you are going to take those big hits to your stack when the blinds AND the ante hits you.
Dan Harrington simply advises to calculate M ratio as normal then multiply by:
“Players at table divided by 10”
Assuming you are sat, at the late stage of the tournament we have already used for illustration purposes, with that $150,000 stack and there are 6 players at the table, your M Ratio is
25 multiplied by (6 divided by 10)
25 multiplied by 0.6 = 15
Your Effective M Ratio is 15, no longer in the Green Zone, not sitting quite as comfortably now are you? You are effectively in the Yellow Zone, be a little more careful.
When to use which Ratio?
Confused? You don’t need to be.
Basic M Ratio is used when tables are generally full, 8, 9 or 10 players. Usually the early to mid stages of a multi table tournament, or the early stages of a single table tournament.
Effective M Ratio is to be used when you are at the late stages (often final table) of a multi table tournament, or in the mid to late stages of a single table tournament. 7 players or less, and Effective M Ratio becomes more important than Basic M Ratio.
Simple isn’t it?
You might have gathered by now that I am a bit of a poker nerd, I like to read poker strategy and am happy to share what I know. Take a look at my recommended reading list for avid poker players.
