03 Apr 09 The Ten Big Blinds Rule
How many times during a tournament do you see a player fold, fold, fold their hands during the late stages of a tournament, letting their chip stack get so small that they would need to double up 2-3 times just to put themselves back in contention? What these players fail to grasp is the Ten Big Blind Rule. The concept is, you do not let your stack dwindle below a total of ten times the current big blind. If/when you do find yourself find yourself in that situation, you’re now looking for every good reason to move all-in.
Why ten big blinds? Well, the truth is there’s no set amount of chips you need to have before you should absolutely push all-in, but the common agreement amongst most experienced players is that ten big blinds represents the bare minimum of chips you need to be able to go all-in with, as doubling up that amount should put you out of harms way at least for the time being. Let yourself slip to just five times the big blind and even if you win your all-in bet, you still are heavily in the danger zone and will now have to once again go all-in very soon, often times with a very marginal hand.
If the situation is correct, you can absolutely expand this range even higher. Many players consider it ok in particular scenarios that you can/should make this move with 15 times the big blind and sometimes even more. What dictates this situation is when there might be a lot of money in the pot already pre-flop and maybe someone’s already moved all-in and you hold a very premium hand.
So say you find yourself in a ten big blind or less problematic area, what kind of cards should you be moving in with? Ideally, you want to try and push with any ace and any king, and even hands like Q-10. If you’re down to less than 10 big blinds, you may have to open up your hand selection to include any Q-X combo as well. You obviously would want to be the first person to move all-in, as it is much weaker to have to call an all-in with these marginal hands, but sometimes you just don’t have a choice.
Try to add this Ten Big Blind Rule to your game as soon as possible, because it really is the only way to successfully defend yourself from elimination when your stack starts to dwindle. You won’t win them all, but in the long run you’ll be much better off because of it.
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