Strategy

Mastering Final Table Fundamentals – Key Strategy Adjustments

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January 15, 2025 · 7 minutes

final table fundamentals

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In today’s article, we’ll focus on the final table preflop strategy with a particular focus on how it deviates from your general GTO strategy and why.

Before we move any further, a fundamental idea to keep at the back of your mind is that, at a final table, you make money by folding. Every time you fold, there is a chance of someone else going broke, allowing you to ladder up.

Because of these payout dynamics, you can’t blindly follow GTO charts. Instead, you need to make adjustments based on chip distribution, other players’ tendencies, payout structure, and more. So, let’s get into it!

Final Table Fundamentals

To start, I’ll break down some final table fundamentals, using a very simple example of four players remaining, each holding 25% of chips in play, so everyone has equal stacks.

Payouts are as follows:

  • 1st $1,000
  • 2nd $700
  • 3rd $400
  • 4th $200

In this scenario, it’s easy to determine who much each stack is worth, by dividing the total prize pool by four, i.e. $2,300/4 = $575.

So, what happens when you find yourself all-in in a break even situation (with 50% equity). If you win, your equity increases to $800, but if you lose, you get 4th place money, $200, If you add the two together, you get a total of $1,000.

Since each player’s equity was $575 to begin with, there was a total of $1,150 worth of equity in the pot, but you only get back $1,000. How is this possible?

This happens because the difference goes to the two players who folded and did not get involved. In a tournament setting, the maximum you can win is the first-place money, so no matter how big your stack is, it can never be worth more than $1,000.

In this example, the two players who didn’t get involved clearly profited just by folding their hands, which clearly shows that folding has real value at a final table. Thus, you need to know when it is a good time to apply pressure and when you should stay cautious.

As a big stack, you can put pressure on everyone; medium stacks can pressure other medium and small stacks, while short stacks can attack other short stacks.

Your strategic decisions will vary greatly depending on the implications. If there are two stacks with 30 big blinds and three players with only five big blinds each, there is very little incentive for two big stacks to get involved with each other when they can easily ladder up at least a couple of spots by being tight.

Basic Concepts

There are several main concepts that you need to understand and internalize when it comes to final table play. The most important ones are:

  • Stack distribution – if other players are shorter stacks and likely to bust, you should be more cautious and fold more.
  • Payout structure – the flatter the payout structure, the tighter you should play, as seeing other players bust is worth more in these scenarios.
  • Ante size – with bigger antes, there are more chips to win in each pot, so you should play more aggressively when antes are big. This is usually the case in live events.

Building on these fundamental concepts, you should adjust your strategy accordingly.

In scenarios where you want to play tighter, you should use bigger bet sizes when you do get involved to discourage your opponents.

By the same token, blockers go up in value as they reduce combos of strong hands you can potentially run into. So, when open raising, you should give preference to a hand like A8 over a hand like 55.

Since busting the tournament is the worst-case scenario, you need to look for spots where you can raise/fold instead of going all in and risking your entire stack. Marginally strong hands like KQo and ATo are perfect candidates for these types of plays.

It’s not just your strategy you need to worry about, though. Be aware of other players’ tendencies and if they understand these concepts.

Often, you’ll come across players who just want to win and don’t care about anything else. There will also be opponents who care too much about moving up the pay table, resulting in them over-folding and playing too cautiously.

Pay attention to these tendencies, understand them, and adjust accordingly.

Playing Strong Hands & Understanding Stack Size Implications

One common mistake that players make at final tables is overvaluing strong hands like AK and TT. In many scenarios, these hands are better played as open shoves, or you want to 3-bet shove them over the opponent’s raise.

You don’t want to get involved in complicated spots and play for your entire stack, especially if there are other short stacks at the table. Playing aggressively and picking up the pot without going to a showdown is the ideal scenario here.

When it comes to stack sizes, some big stacks think it’s their job to go crazy and bust everyone, which leads to them opening very wide. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t be afraid to jam over their opens with 15 – 30 big blind stack with a fairly wide range, as this is an easy way to chip up.

Few Practical Examples

With these theoretical concepts out of the way, let’s look at an example of a hypothetical final table situation to see what our ranges should look like and how they differ from usual GTO ranges.

This is an example with one big blind ante (most live tournaments) and five players remaining:

  • HJ (UTG) – 20 big blinds
  • CO 30 big blinds
  • BTN – 60 big blinds
  • SB – 15 big blinds
  • BB – 44 big blinds

Looking at ICM charts, you’ll notice that the first two players to act have to play very tight. They have 20 and 30 big blinds, respectively, a short stack in the small blind and then two stacks covering them on the button and in the big blind.

mastering final table fundamentals

This setup dictates a much tighter approach than what the GTO strategy dictates when there are no ICM implications.

By the same token, the button gets to raise wider than they would if there were no payout implications. They can apply a lot of pressure on the remaining two players as they have them both covered.

In the small blind, even with 15 big blinds, the player has a fair number of raise/fold junky hands in their range, which wouldn’t be there in a normal scenario where there is no ICM. Clearly, they also have a decent number of shoving hands, such as all aces, a lot of suited connectors, etc.

Taking a step back, if the button opens, the small blind should pretty much play an all-in or fold strategy, only re-raising small with the best hands (AA, KK, and AK) and a small percentage of Ax off-suite hands for balance.

If the small blind folds, the big blind has very few 3-bets against the button open. Apart from the strongest hands, there are a few bluffs in there, but because of payouts and the distribution of chips, they have to stay very tight, mostly calling and controlling the size of the pot.

Summary & Further Considerations

There are many factors to keep in mind when playing at a final table that you don’t have to think about during the early stages of a tournament or when playing in a cash game.

To maximize your equity, you need to understand these key concepts and adjust accordingly. Also, pay attention and take advantage of the opponents who fail to adjust properly.

In this article, we focused purely on a preflop play without even touching the postflop strategy. This is a whole different topic, but the same basic principles still apply.

When playing against a stack that has you covered, your main goal should be to control the size of the pot and avoid big confrontations, especially when there are other shorter stacks.

As a big stack, you can pick up many pots in non-standard spots, leading into original raiser on the boards that favor your defending range or check-raising to put them in a difficult spot.

This is especially effective against medium stacks who’ll be reluctant to put their stacks on the line and bust before much shorter stacks.

Article by
Jonathan Little is a two-time WPT champion with more than $7 million in live tournament winnings and best-selling author of multiple poker strategy books. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts one of the best poker training sites around - pokercoaching.com

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