Going out early in a poker tournament is frustrating, but for many players, there is nothing worse than being eliminated on the money bubble. Playing for hours or even days only to fall just short of a payday is enough to send any tournament player on tilt. Card Player TV recently caught up two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner and Chip Leader Coaching founder Chance Kornuth to discuss some things players can do to help avoid going out on the bubble. With 1430 career live tournament cashes and more than $7 million in lifetime earnings, Kornuth definitely has experience dealing with this stress-filled aspect of tournament play.
“It’s really important to be aware of the other stacks,” said Kornuth. “If it was 100 people and 15 pay, with 17 left you gotta know who’s short.”
At the time of the interview, Kornuth was competing in a $50,000 buy-in super high roller at the 2019 World Series of Poker. Kornuth related how seriously the elite players in that event took their responsibility to keep track of the stack sizes when the bubble loomed.
“In this $50k, for example, people are counting orbits. ‘Okay, this guy is all-in in two orbits, and I have three, so I’m just going to have to wait’,” shared Kornuth. “In larger field tournaments, people are going to bust really fast and won’t be as aware of it as they are in a $50k, so in those, you can probably sneak in with very few big blinds.”
Kornuth also discussed the importance of studying short-stack open shoving ranges, three-bet shoving ranges, and also talked about how you have to sometimes just accept that you can get run over during the bubble period.
Check out the full video below:
Card Player TV has hundreds of poker strategy videos featuring insight from the top players in the game. Check out the strategy section by clicking here.