Monitoring Your Q and M in Poker Tournaments. There are numerous details to monitor in online No Limit Holdem Tournaments. Some of them may be as unique and challenging as the chat you try to decipher coming from your opponents. When playing online though, you do have tools and indicators available which can help you make a solid decision, at least mathematically based on calculable conditions at any given time. Two of those conditions are often used by professional players at live tournaments and are critical to success online as well. The indicators are M and Q. M stands for M ratio which is basically a stack comparison between yourself and the size of the current minimum pot. A minimum pot is made up of a combination of blinds and antes which constantly escalate as a tournament progresses. As your stack (or M) gets lower, other players with better Ms will start to steal your blinds and risk losing a pot in order to eliminate you from competition. Q is a comparison of your stack to other players' stacks by determining the average of stack size of all players left in the tournament and affixing a representative comparison value of one to your stack. So if your stack is half the size of the average stack, then you would have a Q of .5. If on the other hand you had 3 times the average stack, your Q would be 3. Q is a comparison of your stack to other players' stacks by determining the average of stack size of all players left in the tournament and affixing a representative comparison value of one to your stack. So if your stack is half the size of the average stack, then you would have a Q of .5. If on the other hand you had 3 times the average stack, your Q would be 3. M is usually more relevant than Q within normally structured tournament and should always be known as well as its corresponding color zone. Green is for an M of 20 or more, yellow will be from 15 to 20, while orange is from 10 to 15. The lower mzones are red which is from 1 to 5 and the all but out grey mzone which means your M ratio is actually below 1. However, M isn't always the main indicator to consider. You may indeed be more compelled to act a certain way in a tournament based on your Q.
The reason why Q may be more relevant than the M is because of stack parity at a game critical intersect. In other words, if most of the players at your table have similar (low) M ratios that put them in Orange or red Mzones, then the Mzone really don't matter much at all. You need to know what that strength of your hole cards are and use position to take down as many pots preflop as possible. Knowing the difference between M and Q in tournaments can be critical to your success in moving up the money and playing mathematically correct at game critical intersects.
Comparing Poker Tournament Strategies for Mzone and Effective Mzone Arnold Snyder and Dan Harrington are both authors of some of the most popular NL holdem tournament books on the market today. They both definitely know their stuff as each has won not only in poker but in blackjack and backgammon as well. I wouldn't try a number crunching contest with either of them. At the core of each of their most popular poker books belies an area of contention between the two that has spilled over into some lively forum debates across the internet universe that you might find thought provoking, or sleep inducing. Even for poker tournament players the splitting of such strategic hairs is often taken for passing amusement. Dan Harrington brought to light a common technique used by pros for measuring how long your chips will last in a tournament given the current blinds and antes. Somebody (PM) named it M, and it got picked up by the other pros who kept M as a reference number for essentially figuring how many rounds you get to live if you simply blind out in a tournament. Then along comes Arnold Snyder and says in defense of his book, "The Poker Tournament Formula" that M is really misleading because it only measures the current blind level against a chip stack, not the imminent blind levels yet to come. In effect, Arnold is correct here because under Harrington's analysis if your M was 22 (which is a Green Mzone stack), but the blinds will go up in two hands, there is now way your stack will last for 22 rounds. Further, there will be another blind rise before even the 20 hands are done! What Arnold Snyder is implying is called “effective Mâ€. It is a more accurate calculation that takes a tournament’s structure into the equation and deduces the real time left you have to make a move or get blinded out in a tournament. My only point of contention though for using effective M, rather than M is that while others may see you as a relatively safe, yellow Mzone at 15.6, you could be seeing a desperate red Mzone stack at 3.5! In that of course demands a different playing style, which Arnold says may seem “downright maniacal†to players like Harrington. Arnold Snyder says this is the way to play. However, I play online tournaments and can easily refute that because in practice, it isn't doesn't take very long for online players to figure I am off my rocker playing that aggressive, and I will be challenged, and rightly so in short order with what remains of my stack as I try to bully my way into good money with no cards. In fact, as soon as I start displaying such behavior, the online tournament rounders will start salivating over my tournament chips like they were the last cheese nachos on the planet. It just doesn't happen (at least) in online tournaments that have buy ins of less than fifty bucks. Been there, done that Arnold. Real M, the Dan Harrington MZone Strategy works best in low level online tournaments. It just doesn't happen (at least) in online tournaments that have buy ins of less than fifty bucks. Been there, done that Arnold. Real M, the Dan Harrington MZone Strategy works best in low level online tournaments. BaddBeatBobb's Final Table Predictor | 
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