Stack-to-Blind Ratio

Also known as: big blinds, bb stack, stack in bb, effective stack in bb

Your stack measured in big blinds — the standard metric for tournament stack depth and the strategy it dictates.

Tournament stacks are always measured in big blinds, not chip counts, because the chip value is meaningless without the blind level. Your stack-to-blind ratio (commonly just "bb") sets the entire strategic frame and maps directly to depth brackets:

• > 40bb — full postflop play, 3-bet/4-bet pots, position matters most
• 20-40bb — opening and resteal territory, shrinking postflop trees
• 12-20bb — re-shove and short-stack play, fewer flat-calls
• < 12bb — push/fold dominates, decisions collapse to jam-or-fold

Unlike the M-ratio, which folds antes and table size into orbit cost, the bb count is a raw depth measure — but always compute it on the effective stack (the smaller of the two stacks in a confrontation), and adjust the practical thresholds upward when antes add dead money.