With 100 players paid and 101 left, everyone is on the bubble. Play typically slows to a crawl as short stacks try to survive into the money.
That is precisely when large stacks should attack. ICM pressure means marginal calls are far more costly for a short stack than the chip odds imply, so a big stack can raise relentlessly at very little risk.
Hand-for-hand play, where every table waits for the others before dealing the next hand, exists to stop players stalling their way through the bubble at slower tables.
The bubble also produces the tournament's clearest information leak. Players who suddenly start folding every hand have told you they are protecting a stack rather than playing it, and that is exactly who to attack. Conversely a short stack that raises into the bubble is rarely bluffing, because the downside of being wrong is elimination one place short of money.
Related terms in tournaments
- ICM — Independent Chip Model: the conversion from tournament chips into real money value.
- Chop — An agreement among remaining players to split the prize pool rather than play it out.
- Guarantee — A minimum prize pool the organiser commits to regardless of entries.
- Overlay — The shortfall an organiser covers when entries do not reach the guarantee.
- Freeroll — A tournament with no entry fee, or a situation where you cannot lose but might win.
Where an entry quotes a number, that figure comes from the computed sections of this site rather than from another glossary, so the definition and the derivation cannot drift apart. Each entry links to the page where the number is worked out.