It’s the gambler’s ultimate dream and the nit’s nightmare; playing hyper turbo tournaments –  an increasingly popular format at online gambling sites with real money poker games –  where you start with few, if any chips, 3 minute blind increases, and players constantly and consistently making all their decisions preflop, seemingly taking all the skill out of the game.  In truth, there’s still a lot of skill in determining the times when you’re shoving and folding, and when you’re defending your blinds in later levels, when players may have enough chips to just open instead of shove, and understanding these nuances of the hyper turbo can help make them less of a gamble and more of a profitable endeavor for you.
  
The first thing to understand is that, in the opening levels, you only have one move; shove. In hyper turbos, which usually are satellites to bigger tournaments, there may never be a time where you can feasibly open for less than a shove; the major gaming sites only give you about 10 big blinds to start the match with, so even doubling up on the first hand leaves you in the same spot you were in; effective stacks are still 10 bigs, and you’re not open/folding against stacks that small. In the hyper turbo tournaments, which usually give you a few more blinds (in the range of 20-30, on average, depending on if the tournament is a satellite or a cash tournament) to work with, once you’ve doubled up and some other players have, it may not be prudent to simply jam your stack in; you’ll have a little bit of leeway to open a bit lighter and be able to fold to a reraise when your stack hits the 50-60 blind range in these tournaments; just remember that your stack is constantly decreasing ever three minutes, so you can’t just double up and breathe a sigh of relief, you have to keep looking for profitable spots to accumulate chips every hand.

So, does that mean we should be blindly shoving all in every hand? If you’re the button, the answer is actually almost a yes! With so few big blinds in your stack, getting a fold to you on the button makes any two cards a tempting spot to shove all in with; and with less than 10 big blinds in your stack, I’d be inclined to make the dark shove; you need to double up to keep your stack from being in the realm of having no fold equity, so I’d rather shove 92o with 9 big blinds than try it one round later with J7o, a better hand, but only 3 big blinds left to do anything with. The button is your pivot point in hyper turbos; you’ll be doing a LOT of shoving from there, and calling a lot of shoves from players who shove there too. What kind of hands should you be calling those shoves with when they’re sitting on 10 big blinds? Almost all of the top 60% of hands; all pairs, all aces, kings, and queens, J8-J10, 109, and even connected suited hands 67 and greater. It seems like a wide range; but remember what you’ll be shoving with, and it makes a lot more sense!