Harrington has it pretty well on. It has nothing to do with some "ideal" strategy.

If you are playing with antes, and let you let yourself get down to 10 big blinds you are seriously hurting your chances of finishing high in the money.

It is simple math. The farther your stack shirnks below Par, the less likely it is you will ever get back to par, the farther you shrink from the chip leaders, the less likely it is you will ever be one yourself.

As your chip stack falls if you keep your stack in the 10bb range, you are taking away most skill advantage you have and leaving it up to luck.

Say you have 20bbs, but you think you are better off waiting, so you sit and wait paitiently 25 hands later or so the blinds have gone up twice and you have been posting and folding you are down to 7bbs, you finally get a good hand and push allin, you either pick up the blinds, or are racing just to get back to 14bbs that will soon be 10 when the blinds go up again. In you stars example, the average stack is around M=12.

This is a farily conservative time. Harrington warns about coming into pots pots with small pairs and probably suited connectors too. You can't stand a raise, so you need to be very careful about entering pots in EP. He also suggests playing small balls, trying to take down a lot of pots cheaply.

If your opponents are hyper aggressive, or calling stations, this won't work and you will have to be even more careful.

For the oragne zone, you the money on the pot is now more than 10% of your stack, so stealing can quickly get you back into the yellow, and you want to be making moves with hand that have some chance when they get called.

You are still being fairly conservative - particularly after someone else has enters the pot, but you are being much more aggressive trying to find a spot where you can get doubled up and get to a position where you can play some poker again.

All you are doing is treading water.

Maybe you are fully digesting what Harrington is discussing.

I'm only talking about the concept of M. How many rounds you can go around the table vs. # of BB's. Whichever one you use, doesn't seem like it's going to do much for you.

I'm just saying, one person will say he has an M of 10 and I'd say I have 18BB's or whatever. It doesn't really make a difference as long as you play the right way according to your stack.

I agree with what Snowman is saying. I rarely actually calc my M at the table, I let BBs be my guide but I make the adjustments for antes and think I have a pretty good feel for what "zone" I am in.

That's exactly what I'm saying, beavis. Me knowing my M instead of saying I have 30BB's doesn't matter at all... just play the game lol.