From Harrington on Holdem Volume 2: The Endgame.
M is the ratio of a player's chipstack to the total of the blinds and antes.
Vanessa Rousso On Playing Short Stack - PCA PokerStars Caribbean Adventure 2009
The Green Zone : Your M is 20+ (20 or more times the SB + BB + antes)
This is where you want to spend as much of the tournament as possible. All styles of play are open to you. you can be conservative, aggressive, or super-aggressive, and switch back and forth among them as you wish, all moves are available. You can watch a raise and a reraise and come over the top of both players, and still have plenty of chips left for another move later in the hand. In the green zone you're a full- functional poker player, and it's worth taking some risks to stay here.
The Yellow Zone : Your M is 10-19
As you move from the green zone to the yellow zone you lose the ability to play conservative poker. The blinds are starting to catch you, so you have to loosen your play. You can be aggressive or super-aggressive but you have to start making moves with hands weaker than those a conservative player would elect to play. Oddly enough, however, certain hand types (small pairs and suited connectors) become less playable in the yellow zone (due to the lack of implied odds).
The Orange Zone : Your M is 6-9
In the orange zone, you lose the ability to make certain kinds of complex moves that require a reasonable stack size to succeed. Here's an example, a type of sandwich play. A loose middle position player raises 2-3 times the big blind. You know from past experience that he's probably trying a steal. But before you, another player sticks in a reraise. You realize that he probably knows what you know, and knows he doesn't need much of a hand to take the pot from the first bettor. If you have any kind of hand at all and a decent stack, you can come over the top of both players. The first player will probably lay his hand down, and if your raise is substantial and you have more chips to back it up, the second player will probably quit as well. But to execute this maneuver, you need a big stack relative to the pot. If you have to go all-in to make this play, the second bettor may be able to call you just based on pot odds, since he knows you can't do any further betting. In the orange zone, you have to play even more aggressively than in the yellow zone.
The Red Zone : Your M is 1-5
In the red zone you've lost any ability to make a bet other than an all-in bet. If you make a smaller bet, it consumes so much of your stack that you're pot committed anyway. So you might as well go all-in, since it gives you the best chance of winning the pot with your first bet. Of course when your M is lower than 3, your all-in bet will probably not be enough to drive other players out of the pot. The combination of your weak situation plus the attractive odds will usually result in at least one caller.
The Dead Zone : Your M is less than 1 times (SB + BB + antes)
In the dead zone you appear to be alive but your not... you're a poker wraith, just a gnat to be swatted. Your only move left is all-in. And when you make it they'll call just to get rid of you. Never allow yourself to get this low by having your chips blinded away, as you'd have been much better off making a stand earlier with marginal cards. Decent players arrive here only by accident, like after losing an all-in against a slightly smaller stack. It's essential here to be the first into the pot, so you must make a move before the blinds arrive. by moving first, some hands that would call you because of your tiny stack will fold because of the danger of someone coming over the top behind them. The need to move first is so great that your cards really don't matter anymore.
More About M
You should be estimating your M before every hand, and also maintain an idea of the M's of the other players. As you move down through the lower zones - yellow, then orange, then red - your M becomes a key piece of information about your hand, every bit as important as the cards themselves.
Another way of looking at M is to see it as a measure of just how likely you are to get dealt a better hand in a better situation later, and still have a reasonable amount of money left. There are two dangers in being too tight in the middle zones. First: your stack can get blinded away. And Second: You may wait for a good hand and get it at a time when it's no longer useful to you (like with raises and reraises ahead of you).
For example, a tight player drifts through the orange zone, passing chances to make a stand with a somewhat marginal hand. When his M finally gets down to 2, his dream scenario occurs. He picks up AA, someone in front of him moves all-in and he calls... winning and doubling up. Great... but now his M is still just 5! He's still in the red zone, and still needs to double up again very soon. If he'd made a riskier move when his M was somewhat higher, like 7, a double up would have taken him to 14, well into the yellow zone, and bought him valuable time.
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