£250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem

Phantom66

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem:

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem : Are you min raising 77 or AJ (for example) here?
Posted by hhyftrftdr

Jamming. as I would AK. I'm just exploring Ivanovic's comments with an open mind.

Think we have 2 choices

1. Jam any hand we are entering with ever in that position (+makes decisions easy, +provides disguise in that all bets are the same, +folds out a lot of hands that cant afford to call but would have liked to seen a flop -less likely to get called by a hand we dominate)

2. Selectively minraise some hands

Minraise range depends on how I see the blinds playing. Range might be very wide if they are particularly tight/passive pre or post flop should they miss.

IF we are going down the minraise route sometimes we need to be careful we are not giving our opponents obvious signals as to what we minraise as opposed to jamming with. If it is obvious we are stealing a lot of the time we are going to get reraised. Both those points give us a reason to minraise with a selection of premium hands too - but we should mix it up and jam with hands we would normally minraise too.

I like to keep poker simple so I am normally an option 1 kind of guy <15bb

Some make that switch at 10bb - so I don't think Ivanovic's line is so out of line.

DoubleAAA

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem:

This really is as bog standard as a tournament gets. The only reason to do anything other than open ship this is if you need that £32 to eat next week. Even then, you should still be getting it in here. Not sure if you're attention seeking or if you genuinely needed some other opinions, but if you're struggling with this aspect of tournament poker then it's back to the drawing board I think.
Posted by hhyftrftdr

No I do not need the £32 to eat next week, hence why I shoved and didn't min-raise or fold   I just thought it was worthy of discussing to see peoples view points on the min-raise.

As for attention seeking? really? why would posting this particular hand be attention seeking?  Would you rather me not contribute anything at all to the forum?

You can already see that I we have Ivanovic who likes the idea of min-raising here and he explains why, and then you have Phantom and myself that also recognise that it's +EV to be doing that.  I myself prefer to shove but I do like to look at all aspects.  Oh and struggling? no I'm not struggling, doing rather well actually but thank you for your concern.

Lambert180

Tbf, we have 12xBB and AK... pretty much anything other than folding is gonna be +EV.... limping is probably +EV lol, but we're always looking for the MOST +EV option

TeddyBloat

If I was blind v blind or on the button and the pot unopened then id still have a balanced min raising range at 13bb. It might not be optimal but it sure exploits players nicely. With multiple players to act id just jam a less balanced range and look to take the pot, as people will recognise that a utg mjn raise screams strength and would be less inclined to jam their KJo/A3 type hands. Also if our min raise gets called by a passive medium stack then other bigish stacks get the odds to call with their JTs T9 type hands which would be a disaster for us OOP.

Cheers,

TEDDY

rancid

what does a balanced min raising range at 13bb look like and how does it exploit players nicely


surely people are getting confused with a 30bb and a 13bb stack.


then again it is sky and i am sure many people feel 13bb is 30bb


well it could be turbo tuesday and we have a monster stack

F_Ivanovic

Sky has no ante's so shoving more than 10bbs means we are winning less than a 15% chip up uncontested and so the risk vs reward is not that big. In a tournament ante's 10bbs plays so much different because we get ~ 25% chip up uncontested. Also because of sky having no ante's we still have fold equity right down to 6/7bbs. Playing in a tournament with ante's our fold equity becomes almost non-existent with that stack size.

Teddy makes a good point about why we might not want to raise UTG with AK but if table is playing normal you usually expect a raise UTG to get enough folds most of the time. Also even getting 3 callers is not neccessarily a disaster. We still have 11bb and on A or K flops can often get stacks in very good and on low dry boards we can often c-bet/take it down or c-bet/call against an aggressive villain/fold against a passive. Our c-bet only needs to be really small because of the stack sizes and how our range looks in this spot.

rancid

Ivan seriously if your that short how the hell do you expect to stay afloat without shoving % of range

or are you just staying lets dribble by m/r out of short stacks

what % of range are we m/r just to stay in the game so we don't blind away

o no let's compound the problem by dribbling 1bb away once or twice an orbit

this doesn't sound like a strat - just playing hands in a vaccum - o look I have AA I could m/r this out of 11bb - o look everyyone folds - wp me

F_Ivanovic

How short?? lol we're not dribbling away our chips by min-r AK it's a +ev play. OK sometimes it won't work out and we might have to fold. Yes that does suck when we have a hand we are happy to get it in pre with. But a lot of the time it works out nicely and we either take down with a c-bet and get up to a 17+bb stack or we get it in with great equity vs opponents range and double up the majority of the time.

Part of the reason I used to suck at tourneys was because I thought you could only ever shove/fold with less than 15bb's. Which on sky is just not true - and I found a lot of the times I did shove in what I thought was an OK spot that I was crushed when called. Yes I won 1.5bbs when not called but the risk/reward just didn't seem worth it to me. Obv with AK we will rarely be crushed when called but do we really want to be just jamming JJ+ and AK/AQ UTG? Are we just going to fold AJ, KQ, KJ, TT and worse?

gazza127

4 handed I think its safe to say that villains percieve our range as wider, even UTG.

And in bounty hunters people are more likely to call wider too.  BB has a big stack and can take a hit and is more likely to call with rags to take the bounty.

If we are just min raising with AK, AA, KK, QQ and shoving with AQ- JJ- then our range is totally exploitable.  We need to be shoving with our premium as well as our A10s and type hands with about 13bb.

Lambert180

Well I'm 100%  jamming TT with 10xBB in any position, and on the right tables AJ and KQ.... KJ is a bit meh.

F_Ivanovic

Was talking about 13bbs not 10bbs. Obviously 10bbs it's an easy jam!

To be honest I like to open limp a lot on the button rather than min-r as well even as short as 10bb effective. Far too many players will let you get away with it and it's just super profitable to c-bet most flops really small and take it down! I can show you a ton of examples in the torunament I'm currently in of why this is so

rancid

So your m/r down to 13bb


and limping btn w/10bb

wow you must be finding some super soft tables to play small ball strat with such a short stack

Think we have opposing views on MTT strat

TeddyBloat

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem:

what does a balanced min raising range at 13bb look like and how does it exploit players nicely surely people are getting confused with a 30bb and a 13bb stack. then again it is sky and i am sure many people feel 13bb is 30bb well it could be turbo tuesday and we have a monster stack
Posted by rancid

in  a tournament 13bb is deep, certainly playable. and  i think you can do better in some spots than a brute shove/fold game. i've explained why i wouldn't be minraising UTG, but when it's folded to us and we're on the button or small blind then i absolutely would have a minraise/fold range. i'll explain my reasoning.

we are on the button/SB, it's folded to us and it's the bubble of an MTT. opportunites to steal chips do not come better than this and we want to include as many bluffs as we can get away with without being owned. we could shove nash from the SB, but that is a -EV play this deep, and i think we can do better. 

imagine the BB holds a hand like K4, Q7 or J8s. if we've been active in these steal spots he can't defend by calling, often OOP, from a 13bb eff stack [well he can, but...], if he wants to defend he's likely going to have to shove over the top of our minraise. he probably wants to jam here. however 13bbs deep those hands probably aren't calling a shove. this means the value of minraise calling AQ/KQ/KJ etc goes up a bunch. 

we still get folds from all his 92 type junk so we can bundle a ton of minraise/fold hands to take advantage and also help induce. so we still get the same folds from junk, still get it in against hands that beat us, but also get jammed on by hands that we dominate that would otherwise fold. this makes up for the times that they jam over our minraise folding range when they would have folded to a shove. we maintain fold equity, our bluffs are cheaper and we have a much better chance of doubling.

we don't like being flatted but our range contains monsters as well as hands that connect with pretty much any flop texture, we sometimes have postition and the SPR's are low so we arent faced with too many difficult decisions.

not very well explained maybe, but hope it makes some sense.

i'd also be jamming a bunch of hands too btw, and i also think having a limping range is ok against some opponents.

i'm only a micro stakes player, maybe the games are mega different at the levels you play but, meh.

cheers,

TEDDY

F_Ivanovic

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem:

So your m/r down to 13bb and limping btn w/10bb wow you must be finding some super soft tables to play small ball strat with such a short stack Think we have opposing views on MTT strat
Posted by rancid

10bb effective - I had 30bbs or so. And not really it's pretty standard to find plenty of players that will let you limp into them when they have a 10bb stack.

If I know someone in the BB is really tight and will only call/shove with the strongest of hands and plays passive post, then what sense does it make for me to shove 10bbs with A8o? I may get it through a lot and it will be +ev but when called I'm just so crushed vs their range. Whereas I can min-r and happily fold to a shove because I just know I don't have the right equity vs their range. Or alternatively I can limp with suited/high card hands and c-bet a ton and pick up their blinds just as easily and as often without risking my entire stack. Hence more +ev than just jamming.

Obviously vs someone that knows what they are doing I am never going to be min-r folding A8 on 10bbs and instead just shoving for max fold equity. But I think far too many players are afraid to deviate from shove/fold even though it's going to be more EV vs specific players to go down a different route.

Note that when I'm talking about 10bb and limping I'm only advocating this OTB maybe the CO if BTN is really tight.  (and with the right opponents in the blinds) 

IDONKCALLU

anything other then shoving is bad play imo 

so if u min raise then get called u see    a low flop now what guy checks u bet sometimes u win what if u get called now ya dribbling away chips just shove how can u ever min raise here is beyond me 

DoubleAAA

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem:

4 handed I think its safe to say that villains percieve our range as wider, even UTG. And in bounty hunters people are more likely to call wider too.  BB has a big stack and can take a hit and is more likely to call with rags to take the bounty. If we are just min raising with AK, AA, KK, QQ and shoving with AQ- JJ- then our range is totally exploitable.  We need to be shoving with our premium as well as our A10s and type hands with about 13bb.
Posted by gazza127

This was not a BH it was a freezeout but like you said, you would expect bb with his big stack to call quite wide, which is what was doing, however he was playing fit/fold on the flop which made him really easy to play against post-flop.  This is a big reason as to why I questioned whether or not a min-raise would have been the better option given the table dynamics.

rancid

@ Teddy 13bb is not deep and is not playable -
Think we have opposing approaches to MTT play when short



@ivan, ok so you are putting pressure on 10bb stacks - that's fine but I actually prefer a m/r not ever a flat on btn

DoubleAAA

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem:

@ Teddy 13bb is not deep and is not playable - Think we have opposing approaches to MTT play when short @ivan, ok so you are putting pressure on 10bb stacks - that's fine but I actually prefer a m/r not ever a flat on btn
Posted by rancid

13bb can be playable especially when no antes are involved.  Example blinds are 300/600 We can m/r btn 1200, bb flats so pot is 2700, we can then fire a bet ~900 which would mean we have bet a total of 2100, 3.5bbs leaving us with 9.5bbs.

Lambert180

Yeh we don't wanna be putting in 25% of our stack and folding too often though do we.

FWIW, I agree with some of the above to an extent, I think 13xBB is the absolute bottom of the barrel to be raise/folding but we can do it in the right spots. Preferably in later position and like Ivan said, only against very tight people. As he said, if we ship BvB into a very tight player with A9o, we get snapped off when crushed and get snap folds otherwise, a lot of these players won't have a different reship range to their calling range here so with A9o we can m/r and fold to a raise/shove knowing we're just never getting exploited and we're risking the minimum for the odd time they have a like top 5% hand.

That said, as above, 13xBB is the absolute bottom we can mr/fold imo and I wouldn't be doing it UTG. So if I'm never mr/folding UTG, then obv that means when I mr I'm calling ships with 100% of my range. And for that reason, I'd rather ship myself (when UTG)

TeddyBloat

@ Teddy 13bb is not deep and is not playable -
Think we have opposing approaches to MTT play when short

lol, yah 'deep' was hyperbole-ish...

whats the cut off for open shoving then?  15, 17bb?

i'm only talking about the SB or Button position when it's folded to us. obv steal spots that people will jam lighter over. if they fold more, great our bluffs just got cheaper and more profitable. [the chips we lose here are more valuable than the ones we win, so that's a consideration].

i think you are burning ev by eg open-shoving AA 15bb deep when you're the SB v BB or button v blinds

i think the same holds for 13bb deep.

i think the same holds for hands like KQs.

shove/fold is not the be all and end all at these depths for me.

aside from the specific situation of button/SB positions in unopened pots i agree that it's better to just SoF

cheers,
TEDDY

Lambert180

Open shoving 15 or 17BB without antes is horrible play imo. Risk too large for reward and again just creates that situation of getting loads of folds then when we get called we're crushed and probably out the tourney. Obv the odd time we can cooler someone AA v KK or w/e but if we're shoving a decent sized range we're just gonna be crushed SO often.

Tbf, it does also depend on the table about how low we go and how we play our shortstack, which people don't seem to be taking into account. With 15xBB+ I'm definitely minraising 100% of my range (obv range depends on table) from any positon on any table on Sky, below that it comes a little more situation dependent.

TeddyBloat

agree 100%

cheers,
TEDDY

DoubleAAA

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem:

Yeh we don't wanna be putting in 25% of our stack and folding too often though do we. FWIW, I agree with some of the above to an extent, I think 13xBB is the absolute bottom of the barrel to be raise/folding but we can do it in the right spots. Preferably in later position and like Ivan said, only against very tight people. As he said, if we ship BvB into a very tight player with A9o, we get snapped off when crushed and get snap folds otherwise, a lot of these players won't have a different reship range to their calling range here so with A9o we can m/r and fold to a raise/shove knowing we're just never getting exploited and we're risking the minimum for the odd time they have a like top 5% hand. That said, as above, 13xBB is the absolute bottom we can mr/fold imo and I wouldn't be doing it UTG. So if I'm never mr/folding UTG, then obv that means when I mr I'm calling ships with 100% of my range. And for that reason, I'd rather ship myself (when UTG)
Posted by Lambert180

In this scenario we were 4 handed so in effect the utg is also the CO so we only have to pass the btn..

F_Ivanovic

In that case I think min-r > shove.

hhyftrftdr

One of the biggest mistakes I see on Sky (in my opinion of course) is people waiting too long to get busy with a short stack. Yes, there are no antes. But people seem to like waiting until 10bb deep or so before feeling they can be shoving. This is wrong I feel, and more often than not leads us to getting super short and thus leaving our fold equity out in the cold.

Down to 10bb, card/spot dead for 2 orbits and suddenly we have a 7bb stack. When we are down to the 15-20bb stack, we should be using this size to its absolute maximum; 3bet shoving potentially quite light vs certain villains. Perhaps open jamming towards 20bb is a bit off, but 15 or under is fine by me. 

In this specific example, we are only 4 handed. We will be in the blinds 50% of the time. Any opportunity we have to pinch chips with a 13bb stack should be taken. Any chips we can nick without seeing a flop keeps our heads above water and doesn't risk our tournament life. We can make no mistakes with a 13bb stack. Anything other than open shipping AK (or indeed our whole range) here is a mistake I think.

Pretty much a +1 to what Rancid has said. Obviously people approach MTT's in a different mode, but shortstack poker is pretty one dimensional.

F_Ivanovic

One of the biggest mistakes I see on Sky (in my opinion of course) is people waiting too long to get busy with a short stack

See I agree with this but not for the reasons you gave. A lot of people seem to think they have to shove or fold at 15bbs deep or less which leads to extremely tight shoving ranges because jamming with a wide range just doesn't have enough risk/reward.

I guess it's all personal preference but any more than 10bbs and I think there's always more options than just shove/fold.

hhyftrftdr

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem:

One of the biggest mistakes I see on Sky (in my opinion of course) is people waiting too long to get busy with a short stack

See I agree with this but not for the reasons you gave. A lot of people seem to think they have to shove or fold at 15bbs deep or less which leads to extremely tight shoving ranges because jamming with a wide range just doesn't have enough risk/reward. I guess it's all personal preference but any more than 10bbs and I think there's always more options than just shove/fold.
Posted by F_Ivanovic

You genuinely think that 11/12bb is still a raising stack? Serious question by the way! Intrigued....

F_Ivanovic

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem:

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem : You genuinely think that 11/12bb is still a raising stack? Serious question by the way! Intrigued....
Posted by hhyftrftdr

Yes

11bb 2x raise = 9bb. c-bet/fold = leaves us with 8-8.5bb. Obviously we won't be c-bet/folding much (we can chk fold some boards too) but at minimum we still have 8bb's. Still have fold equity with this stack and a couple of steal shoves and we're back up to over 10bbs.

TeddyBloat

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem:

In Response to Re: £250 Gtd £11, AKo utg, Bubble, ICM problem : You genuinely think that 11/12bb is still a raising stack? Serious question by the way! Intrigued....
Posted by hhyftrftdr

In a heads up sng playing exclusive shove or fold 12bbs deep would be bad. Think this can apply to certain mtt spots such as SB v BB / button v blinds. Does open shipping AA 12bb deep yield the best expectation?  If it doesnt then you have to be minraising it, surely.

Really respect the opinion of the people in this thread btw,  dont have any poker mates so threads like this are a gold mine for me, especially so as you are all vastly more experienced and skilled than I am. Dont want to come across as a know it all upstart, but being able to debate, challenge and be challenged is proper helpful. Just so ye know.

Cheers, 

TEDDY

DoubleAAA

This has been a very good debate as to whether we min raise or shove with 10-13bbs.  It's always good to view things with an open mind as nothing is concrete and poker is always evolving.  It was only around 3 years ago that a min raise was frowned upon.