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If you shove here you're getting folds more times than not. This hand you wouldn't have but then we're happy to get the call as 70% favourite. We need 60% wins in these so if we get our money in as 70% favourite every time we're laughing. If they fold our stack is now 1200 and our stack is quite big compared to the rest.
Firstly learn to conduct yourself in a way that you can lay-off with the insults. It's easy to disagree about poker and how we should play a hand but there really is not a need to be insulting. It's a shame you won't be going, would've given us the opportunity to speak about poker and I have this funny feeling that somehow you wouldn't be speaking in the same tone that you type.
There's a limper in the pot and we believe that they will call a raise to 4BB-5BB but will fold if we shove. Clearly raising to 5BB is the correct play (without ICM considerations). Easy game when we have a good read.
Now we're in the small blind and a good player has min-raised in front of us. We say raised because good players aren't limping. We must have a bigger stack to make the theory fit, so let's say we have 13BB-15BB.
Now we decide to stick in a 5BB 3-bet with our marginal hand. We believe that the villain can only continue with a big hand, since we're leveraging our stack against them. Clearly he's going to believe he has no fold equity so he's folding or playing for stacks, right?
The trouble with those pesky good players is that they take notice of what we're doing. So this particular trick won't work very many times or they'll just figure out that our range is not strong. We also have the problem that if they do shove, even if we believe they haven't figure out our weak range, we genuinely are priced in to make the call most of the time, despite believing we've strengthened our opponent's range for getting it in.
What's worse is that we won't want to make this play when we actually have a big hand, because we won't want to make it look like a big hand. So as soon as our opponents realise what we're doing - that we have a strong 3-bet shove range and a weak small 3-bet range - we're stuffed... and if they know we're a thinking player the first thing they'll ask themselves is "Why would you want to make yourself look so strong?"
We're better off disguising our hand by 3-bet shoving with all our hands in a vacuum against good players.
When we're not in a vacuum and we're doing this sort of thing against good players we're familiar with, we're just levelling against them. We can't really discuss that as a particular strategy because it's all based on that history and "I know that you know that I know" etc... We still have to be aware that we're either pricing ourselves in to make the call when shoved on or we're putting a huge proportion of our stack in and then giving up our equity by folding, so doing this with hands that we're not happy getting it in with is not a good plan.
If we're talking about raising into an unopened pot for 40-50% of our stack, to rep big hands... then I don't know what on Earth we're thinking, to be honest.
Just to clarify, Im talking raising between 45-55% of our 10bb stack. Im not talking anything to do with min-raising.
Guys, it's something that I utilize and it works for me. I tried to explain it as best as I can, raising 45-55% of our 10bb stack with strong hands vs a limper (poor player) and open raising 45-55% of our 10bb stack with a marginal (repping a strong hand) vs a good player in the blinds. That's all I tried to say
2: I disagree with this statement. You'll find the greater percentage will not. Their happy to call off another 3-4bbs not even thinking that their gonna be committed on the flop but the thought of putting another 9bbs in with K3s or 86s is asking a bit much from them.
It's just this idea that raising to 50% of our stack is a good plan against a good player that we have a problem with. Just ask yourself what happens if, say blind v blind, we min-raise out of our 10BB stack.
The good player in the big blind is going to see that we are short and that any shove he makes is going to give us pot odds of 40%. He should think that any hand we're raising with is a hand we're going with and therefore his shoving range should be relatively narrow. Now, since we're only 10BBeff anyway, it is only relatively narrow and won't consist solely of monster hands, so against his shoving range we should probably be calling even if we are holding a marginal hand. If we can't call that shove, knowing that the Big Blind's shoving range is going to be not especially narrow, then we shouldn't be open-raising at all because we're just putting money in the middle then giving up our equity.
So let's take that on and make our raise to 50% of our stack. Now we need to believe that the villain will perceive this is as a monster hand, because he thinks we're bad enough to be so obvious about it. I don't think I've ever played an opponent that is that easily read, to be honest.
Then we have to assume that he's folding his entire range except AA or KK, if he believes we must be holding a monster ourselves, yes? Trouble is that when he does shove, we're getting pot odds of 25% to call.
We have to be holding absolute rags and be absolutely certain that this good player thinks we're super-transparent. If he can ever be making this shove with a single hand that we're 30% or better against, we have to call.
That's the trouble; Good players won't perceive this as being a monster hand unless they think we're absolutely hopeless. They'll just think it's funny and get it in with the same range they'd shove against our min-raise because they wouldn't think we could fold having min-raised from a 10BB stack, either. If we then fold getting 25% pot odds, it's horrendous.
As I say, if we do this against someone we're very familiar with and have a history of this sort of raise with, we might end up levelling them into a fold. That's just way too specific a situation to be worth discussing here.
Thank you for the advice. I'll ignore you from now on.
In Response to Re: Did I make mistakes here?: I understand everything you've said but I'm not sure I agree with the pre-flop shove still. Of course with my stack size I'm not a lock on cashing, but I do have the second highest stack. Given the size of the blinds, and the chipstacks of the other five players, surely there is no harm in playing more cautiously and waiting for others to get knocked out?
To actually acheive this I have a big hand illusion then you need to play against good players, needless to say your not going to be playing against players that will fold.
The only benefit in raising larger is with hands you don't really want to shove and race against a range where they get to realise all there equity. By raising 3,4 or 5x will look stronger and you may fold out a certain % of range.
The only drawback is when you do this with top of range good villians are going to fold.
On the reverse bad villians are going to call/shove.
All in all it's a terrible overall strategy.
It may work in a vaccum but I can't see how you would implement it against good players without it being totally transparent.