13 replies to this topic

[chrisuk_sw]

Situation:

It's a live B&M MTT. There are 320000 chips in play and there are 9 players left. 7 places pay.

You have 10000, the blinds are 1000/2000. You are UTG, and your hand is 55.

Push or fold?

If its a push, do you push with 22, 33, 44?
It its a fold, do you fold 66, 77, 88, 99?

[loxo]

Is there an ante?

What are the other stacks?

Have we been pushing lots of hands?

Whats the table been playing like? How many callers can we expect? Are we the shortest stack?




Having said all that with an M around 3 I'm shoving any pp plus lots more hands. The payout structure obv has an influence on our decision but we are just about to go through the blinds again and are more than likely the shortest stack so we have to get it in.

[chrisuk_sw]

Is there an ante?

What are the other stacks?

Have we been pushing lots of hands?

Whats the table been playing like? How many callers can we expect? Are we the shortest stack?
Having said all that with an M around 3 I'm shoving any pp plus lots more hands. The payout structure obv has an influence on our decision but we are just about to go through the blinds again and are more than likely the shortest stack so we have to get it in.

- there's no ante
- there are two other short stacks, three medium stacks, three big stacks
- the final table has only just started, there has only been one hand so far - it went: raise 'em, take 'em. we have a reasonably tight image and can safely assume that the other players won't CDU, they'll only call with a hand.
- the payout structure is: $750, $400, $250, $150, $100, $75, $50

[jmbreslin]

I think you clearly have to push here. You're going to blind yourself out waiting for a better hand. 55 puts you on the good side of a coinflip against overcards; if you run into a bigger PP, them's the breaks.

[Yahkin]

Yeah, you need to get your chips in the middle here. It's good for people to know you are willing to gamble...they will be less likely to try and steal your blinds.

[YBravo]

The only way you could possibly not push here is if you accidentally saw another player's cards and they had a bigger pair than you.

[chrisuk_sw]

I've been thinking about this since my tournament exit yesterday (naturally, I pushed with 55 and ran into AA. gg me), and the maths tends to support that its a push, but doing it from UTG still scares me. 30% of the time* we'll be crushed by an overpair, and the rest of the time it's likely that we'll be in a race situation.

If we reason that there's an 80% chance that we'll be called with overcards...

30% of the time, we are up against 66-AA: win 6%
56% of the time, we're in a race: win 28%
14% of the time, we don't get called: win 14%

so 52% of the time, we're out, 34% of the time, we double up, and 14% of the time we add 30% to our stack. If we increase the 80% chance of being called with overcards, then it gets worse. I know that given our stack size we have little scope for play, but is this a gamble worth taking? Is it still a push with 22, given that its nearer to 40% that we're up against 33-AA?

* (211^8 / 220 ^ 8 ~= 71% we have the highest/only pair pre-flop)

[rog]

IMO, it depends on how short the other shorties are, and how much action you expect from the people at this table. I don't think a shove is wrong, but if there's a high chance the bubble bursts this orbit, I might fold. If you're called, you're 50/50 at best, and the problem is if someone early calls, it encourages others to call. The last thing you want is to be dodging 4 or 5 different overs for your tournament life near the bubble.

[jmbreslin]

Given that he's sitting with only 5BB, I'm assuming that he's the shortest of the shortstacks. Hero is UTG, which means he's about to get hit for another 3000 in blinds, which is almost 1/3 of his stack. That's a good chunk of fold equity that he's losing if he throws away the 55 and doesn't get anything better in the next 2 hands. That also gives him only 6 hands to land something better before the blinds hit him again. But, like rog said, it does depend quite a bit on whether Hero is the shorty or if there are 2 others shorter than he is.

[simo_8ball]

Easy shove with any pair.

You get dealt a pair 3/51 = 1 in 17 hands.

(16/17)^8 = 0.616 chance noone has a pair.

22 is ahead preflop roughly 62% of the time (not perfectly accurate, but good enough).

Now consider that most people will fold 22-66 in early position to the shove and your equity increases. Many players may fold anything below 99.

There is no way you can afford to pass this up.

[simo_8ball]

If we reason that there's an 80% chance that we'll be called with overcards...

80% called preflop my overcards.

probability of 8 folds = 0.2
0.2 = (fold%)^8
0.2^0.125 = fold%
Fold% = 0.82.

This means that on average, players at the table will be calling you with 18% of their unpaired cards. That is something like A2+, KT+.

In early position, noone is calling with a weak ace and probably not KT either. This means you need to open up the late position calling ranges significantly to compensate.

I could go further into this analysis, but it should be clear that 80% is a fairly high estimate for being called by unpaired cards.

[GrinderMJ]

To be honest, I think I shove any 2 UTG here, can somebody run the math on how bad this is?

[simo_8ball]

To be honest, I think I shove any 2 UTG here, can somebody run the math on how bad this is?

I keep going back and forth on this whole idea. I haven't come to a decent conclusion yet. Is it better to call allin without looking in the BB or shove 92o UTG at a full table? I tend to shove all but my worst hands, but I really don't know what is optimal.

[tskillz187]

I keep going back and forth on this whole idea. I haven't come to a decent conclusion yet. Is it better to call allin without looking in the BB or shove 92o UTG at a full table? I tend to shove all but my worst hands, but I really don't know what is optimal.

Russ Boyd and someone else fairly good (PMJackson?) both argue for folding super short and going into the big blind. I don't feel like digging his argument up and this really isn't that big of a deal in MTTs because usually you're just not going to make the comeback. But for some reason I think going into the big blind super short is slightly better than pushing and having to go through the blinds anyways.