Hi all!

The question I have is quite a general one, but let me first post a hand to give an example of what I have in mind.

We're down to 7 players in a 9-man SNG, blinds of 75/150, I'm on the button and have played pretty tight so far. Played only one big hand, in which I doubled up.

SB is 37/5/0.5, with the 37 mostly from limping, not from calling raises.
BB is 16/11/2.0.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $15+$1 Tournament, 75/150 Blinds (7 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP1 (t1420)
MP2 (t1725)
CO (t1520)
Hero (Button) (t2855)
SB (t1300)
BB (t2230)
UTG (t2450)

Hero's M: 12.69

Preflop: Hero is Button with 4 , 4
4 folds, Hero raises to t400, SB raises to t1300 (All-In), 1 fold, Hero calls t900

Comments on this particular play are of course welcome, but my more general question is something like this:

Often, you double up in the early stages of a SNG and enter the middle stages (say with blinds of 50/100, 75/150, 100/200) with a stack of about 3000. In these cases, you have to find a delicate balance between making money from the blinds and preserving your decent stack. How willing should you be in such cases to steal from people who roughly are on their starting stacks? In particular, in situations as the one above, you're trying to steal the blinds, while accepting the possibility that the player with roughly 1500 chips will play back, in which case you get the odds to call and are often in a race situation (and sometimes way behind) so you might get back down to around your starting stack.

Should you be willing to take these risks, or should you let them go by and look for other spots?

You shouldn't be raising to steal blinds from players with stacks in perfect resteal range unless:

(1) They are very tight and you're confident your steal will be successful; and/or

(2) You're prepared to make the call with your hand if they push back

You shouldn't be making the raise hoping to steal, and then find yourself stuck and wondering what to do when they play back.

Just to clarify my post a bit: my reaction to SB's all in was definitely not: "Yikes, he reraises! Now what???"

When I make this raise, I'm very well aware that I will have to call a shove by the SB, and I'm willingly taking that risk. (On the other hand, if the BB reraises, I fold.) The question is of course: is that a good strategy to follow?

So, as for point (2) in jmbreslin's post, the answer is certainly "yes". As for point (1): my read on SB was that he liked to limp and see cheap flops, but was quite passive otherwise. I gave the steal a decent chance to work, but I would find it very hard to guess a percentage for that.

shove > Raise

you have to call the SB shove, as you say.

I disagree with this given the BB can cripple us. If you raise to 400, SB shoves and BB overshoves then you are at best racing against two players with overs and crushed by everything else and can fold. Shoving on the button puts our stack unnecessarily at risk. I think OP played this correctly.

Yes, but there's also the BB, who has a lot more chips. The reason I did not not shove myself is that I can still get away if the BB wakes up with a hand. If both SB and SB have ~1500 stacks, of course I shove myself.

(Which is not saying you're wrong, of course - just trying to explain my reasoning behind the play.)

Edit: as posted above...

I'm fairly sure shoving there is unexploitable, although you'd have to run some numbers.

Think about calling ranges.
Admittedly you have to shove your entire range to balance your shoving range here. (against anyone decent that is -which the BB might be)

Say BB calls you with 66+ , KQ , A9+
and SB calls with 55+, KJ+, A8+

You are a 59:41 dog (give or take 0.5%) in both.

Say they both reshove with a similar range -
with:
22+,A8s+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,ATo+,KTo+,QTo+,

Which you are a 55.3 : 44.7 dog against.

With these numbers, essentially Sheets' spreadsheets say they're both about the same...(Shove and raise/call - raise/fold)
It actually likes raise/call over raise/fold vs the BB though.

To save myself the trouble of thinking about it, I just shove here, you may be sacrificing a tenth of a BB in EV in some circumstances.

Given reads you can probably alter those numbers, I think it's probably fairly good for the BB- but this SB is not playing optimally so idk what ranges to assign him

oh yea, and against thinking regular opponents in these things, you have o shove your entire range if you shove 4s here.
In $16s you can probably get away with playing monsters differently vs 80%+ of opponents but watch out for the decent regs who will work you out and exploit you.

A shove is very marginal +ev here, so I really don't know if I prefer that over raise/fold here. As highwaystar states, the biggest advantage of shove is it's unexploitable.

I'd probably shove this if the bb/sb have a fairly tight calling range. One stat I've been using a lot in this spot is % call pre flop raise. This usually gives me a better idea of how to proceed in these spots.

Depending on how you fiddle it I get shove to be between +90 and 115 and raise/call to vary between +70 and + 120. (given optimalish players)
Raise/fold is about +25

If you're getting shipped on wide, raise/call vs the BB is actually the biggest + EV play I found. idk what an optimal resteal range is for the BB here, other ranges wll make raise/fold better than raise/call.

Hard to say what their resteal range is here. Our image factors into that as well. If we are running 25/20, obv their resteal range is going to be a lot wider. The more I think of this spot, shove seems like the better play.

I don't like the shove, but only because, at the $5-$20 sng level, I just don't like putting myself at risk here with 4s.

I don't like it, but it's hard to argue that it's a mistake, and there are lots of situations when I would shove here.

I probably play it like the OP. Sometimes, I just min raise in these spots if the blinds are tight enough, so that I can possibly get away from my hand, even if a short stack reraises, but I still have to know what I'm going to do in advance, as someone else mentioned.

But, this means having good reads. Shoving takes thinking out of the equation.

I don't understand why you have to call the sb here. In an Mtt you obvioulsy call everytime, but in a STT your going to be faced with a lot of situations where you'll be getting great odds where you should fold. Your racing at best here, I'd rather maintain my 2400 chip stack rather here than risk going back down to 1500 with a hand as weak as 44. I'd rank as follows:

1. Open Fold
2. min raise/fold
3. 3x raise/fold
4. shove
5. raise/call

This is a really interesting topic. I read the OP and my reaction was "Wow...I just don't know." After reading responses, I still don't know what to think. I tend to lean toward Staggo and potatoman's perspectives, though.

Of course, there are situations where you should fold in an STT with good chip EV odds, but I think this concept has been overstated a lot lately. Chip EV and monetary EV are in many situations not as different as people believe.

So, let's just calculate things. Using an ICM calculator, I find that my monetary EV is:

• If I fold to the all in: $23.71
• If I call the all in and win: $36.93
• If I call the all in and lose: $16.13

A little calculation shows that this means that for folding and calling to have equal monetary value, I should win the hand 36.4% of the time and can lose it 63.6% of the time:

.364 * 36.93 + .636 * 16.13 = 23.71

Now let's use pokerstove. Let's put SB on a ridiculously tight range, say a top 7% hand. (88+, ATs+, KTs+, AQo+) Even then, we have a 37.2% chance to win the hand (ignoring split pots), so even then we make money in the long run by calling. In practice, SB's range will be much wider, and we make a lot of money (in actual dollars, not just in chips!) by calling the shove.

(As a comparison, if you were playing for chip EV, you would have to win only 32.7% of the time. So yes, there is a difference. It's just not as huge as people often think.)

Final note: this of course *only* shows that once you raise to 400, you have to call the shove. That that raise in itself may be incorrect is something I'm definitely not contesting. I'd love to hear further opinions and arguments on that - thanks to all for the replies so far!

Good, I was starting to think I was crazy by wondering, "How about just fold PF?"

So 37% of the time against his range your saying you will win $36.93 if you call and win. 63% of the time you will call and lose earning $16.13. If you fold then you make $23.71? I thought the calculation you made balances calling and winning vs losing. Did you calculate what you will earn by raise/folding, or am I missing something here?

I'm not sure if I understand the question correctly, but let me try answering anyway.

I am comparing the following two scenarios: raising and folding vs. raising and calling.

If I raise and fold, ICM tells me that my remaining chip stack is worth $23.71.

If I raise and call, there are two possibilities: I win or I lose.
If I win, my chip stack is worth $36.93.
If I lose, my chip stack is worth $16.13.

If I win x% of the time and lose (100-x)% of the time, my EV is x% of $36.93 plus (100-x)% of $16.13.

What I say is that if "x%" is actually around 37%, this amount is roughly equal to the $23.71 I would earn from raise-folding.

In practice, "x%" will be much more than 37%, so I win more often and lose less often, so my EV from raise-calling will be larger than the $23.71 from raise-folding.

Not sure if that clarified things - please ask again if not!

[quote name='Mr. Sparco' post='2992868' date='Sunday, January 25th, 2009, 11:01 PM']I'm not sure if I understand the question correctly, but let me try answering anyway.

I am comparing the following two scenarios: raising and folding vs. raising and calling.

If I raise and fold, ICM tells me that my remaining chip stack is worth $23.71.

If I raise and call, there are two possibilities: I win or I lose.
If I win, my chip stack is worth $36.93.
If I lose, my chip stack is worth $16.13.

If I win x% of the time and lose (100-x)% of the time, my EV is x% of $36.93 plus (100-x)% of $16.13.

What I say is that if "x%" is actually around 37%, this amount is roughly equal to the $23.71 I would earn from raise-folding.once specified,


In practice, "x%" will be much more than 37%, so I win more often and lose less often, so my EV from raise-calling will be larger than the $23.71 from raise-folding.


Why is "x%" more than 37%? I could argue his range is even tighter than the one specified, I don't think k10s and kjs will be reshoving there, and a lot of kqs will be folding there too. The way I see it is roughly 70% of the time your chipstack will be worth 16 bucks and 30% of the time your chipstack will be worth 37 bucks. The numbers you present seem to make it pretty close either way, raise/folding or raise/calling. Although it would seem raise/calling would have more variance.

Well, if you somehow think that indeed villain will not shove with more than 7% of his hands, you can justify a fold after the raise here.

I don't think many players on a 13BB stack will be that tight, though. Note that the hands I quote are just the top 7% against random hands, but players may have other preferences - indeed, some tight players may fold KTs and KJs there (8 possible hands) but will include AJo (12 hands), so that already puts you in an even clearer calling situation. I think you would have a very hard time arguing that the average player will shove less than 7% of his hands here.

As an aside: if for some reason you really think villain will be that tight, that of course justifies the steal itself a lot more: you will win the blinds an awful lot of times. If you put BB on a similar range, you will steal the blinds over 85% of the time! So in that case, you definitely should not put an open fold on the top of your list - you should start stealing like crazy.

That's a great point. But if the players in the blinds are rocks, raise/fold should move up in the rankings, perhaps to the top of the list, right?

The reason why this point and the post before are incorrect is because while the sb should be on a real tight range for restealing, the bb has a 2200 stack and will be restealing much wider. So you should't be stealing anymore often.

For the steal not to be worth it, SB and BB together should reraise about 27% of the time. Are you really putting the generic SB on a tighter-than-7% range and the generic BB on a looser-than-20%-one?

I still think that raise-folding versus the small blind is out of the question, but if I'm really wrong and these numbers are reasonable, I would love to hear other people's opinions to confirm that. As for open folding vs. raise-calling the small blind, I'm still not sure what is best...

I don't want to comeoff as a dickhead here, but if your not sure which is better, open folding or raise calling...I think you sng game needs a lot of work. Stealing here doesn't increase your stack enough to really help you. You can come up with numbers for why its profitable, but it really doesn't matter. You have enough chips right now for the push/fold stage and should really just be playing tight until the blinds increase.

Actually, rather than saying never, two questions should get posed here: what range do you expect villain to resteal with? How often does villain resteal here?

Either way, the chances typically aren't very high. And while the other player(s) yet to act are factors too, villains in those spots should pass a vast majority of the time.

In sum, we shouldn't be reluctant to steal just because one of the blinds has a short resteal-friendly stack, because such a villain usually will not overshove. And when he does, we can dump our steal hand if we don't have enough equity to call.