first the question. if u wanna know what hand made me think of this read after the question. ok. assume you are in an online NL tourny and you are short stacked.

what % of your stack should all the blinds be =/> (your limp included) to make the all-in blind steal worthwhile? this is assuming you have a playable hand anyway. so even if someone does call u , u likely wont be in horrible shape.



heres the hand. i got 3800. blinds of 150. so i got roughly 25 bb . i am dealt AQ off in sb. even tho i am short stack at table (rebuy tourny), 25 bb is not too short. any way, everyone folds to button, who limps in. so im at least calling which means its at least a 450 pot. i decide ill most likely raise to pick up the 450 right now. however, when i look at the two players in the hand, i notice they are the top 2 chip stacks at my table, with 25k and 20k. i get worried that a standard raise to
4-6xbb may not be enough for these people to fold, as they have 125-150bb themselves. im out of position and dont want to throw away 600 if the flop comes rags and they bet. so now im thinking maybe ill just limp and play it out conservative and keep it a small pot. anyway my final decision is to steal the blinds, but bc i think they may call a raise, i decide to go allin for 3800. if they call and im in a coinflip, its not great, but a good chance to move up in chips. anyway the guy on the button calls with AA. (great limp by the way). so im not too upset with my rationale of play for the hand, but i start to wonder if stealing 450 was really worth risking my entire stack. 450 represents approximately 12% of my stack. if it was 30% of my stack i would say there is nothing wrong with this play, i am just wondering if 12% is really too small an amount for the big risk. so my question is what % of your stack is this play worth doing?

Read "Harrington on Hold Em" part 2.

cmmon people i obviously havent read it yet, and even if i do i kinda would like this question out of my mind tonight and not a week from now, u cant tell me what he says?

You're nowhere near shorstacked there. Make a standard raise and go from there. But it sucks running into aces, but that'll happen. In terms of your stack, you don't need to push right now.

Ok since you insist i'll tell you. Harrington's talks in depth about a thing called "first-in vigorish." This is where if you're the first person to enter the pot you have a good chance the steal the blinds under the right conditions.(stack size, position..ext.) He talks about how in a single table tournament how important it can be to steal blinds by moving all in especially on the bubble. If you know your opponent has to call all his money when he can just sit out and make money, most likely you'll steal the blinds with an all in move. He says a lot more in the book which i highly reccomend you read.

Negative fold equity here boss.

For a deeper explanation go to tournament strategy and post there, some anal strategy guy will calculate the rough numbers for you.

a wise man once said "moving all in to steal the blinds works every time but one."

Personally, I think it's a horrible push. Why would the button limp in there with the blinds getting pretty high. It either means he's trapping with a strong hand or he has a drawing hand and wants to see the flop. The best way to find out this information is by raising 4-5 x the BB, not by risking your entire stack.

Seriously though, you should've just asked if anyone had aces, and just fold if anyone said yes.

that wise man was me.

so the pot was 12% of my stack. at what % is high enough for the allin then?

by the way, i limp with crummy hands all the time with late position, especially with no others in, so its not easy for me to put the button
first-in-limper on a big hand

Small Blind + Big Blind= what you pay per round.

That is also known as M

150+75= 225

Your stack into 225= your M

Your M here is about 17.

You can push there with an M of 5 or less.


Really... Get Harrington on Hold'Em... both of em.

M has helped me so much, i can't believe i ever entered a tournament without knowing about it.

ok. tx. should i adjust M to 150+150 considering my style? i am the type of player that likes seeing flops and nearly never folds x-x in sb when the pot is limped

Not if you win everytime..

No. There's a lot more to it. Different M's allow you to play different styles and hands and whatnot. You probably shouldn't play the style you are playing with anything under 20... maybe more like 30. Depends how loose you really are.

No. M is a measure of how much an orbit costs you in blinds and antes. SB should amost never fold an unraised pot, but you still have that choice, so the complete isnt part of M.

Your big problem in this hand is that youre facing two big stacks, and are out of position on top of it. What has BB typically been doing when its folded to him..has he been raising or limping, and with what kinds of hands. A standard raise here shoud be enough to chase the BB and at least get heads up, but OOP even that is risky vs two big stacks. Limping and checkng the flop on the blind isnt unreasonable with AQ.

I don't have Harrington on Hold'em but I will say that I've been using the concept of M since last year. My concept was just my stack divided by the Big blind but it's really the same thing. Is that all that Harrington discusses or is there much more to it ? I'm not impressed with the M concept because it's something that many people already knew before Harrington's book. I'm not saying the book is bad but why is there so much fuss about his book.

M is not the same as dividing by the big blind when there are antes. There is also much more to "M" and "Q" than pushing or not pushing.