Bubble play

What do you do in this situation? I usually like to be aggressive during the bubble, but I found myself in a unique situation.

$2 + .25 SNG
Blinds are 150/300

Stack Sizes
Dealer: 300
SB: 2900
BB: 9000
Hero: 1300

SB post 150
BB post 300
Hero: 8c8d
Hero: ????

So, what do we do? We know the SS is all in in the next two hands. Do we wait it out and hope for the best or do we go for broke and push it all in? SS will probably be calling with just about anything or they could fold and hope SB or BB has a hand to call me with that I dont want to go up against with 88. Ax,K10+, QJ, J10, over pair, suited and/or connecting cards over 45 possibly. But if we fold and SS goes all in and wins, we find our self SS after the blinds and in dire need of something good or a little ATC miracle.

So, go for broke here or just wait it out and hope to sneak in?

I know this ain't all that helpful, but I think this one's all about personal preference, there's a good case to be made either way. What's more important to you - cashing, or winning?

Here's something you may find interesting. Let's look at what the Kill Phil strategy says for your situation.

At blinds of 150/300 and a stack size of 1300 you have a CSI (chip-status index) of 2.88. {CSI is just the stacksize divided by the Cost Per Round (CPR)}

1300/450 = 2.888

According to the KP rules, in Early Position, with a CSI of less than 10 (4500 chips in this case), you should go all-in with anything equal to or better than: 66, AQ, ATs

Your CSI is only 2.88. Personally, I say screw third place, I'm going all-in here any day of the week.

I've found that the KP rules work best late in the tournament when your CSI is below 10, but following the rules too early in the tournament or with CSIs greater than 30 is tournament suicide.

True, you might lose even late in your situtation, but in all likelihood the two big stacks fold, and the SS calls you, and you win. Or you pick off the blinds.

So, you make the cut anyway, with a few more chips to boot.

Interesting. Haven't read Kill Phil yet - CSI doesn't take table size into account?

A basic M value (from Magriel or Harrington) would be the same: 1300/450 = 2.8

But an effective M value takes into account the size of the table as well, and the fact that you're paying blinds two hands out of four, not two hands out of nine or ten: (1300/450) * (4/10) = 1.15

The situation's actually a lot worse than you're suggesting, which leans even more in favour of just shoving 88. But the bubble is a very specific circumstance... hence the question: what's more important to you, cashing or winning?

Yeah, 88 is a big hand with four players. Your M (or CSI in the KP term) is actually much worse than 2.888. Remember that when you're at the final table and players are reducing, you would look at your effective M (which is actually a reduction of the normal M). The forumla becomes: Effective M = M * (# remaining/# seats). In your case that then becomes M(e) = 2.888 * (4/9) = 1.28. By Harrington you are clearly in the Dead Zone and really looking to push with ATC anyway. And 88 is not just any two cards, it's a made hand with a very reasonable chance of taking the pot right now and surviving if called. Push.


EDIT: Wow, Oz and I were on the same page there, I just took longer to type it.

Play to win, don't worry about the short stack, and push. You have a monster 4-handed.

Oz, Kill Phil also has rules for table size. I didn't want the message to be too big. As you said, the "situation is actually a lot worse......which means.......shove...."

Right. We agree. And so do the Kill Phil authors.

BTW, you calculate CSI the same whether there are 4 players or 8, but the hands you play change.

For example, shove with pairs 22 (rather than 66) when CSI is between 4 and 10, and table size is 4 to 6 rather than 8 to 10.

Note: there are alot more rules, so don't take this to mean it's all that simple. There are trade-offs galore.

Also, the whole scale changes during the "Move-In" stage when Average CSI is <10.

Use with caution.

The authors of KP have a couple of late stage adjustments. One is when the Average Stack Size is less than a CSI of 10. They call this the "Move-In" stage. So, just by that alone, you get a whole new set of rules. But then also, like you are saying, there's an adjustment for the table size. Different rules for 4-6 players than for 8. Different rules for 3 players, and then different rules again for heads-up.

As you know, in most MTTs they usually keep table size high right til the end, so these adjustments usually really refer to play at the final table.

I say tomatoe, you say tomahtoe.

And fwiw, effective M (or CSI:miami), is very useful in STTs where the number of players is constantly shrinking. It doesn't just apply to MTTs.

The methods are essentially getting to the same end point, they're just doing it slightly differently. From my perspective (having never read KP), the KP method appears to be taking the more complicated route.

In reality, when you get that short, there is little to no distinction between a M/CSI of 4 or 3 or 2.25. Fact is you're desperate at that point and there's really no need to over complicate it. A shove is a shove at that point with a strong hand with four players left.

Cool, I follow you. Think I agree with JD, it sounds like it gets to the same point by a more complicated route. I'll have to read the whole book. But anywho:

My point was, while the effective M (or the adjusted CSI:NY hand requirements) may be in even greater favour of a shove, M isn't the only consideration here: we're one place away from the money and there's a player who's going to be all in within two hands. Neither M nor CSI takes that into account.

Chuck's advocated playing for the win and shoving. Nothing wrong with that, and it's what I'd favour myself too.

But I wouldn't say somebody was wrong for just wanting to cash, and folding the hand as a result. Hell, people have advocated folding pocket aces in this situation on here before. Which is why I asked the question of OP: what's more important, winning or cashing?

I think this is a very close decision. Some of it is of course personal preference. But it also depends on what type of player the big stack is.

If you push, the small stack should fold most hands(even good hands) hoping that one of the blinds calls you and you lose so they can sneak in the money.

The small blind should not just call because the big stack is behind him. If they re-raise, then they would put themselves in jeopardy if the big stack calls. So the SB should be playing very tight as well.

The only player to really worry about is the BB. The problem is that when it is folded to him, it is only 4 more BB to call and he should call with many hands. Overall, the tighter the big stack is, the more likely I would be to push in this situation and vice versa.

ok, I'm drunk, but show me one person that'll fold aces here and I'll hunt them down with the heine bottle I have in my hand.

This is a standard push. If you're trying to squeeze into the money in a $2 stt, then...well then you deserve the heine bottle.

LOL - and they should be grateful for receiving such fine advice!

Gotta admit, I didn't consider the buy-in. I just figured if someone's actually thought about it enough to post it here then the money must mean enough to them to ask the "cash or win" question.

And you're probably right. It's just a little hard for someone who's above the $2 line to agree with limping in the money.

Well really, I never (or rarely, at least) agree with limping into the money; if you're playing a game, you should be bankrolled for it. If you're trying to squeeze into the money, that means you're probably not bankrolled for it.

Sorry...threatening someone for not playing (what I see as) proper poker isn't exactly...courteous

The buy-in amount is completely irrelevant. Whether the decision is for $6 when paid $2.20 or $60,000 when paid $22,000, it is all the same.

The question is what the optimal play is.

Good points by everyone. I guess it is a matter of personal preference. While I play to win, I reconsidered my strategy and my situation and opted to fold into the money.

Also, Chuck mentioned a good point about the buy that I didnt take into consideration at the time...and it is pretty silly of me to want to sneak in a $2 game. (I do have the bankroll for it.)

With that said, what if it was a $1000 buy in SNG? Would you still push or do you reconsider your situation? Does the price of the buy in (and you do have the proper BR to fund it) change anything in this situation?

I don't think the buy-in should affect decisions if properly bankrolled. We can't think "This is only a cup of coffee" or "This is a house" as it will lead to sub-optimal decisions.

I am not talking about life-style changing amounts in MTTs like final table on WPT after winning a $40 satelite. For SnGs and cash games, if preperly bankrolled, the absolute amount of the buy-in should not matter.

This just looks like a fold to me.
1. bb is the big stack = more likely to get called if you shove, and...
2. you give the 300 short stack the opportunity to make the "mistake" of going with whatever hand he has right now (add to that the big stack will call very liberally).
3. you have less fold equity than you think shoving into a 7x your stack bb chip leader. Although this could be the exact opposite, given your read here: if the HUGE chip stack is just sitting on waiting for the money, then you fold equity here is 100% (assuming he sees that the short stack is that short).
4. doubling your stack still puts you in third place, exactly where you are now (although very close to second), so your "real money" equity increase wont be that great even if you win. This is the argument againts the "I play to win" posters: winning this HAND does not really make you that much more of a favorite to win the tournament as a whole. Thus the "play to win" argument holds a lot less water. In other words, you are on a kind of "negative freeroll" by playing this hand.

Yes, on second thought, I could see the bb calling, but I would think that's the optimum scenario, to get called by both the bb and ss.

Assuming you win the hand, of course.

Pretty big assumption - probably the best 88 can hope for is to be in a coinflip against a single hand. Put it up against two hands, and you'll be well under 50% to win.

Well, if it went three way then you would still only have to beat the SS anyway (i.e. if you both lost to the big-stack then you at least have the consolation of 3rd having gone in with the bigger stack).

However, I would say that the most likely scenario here with a push is that the SS would fold and hope for the BB to call (likely, given the stack sizes) and then take you out to carry him ITM.

Hmmm, are you sure? There's a chart on page 205 of Ken Warren's book "Winners Guide to Texas Hold'em Poker" where he says for 88s there's a 71% chance of winning against one player and a 52% chance against 2 (assuming the cards are played to the end). That would make it well in your favor to risk 1 or 2 calling an all-in. If all three called it would only be 43% according to that table. I suppose he could be wrong. Do you have a software program that calculates these odds?

No I'm not sure - it was a guesstimate. Others on here have odds calculators that could do it accurately. But I'm fairly confident that the value of 88 decreases below 50% in a three way pot against the kind of hands we'd be facing here.

What needs to be considered is the cards the other players are likely to be calling with. I'm assuming neither the BB nor the short stack would bother calling with 72o or any rubbish hands like that.

Against any two cards, 88 might have the figures you're suggesting. But who's playing ATC here? Certainly not the big blind, I would have thought.

Against a single opponent holding two overcards (AT, KQ, etc), 88 should be just over 50% favourite. Against two opponents with similar hands, it'll be less than that.

Some say fold, others say move-in, and others say it is close.

To decide how close this decision is, we need a quantitative estimate of the $EV for folding and moving all-in. So here it is:

The folding equity is easy. Since the small stack(SS) will be in the BB soon all-in, the SS needs to survive 2 all-ins against a single opponent to get to a stack of 1200(which is our stack). At that point, we will have about equal $EV which I am approximating by using 3rd place only.

The SS has about 25% chance to get there. So we are 75% to get in the money PLUS half the time when the SS doubles up twice. So that's about 88% of the time which gives us a folding equity of $3.50. (Note that in reality, it is higher since sometimes we will get in 2nd or even 1st place, but I am making the same approximation for all-in equiuty, so this is a good first order approximation.)

To compute the All-In equity, I am assuming that the SS will play correctly(which is bad for us) and will fold almost anything in this situation. Should the SS play incorrectly, we get in the money even when we lose against the BB if they also lose, while we win even when we lose against the SS because we pick the big part of the 3-way stack.

The table in the attached picture shows how often we win depending on the calling range of the BB. The formula I use for the All-In $EV is

$EV = (100-BB%to call)*$3.50 + (BB%to call)((%for us to win)*$5.00

The $3.50 above is the folding equity. In other words, if we move in and we don't get called, I am assuming that the extra 300 don't change our situation that much.

The $5.00 above is the average of 2nd and 3rd place. The assumption is that when we get called by the BB and survive, our stack is now about the same as the SB. So we have about the same $equity. So we will roughly share equal number of times 2nd and 3rd place. (As before, I am ignoring the fact that the $EV is higher because we will sometimes win, but that roughly cancels out the 2 underestimates for folding equity and all-in equity).

As can be seen from the calculations, the decision IS CLOSE! Not only with respect to folding or all-in, but it is indifferent to the calling range of the BB. We benefit the most when they are very loose or very tight.

If we took into account that picking up the blind is worth something in this situation(which is ignored in the All-In $EV), then any decision is fine.

However, ther variance of folding is smaller! Since variance requires higher bankroll which reduces "profit", then folding is the preferred action (by a very small margin).

philthy, you made an excellent fold!

Attached Images

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Thanks! Now, I can sleep easy tonight.

Very nice breakdown, too.

Ok, but remember the problem that was presented above was pre-flop knowing nothing more than your own two cards. Is it really valid to consider what they might call with when you're still working on what they might have in the first place?

You're right that the Warren chart is pre-flop considering any two cards you might get played against all the way to the river, and is not considering what cards someone would play versus cards they wouldn't play, but I'm not so sure those considerations can really be useful in actual practice. Seems a little circular to me.

I could be wrong, though.

It is.

You are facing ATC. They might fold, but either way right now it is ATC.

For real?

It's pre-flop and hero is first to act - how exactly would you propose to be "working on what they might have in the first place"? This is online, so there aren't even physical tells to go off.

So all you can consider is how your hand shapes up against their potential calling range. Especially in this situation, what it's relevant to know is how much trouble you're likely to be in if you get called.

Well, I think I see where he's going...at least sort of. The whole idea is that as first to act, you are facing ATC. For purposes of calculations in general, and for simplicity, your odds of winning (based on the previous charts) are what they are for ATC going to showdown. Pretty straight forward. If the argument is that pushing with a very strong hand with four players is wrong because you'll get called by big hands and lose, then the submission is that you'd also have to modify your value by how often your opponent will actually have the hands in question.

So, for the purpose of discussion, let's say look at just one opponent for the moment. I don't feel like running several numbers (I'm sure someone will actually do that following this post anyway), so speaking at a bit higher level for sake of concept... If the opponent will only call with the top 20% of hands, then right off the bat we win 80% of the time because he folds. Then, for the 20% of the time he does call, our 88 will win about 50% of the time overall, which is another 10%. If so, then a push with 88 in this position (with an effective M of 1.28) looks to win approximately 80% of the time against the one opponent. Complicate it further and get two people with decent enough hands, but remember that the second caller will likely have slightly less premium hands because he is getting better pot odds after the first caller, reasonable implied odds, and an opportunity to help knock out a player and move up the money as well. For my money, in this situation, this is a push.

Anyway, that's where I see it going.

As my sister used to like saying: "THANK you!" {which roughly translated it means something like: "That's what I'm talking about."}

Right.

Oz, this is the answer. What's relevant first and foremost is "what is the likelihood that the opponents fold?" That's what I meant by: "Is it really valid to consider what they might call with when you're still working on what they might have in the first place?"

True, you can always take things to the next level, but I think that what Jack just showed is that it doesn't really change the picture significantly, not when you consider that you win all the "folds" cases. The "push"'s power is threefold: (1) everybody folds, you win and (2)if everybody doesn't fold, hopefully you played cards that give you an edge if called. In this situation 88s are above the line, all things considered, and (3) even if you get called by better cards, you can still get lucky and win anyway.

IMHO, I think Warren's chart is about as complicated as we have to make it.

But if you want to talk about yet another level, how about this: Suppose you're opponents know your playing style, and know that you're capable of going all-in in this situation with 88. They don't know you have 88 but they know you're capable of pushing with it. So now, maybe they adjust their normal calling hands to something that they think would give them fair odds to beat 88. What odds do we use, in this case, if we try to consider "range of possible calling hands?"

This is all fine and dandy if you are talking about chip equity, and winning the most tournament chips. However, what you fail to consider here, is how that stands vis a vis your actual real money equity: our goal isn't to win the most tournament chips here, it's to make the decision that will win the most actual real dollars long term.

Yes, you're right. I should clarify something that I've been taking for granted in these conversations. I'm only talking about tournament play, where we all get a certain amount of chips to start with, and the goal is to win the tournament holding all the chips.

You're absolutely right to point that out. I keep forgetting to stress that point, probably because I almost never play ring games anymore. On page 14 of Sklansky's "Tournament Poker" he outlines 10 "differences" between tournament poker and cash ring poker. I don't want to re-type them here, but they're pretty significant.

If I was to add an 11th difference to Sklansky's list, it would be:

11. There's a constant trade off between "survival" and "winning the whole shebang". Using good cash ring skills will immediately get good players to the final tables, but winning the tournament requires adjustments to their game, so that they have enough chips to compete in the latest stages.

At least, that's what I found, but I might not be good enough to make that blanket statement.

I would be interested to know how well good solid players do in tournaments, without any adjustments to their game at all, in these days of the Jackal.

In Phil Hellmuth's 300 page book, there is one sentence that I think was the most powerful idea I've ever seen so far, regarding tournament play: "Isolate the Jackal."

That's one way to get the chips you need to win.

Also. Doyle Brunson states that the first one to get his chips all-in with 10-15x blinds, or less, left, increases his chances astronomically.

That about says it all. Win one all-in in round one, and then avoid losing those chips back (avoid loose all-ins), and you're pretty much gauranteed to at least make the top 10% or even the final table with a good size chip stack.

It's interesting, though, because during those first rounds when the blinds are 10/15 you can do nothing for long periods of time and still be in good shape halfway through the tourney, and quite possibly make the final table by avoiding mistakes and making a few good moves. The only problem is when I've done that, and made the final table I was the short stack with 1000 chips or so, and the big stack had 60,000+, and the blinds give you a few hands at most to make a miraculous recovery to win. True, you can get a small payout that way though, so again it's hard to say which side of the "survival" vs. "win it all" trade-off is better for you long term. In the final analysis aliengenius could be right in that you're better off playing good solid poker, than you are using the tournament modifications. At least as far as steady profits go. I'm not sure, because like I said I don't think I'm good enough to win if I don't take a few all-in chances both early on, and like the one presented in this thread at the final table.

There's another thing, too. As the buy-ins get higher, would I really have the nerve to go all-in on the first round? Maybe with AA, but I'm not so sure about KK, QQ, or AK (especially AK, I lose way too often with AK) or worse hands, which win alot of all-ins in the first round of lower buy-in tournaments. I wonder what Annette Obrestsad's theory is on the subject. Does she take big risks early or avoid big risks early?