I've came in 4th place in many fulltable SNG's

Correct me if I am wrong...
You have to open up your range when there are 5 or 6 players left, otherwise you will end up with the shortstack when there are 4 players left.

ex, I am on the button w/K9o & , and 1825 chips. The blinds 150/300 antes 25 w/5 players left.

Everybody folds to me. Do I just ship it in or just fold?

Ship the nickels imo.

Barring some read / situation that dictates otherwise (like we're second in chips with that stack and the chip leader, who likes to call wide, is in the big blind) yes I'd be shipping there. And in general yes, it's around that point that you're looking to be aggressive in the right spots and build a stack so you're in a better position to get across the bubble and cash.

I'd be shipping 23 off in that spot, just to give you an idea of how loose you really need to be.

i get the impression your slowing down once you get down to 4... you should continue open shoving a very wide range. chip stacks are the main thing you need to look at when determining how to play your hand.

generally speaking if your the short stack, you need to open up your range. if you are the chip leader then opening ATC is usually correct. especially if their is one short stack, you want to steal (put pressure on) the medium stacks blinds.

SNGwiz can help you analyze your game. it is a must have for anyone that wants to learn proper bubble strategy.

The average stack for the villains is 3,892 at this point.

A lot depends on the blinds, specifically how tight they are and how many chips they have.

Assuming the blinds have less than 4k each, Personally, I like practically min-raising to 625 at this point. That leaves me with 1,200 chips. (Note: I usually make the same sized raise with just about *any* hand I raise with. I make it a little more than a minimum raise because sometimes Big Blinds feel obligated to call a minimum raise, but they can let it go if it's a little more.)

Due to low M's (the ratio of chips to blinds) people will usually respond by folding or shoving.
If they fold, beautiful!
If one of the blinds shoves and I have a bad feeling about him I can get away from the hand and still have enough to hurt/scare them when I shove (very soon!) on subsequent hands.
Note: Before I make my bet, I will usually decide what to do if one of the blinds shoves. Often I'll fold if a specific person shoves, but call if the other guy shoves. (But I always fold if they both shove)

If the big blind has 8k and other players have stacks about your size, then I probably ship it so that the big blind can't call on a whim.

You're trying to balance several factors here.
* K/9 is an above average hand, so you want to get some value out of it.
* If someone with 3,800 chips calls a shove from someone with 1,800 they usually have K/9 beat. (IE, few people at this stage will call with Queen high)
* 1,825 isn't many chips so you need to make something happen.
* When you open at the pot you have what Harrington calls "first in vigorish" which means people are less likely to want to put money into the challenged pot.
* Big stacks are likely to challenge you, but people with small stacks are likely to fold to any raise.
* Small stacks are probably just as likely to fold to the min raise as they are to the shove. They aren't looking to see the flop and evaluate because their M's are so low.

@savage, he has 6 bb's in the K9o example. we can never raise/fold. shove adl. unless their are 2 extremely short stacks with 5 left.
almost certainly shoving K9o on BTN with 6 bb's unless stacks look something like this:

utg/hj: 600
co: 300
hero: 1825
sb: 5000
bb: 5775

in the scenario above i would fold all but the very top of my range. stacks are soooo important when deciding whether to shove or fold in STT's.

The SB had a little over 3K and the BB had a little over 4K, and the guy to my right had about 750 left. TBO I would rather finish in 5th place than blind out in 4th place.

if you play a high volume at micro level then sngwiz will pay for itself with your increased ROI in little time. perhaps a month or 2, maybe less.
highly recommend getting it and analyzing the games you played yesterday before you start the days session. do this everyday and you will see major improvements in your results.

bubble strategy in STT's is all about your opponents calling/shoving range and most importantly chip stacks of the remaining players.
get it, you won't be disappointed.

I've downloaded it, but I've never bought it.

Raise-folding 1/3 of your stack when you have 6bbs...Notsureifsrs

If you're going to buy wiz, do some research/prior learning to find out waht it actually calculates.

With the ante we have more like 4-5BB adjusted, so raise folding is, umm, not good .

There could be a lot of reasons you are finihsing 4th, it could be that you are playing too loose earlier in the game, it could be that your too tight overall. It could be that you loosen up too much. It's about balancing aggression with survival. Without a detailed look at your stats no one can really say with any accuracy where your leaks are.

Anyways in the end I found myself heads up & pretty much crippled against another guy w/12K vs. my 2K, but 2nd place isn't so bad. After I reread this thread, I went ahead and played another .60 SNG which I won for $2.50.

Open up 5-6 handed... shut down 4-handed, without any other reason to keep pounding away.

I try to oscillate in standard 9-handed SNGs...
low variance early (7-9 handed)
high variance middle stages (5-6 handed)
low variance (4 handed)
high variance (2-3 handed)

Bubbles suck... I do it too often... don't be that guy.

thread is way tl;dr but with 6bb OTB you can probably ship ATC profitably.

i disagree james. of course we should tighten our calling range on the bubble but our shoving range should be much wider 4 handed than 5 or 6.
however their are situations when i would play tighter on the bubble. if we have a medium stack and their is a really short stack then we need to be much tighter.
infact their are times when it is mathematically correct to fold AA on the bubble in a STT.

those times are rare so generally speaking our shove range should be wider and our call range should be tighter 4 handed.
it all comes down to stack sizes and villains tendency's.

Maybe you have a different definition of "shut down", but mine means don't shove like A3o. lol AJ+, TT+ and all my money goes in no matter what... but instead of encouraging significant action, I'll just be shoving no matter what because collecting blinds and antes at that point are worth more than the risk... but it would vary depending on how deep my roll is for that level. I generally play pretty deep, but not everyone does. If that min cash means a lot to the person, they should play really squeeky tight, and then play for first.

I have to have really good reads and knowledge of my opponents to want to put myself in a really risky situation that can lead me to bubbling, and those situations include, not only calling light, but shoving light too. If I'm a low M, but there are 1 or more high-variance style players at the table, I'm more likely to wait them out and pick up a good ROI boost in a spot where I wouldn't cash a large % of the time than lighten my short-handed shoving range more than my average.

I understand that makes me a nit... I'm ok with that.

I'm just worried that if I play too tight w/ 4 players left there's going to be a guy who's the chip leader w/over 6K chips that is going to start shoving on every hand, and bully every body else on the table into folding every hand.

It is better to gain initiative before anybody else. I would rather end up in 5th place than get caught in the middle of a 4 way shove fest w/ a short stack.

I disagree.
They will either call or shove back at you, so if you feel pot committed your bet size doesn't matter because you're going to call, right? And no villain is going to bluff-raise you back at this point because you look pot committed, so they'll have better than your K/9.

My play gives you more options. What if you raise, the SB shoves, and the BB shoves? How do you feel about your hand then? The small raise probably just saved you from bubbling because you can muck your hand.

Folding after the raise isn't terrible when you figure that if you shove and aren't called the very next hand you have about the same amount of chips.


I'm serious. I have a pretty good record in the CardsChat team league, which are essentially single table S&G's. I'll post a chart of my finishes for the 4 most recent seasons (a year of seasons vs CC players).

You want to stay alive, and you want to use every advantage you have. If you think the SB & BB are going to call the small raise most of the time then by all means just shove, but most of the time people with small stacks like that do not. They wait for a good hand to shove back, so bet small and take the money.

If they do shove, well, then you have a decision to make. If you make bad decisions then by all means shove pre-flop. If you have a feel for the players, then you are doing yourself a disservice by limiting your decisions by shoving.

Seriously, a lot of the time in this situation I'll decide (before I see any action) that I'm going to make the bet, and fold to the Player#3's shove but call the Player#4's shove, based on what I know about them. Sometimes you know that one particular villain is only going to shove back with Ace/Face and pairs 9/9+, which have you crushed. So I fold to them and start stealing with my remaining 1,200 chips which is better EV (IMO) than calling a tightwad with K/9. Even if you get called while stealing, you're often only a 40:60 dog.
1,200 is still (barely) enough to hurt people at that point, so I'm not afraid to have those chips (considering the stack sizes to my left).

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Is that chart for real? jk. Your approach in that situation makes more sense now that we understand that you are up against opponents that you've played with before.
When I pick a table, I have to take whatever is available, and I haven't got my HUD set up for my PC at the present either.

Things to consider,

Generally, most villians are happier to shove over a raise rather than call an all in raise.

When we get called all in on a pre-flop shove, we usually have like 25-40% against their range (depending on the player). Sure, we might bust more often, and finish in 5th place, but does that not give us a better chance of actually finishing in the top 2 positions. I mean, we want to cash in a SNG, it's the first goal, but we want to cash on average with a decent stack to work with when we get ITM.

I had a few more ideas about why this play might be less than ideal, but i've just lost my train of thought.

I think there is a time and place for the play you mention, but i fail to see how this is one of them. Feel free to correct any of my above logic.

I wouldn' push with k9o; that is just out of my range 5 handed. (k10 k7s, ax, q10s) Depends on opponent. If BB is tight, and has good FE I would shove but you also have to worry about sb. Generally speaking for a big stack to +EV call you he needs to be close to %80 favorite to call a all in on the bubble. I will also adjust my shoving/calling range depending on the image I created for my self in the early stages.

Nice post here, agree with much of your analysis in this thread too, post more kthnxbai

Yes, open up your range but do you know what to open up to? One of the best things I ever did (since I sucked at short handed) was enlist a 6-max coach and played that for a while to get a grip on that. Starting hand requirements totally changed over what the books say (looking at a full table) but not as much as I thought they would.
K9o w 5 is kind of on the border so shipping it would totally depend on who you are shoving into. It's not like you would jump for joy if you got called by a big stack with that hand. If the blinds have been tight and somewhat passive then it is a shove all the way. But I would say that about 36o too.
If there is a desperate short stack in one of the blinds, especially BB, you can probably assume a call w ATC so again this hand to me is worth a shot.
If you have aggressive big stacks sitting there that are just looking for an op to knock you off, well it's up to you. I would have to go all the way - unless those other two guys (UTG and UTG1) are shorter than me and I want to play the very dangerous and precarious waiting game which can make me the short stack in the blink of an eye. But that, like everything else, totally depends on how the others are playing. Just the other night I was sitting in the final four of a live tourney (paid 3) and one of the big stacks was mercilessly attacking the short stack on my right. Going after her BB and coming over the top on any bet. (She was very passive, so she had it coming) I got out of his way and let him attack so I could lock up some money. Well what happened was he doubled her up a couple times and then I was the short stack. So the strategy backfired. I did end up second, but I had to go into aggro gear to do it.
Bottom line, yeah you have to open up your range as it gets more and more shorthanded but if you are still guessing what that range is you are at a horrible disadvantage and shooting in the dark.