ok ok, but this isn't the point of this thread. the question is...well, it's the pole. it's not whether you should fold or shove.
No probs, sorry I have to admit it was very late last night when I read this post and I had a fair few drinks by then.
The answer i gave before is still what I think is true, but ill rephrease it a bit more for this situation.
Is there a likelyhood that the BB will hold better cards because of all of the folds?
Again NO, it has been mentioned before in the thread.. you do not know what cards the others have folded, they may have folded all of the aces, kings etc, etc.. you just dont know.
Now for the second part..
Does it mean that the short stack has bad cards? (logically if somethingis true its inverse would be false, and vise versa)
This is the thing I was driving at yesterday.. The strength of the short stack's hand is the lowest factor that will influence his play.
He is getting very desperate. If he pays a couple of blinds and then doubles up, he wont be that further forward than he is now. His chances of winning are very slim.
But if he is to have any chance of winnning he mustdouble up a couple of times and he must do that very soon.
So he will play all premium hands (ok no brainer there)
He will also play any heads up situation, because random cards hold up better heads up than in a multiway pot.
The chances of him winning, at this point, are less than him cracking aces a couple of times. In order to get back in he is therefore correct to gamble .. (like crack aces a couple of times).. he has probably lost anyway.. this is the only hope he has (and its slim).
So if he is correct to play any two cards he likes the look of heads up, then this is one of those situations as it is only SB v's BB.
So I was bringing up the idea that when faced with a shortstack, infomation regarding his hand strength is not that valuable, as the correct play for him is to get his money in a heads up situation regardless. So if you rasise him in all in, he will call and if you make a standard raise, he will go - all in... thus exploiting the last bit of fold
equity he has.
The origional poll is designed to answer the queston, do these previous folders, in some way, give me an edge?
Slanksy says that everytime your opponent plays as though he could see your cards, he gains an advantage. Well the situation here is the key factor.. he is looking for a heads up situation and you are proposing playing less than premium cards against someone who is correct to play any heads up situation.
I am saying statistically no you cannot infer either strength or weakness from previous folds.
However, faced with a shortstack.. the shortstaack wants you to bet, he want to get in a heads up situation. Therefore his position and the previous folds indicate that he will play with strength regardless of his cards. So you should play this situation as though the shortstack held strong cards. There will be a showdown. And even if you win (and you very likely will) the shortstack will be swimming in sklansky bucks after this hand.