Playing an awkward stack?

This is a live $210 buy in tourney at my local casino. Blinds are 800 and 1600 with a 200 ante and my stack is 30K and my stack has been hovering right around 7M the whole tournament, except for the first few levels of course.

We are just about ready to go on the second break and from UTG +2 I’m dealt AA. Prior to this I had pushed a couple of other hands as well, like QQ and 45 with on flopped open ender against the other blind – so I did think about just pushing and AA is the only hand I would consider not pushing. But, I raise to 4200 and everyone folds.

The next hand I’m dealt JJ and push all-in, everyone folds. We then go on break.

The first hand back from break I’m dealt AA from UTG and this time push them all-in in the hopes of seeming weak and possibly suicidal – again, no callers. WTF? My stack is now around 10M, but it’s just a consolation prize.

I need the action and without it I ended up shoving with a 5M stack and an Ah 3h about three levels later and losing – go figure! With my stack size I didn’t have a whole lot of room for other options, if I had been called even one time on one of those three hands it would have been enough to get me over that hump. I certainly was not playing like a rock, though I’m certain my table image wasn’t completely opposite of a rock’s image either. It was just one of those days where no matter what I did it didn’t work out! Do I adjust and start min-raising with no fold intent (I’ve learned my lesson there as a good way to get in trouble and lose anyway), or is playing like I did positive EV?

Am I right in thinking you only psh with hands? Im discounting the 45 open ender as the action was post flop, against the other blind, so doesn't really mean to much. Whats the rest of the table like? Any Maniacs, calling stations, and so on?

I think as it gets deeper in the tournament min raise becomes more standard than 3x. If you wanted to min raise AA or JJ with the intention of calling I think that is good plays. If you jammed that many hands all close together you should have gotten action though. By the time you get A3 they have seen you jam a bunch so jamming a terrible hand like this is not good. Id much rather jam 10J, K9, etc. Where you have better equity against their calling ranges.

Ace 3 is a horrible hand to shove preflop in my opinion shoving aces I have no problem with I actually prefer it but that is just my style of play with them

I would have slow played the jacks though min raised and then hopefully had a call and go from there

im new to reading bloggs on here,you say you have 30k and hovering around 7m,,,what does that mean,

delta50 said:

im new to reading bloggs on here,you say you have 30k and hovering around 7m,,,what does that mean,

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Stack 30K = 30 000 chips
7M = If completely passive the player will be blinded out in 7 rounds.

Depending on big bind, small blind and ante a chips value very a lot. So it can often be good to use Harrington's M-ratio to describe the relative size of once stack.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-ratio

Your table was full of nits. Widen your EP shoving range imo.

^ +1

I don’t know about NITS, there were 3 guys I have played many times, but generally I would agree. Already in the tournament, the guy to my right, made two miraculous calls against me, one with A6 and the other with A 10, both were just Ace high, and of course they were each suited – of course he won and I committed the cardinal sin and tried to bluff an idiot, not once but twice; nonetheless Ace high calls aren’t typical of NITS; are they? But that’s just how things were going, nothing I did worked.

The first time I had AA and made it 4200 (which pretty much is a min raise (2.5x) by the way) the button (one of the three regulars) reached for raising chips, I saw him put 12K in his hand and then at the last second he started starring me down and eventually folded. I don’t know if I gave something away or if he just sniffed it out – obviously it would have been a near instantaneous 4-bet all-in.

doomasiggy said:

Your table was full of nits. Widen your EP shoving range imo.

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I would love too but keep getting dealt premiums. Good problem to have I guess.

The Ah 3h shove actually occurred on a different table about 90 minutes later, so that hand had little bearing on the others.

ssbn743 said:

I don’t know about NITS, there were 3 guys I have played many times, but generally I would agree. Already in the tournament, the guy to my right, made two miraculous calls against me, one with A6 and the other with A 10, both were just Ace high, and of course they were each suited – of course he won and I committed the cardinal sin and tried to bluff an idiot, not once but twice; nonetheless Ace high calls aren’t typical of NITS; are they?

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Depends. Even nits know enough to call vs short stack shoves with Axsuited, especially if it's blindvblind or if the table is short handed.

to give an example, I was playing a 1.35turbo mtt a few hours ago and I shoved on the button vs two nits with 86cc for 10bb effective. Sb snap called with A5hh. He'd been running 11/9 over 50 hands, which is pretty nitty for a turbo mtt.

Coffee said:

7M = If completely passive the player will be blinded out in 7 rounds.

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M = enough chips for one round (big blind + small blind + number of players on table x ante)
Example:
On 9-handed table.
If blinds are 1,000/2,000 and ante is 250
Value of M = 5,250

If you had 30,000 chips.
You would have 15 big blinds
Your M = 5.7

Value of 'M' is used to help players understand just how much play they really might have left with their stack size. I think it might be a bit oudated now. I have been doing some reading of newer tournament books and watching some Training videos and in the videos not a single poker coach referred to their stack size in 'M'.

Hope that helps. I just learned this stuff last week. I asked the very same question.

emirlidan said:

Ace 3 is a horrible hand to shove preflop in my opinion shoving aces I have no problem with I actually prefer it but that is just my style of play with them

I would have slow played the jacks though min raised and then hopefully had a call and go from there

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I find this a bit confusing.
Sometimes A3 is a great hand to shove preflop with.
I don't get why you would want to shove with Aces but then just min-raise with JJ?

doomasiggy said:

Depends. Even nits know enough to call vs short stack shoves with Axsuited, especially if it's blindvblind or if the table is short handed.

to give an example, I was playing a 1.35turbo mtt a few hours ago and I shoved on the button vs two nits with 86cc for 10bb effective. Sb snap called with A5hh. He'd been running 11/9 over 50 hands, which is pretty nitty for a turbo mtt.

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You could be very right.

I didn’t play the A 6 hand very well, I raised his pre-flop limp, checked the flop, bet the turn when a king fell and then bet the river – there were some scary suited straight cards out there but in a nutshell my line made no sense at all. Luckily he wasn’t the type of player that was even looking at my line, but he had a monster stack and all I did was simulate a value bet as a bluff attempt – so basically, I deserved to get snapped off; I would have just preferred that it was someone that knew WTF was going on, he doesn’t even know what a value bet is!

He got that massive stack by rasing from UTG with AK off, the cutoff, button, and BB all went all-in for respectable stack sizes and he called. The all-in hands were AJ, AJ, and A10 if you can even believe it; I’ve barely even seen that stupid crap online, this was a live $200 tourney in the third or fourth level when that occurred.

I’m just reserved about using the term NIT with this guy for the above reasons but whatever you call him he was not good, which was all the more reason not bluff him – but in both cases that was the only way I could win, plus betting against Ace high hands on the river must be positive EV. In only have to win 1 out of 4, assuming average to small pot sizes, to make it profitable.

But he was so bad that he would call all-in into a four way all-in pot with AK, but to him me going all-in pre looked super strong and super sharky – he doesn’t want anything to do with my all-in, so maybe you’re right in calling him a NIT.

MadMaddie said:

I find this a bit confusing.

Sometimes A3 is a great hand to shove preflop with.

I don't get why you would want to shove with Aces but then just min-raise with JJ?

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Yep, I’m thinking the same thing there. When I’ve got a 5M stack I’m all-in or folding. I am looking for any ace, any pair, or any two suited cards – in this case I got two of those criteria with a suited Ace; yes I’m shoving it, and if it doesn’t work out, shrug, they’ll be another day and another game.

I don’t understand why your so called “Style” dictates that you shove AA but slow play JJ with a 5-10M stack – that make no sense at all and certainly is not part of any profitable strategy.

MadMaddie said:

M = enough chips for one round (big blind + small blind + number of players on table x ante)
Example:
On 9-handed table.
If blinds are 1,000/2,000 and ante is 250
Value of M = 5,250

If you had 30,000 chips.
You would have 15 big blinds
Your M = 5.7

Value of 'M' is used to help players understand just how much play they really might have left with their stack size. I think it might be a bit oudated now. I have been doing some reading of newer tournament books and watching some Training videos and in the videos not a single poker coach referred to their stack size in 'M'.

Hope that helps. I just learned this stuff last week. I asked the very same question.

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M is still completely valid and useful, more so if te tourny you play has Ante's. Using BB's dosnt take ante's into account which is key.

I find M useful and user friendly. Sometimes some of the other stack measurements can seem a bit confusing, since there seem to be so many and even more poker spec. abbreviations.

If short stacked I shove as well with A3s, now and then. Especially if the table is tight/I think I can steal.

imo shoving seems to be how alot of people play

imo shoving seems to be how alot of people play but when you do if you get no action then what at least you didnt lose but like you said you needed those chips with callers so i would take a chance on four betting instead of shoving so much. we do have the awsome fold button just incase trouble happens and believe me im always in that.
goodluck out there and for future info. about me I always shove aa kk qq no walks for those babys.

I think you should reconsider your strategy of "always shoving AA/KK/QQ"....that is not going to give you the most profit with those hands.

I would be way more inclined to shove JJ rather than AA.

deeshark420 said:

imo shoving seems to be how alot of people play but when you do if you get no action then what at least you didnt lose but like you said you needed those chips with callers so i would take a chance on four betting instead of shoving so much. we do have the awsome fold button just incase trouble happens and believe me im always in that.

goodluck out there and for future info. about me I always shove aa kk qq no walks for those babys.

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I don’t think you understand. I’m not shoving in the hopes of seeming weak (although that is a factor, especially by the third consecutive shove) but really what I am doing is shoving because I don’t have any other choice. I simply don’t have room to fold, and in such a case, I also do not have fold equity. Yes I need the action and I want my opponent’s chips, but it will be on my terms, not his! The last thing I want is to hear him say, “Well, I’m behind but I have to call…” as that is often the last thing you hear while still having chips at the table.

Obviously this is a very fine line, hence the point of this discussion, but it seems as though you’re looking at it wrong!

When you shove all in preflop, you take away a lot of the mistakes people can make when you just raise preflop. Since we want people to make mistakes, you have to give them rope to do so. By shoving, they can only call. And it's a huge call to make, so it will scare a lot of people off. By raising, you will get a few callers here, which is great, because it lets them see a flop, which gives them more of a chance to **** up... i think you see where this is going.

Sori said:

I think you should reconsider your strategy of "always shoving AA/KK/QQ"....that is not going to give you the most profit with those hands.

I would be way more inclined to shove JJ rather than AA.

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+1
Shoving 20bb doesnt get called very often with relative stacks , probably works best when your the shortest stack on the table and everyone else is deep.
Im definetly alternating between showing and min raising my monsters , and almost never folding post flop.

WiZZiM said:

When you shove all in preflop, you take away a lot of the mistakes people can make when you just raise preflop. Since we want people to make mistakes, you have to give them rope to do so. By shoving, they can only call. And it's a huge call to make, so it will scare a lot of people off. By raising, you will get a few callers here, which is great, because it lets them see a flop, which gives them more of a chance to **** up... i think you see where this is going.

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Yeah I see where you’re going and even get it – this is a bad example because my stack size was so….Well, awkward!

But by allowing people the rope to hang themselves, you also open yourself to the possibility that your villain spikes a set while you’re unable to fold. With smaller stack sizes this fact is negligible as you’re almost never able to fold. But with a very awkward stack, like mine in this example, where technically speaking I could fold, but probably won’t, raising sets yourself up to get cracked or win the blinds anyway.

But, I’m not arguing, I just think it’s a grey area across a very fine line when choosing your course of action. By the third consecutive shove, I think shoving is the only way to play.

WiZZiM said:

When you shove all in preflop, you take away a lot of the mistakes people can make when you just raise preflop. Since we want people to make mistakes, you have to give them rope to do so. By shoving, they can only call. And it's a huge call to make, so it will scare a lot of people off. By raising, you will get a few callers here, which is great, because it lets them see a flop, which gives them more of a chance to **** up... i think you see where this is going.

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The reason why we shove preflop vs short stacks is because we want them to fold pre. We want to pick up the max amount of chips we can without being forced into tricky spots postflop. The way to max our value vs nitty players who fold a lot is to shove wider than we normally would, since we have more fold equity. We don't want to see a flop, we want to scare people off.

I get what your saying, but I think it only really applies when people are deeper than what they were in OP.

ssbn743 said:

Yeah I see where you’re going and even get it – this is a bad example because my stack size was so….Well, awkward!

But by allowing people the rope to hang themselves, you also open yourself to the possibility that your villain spikes a set while you’re unable to foldu-huh, but we're thinking long term. The amount of times they spike a set will be more than compensated for by the amount of times they call and fold postflop. Or call and hit something worse postflop and we get their chips. And we know having a big stack in a tournament setting is kinda a big deal. With smaller stack sizes this fact is negligible as you’re almost never able to fold. But with a very awkward stack, like mine in this example, where technically speaking I could fold, but probably won’t, raising sets yourself up to get cracked or win the blinds anyway.We have around 15 bb adjusted. It's far from akward really. Most of the time it's just raise, c-bet, shove turn. If anyone gives us action postflop, we snap them off or shove on them, it's really not rocket science.

But, I’m not arguing, I just think it’s a grey area across a very fine line when choosing your course of action. By the third consecutive shove, I think shoving is the only way to play.

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doomasiggy said:

The reason why we shove preflop vs short stacks is because we want them to fold pre. We want to pick up the max amount of chips we can without being forced into tricky spots postflop. The way to max our value vs nitty players who fold a lot is to shove wider than we normally would, since we have more fold equity. We don't want to see a flop, we want to scare people off.Yeah, cool. But we're not talking about shoving wide here vs nits. We're talking about the OP, which clearly shows that he was playing three monster hands.

I get what your saying, but I think it only really applies when people are deeper than what they were in OP.This is completely untrue. THe great thing about this stack size postflop is, it doesnt matter what we do postflop, we're really just letting people hit worse hands postflop, we're never folding.

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Vs short stacks it's completely differant, because we're not shoving our stack anymore, we're shoving the short stackers stack. But also we're never in tricky spots postflop, we're never folding vs them anyways. In the op he has 30k chips, I've never used 'M' but effectively, accounting for antes we have around 15BB, which isn't really a stack we want to be just shoving our monsters with. It's really the perfect stack to be raising our monsters with. As mentioned before, we're never ever ever ever ever in a tough spot postflop. Usually we just raise pre/c-bet flop and take it down, or they shove on our c-bet and we make an easy call.


Anyways to summarize.
Shoving takes all the mistakes our opponants will make away from them. They are forced into a tough decision for all or most of their chips. Most live players will be hesitant to call big shoves for numerous reasons(looking stupid, big money/passive).

Raising allows them to do two things they probably shouldn't:-

-They can call(bad players like to call, it lets them see flops)... good, so again, we have no real decisions to make postflop. Just bet and get it in, nothing tricky here.

-They can re-raise us preflop(good players like to re-raise, they see it on TV and they think it's a good spot to shove)... Sweet, plays right into our plan.

-They can all fold... Same result as shoving.

- We can get multiple callers... No big deal, the pot will be pretty big by then so we can just shove flops.

Coffee said:

I find M useful and user friendly. Sometimes some of the other stack measurements can seem a bit confusing, since there seem to be so many and even more poker spec. abbreviations.

If short stacked I shove as well with A3s, now and then. Especially if the table is tight/I think I can steal.

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Interestingly equilibrium solution says A3 is better than A6 or A7 because it makes more straights. And A4/A5 because of the same reason.
It is minor, but thats the point of equilibrium solution.......