Hey Tom, good to hear from you. I like this question too. It shows me that you were paying close attention during the video to pick up on things like bet sizing on one of the four tables. Nice job there man. I also like  your thoughts on the hand. I just re-watched it and see what you mean. It looks like the vast majority of his range is Tx, doesn't it? I mean there aren't many draws as we both talked about, and there aren't many other pairs he could have quite frankly. While I agree that his initial peeling range on the flop is wider than usual because of my c-bet size, I think by the turn, and certainly by the time it comes time for him to call the river, he's not going to show up with many worse pairs. Maybe if the board was J high or something and he could more readily put my on AK or AQ that was bluffing. But here it looks pretty squarely like Tx. I should also note that he'll occasionally show up with a better Kx here on the river. In fact, it very well might be his second most likely holding. Like 80% of the time he has Tx, 7% Kx (I guess I do beat some Kx here.. K5cc or something), like 5% missed draws, and the rest various worse pairs. Something like that. Since he has predominantly Tx, I think you're right. We should bet an amount that encourages him to call with that hand. I bet too big; it encourages folds. And as you smartly noted, we open up other good options (albeit rarely occurring  where he could CRAI with a missed draw or weak showdown value. I definitely wouldn't be folding either if that happened. Good eyes on the video/hand, cheers man. 

Cheers!

Hey Aleksandra! Yes, definitely experiment. Getting experience seeing how different things work for you is so important. And you are doing it the right way. You're doing math homework first, so that when you sit down at the table you have a good idea of what you're doing as you're ranges widen. You understand the risks and adjustments that are part of playing wider ranges. Of course this is something you'll never quite master; or at least it's something I'm still getting better at. But you will make much improvement early on, and like I said, I think this is a great way to approach the game and to get better. 

How would I evaluate Nash ranges in terms of play-ability? This is a good question. I'm not totally qualified to answer because math is a weakness in my game, but I do have some thoughts. I think that yes, these ranges have good play-ability. One thing I would do to kind of confirm this is look at the hands that are right on the edge of being included in the range Nash gives you for a particular spot; the bottom of the range. Also, what hands didn't quite make it into the range? I would ask myself how I think each of these hands play in the situation I'm looking at. So if you're looking at over-calling in the big blind. Let's say it's a turbo and 10 bb shove from middle position (MP), and the SB shoves for 8 bb. You're wondering what range to call with in the BB for 10bbs. Look at the range it gives you. First of all it should be pretty damn good and accurate, and I know for me a lot of times those ranges are eye opening with some hands that are in there and some that aren't. Then like I said, look at the hands at the bottom of the range and try to think in your own mind how they play in this situation, and why. The more you do this, the more you'll start to understand the value that each hand has. And I think that's really really important. Then once you get into postflop situations, this exercise becomes ever more important, because postflop play-ability is so important. Over time you'll really start to get an understanding of the game as a whole :) 

Hmm good question. I think yes and no. Yes because you can practice a lot of different situations. But no because you will only get to practice each situation a couple of times per level. Because of this you won't be able to actually create a range vs your opponents you know. You won't get enough hands to do so. 180s might be a good place to start, work on preflop spots and thinking the way I described in my post above. You can get a foundation for the math and the thought process here, and then expand to slower structures.

Really though you can't go wrong. It's all going to be beneficial for you, all practiing that is. 

Thanks, you been so helpful as always, looking forward to next vid :))

Hello klondike! Thanks for watching and introducing yourself here. I'm going to explain this in detail with math and all very soon, but I'm starting up a session right now and am having trouble multitasking. Without having done the math yet, I'm sure it will be profitable though. But I can totally appreciate where you're coming from here. Over the years, and even still to this day, I'm always amazed by how the math works out - it often seems to justify these looser type of plays. We're calling 3,452 to win 8,398. That price is just so good that it makes up for our hand not being the strongest. Though our hand is also underrated! More coming soon! Cheers man and gl.  

Okay klondike, thanks for you patience with me as I reply to this in stages. Rereading your question, I noticed you mentioned turbos specifically. I would say that it's fair to say that in general, yes turbo ranges are wider. Two thoughts here. The first is that I don't think ranges should necessarily be wider just because it's a turbo. Turbos are just the same as a regular speed tournament, or any poker tournament, in that your decisions to shove or fold when at a low/shallow stack depth are dictated by the mathematics involved. These formulas are going to the same no matter what speed the tournament is. You'll have inputs like the amount of chips (or big blinds) in your stack relative to the blinds, your actual hand and it's strength, your position at the table, and the range of hands that you estimate the players behind you will call you with if you shoved all-in. Notice that there is no variable in this equation for the speed of the tournament of when the blinds will. 

The second thought I have on shoving though is of minor importance compared to the first, crucial point. It is however interesting because it's a deviation from everything I just said. In turbos much more so that regular speed tournaments I like to look at a few non-mathematical factors before deciding whether to move all-in with my hand, or to fold it. The first one of these factors I'll consider is when the blinds will go up. More specifically, I'll try to determine if I can make it through the blinds again before they rise. If I can't, I might look to shove a hand I would ordinarily fold. Now I'm not talking about shoving 35 offsuit from under the gun or anything. But maybe a hand like A9 suited or something from under the gun +1. Say I have 10 big blinds left, but they're about to go up. If I pass through the blinds at the higher blind level and I feel I'll be in too precarious of a situation, I might make a marginal shove with the A9 suited here in order to prevent a more marginal situation that's on the near horizon.

 All of this is very subjective and it's all based on your estimation of a lot of variable. I think it's important to note that you really can't go too wrong here. As long as you have a general idea of what hands to shove at what stack depth, you're okay. If you're wrong, you're only wrong by a little bit. I mean if you shove a hand that's losing 2% say, how different is that from shoving a hand that's making you 1% profit? I content it's not very different in the grand scheme of things. I'm getting a little far from my overall point, but I would encourage you as you learn poker to not focus as much on the exact details of shoving as I would more important conceptual aspects of the game. Things like hand ranges, 3betting, psychology, postflop play, etc. Once you get those concepts down then you can split the hairs of shoving mathematics. However I don't categorize your original question as one of those hair splitting spots at all. It's a crucial moment; we're about to put our tournament on the line vs two opponents - we need to get this correct. Math to follow! 

One final point though. Above I was mentioning other factors I look at when deciding whether to shove, factors that go beyond the underlying math. Another one of these things is the stacks around the table. If there are certain arrangements of stacks at the table, it can make it more or less profitable to shove. Bear with me, this is the kind of detail stuff I just encouraged you to save for down the road! But, while we're here.. Let's say we're under the gun + 1 again, and we have Q8 suited and 8 big blinds. This is close to being profitable shoving on it's own based on the math, but not quite. Most players at the table have 20 big blinds or more, but the two players to our immediate left have 3 big blinds each. If we shove now, they're going to be relatively unlikely to call us. I mean they still have a couple more hands to see/be dealt before they have to pay the big blind. If we shove all-in, they might not want to go all-in themselves because they know that we have to have a pretty good hand to move all-in ourselves, and they don't want to play against a good hand if they don't have to, even though they're getting pretty desperate. Compare that to when they are under the gun, and can move all in and take their chances of playing against all the random hands behind them - no one behind them has made a declaration that "hey I have a good hand", like we did in the prior example by moving all-in from early position. Another thing that could happen is that they get total trash under the gun, and fold knowing that they will be committed to call all-in for the rest of their chips (one or two big blinds at this point) when they post the big blind the next hand. Well, when they are in the big blind, we'll be on the button at this point. Normally prime shoving position for a short stacked player, but not in this case. Knowing 100% that we're going to get called by a super short stacked big blind hurts us. Number one, we never win the pot preflop, so we always have to win a showdown. Number two, we can never double up because the big blind is so short. So we're having more risk (always have to showdown) for less reward (he only has 2 big blinds for us to win). 

Again, taking a step back. This is all very detailed and definitively a nuance. But the overall point I'm eventually getting to is that sometimes it's better for us to shove the Q8ss under the gun plus one, even if we lose a little bit of money, because our options once we pass  through the blinds in three hands are looking even less desirable. Now I hope you're still with me. I feel like I'm trying to teach you to hit a home run before I'm trying to teach you to hold a bat. I'm running two risks here, one that you're bored out of your mind, and two, that you don't yet understand what I'm saying. That's totally okay. Because even if you don't see my point(s) at this moment, someday you will have that ability, and you'll be able to reference this post to get better at that point. 

Without further adieu.... The math! I'm going to make it in a new post just for organizational sake. This one is long. 

Before we start the math, one final thought to wrap up my above post. I assume that people in turbos are shoving a tiny big more than I would normally expect. I think this because they'll either feel more pressure or panic from the blinds rising so quickly, or they have some other reason to do so outside of the math, much as I often times do as I outlined in my previous post. 

The blinds are 350 and 700 with and 85 ante. The table has 9 players dealt in, and I'm in the big blind, with 1,815 being in the pot preflop before the cards are dealt. This included my big blind (which should no longer be considered "mine", it belongs to the pot), and the small blind. 

A player UTG+2 shoves allin for 4,152 (which is 5.9 BBs). A player in the small blind shoves for 2,431 (3.47 BBs). We are now faced with a bet of 3,452 more to call, into a pot of 8,398. 

To determine our immediate pot odds, we divide the amount in the pot (8,398) by the amount we have to call (2,431). This lets us determine the "price" we're getting to call here.

8,398 / 3,452 = 2.43      So, we're getting 2.43:1 to call here. That's a good price. We need to win this pot 1 out of (2.43+1) times in order to break even on the play. 

Where do we go from here? Well, now we need to see how our hand stacks up against their range of hands. We first need to estimate what hands we think each player is going all in. Klondike do this estimation yourself right now please. For each player, what are all the hands you think they're each shoving? Then look at my estimation below.

I think the player UTG2 is shoving: Any ace, or better. This means anything from A2 offsuit or better. The notation for this looks like as follows A2o+. If I think he's shoving any off-suit ace, I by default think he's shoving any suited ace, since the "suited" aspect adds about 3% equity to the hand. So far we have A2o+, A2s+. I think any pair, 22+. I think suited connecting hands, the worst one being 87s. So, 87s through AKs is notated as 87s+. I think suited kinds starting with K7s, so K7s+. Same with suited queens, Q7s+. J8s+ JTo+ as well. Q9+, K8o+. The final range is:

A2o+, A2s+, 22+, 87s+, K7s+, Q7s+, J8s+, JTo+, Q9o+, K8o+   This hand range is 33.63% of all possible hands. So, he's shoving about 1/3 of the hands he could be dealt. How does my estimation compare with yours? By the way, I am using a free program called "Equilab" I got it free by signing up on PokerStrategy.com (free to sign up), and then simply downloading it. You can too, it's very easy to do, and a great program to have. This will be a great thing for you to play with if you want to get a better feel for this math and the equity of various hand ranges.

Now, the range of hands from the SB player. Again, what is your estimate? Remember, there is already a player all-in in front of him, so he knows he has to play against that player at showdown. But he's also getting a good price on his money to call. 

I think the SB is getting allin with A very similar range, actually, in this case. I think it's possible he actually gets allin with more hands if you can believe that, because he's getting such a good price, and his situation is pretty desperate with his low stack. He figures his risk to reward ratio is going to be very favorable here, so he's pretty happy to take a chance with this hand. I added a few hands to his range, from the range I estimated from the UTG2 player. The additional hands are K7o, Q8o, J9o, T8s, K4s-K6s, J7s. Overall this hand range is 37.86% of possible hands. 

Now we have found out what hands we think they are moving all in with, and we already know our hand, A3hh. Now it's time to see how our hand stacks up against their hands. For this we need our good friend math! I'm using the program to calculate the equities. Here are the equities for each of us three that the program calculated:

UTG+2 = 35.47%  

SB       = 34.32%

BB (us)= 30.21%

I recall from your original post that you said we needed 28% to break-even  Hmm, well this is above that, but just barely. Let's carry on.

Let's review. We're getting 2.43:1 (8,398 / 3,452) pot odds to call all in vs. both of these players. I estimate that UTG2 is shoving 33.63% of hands, and that the SB is shoving 37.86% of hands. 

Since we have 30.21% equity (round to 30%), well, we win the pot 30% of the time (Probability to win the pot, or PW). Therefore we lose 70% of the time (Probability that we lose the pot, or PL).

What happens when we win? How much do we get? Well our chips won (CW) is whatever's in the pot! While our chips lost (CL) is going to be whatever amount we called preflop vs their allins. In this case CW =  8,398. CL = 3452.

We're going to have two scenarios, and we'll need to add up the answers we get for each of these two equations. 

Equation 1:  PW X 8,398 = Chips won (positive number)

Equation 2:  PL  X -3,452  = Chips lost (negative number)

Now we plug in the known information we have for the variables.

.30 X 8,398  = +2,519 Chips 

.70 X - 3,452= -2,416 Chips

 2,519 - 2,416 = 113 chips

Wow, so according the the math we make 113 chips here. In order for this number to have any meaning, we need to relate it back to the context of the actual hand. Remember, we're playing 350 700 with an 85 ante. So, this play is making just barely more than an ante! I'm very surprised by this. I thought the play was much more profitable than that. And remember, so much of this process was based on me estimating their ranges, so more or less hands in their true range (as compared to my estimation of their range) could easily swing this thing to anywhere from unprofitable, to maybe making two antes! Or slightly more, but in this general neighborhood. 

Klondike you were totally right in questioning that call. Very well done. I'm extremely glad you did that, because I was calling there without much of a second thought, not realizing it was as close as it was. However, I think this is clearly a call still. The reasons are, we're making a tiny bit of money first of all. Secondly, let's apply the the thought processes I described in my previous post. What are some factors we see in this situation that go beyond the math? Are any of these worthy of being factors in our decision here? I vote yes. One thing that stands out to me, is that if we win, we'll have 20 big blinds and be relatively comfortable in this turbo. Whereas if we call and lose, we're left with 5bb, and that's not a good situation to be in, but we've just passed the big blind, and will have an entire orbit to find a spot to double up. To me the benefits of having 20 bb outweigh the cost of being left with 5. Of course this is my opinion, and I can't tell you that it's right on a factual level. Folding and being left with 9 bb is the other option. This is a fine as well, but in a turbo format, being in the big blind now, it's unlikely we're make it back to the BB before the blinds go up. If we don't get any hands in this orbit, we're faced with the prospect of pass through the blinds at 400 800, and maybe coming out on the other side with around 5bb. Again, that's not the end of the world, but I would prefer to take a chance here, with about a break-even spot math wise, to try to get to 20 bb and be in a nice position in the tournament moving forward.

The end! I hope you managed to read all of this, and if English isn't your first language, I thank you for your patience in translating it. I hope it wasn't too much for what you were wanting, and that you learned a few new things. Hopefully this post is something that you can reference back on many times as more questions arise as you continue to learn poker. Thanks again for watching and for starting a conversation with me, and good luck at the tables. 

Hi duttifrutti. Good question here... Putting
me on the spot! As I begin to write this I'm not entirely sure what the bottom
of my range is, but I'll come up with an exact answer/range. I can say for
certain that yes this K9 reshove is my standard with these stacks and
positions. Just eyeballing it here, I would say K5s and K7o are the bottom. Of course any ace, and pair. Probably like 98s+, Q7s+, that sort of thing. Q9o+ I think. How does that look to you? 

Hey eric..eric! This video will be a 6 part series and I'd say for the majority of it I'm playing 2-4 on the side. I definitely reduced my table load from what I normally play so I wasn't constantly distracted while talking through situations for the video on the four tables I was recording. A little distraction shows up here and there, but it worked out well overall, because I always had something going on the side that I could bring into the recording. 

Hey Klondike! Good to hear from you again. I'm glad we're keeping the conversation going. I'm glad you got something out of my response. I tried to write things out every step, one at a time, and with everything that came to my mind. I was hoping that if you could sort through all of the writing that there would be some stuff of good use for you. Thank you for the kind words as well! 

You mention that your instinct tells you this won't be a profitable call. Well that makes a lot of sense to me. In fact, I remember feeling the same way for years, until I started to see the math worked out, and to understand the value of each hand in relation to other hands and to pot odds. Thankfully we have all of these tools and mathematics to guide us, and the answers they provide in situations like this are very useful. Great work on the math you did on the hand as well, it looks good. The ranges you assigned the villains are very similar to the ones I gave as well. Like me, you also discovered that this spot is essentially break even if these ranges are accurate. I like that you thought about how our profitability would change if their ranges change. That shows that you're understanding how these different things work together to form the bigger picture, and the ultimate answer in terms of our EV. I could see each section of the ranges you assigned being a little wider, while I couldn't see them be much tighter. That tells me that this is about the tightest they will shove, and therefore the worst our EV is going to be. You again correctly stated that the wider they're shoving the wider, the more EV we're going to have, because each additional hand added to their range is going to be one we have beat (an equity advantage vs). I realize that this is all review at this point! One final point of clarification. Above when I said I could see ranges being wider, I would say like instead of the bottom being JTo, it would be like J9o. Instead of the bottom being 87s, maybe it's 67s or even 56s. Just one or two hands in each category of hands, not much at all, but enough to have a bit of an effect on our EV. 

This is my favorite though. You ask how far we are into the money. What a great question. This is one of those other things I was talking about that come into play when looking at the EV of calling vs folding. I left it out of my original response to you, but in fact it's possibly the most important of all those considerations. We were not very far into the money at all. I don't remember exactly, but I remember that I never made it too far once in the money of that tournament overall, so I know this hand didn't take place with too far in, and therefore didn't have much of those ICM considerations factoring in. 

I have a lot of respect about your attitude toward getting better and the effort you're putting into it. That's what I love about poker too, is that there is so much room for people of that mindset to succeed. GL!

Okay yeah exactly. Two key points to wrap this up. The first and most important is that we're getting an overwhelmingly good price here. That makes up for a lot. The second is that there are so many combinations of cards that we are beating. Hands like KQs, QTo, and J9s. Sure he's shoving any ace and pairs, but we have an ace, so there are much fewer possibilities for him to have those hands. For pairs, there are just much fewer combinations of those hands to begin with. Hopefully that lends some additional perspective to just how well our hand does again the hands they can have here. 

Nick, thank you! I actually did not know that. It's funny though because I have done it your way, the quick way, on accident before, but somehow it never registered in my mind. I always just did kept doing it the slow way. Now that you mention it, I'm like ohhh yeah, that's right, I've done that before! But I like trained myself to forget about it because it wasn't the way I was in the habit of doing. Weird. Haha. 

I'm glad you're enjoying the videos. Let me know if you ever have any questions or things you see that I could be doing better. I'd be happy to go over them with you here. Gl! 

Haha, thanks man! I'm definitely very happy after that score =) Something else cool about that score is that it will become videos on RIO! Although these videos will be on the Elite membership plan. Let me know if you ever have any questions from any video, meDo. The site alerts us whenever someone posts, so no matter how old the video is, I will see your post and you will get a response. GL out there! 

Hey man, thank you! That's great that you're liking my videos. It always feels good to hear when someone is finding them useful. 

Also, I hear some great things about you man. I'm excited to see you develop a player, and hopefully I can help in that process in some way.

Man, good eye. It's funny looking back on this. The video was recorded almost one year ago. 2013 Nick was a fish! I look back on that hand and I shake my head. I think calling is definitely the best player here, for all of the usual reasons: We're in position, our price is good, and our hand is extremely playable on a lot of boards and vs a lot of lines. What also bothers me in looking back, is the indecision. You can see me going back and forth on calling or folding - I simply don't know what I want to do, or what I should do. That... That is not ideal, ha. 

As uncomfortable as it is for me to watch myself be indecisive and unsure of what the best play is, I'm also very happy seeing this - because it shows me that I have in fact improved (substantially) since that moment, almost a year ago. And that is what counts in this game, improvement. If you can get your skills to a competent level, to a good level and then beyond - you WILL make money, it will only be a matter of time. 

The poker player I look up to the most is Jason Koon, and he says "If you look back on your game every 6 months or so, and don't think you were a fish then, then you're not working hard enough". I couldn't agree more.

I don't think my note had anything to do with this decision - it looks like it was just his player stats for pokerDB. And the color tag is just "average regular player", which is something I use if I see a guy a lot but don't have any specific reads yet.