GEN: flat vs squeeze when shallow
Posted by MrSneeze
Posted by
MrSneeze
posted in
High Stakes
GEN: flat vs squeeze when shallow
Hey guys, I have a general question for the MTT wizards out here.
I have this hand that made me think:
Live tournament, 200€, full of weak players, OK structure. An old guy, that has been pretty limpy and nitty (very straightforward postflop), opens for a minraise from the CO. He hadn't opened much before, but we just came back from dinner break, and he now had 20bb. I'd say he has more incentives to try to steal than when he had 40bb and wanted to see flops, but at the same time IDK, he might continue limping with 20bb and only open premiums.
BTN flats on the BTN, he covers. He's definitely putting dead money very often here, he's not a good player. Probably not even thinking that CO is shorter than before, nor that blinds could squeeze.
SB folds, I have 22BB in the BB with 88. What's your play here? Tournament is very soft, I'm not scared at all to gamble, get to a bigger stack, because I have a crazy image and probably value in having a bigger stack to play along with a variety of sea creatures :D.
Squeeze seems kind of standard, but having such a nitty opener makes me want to flat more, especially as I think I'll have some ability to make postflop live reads. BTN is dead money very often though (he'll probably fold AJ if I squeeze).
So, what do you think of this spot, and what do you think of flatting more in general with good squeezing stacks, when facing either too tight players, or players against whom we have little FE (say, people with 200bb stacks that will rarely open/fold to resteals from 25bb stacks)?
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I dont call this spot. Or shove, or fold. Calling is certainly dominated by shoving or folding, since multiway this shallow our hand is terrible.
88s is certainly near the bottom of my range to squeeze there, 99s I would squeeze this spot near 100% of the time but 88s is more player dependent on the opener. Since he raises besides limping I am comfortable to fold, since 22bb is a ok stack to continue this spot where he changes his strategy I think it is ok to fold. The price is good but our equity realisation is not good enough to play this hand post oop.
There's no way folding can be good here--calling is +ev even if it's strictly to setmine. That said I would jam because it's a tournament etc.
set mine 20bb deep ? What assumptions you made to say call is +EV ? What about equity realisation on Q62, 655, A65...
Three-way getting 5.5:1 (assuming no antes), yes we can setmine 22bb deep. All we have to do is win another 2.5bb post-flop on average when we do flop a set, which should be very easy to do. That plus the fact that when we don't flop a set, we can occasionally get to showdown for free and win.
I am not saying that you can not set mine 20bb deep but it is a dominated strategy. Maybe against two possible.
What do you mean by "dominated strategy"? If calling is significantly +ev (which it is), why would you think folding is better?
Calling here doesn't mean you're set valuing. It's a matter of equity/pot odds too.
I never said we are setmining by calling; I said that it'd be a +ev call EVEN IF WE WERE, meaning it's obviously a +ev call no matter what.
I know oblioo, I was saying that to Raphael. And yes, we do have (good) odds to set value too.
You're turning your hand into 72 by squeezing here, imo. Why not flat and see what happens?
Definetely not. Stack sizes, dead money and the equity when called matters a lot and I'm sure 88 will show a profit shoving while 72 won't.
You're right about the equity for sure - instead of just using the Sklansky quote I should have probably said K8s or A3o or some other hand with better equity if called but low playability OOP.
Stack sizes, dead money and FE are the same regardless of our hand and tbh in the above situation it's unclear as to whether we're value shoving or bluffing - 66 is a bluff JJ is value, 88? Who knows.
My point really is that you're taking a hand which can profitably call and turning it into a bluff. If, as Sam says you'll see some ridiculous folds (seems right) then jamming is more about fold equity than showdown equity and some raggy hand which has no post-flop playability but a blocker seems like a better one to do it with.
Full disclosure: I'm an older guy who looks like villain so I never shove 88 here live because I'll be in horrible shape when called - but I'll happily jam 76s and expect villains to fold AQ and JJ face up. I've had people sigh call with KK :)
Believe me and you can run this on icmizer etc...shoving Axs (blocker example you gave) and 67s will show much more less profit than 88. And while 67s doesn't have a good equity as 88 does, it does have playability and is an easy call from the bb. It's not about the terms, if you're shoving for bluff or value, this doesn't matter. What matters is only the expected value in the action.
How much the softness of the field influences our decision? On the one hand, I want to gamble less, because I can find ways to make chips ; on the other hand, the utility of a bigger stack would be very big against bad players with deeper stacks, prone to make mistakes postflop / give away live reads.
The utility of the bigger stack argument is one that always interests me, doesn't make much sense to me - other than more chips are better than less, but the chips you add to your stack are always worth less than those you lose.
I can see the utility of different zones - for example being able to open light, being able to 3B light, being able to 4B light etc; and correspondingly being able to bet for value in these situations without your hand being face up so I can see the value in taking a lesser edge (gambling) to be in a better situation, or avoid being in a worse one. I'm just not convinced that simply having a bigger stack is worth as much as some people think, particularly against weak players.
If I was playing against players "prone to make mistakes postflop / give away live reads." I'd be erring on the side of playing post not pre and reaping the benefit of their mistakes.
Indeed this is a good question. If people on your left is folding too much you can decide to play this as set value and keep exploring that spot which in overall must show a bigger profit, considering that around 25% of the times you're gonna bust. The thing is that you can't predict that there are gonna be many spots like this, this may be the only risky spot (to shove pre) you're gonna play this guy, and you don't know how many opportunities you'll have to exploit that spot I mentioned (or another). So generally I tend to pick all +ev spots, even though I must think deeply about this topic sometime.
Edit: and not only that, but as this guy is a weak player, you can expect to play it almost perfectly post-flop, so even though the ev of shoving is highly positive, calling for post-flop and set value might be even more +ev.
Example
Utility 10bb stack = 10 units
Utilty 20bb stack = 20 units
Utilty 30bb stack = 50 units
Utilty 10bb stack = 200 units
Without talking about derivatives get harder to explain this lol.
On this soft fields I usually take more polarized strategies then going to gamble on the middle part of my range.
You mean 100bb = 200units? I think.
So just use derivatives if it makes it easier and I'll try to follow along - because that still doesn't make sense to me. Are you saying that chips are exponentially more useful??
I am not saying that are exponentially (but is a way to think, since the second derivative is positive) more useful but assuming a strict linear relation is wrong in my mind.
The functional form should look like any convex function, that has different slopes for portions of the stack. Doubling from 5 to 10bb has a different impact than 100bb to 200bb in the utility. So, the speed that utility increases should be different in those.
(yeah, I mean 100bb)
I would imagine with the structure of most 200 Euro comps this is an easy jam. Defo + EV and old guy may make some ridiculous folds.
Key to the hand is that you feel btn is putting in money he can't defend.
This has to be a jam all the time. Old guy is folding a ton of his range, and button is (based on your assumptions) never calling, so unless you have a "live read" that this guy calls with A9s ATo + which he's not, he's way too nitty in your explanation to ever call correct here and just cause he's min-ing I'm not that afraid, this is always a jam. If you forget to jam don't ever fold and make a meh bad play and flat but don't ever fold and try to always get it in pre here.
Accessory question: the hand happens just after the 75 minutes dinner break (very first hand). Vilain had shown to be nitty and limpy. Do you tend to give him more credit for a hand when he opens right away? Or it actually doesn't matter?
My impression with straightforward guys is that they need to melt in into the game before getting involved. Obv if my opponent was a young gunfighter, I could expect to open right away from break with a wide range (even a wider range than usual maybe?).
Doesn't matter a ton imo. I've seen a lot of nitty old guys who were playing like 5/3 before the break, and all of a sudden raise/gii with hands like 88 after the pee break.
Well, this could be questionable if his min-raise was from UTG+1, but against CO, even with him being a fish, it's just too strong imo to do anything but shove. 55 (for a matter of equity and frequency) is questionable probably (when still a standard shove vs a regular CO range). 88 with 20-22bb is a jam all the way here.
Shove is the best play here. Call is better than shove, but still much better than fold.
88 is not equivalent to 72o or k8s or any other hand here. It has much better equity vs. calling ranges then the other hands.
Calling isn't just set mining, we can showdown a winner. We can comfortably get it in on flops like 765 or 234. Yes we will occasionally have tough spots on q52 rainbow, but making bad preflop folds to avoid marginally tough postflop spots is not a good strategy to maximize equity in a given tournament or a good way to improve in the future.
Thanks Sam. Appreciate the input. I'm trying to see this from the point of the "pro-shovers". Checking it out in ICMizer (cEV) it looks like we win 1.5-2bb w/o antes or 2.5 -3bb 9max w 12.5% antes by shoving (depending on exact ranges). So if we make less than that by calling we should shove?
Which now that I worked it out makes me want to shove if there is enough in antes.
Are you advocating shoving or calling and closing the action preflop? Your first sentence is confusing.
Oops. I meant to say call is better than fold, but shove is better than both in that post.
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