I think that for the most part we should be flatting most Ax in this spot vs a button open 28 deep because they will be flatting wide. If the villain was a loose opener and raised MP, I think the use of the Ax blocker is much more viable as a 3b hand. Buton vs BB though I doubt we get many middling connected hands to fold pre, so we are seeing flops in 3b pots vs hands that flop great. We never get paid off on an A high board and always get owned on middling boards. I think it is a clear flat with any mediocre Ax at this stack depth.

It was 17BB

I agree they are decent blockers and would be a fine open, but being on the conservative side versus 4 jam stacks is a viable option as well.

You would need the runitonce skin and drop it into the pokertracker replayer skin folder.

Taking every +chipEV spot in a tournament (especially one where you have a pretty good edge over other players like this $11 tournament) is not good for maximizing your ROI.

Shoving something like K8s in a weak field in a situation where you aren't super desperate for chips is probably +chipEV. But its also a shove that your opponents won't be making a lot of calling errors against. But if you pass that spot, and wait for a better value hand, vs weak opponents, they will probably be making a lot of errors allowing you to bluff post flop or value betting 3 streets resulting in a much higher +chipEV spot that you might not have had the opportunity to get by eliminating yourself with a K8s shove.

Pretty much this. It's hard to estimate how much EV we are willing to pass on though, to preserve our chip utility. It's very much an art rather than a science (and is different for every player, as every player has their own particular set of skills giving them a particular edge in a given mtt)

This makes perfectly sense. You help me a lot. This might be a major leak in my game as someone who always try to max out nash..

If someone has any footage for this like vids or posts, let me know

Thanks for the great replies. This really depends player to player as post flop skills is the main decider on how how much you want to skew from nash. A complete novice will probably achieve the highest roi by taking every nash jam spot, whereas a seasoned cash game player will be able to skew considerably from nash to maximise his/her roi.

Ok I get that one, but couldnt it be also maximizing ROI not to take every +eV Spots, if you do not have a postflop edge but better shoving ranges.

So lets say your opponents all take every nash spot that are. +0.2BB, if you take all spots that are +0.1BB you have obv an edge over the field. If you now start to take every +0.0x spot You would reduce your chances to use this edge, so it could maximing your ROI on long time. Am I wrong?

I mean ofc this is hypothetical and the numbers are not exact, but I just cant to understand if its a correct logical assumption to let go some +eV spots to have the chance to get more +eV Spots in later stages even without postflop edge

Another example: If we have a +0..000001BB Spot which has a risk of ruin of 25% and we know with our shoving ranges we make evBB about 5 per 100 Hands and in the stage of the tournament we play in average 50 hands more with that stack. We expect to make 2.5 BB in this tournament and we reduce that eV if we risk to ruin for 25% and reduce our eV to 0,75* 2,500000001+ 0,25 * 0 = 1.875

Am I getting this right or Im wrong?

Ok I get that one, but couldnt it be also maximizing ROI not to take every +eV Spots, if you do not have a postflop edge but better shoving ranges.

So lets say your opponents all take every nash spot that are. +0.2BB, if you take all spots that are +0.1BB you have obv an edge over the field. If you now start to take every +0.0x spot You would reduce your chances to use this edge, so it could maximing your ROI on long time. Am I wrong?

I mean ofc this is hypothetical and the numbers are not exact, but I just cant to understand if its a correct logical assumption to let go some +eV spots to have the chance to get more +eV Spots in later stages even without postflop edge

Another example: If we have a +0..000001BB Spot which has a risk of ruin of 25% and we know with our shoving ranges we make evBB about 5 per 100 Hands and in the stage of the tournament we play in average 50 hands more with that stack. We expect to make 2.5 BB in this tournament and we reduce that eV if we risk to ruin for 25% and reduce our eV to 0,75* 2,500000001+ 0,25 * 0 = 1.875

Am I getting this right or Im wrong?

Ok I get that one, but couldnt it be also maximizing ROI not to take every +eV Spots, if you do not have a postflop edge but better shoving ranges.

So lets say your opponents all take every nash spot that are. +0.2BB, if you take all spots that are +0.1BB you have obv an edge over the field. If you now start to take every +0.0x spot You would reduce your chances to use this edge, so it could maximing your ROI on long time. Am I wrong?

I mean ofc this is hypothetical and the numbers are not exact, but I just cant to understand if its a correct logical assumption to let go some +eV spots to have the chance to get more +eV Spots in later stages even without postflop edge

Another example: If we have a +0..000001BB Spot which has a risk of ruin of 25% and we know with our shoving ranges we make evBB about 5 per 100 Hands and in the stage of the tournament we play in average 50 hands more with that stack. We expect to make 2.5 BB in this tournament and we reduce that eV if we risk to ruin for 25% and reduce our eV to 0,75* 2,500000001+ 0,25 * 0 = 1.875

Am I getting this right or Im wrong?

It's kind of super hard to stick exact numbers to it, but I think this is one occasion where keeping it simple is a good thing. Say we have 17bb and we're pondering whether we want to shove or not to go after the preflop dead money. I think a good way you can develop a feel for this is to consider the three following things :

-How badly do I actually need 2.4bb added to my stack? Sure poker is an EV game but in practice this is the expectation we go after, knowing that when our FE fails we are obviously losing chips and money.
-What EV do I consider beneath my skill given the situation (stack, table average, structure etc)? This is kind of similar to the first thing. Basicly you have to wonder, if regularly going after .15bb EVs for stacks is the best use of your chips. If in this tournament you have many easy blind steals, cbets, resteals etc maybe marginal shoves are bad (actually they definitely are).
-What is my actual chip utility right now? How would this hand change it? This is a more general attitude, but it's really good to think about. Basicly, ask yourself where your edge at the table REALLY comes from, and how much your stack has to do with that. What options you lose by dropping from 30 to 18bb, what options you gain by going from 30 to 42bb. This is the kind of consideration that comes into play when someone decides "I could 3barrel here for a lot of my chips with probably decent EV, but I think there are better ways to use my remaining 30bb" in the SM or some other long major.

Akira kind of nails it when he brings up skill. Basicly, unless you're playing a hyper turbo, IF you have significant edge on a field, it usually doesn't come from small EV piles. It comes from smarter postflop play, smarter preflop 3b strategies, better stealing spots & so on and so forth. Passing on some potentially tournament ending small edges to preserve our ability to abuse significant mistakes from our opponents has value. As long as we're actually significantly better, it has value.

As a general rule, I think it's healthy for a MTT player (and even to some extent for a CG player with regards to BRM but this is entirely its own thing) to not always think ONLY about EV. EV is, in its own way, a simplification. We take every payout and its probability, multiply them and add all this up and we call that weighted average "EV". Another way to think about spots, which amateurs use more habitually (poorly and often for the wrong reasons, granted) is to consider each payout individually. You can say "shoving here is +Xbb" or you can say "shoving here will win Ybb 90% of the time, cost Y'bb 7% of the time and wing Y"bb 3%". We usually prefer thinking in EV because, well, it's much more straightforward. In a format where ruin is a serious concern and where cashouts are impossible (i.e. MTTs) I really think EV can be a bad shortcut. After all, maybe scenarios Y, Y' and Y" have various impacts to us. ICM describes this, to some extent, but it also comes short. There really is no actual model for skill, chip utility and how much we can expect to win in the future. These are important factors though and they need to be taken into account from the earliest hands of a tournament. We shouldn't be playing a turbo tournament the same as a reg speed or a deepstacked one, we shouldn't be playing a cheap easy tournament the same as the Sunday 500. We know this, but there is no model for it.

/end rant but it's just hard to express these things with math because well... there is no math for them as of now. Invent the model and make millions though, we'd all like better tools than the existing ones which are basicly a mix of GTO (whatever understanding we have of it) / general poker math / ICM / block theory (whatever understanding we have of this). I think it's awesome to use math as a decision making factor, but the decision will still be up to you! Will you take a certain spot given that it's not a losing play? You might, Phil Ivey might, Brian Rast might not and Dan Colman might not (names at random). There really is an amount of personal opinion wrt variance in tournaments, and I think there always will be.

awesome post. Thanks!

Cool! I'm always concerned that whatever valid points I may make get drowned in the mental diarrhea. I never know how to keep it short :/

Im not 100% sure but I think this is just the default tournament HUD on Pokertracker 4

I think that at this stack depth versus a wide button opener we should polarize our 3b range to the top of our range and the bottom of our range (suited) and flat with everything else. I don't want to be 3b folding with hands such as KQ, QT, J9 etc. I would 3b fold hands such as T2s, 83s etc (~2 to 5%). As long as we keep this 3b bluff range suited, we will actually be really balanced with our 3b value range. 77+, ATs+ (7.5%).

After the structure change there is a lot deeper play going on but some of the non turbo structures are still very shallow.

I agree with raise calling KQo and I learned a lot from Akira's explanation of why. We aren't giving ourself a chance to win a full double up often enough when we open shove. I find myself often jamming so many hands when I'm 14-18bbs that I never get to accumulate chips. This is a great spot to open and get called/shoved on by a dominated range.

As for the small aces and low pp's they are jamming- i think we have enough equity against those hands that it's not that detrimental when figured in.

Thanks for the reply ralphykid, This is exactly why I would rather raise call. When we jam we actually get called by a lot of their value rejam range and we have decent equity against those. By raising we allow much worse to jam, as well as create cooler situations against the BB defend when we both flop top pair, ours being the nut top pair.

Sorry about those. Poker tracker replayer doesnt have the pot won or lost feature so I probably do skip over some hands the hero played.

@2:00 I think we are most likely folding to everyone's jam here without any reads. If we had more/looser stats for the button - big blind I would call off their jams.

@25:37 Very interesting. 1/3 of a BB is pretty significantly plus. I guess this is a great spot to be jamming. Thanks for the catch!

I cant find the exact hand but for the most part yes. We will be 3b with TT vs a 18-25bb stack and flatting vs a 40bb stack.

Thank you! I agree and I will definitely keep this in mind for my next review.

If we were IP I would definitely flat but there is something to say about cutting off the hand when we are OOP as villain is likely to check the turn and see the turn/river at which point we can be put in tough spots.