Slingtown

Great stuff. Lots of food for thought.Thanks a bunch,

what are the blinds? whats the range you think he's opening and what range do you think he's calling your shove?

In early position I'm going to shove this most of the time. I think min raising here in early position in general looks stronger than a shove given the positon. We can be shoving a bit wider than this and will get called by worse hands sometimes. In I'm in later position I like to mix in min raises at certain tables because people can see us as stealing and play back at us.

I don't mind your raise sizing and think you have the right idea about wanting to raise a bit more OOP. Now i agree villian UTG1 limp reraise looks really strong. However unless we've seen him do this with AA, KK exactly I think his range is gonna be much wider for that. Lots of pocket pairs show up in this spot maybe even come suited connecters. But we can't range him just on AA, KK and those are the only two hands we don't want to see here.

When he makes that move we are roughly 30ish bb effective and given the strength on our hand I don't mind just shoving and getting it all in. We have the top of our range and need to be playing this hand very aggressive at this point. Calling is the worst option.

ICM I guess should be considered but at these stakes the jumps are so small I don't personally care if I ladder one point in this small an MTT. I'm going for a win.

One note about post flop. When the villain shoves there I think we can make the call. its a pretty good flop for our hand and there is so much money in the pot as played. We have outs if he has a hand and sometimes he missed and is trying to steal the pot and we are ahead or chopping.

its a little off topic and there is a bit on personal bias. I would say to cut the HUD and focus on hand reading and tells outside of it. I believe these are much more effective and will help you grow. If you later get to the point where the HUD can compliment your skills then it will be easy to implement. But I am a huge fan of learning without it. I do play in the USA on Bovada so couldn't use a HUD but I never did coming up and believe it helped me tremendously where too many people on sites like these were just reciting HUD Stats for why they were 3betting, folding, shoving etc.

Did this villain limp with AA twice before? It happens at low stakes but people also limp with a wider range. It's the micros people do a wide array of questionable things. It's good you are picking up on some of them and trying to figure out what is what. Let's not overthink things though. 

I hate stats as a way to discuss hands (I think it limits your growth as a player at the lower stakes) but this guys limps a bit much. Also answer this question for me why don't we wan to play AK OOP?

Stacks aren't that big and most likely this guy wants to see flop. We have to plan the hand out before we make our decision. We can't just raise big pre cause we don't want to play the hand and we have a premium so we should want to play the hand right now. I'll respond a bit more later.

Yah I'm never open limping as a general rule with these type of hands. Obviously the later position we are in the more I like opening. 55/66 is a good cutoff from very early position when the stacks are getting shorter at the rest of the table and we know people are going to be pretty aggressive 3betting/4betting. Generally at the small stakes people aren't light 3betting so its even more reason to tighten up a bit.

I think to answer your question about what to do against a 3bet you need to range each opponent based on our knowledge of what they've done. Its a tough answer to give without knowing the opponents but yes 99 is too big. Its not horrible being OOP when called we just have to focus on how to play the hand profitable based on the board texture, opponents stack size and tendancies.

Yah I don't think he's ever going to have a 4bet bluff range. The stacks aren't deep enough for him to be doing that. You gotta put the pressure on and shoving does that and puts him in the spot you are in. Shit players will fold better hands here A9, A10 and lots of times smaller PP which is why the shove is so effective.

yah i think that is a fine line of thinking. its tough to say precisely in this spot what this opponent is doing. He could have AA here and be hoping to induce. It really depends on on read and what we've seen. If you say you've seen this player min open a few times I'm more inclined to think our hand has fold equity. He also could be calling a shove with hands we are ahead of KQ, KJ, 77-22, Ax. Yes we are going to run into better A9-AK, 88-AA but we have equity against his entire range here plus what we perceive as some fold equity.

I don't really like calling personally when effective stacks are so short. We have a pretty decent hand and if we think we have some fold equity I think a shove is best here.

I think flatting here is a good option. We can induce a shove from one of the smaller stacks behind us a good amount of the time and assuming the original raiser calls we can reship and have fold equity or be way ahead when called by a strange hand that assumes there is so much money in the pot its worth taking a shot at it.

also if we flat and everyone folds we can play a pot IP against a spazzy player.

3betting gets tough for me here cause there is no 3bet/4bet dynamic established and its gonna be harder to range him. i think he's less likely to 4bet shove over our 3bet light as opposed to 4bet shoving over one of those small stacks.

How do you guys feel if we also had a 20bb stack?

After giving this some thought I believe 1010 is anywhere from 44-54% equity against the small blind range. I think given our stack size and the dead money in the pot we should make the shove. There are also times where we get it in against both villains and they have each others outs. However, I might be tigther with a slightly less stack to perserve our tourney life. That may be wrong but I'm curious how others feel about that.

The opening raise isn't that large. Depends on the habits of the raiser. I would say the size falls in the standard sizing depeding on a player. If we had a very good read and a strong sizing tell (ie the player alters his raise size based on his hand) we could narrow his range but in this case its probably his standard opening size. from the stats provided the raiser is opening very wide so has all types of hands we have fold equity against. lots of pocket pairs, broadways, suited connecters etc. I'd be a little more narrow given the early position.

What were the blinds?

I'm folding this hand preflop. No point playing OOP early against multiple opponents. As played I think you should be raising a bit bigger on the flop cause you really don't want callers you want to get it in now and if they are really going to call then you want max value. And I don't mind getting it all in cause people will stack off at this level with big diamonds.

I loved every minute of that. Two thumbs up.

Well you need to work on your preflop game. It's a pretty broad question and I'll try to touch on it in more depth tomorrow but you need to be playing effective stacks. 

By that I mean if you are in the CO with 100 bobs and the button, sb , bb all have 15bb then you need to play your stack as if it is 15bbs. So if you have let's say AJ for example the best move is to shove and put the pressure on them. Maybe if effective stacks were deeper as they are early on you could open and play post flop but that's not the case here.

Likewise when the shorts stacks are shoving you need to figure out what range are those players shoving. Are they just shoving any two? Are they shoving an optimal range? Then ask yourself how does your hand play against that range. You need to be calling at time a slight favorite against that range to not get exploited otherwise people are gonna have way too much and edge against you.

Lots of factors come into play as well but this is a good start. I'd suggest posting hands with questions look into obtaining a push/fold chart to see how wide you can actually shove profitably. 

Hope this helps get you thinking feel free to ask any questions we are all here to learn and grow.

with the second hand I don't like calling in that spot. Its not just a shove and a call. Its a raise, call, shove, shove. Ranges are alot stronger and often we run into AA, KK, QQ, AK, QQ. The best case scenerio is running into two underpairs and then we are just flipping. But overall I think KQs has pretty bad equity and by a quick look at those players stats they aren't maniacs. SB is very short.

I also don't like just flatting with your stack because you create this tough situation. I think preflop you need to either decide to 3bet shove or fold. When I plug in the top 10 % of opening hands for MP we have only about 42% equity. Unless his been playing very loose in this spot being close to final table and having a stack putting pressure on everyone, he might be even tighter given his early position and reshove stacks behind him.

I probably like to fold even though KQs is just so sexy. We are rarely getting it all in against a hand we dominate and I'm not sure we have as much fold equity here.

Yah I like the first spot much better.

fwiw I didn't see UTG limp before my post

for the slice numbers I used the villain to have a call range of JJ-AA, AKo, AKs and an opening range of 88-AA, AKo-AJo, AKs-ATs. +19.5K chips there and if you add in other Ax hands KQs etc it gets a little bigger.

Never call. That I can say I am positive on. OOP and we lose value post flop when we actually hit our A or K and he has QQ, JJ, 1010 type hands. BTN is either getting it in pre or folding.

Given the dynamic playing out I think the best play here is to shove. There is a dynamic playing out of the bubble and we need to take advantage of it. I'm not sure I even really consider ICM at this point and personally in spots like this I'm not concerned about just getting into the money. My style is too try and accumulate the biggest stack for the run. If I run into here so be it.

Against the range of TT+,AQs+,AQo+ we have 49 % equity. With all the dead money in the pot its worth it if we are called with this range. When we factor in our fold equity I think this hand is too good. Villain can be folding here with alot of his 3bet range.

When I put this into a program called slice we have an EV of roughly +20K chips when we shove here. That only is against the button and I'm not sure how we should correctly be factorting in when the CO calls which is something also to consider.

I'm also curious about the size of the 3bet. Seems pretty large but who knows what this means without reads.

Bottom line we have the top of our range, fold equity, blockers to AA, KK, and I don't think we should be looking to just make the money here. Its a great spot to put pressure and amass a massive stack. Shove all day.

I'm sorry if I'm missing something, but what were the blinds are what were the hands?

Don't overlimp this hand preflop. I most likely just fold it in early position but if I'm going to play it I'm raising the UTG limper. 

On the flop I don't mind just calling. When we turn trips on the turn and he pots we should be raising and getting our stack into the middle. He has all types of Jx and diamonds. Plus at this level he could spazz with a pocket pair because both jacks are out there. 

But who knows what he does with KJ, AJ. Limping UTg here is pretty bad aside from a few hands.

I like 3bettin preflop 100% of the time for value.

As played I prolly fold flop as our hand can't stand too many barrals and we don't has a good read on villain. I think his line has allot of Ax hands in his calling range. 

Some of the time I think you are correct. Given this is a small stakes donkament sometimes players will play like that. But I also see someone playing Qx the same way. In there head the flop is safe and they flat because they want to see a safe card on the turn. Now that the turn isn't a K or A there Qx is really good. No straights, flushes out there either so this player now feel safe to dump his stack in with Qx.

In the end I don't think these players are thinking too much so I think sometimes your analysis gives them too much credit for taking a trappy line. That all said, I do see them playing sets, Q9 this way as well.

I think it comes down to how we perceive villains perception of a strong hand. To lots of players at this level that varies.

I don't think you overplayed the hand. As played folding AA is a big leak. We've committed nearly 13K of our 32K stack so far and folding would be pretty bad. I also think AA plays well against this villains entire range.

Against this range QQ,99,77,AQs,KQs,QJs,97s,AQo,KQo,QJo we still have nearly 62% equity on the flop. I think this is a case where we just ran into the top of villains range. I like our line and think its the best way to maximize value in the long term. Sometimes we run into it.

upon further review,

55+,A5s+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,ATo+,KJo+,QJo

77 has like 48 % against that range with I think is reasonable for someone to be shoving. in that case we should be calling here. i guess in the end it comes down to our read but unless this player is supertight I think mathwise its a call.

yah i think we can get away from this given his early position. we are most likely flipping at best against his range and rarely ever dominating. even A6-A2 type hands won't show up often. i agree with the above though, i'd want to know the tourney average etc. we have 7 big blinds but might be able to find a better spot when the button passes with some fold equity. sometimes late in turbos perserving your tourney life is important because with a double up or two we can have a commanding chip lead.

Yah shove over his raise. To me his turn action means he wants to get it in and even if h folds it's not the worst.