Bubble spot against shortstack

[MikeyEl]

Interesting shove/call spot.

100/200 blinds No Limit Hold'em Tourney, 4 Players
Poker Tools by Stoxpoker - Hand Details


BTN: 5,445 (27.2 bb)
SB: 3,590 (18 bb)
Hero (BB): 3,600 (18 bb)
CO: 865 (4.3 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is BB with T 8
CO raises to 865 and is all-in, 2 folds, Hero calls 665.

This is a perfect example of understanding and applying ICM and opponent ranges. IMO, the villain's range is ATC in this spot. He has ~4BBs, and the blinds were about to hit him and take about 50% of his stack.

Now all that remains is deciding whether this call will be profitable for me. I like this hand because hopefully we have some live cards, we have connectedness, and we have suitedness.

Against ATC, my hand is:

%Win 50.56%
%Tie 3.58%
Odds 0.91 to 1

With the chips in the middle, this is an easy call.

I plugged a few other ranges to SNG Wiz in order to see how tight our villain could be, while still making this a profitable move. (Note: I think these are irrelevant for my hand) Attached are two screenshots from SNG Wiz showing that this is a profitable move. (Sorry about the crappiness of the shots, I can't open SNGWiZ at the moment bc i'm in the middle of a tournament on FTP)

One shot is applying the ATC range to the villain; the second shot shows how tight a villain's range can be while still making call a profitable move.

It is important for everyone to understand ICM and villain's ranges to be a profitable SNG player.

[gamer4life27]

Here is where you are wrong. Even though I may have ~4.3BB's left, my range isn't as wide as you assume it to be. I am not shoving with 22+. In fact, I am folding 22 - 55, maybe even 66 and 77. And as for the hands you put into your SnG thing, I am not shoving with K9s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T8s+, or 98s+.

You haven't seen a great enough margin of my hands in showdown to know this and this is why you thought you were supposed to call when in fact, you were not getting the right price to.

In fact, I have done EXTREMELY well in super turbo tourneys and SnG's, so I know how to play the short stack pretty well.

[travz21]

How can you say you know how to play the short stack well if your range is that tight with 4bbs on the bubble? I'm shoving any two UTG in that situation. I'm not saying you don't know how to play the short stack well, I'm just saying there's no way your range can be that tight if you play well.

Hero needs around 36% equity against shoving range. Even if villain is ultra-ridiculously-nitty tight 4-handed and only shoves 10% of hands here, hero is 33% against that range.

Villain needs to shove around the top 24% of hands or more for this call to make sense. So this call makes perfect sense in my eyes. Even a 40% shoving range is tight in this spot IMO.

[MikeyEl]

This hand came from the POTW tournament and, as you can tell from the above post, the villain was gamer4life27. I was going to keep the players anonymous, but gamer4life27 seems comfortable exposing himself as the villain. Here are the results to that hand:

Flop: (1,830) T J K (2 players, 1 is all-in)
Turn: (1,830) T (2 players, 1 is all-in)
River: (1,830) 2 (2 players, 1 is all-in)

Results: 1,830 pot
Final Board: Tc Jd Kh Ts 2c
Hero showed Td 8d (three of a kind, Tens) and won 1,830 (965 net)
CO showed Ah Kc (two pairs, Kings and Tens) and lost (-865 net)

Here is where you are wrong. Even though I may have ~4.3BB's left, my range isn't as wide as you assume it to be.

You asked for the basis of my decision to call, and I described it in my original post described it in detail.

As you said, I have not seen you play enough to form a good basis for determining your specific range. And, when faced with that type of situation, I assume that the villain is playing optimally. In this case, Villain should be shoving with ATC.

You haven't seen a great enough margin of my hands in showdown to know this and this is why you thought you were supposed to call when in fact, you were not getting the right price to.

Incorrect, even if we were playing with our cards face up I would have called. My hand had a 40% chance of winning against yours, and given the chips in the middle (the small blind, and my posted big blind), I had the right price to call.

The reasons I was able to call were based more on your stack size and my position than the two cards in my hand. That is the trouble with waiting until you have 4 BBs to shove, you give too many hands the right price to call. If you had shoved 500 -- 1k more chips there is no way I can make this type of call.

I hope this clears it up. If not, I guess we have to agree to disagree. My call was + EV, and I will do it 100% of the time.

[phaul]

It's a standard call.

In fact, I have done EXTREMELY well in super turbo tourneys and SnG's, so I know how to play the short stack pretty well.

In fact, I have done EXTREMELY well in super turbo tourneys and SnG's, so I know how to play the short stack better than the opponents I play against. If you're at micros, you do not need to know how to play very well at all to be profitable.

[frob23]

I will just add that I was playing in this game. The blinds had just gone up (if I recall correctly) and before the cards were even dealt, I fully expected gamer to shove in that spot. I might have expected him to fold 3-2o or something equally hopeless but pretty much anything with at least one broadway card was probably well within what I expected to be shoved.

Even if we assume that gamer only shoves when holding at least one broadway card, I don't think calling with T-8 suited is all that bad. The pot odds are good enough to take it as an underdog, the Hero isn't going to be crippled if he calls and loses, and if he wins it will mean he's just made the money. Not only will he not be crippled, he won't even be the short-stack after losing this.

Do you *want* to get all-in with T-8s against AK? Well, not if the stacks and the situation was different but this seems fine to me.

This hand, I was the button and had 7-2o. If I had anything more reasonable... I probably would have called (or raised) myself. I would have expected to have a fair shot against gamer's range with a lot of hands... and the dead money from the blinds would have also been tempting.