Don't mean to beat a dead horse but thats a perfect scenario being 3 handed with AK, 10 bbs and big stack shoving on you.

As someone already said if your not calling here what are you waiting to call with?

ECM is good and all but your going to have to get it in a sooner or later so why not do it when you have a decent enough stack and a premium hand wheres a double up is way more meaningful, rather than waiting until you have 3 BBS and get AA and double up to 6.

All the ICM bashing in here and this isn't even an ICM fold? ICM doesn't mean be a nit.

It depends on the situation though. You can't just split the difference between ICM and ChipEV every time. If the stacks or the style of play is that everyone is getting a "fair" chance at jamming and picking up pots then ICM gives a pretty accurate idea of what your stack is worth. In micros sometimes everyone is playing very tight including in terms of pushing. In that situation your tournament life is worth even more than ICM says it is because you are in a great situation. Against some opponents though you have to play wider than ICM to avoid getting blinded off.

The thing about aiming for the top 3 spots is nonsense. There is no magic pay jump between 3rd and 4th. If you were to really treat it as a satellite with the top 3 being the target and the other positions worth nothing then you have a higher ICM "average bubble factor" with the "aim for the top 3" strategy than you do using the actual payouts for a 180 man when you are 4-6 handed and it is about the same at 7 handed.

See http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...ctors-1504943/ the 3 handed satellite is at the bottom.

Yes, it for sure depends on the situation- and i havent said anything other than that either in my posts.

The example we discussed in this thread is when were having huge big stack who is (very likely) shoving a wide range in order to maximize his fold equity and run over the table. We counter that by snapping him off with a wider range for value.

Of course other situations require other adjustments. If we are 4 even practically even stacks for example and each got chances to shove and take down pots like you mention i certainly agree with you that ICM ranges strictly is giving us a better base.

And its not nonsense at all going for top three finish. Many players play all too defensively when its 4,5 or 6 players left. Especially in 180 mann games the prizepool is distributed extremly top three heavy, so it makes sense to turn up the aggression or call any two shoves wider- and trying to accumulate chips in every way we can. If we get a chance to make some good calls against an aggressive big stack that other players aint taking- we are giving ourself a much better chance at finishing top three than other players would.

readless its a call, with your reads its an easier call

Nash BU push 65%, 22+ Kx+ Q2s+ Q5o+ J2s+ J7o+ T2s+ T7o+ 93s+ 97o+ 84s+ 86o+ 74s+ 76o 63s+ 52s+ 43s

Nash SB call 5.9%, 88+ AJs+ AQo+

even if BU's shoving a bit tighter, lets say 50%, its still a call

BU must be tight-ish like ~30% for us to even think about folding this

I probably shouldn't have quoted your post because doing that in this conflictual environment on 2p2 leads to the reply being interpreted as disagreement (or total agreement if you just put "this" or qft). We basically agree; I was just placing emphasis differently.

Those defensive players are probably misinterpreting what people really mean when they talk about the idea of aiming at the top 3. At 4-6 handed the best way to secure a top 3 finish is to fold a lot and wait for other people to go out like its the bubble of a satellite. The actual style you advocate short-handed is basically playing for 1st, which makes a lot of sense under conditions where others are going to let you push them around. An additional reason is that once they have seen you make a call that seems ICM-crazy to them they don't want to play with you any more and risk going out. So I 95% agree with the play you advocate here but just not how you express the reason for it. The number 3 is just an arbitrary number - the gap between 3rd and 4th is much smaller than the gap between 2nd and 3rd - we could equally say the prizes are top 2 heavy or top 4 heavy.

Like you say, who should you get chips from? Of course the guy who has a pile of chips and really wide ranges, the chip leader - in reg speeds you are still seeing plenty of flops at the final table and the chip leaders arrive at them with junk in their ranges. If it is my last tournament I often open the other table at FT2 and open the hand history for that table - as it fills up you can look at the list of winners of hands and see if the table captain at the other table seems to be aware of the ICM pressure he can bring to bear, or not. If he is then you know he can be pushed off hands a lot - including because they assume you would never commit "ICM suicide" by playing against them with air, so you must have a strong hand so they must fold.

A couple of things I do disagree with. When you are playing against the quiet mice with midstacks or chip leaders who don't know about using ICM pressure it's best to give them respect on the rare occasions they kindly inform you that they have a hand and go back to stealing their blinds on subsequent hands because you will get all the chips in the long run like that anyway - I am a lot more reluctant to call jams against those people than you say you are. I think that style is chipEV but also ICM is one reason to call tighter too.

One other thing I want to say about ICM, is I found that when I started considering it more in my play I started getting much better results - but paradoxically I started getting a lot more 1st places (if you sharkscope or pokerprolabs me it was about New Year. Since then I have ran my bankroll up from $9 to $193 in actually not that many games). Before, I was probably a calling station even though others in my micro games were playing too tight so it might be what are called compensating errors but the additional reason to respect the opponents' raises helped lead me to a better style of play.

Regarding the "play for top 3?" debate, I think it is clear that once you're ITM, you MUST play for top 3. Here are the payouts in 180s:

Position Prize
1 30%
2 20%
3 11.4%
4 7.4%
5 5,8%
6 4.3%
7 3%
8 2.2%
9 1.5%

There is more value in going from 5th to 3rd than there is going from 9th-5th or 8-4. There's more value in going from 3rd-2nd than 9th-4th. The only really signiifcant pay jumps are from 4th-3rd and beyond. Expanding further, the jump from 4 to 3 is larger than from 27 to 4.

Obv we're not aiming to play like a maniac, but speaking for myself, I am only a slightly better than average micro player (meaning that if it wasn't for fish at this level, I'd struggle to win consistently). One way to improve on that standing is to apply a higher aggression and calling frequency once ITM, in order to improve my odds of finishing top 3.

Looking at my own stats, my last 500 tournaments (a ridiculously small sample for a grinder, a couple of months for a punter like myself), I have a 15% ROI, but the entirety of my profit comes from a pair of 1st places. Change them both to 3rds and I'm break even, change them both to 4ths and I'm in the red.

On a certain level it's depressing to tread water for 6 weeks hoping for a big score, but that's the life of an MTT player, from what I can gather. My goal is to improve my game so the top 3 finishes become a more regular feature, rather than just making guest appearances.