Both villains are not really good.

If you just look at ICM it is a fold. Around breakeven when villain 3bets 30% which is not very realistic. I dont have stats, but they were avg bad. 18/14/7 or something close to it. Villain was a -4% roi over 4k game sample loser. Other villain was a 7% roi. But also not great.

In game i folded. Do i still hang too much to icm? Or is it reasonable? Snap call? Any input is welcome

If your plan is to r/f AQ, then why not just jam it instead?

sorry but that just does not make any sense.

+1

if u open, you need to protect your range somehow and r/c ATs AJo+ 77+ seems good to me

guys, but just look at the icm spot we are in. If you give villain a 3bet of 30%isch AQo becomes slightly profitable. AJo is never gonna be a good call here. Or do you really think villain will 3bet us 40% of the time here?

Besides my raise can be flatted by the sb which is a huge +$EV spot for me in position. Its really not correct to reason that because i might r/f with AQo vs SB i should jam instead because each line is so different. And i personally still think r/f > jam > r/c. Escpically vs a somewhat passive villain.

It does hurt ofcourse, and i am not saying r/f is the best line here. Thats why i ask. But arguments as: you have to defend here, or if you r/f then jam instead are just not valid.

totally disagree. if you want to wider their shoving range - you open. If you want to tighten their ranges, you shove. By shoving u put them in icm spot, not urself. Both line are +ev here (and i am sure about it). Question is, which is making you the most money in the longrun. And I think, the better the players behind, the wider you can r/c

sorry but did you read my opening post? The players behind are NOT good. I dont think a gto line is optimal here. Exploitive play against players who do not 3bet (by a long shot) optimal.

Jamming is certainly an option. I dont dispute that. And indeed we put our opponent in a tough icm spot. But that does not mean that another line could be better.

EDIT: defending arguments are really not an issue here. cause we open tons and villain just dont 3bet enough to punish us.

Wonderer pros calling range looks good to me. Folding AQ here is just lighting money on fire. That's why if you intend to fold AQ to a jam then shoving is better.

Everybody keeps saying this. But why? Just load this hand in hrc. You will see villain has to 3bet at least 30% ( or close to it ) for aqo to be breakeven. Ajo is a big loser. I dont think villain 3bet anything near this range. I get that 9-5 handed chiputility is a big part but 3 handed? Seems to me icm is the only factor.

Any comments appreciated.

its often advocated to deviate from ICM play cause we dont want to tighten up too much in order to ladder from say 7-6th. Because the big money is in the top3. But right now we are already in the top3. So laddering (playing 100% icm) is pretty much the only thing we are after now. Right?

Forget icm for a second here. If we're opening x% of hands and folding AQo, what are we calling? AK,1010? That's becomes super exploitable villains can and should shove ATC on us. So we have to find a happy medium to call with so that were not getting mega exploited. If we decide that were not going to take any -icm edges then shove for the same reason as above we don't want to create a situation where we are supppper exploitable

thanks for your reply oldschool and i get what your saying. But that only holds if villain will 3bet us extremely wide cause he knows we call extremely tight. But how can he ever know that? Doesnt it make more sense to assume he has a 3bet of 15-30% here. In which case AQo is breakeven at best.

not sure how to explain it but AQ is worth too many chips to r/f in this spot. if you are stuck on using icm in this spot then shove AQ and raise weaker holdings to exploit them not 3betting enough. im still super happy raise/calling AQ here

This is true generally and in GTO thinking, but against certain bad opponents you can just min raise and on the rare occasions when you get jammed on say "thanks for telling me you have the nuts" and fold - however most of the time they fold anyway or they flat and you play a pot with a dominating hand, the lead, position and a skill advantage. OP is telling us villain is one of those players.

To me it doesn't even depend on general stats, you need to have sat with them 3-4 handed and watched them play and also got a feel for their timing but you can know this is a raise/fold sometimes.

There is also the point that the raise/call against the SB where he thinks he may have a sliver of fold equity is superior to jamming into him.

Added to the above, if they are both really bad then it's one of the occasions when your "tournament life" really does mean something outside of ICM calculations. It sounds like they're literally going to fold it away to you when you get heads up and possibly before so you don't need to flip now.

Being a bad player doesn't necessarily mean they are never 3b light, it could mean they also make a really bad call with a lower Ax hand also?

If we are playing super-exploitable here then we can just r/f ATC if villains are bad and shove the hands that we don't want to r/f or r/c.

The info in the OP didn't really give any indication that BB has a tiny 3b range?

Pretty much that yes if they'll let you do it.

The info I would like is also what have our previous actions been on the button short-handed. Have we been raising a lot here?

^^ Yep, this would make a big difference in garnering a more accurate response than just posting 1 hand in a vacuum.

Even saying 18/14/7 is bad obviously depends on the player. I would even suggest that some of the better regs out there have overall VP$IP/PFR/3b stats that look something like that.

If it's something like "I have relentlessly been stealing chips and accumulating with little resistance from either player" then that's definitely a reason to have a super-wide r/f range.

Also, are we ever considering we aren't up against KK+ here some proportion of the time due to the fact that there might be a smaller 3b from villain. Has villain shoved on us before or made a smaller 3b?

There's just so many things that can influence our decision here. My first response was based on such limited info. The more info we have, the better decision we can accurately make.

I agree generally. We can just move on to the next hand, which is going to be +EV and are therefore not to be missed.

Sometimes though the timing tells let you know that they're getting annoyed and they're going to "play back". In that case it's nice when you have something that can call, though that maybe applies more to players against whom we have a smaller edge and when there is less ICM pressure.

+1

That doesnt necessarily mean we´re taking the right decission, we only profit from ICM decission when we´re either crushing villains range and/or we´re not in the hand.

I would also considered how soft/weak the table is, for me is not enough to determine if X line is +EV i need to know by how much and if the edge compensate the risk im taking, for example on a soft table with bad players im gonna be more willing to pass on small/marginal +EV edges than on a tough table with solid/good thinking players, on this table im gonna take every edge i can get and even taking slightly negative EV ones.

It depends if you have history vs these "better players" that know you´re capable of r/f AQo for example :P

Then i rather either to open push or r/f but personally im more leaning forward open shoving better than r/f AQo.

I think is the best option without specific reads on the villains.

This doesnt mean they know what ICM is maybe what u mean by NOT good players is that they are unaware of ICM meaning r/f is surely the best option here.

I would start considering future EV in these close/marginal spots, if you have an edge vs these players u should be passing out small/marginal +EV situations (like open shoving or r/c), for us to say open shoving is better than r/c or viceversa we need a read that villain is an aggro restealer in these spots and/or is very aware of ICM and know we are also.

+1 to both, gold advice.

Def should not r/f AQ here, if it's a reg in the BB, he's going to jam wide enough to make it ok, and there's added value in taking out the only other reg with a decent stack. If it's a random, yes his 3bet will be overall less, but the make up of his 3bet range is made more of hands that you crush, making AQo a better call off even with a lower 3 bet percentage. Against an extremely solid reg in the BB, open shove is the best line.

I agree it's normally a shove - partly because we find ourselves having to r/f so much that we can get exploited if we don't get the last bet in - so therefore we should primarily be jamming this stack rather than min-raising.

It would be good if we had a sample size on the stats. Given we're told he's bad I'm assuming they're mainly from this final table in which case they are really tight over the short-handed play - but maybe they're a few leaps of logic there

As a general rule though, instead of equities we have to go with probability of finishing 1st, 2nd and 3rd. If we flip our probability of winning the tournament is probably only about than 50% (remember we still have the SB to deal with even if we win) and a lot of the rest of the time we come third. If OP is right and we really do have the measure of these players our chance of coming 1st if we fold is a lot higher, because they're no good and will let us do what we want in later hands.

This reminds me of a time I got HU against someone who was 20 tabling and I was on my last tournament of the session. He started with 75% of the chips but was literally playing only 25% of hands HU, so I just kept min-raising and he kept folding. I got to almost exactly 50-50 in chips and I min-raised AK and he shoved. I called it off and won but now I'm convinced that AK was actually a raise-fold there (maybe 15BB deep) because there was literally no chance of him winning under normal play.

3 handed with both players being bad, they will execute the short stacked bvb play in a much nittier fashion than good regs. So therefore we should be willing to stack off lighter in thin spots because the 2 other players will "clash" much less often than they are supposed to, thereby pushing up our range that we play from the button. Every time the SB doesn't shove nash into the BB, or the BB doesn't call SB shoves wide enough, it hurts our equity, which changes how we play our button. And again, bad players are more likely to 3bet shove a range we dominate (lots of ax) as opposed to a reg that shoves hands like 76s.

^ Those are good points. Now I don't know which of us is right

good points sandmanness. But about your last point. Dont you shove A2o in that spot? (as bb) I sure do.

@lektor yeah that was kinda my reasoning. saw a vid on RIO on it. I thought, when i make the call, i be a 60/40% favorite in the best case scenario. Meaning id probably win the tournament 60% of the time and finished 3th 40%. I dont know, with this chip distribution, and these villain, it feels kinda thin. And thats the best case scenario. I could very well be up against a 50/50 vs the bb.