TLDR:

Nit wondering if being nitty and passing up +CeV shove/call opportunities is better for your overall eV when it means not being knocked out of the tournament a large percentage of time, and how much CeV are you willing to give up? Are those extra 1-2BBs of CeV really worth being knocked out of the tournament a large percentage of the time and missing out on all the possible future CeV opportunities you would have had if you weren't knocked out?

I've been doing a lot of analysis with SNGWiz on my 180 turbos game lately and its got me thinking, just how much CeV do you need to make a shove your best option. A lot of the time you have profitable shove opportunities that are +1 - +2 BB in CeV but you are being knocked out of the tournament a good percentage of the time in exchange for that CeV (depends on number of villians left to act and their calling ranges but with 2-3 (shoving from CO/BTN) who have an averageish calling range 10-15% of the time you'll be knocked out).

How much is your place in the tournament actually worth and how do you factor this in when calculating your shove / calling ranges? Obviously this depends heavily on a lot of factors like skill level of the players relative to you, how shortstacked you are since the more shortstacked you are the less time you have to wait for a more +eV opportunity, what blind level you're at and when the blinds are going up etc.

What I'm wondering is whether a lot of the shoves are really worth being knocked out of the tournament 15% of the time in exchange for a couple of BBs of CeV especially with the blinds increasing so fast and the diminishing value of those chips (200 Cev at the 50/100 blind level might be great but once the blinds go up a couple more times it won't make much difference to your stack at all).

Also even though your fold equity goes down and your stack size might drop a couple BBs if you pass up a +CeV opportunity, generally as the blind and ante levels increase generally your CeV opportunities will be worth more in chips. Is shoving 10BB when you only have 1-2BB in +CeV really the best option or are you better off waiting for strong hands that have a higher amount of CeV and lower chance of losing your spot in the tournament, as well as more profitable shoves as the blinds increase and there is more in the pot resulting in a higher CeV.

This is such a nice question. I'm subscribing to this thread, been wondering about this for a while now, just couldn't express myself in such an eloquent way.

I think giving up more than 0.25BB when you are with a 10BB stack is bad and more than 0.75BB when your stack is around 20BB.

1-2BB is huge.
It is like 1/10 of your stack on average. There is no hand you can wait for that would give you that big advantage over your opponents hand on average. Usually you would end up pushing 55% vs. 45% at best anyway no matter how long you wait, worse if you wait too long, ending up in multiway pots being short stack.

Poker is a game of little edges.

Basically this. A 1BB increase to a 10BB stack is massive, where else do you get an immediate 10% return on an investment?

Further, the fact these spots are +cEV means that more times than not you will increase your stack rather than be sent to the rail. Although variance can provide long periods of imbalance, if your in it for the long haul you will start to see profits. I also believe there are spots where I would take a -cEV line to preserve my tournament life in the short term. Although this seems counter intuitive, I might opt to take a 5% loss if I feel the table is too tight (say 10% too tight). Even though you make a 5% loss on the call, you negate that by the amount of times you shove into players not calling optimally and the fold equity you gain from taking the push / call. This would only apply when short stacked. There is no reason to take a -cEV line when you have a reasonable stack.

Other than against an atc call in the blinds it is impossible to work out the other players' ranges well enough to make judgements in very marginal cases. All you can really say is that if it is very close then it doesn't matter much as you are not gaining or losing much ev either way. It's never 100% chip ev anyway. It's always less.

This is an answer to the question?

Most guys that would be good enough to give up ChipEV for Surviving don't do it, and most guys that give up ChipEV for TournamentLife shouldn't do it.

Just to give some classic examples. To give up the race QQ vs AK, you would need ~250% ROI (from Mathematics of Poker IIRC).
A cash game player usually makes 2BB/100, without rake (as in tournaments, we'd have no rake while in) that would be perhaps 5BB/100 or 0.05BB/hand. Even if we assume that opponents in tournaments are softer, to assume to get more than 0.1BB/hand in ChipEV is absurd (it's ~ my longterm winrate in tournaments over ~300k hands from last year). So passing Edges that are anything >0.025BB/hand is like giving up significantly your winrate and your edge.

Our job is to find and exploit any edge we can get, not to find them and then throw away.

Close to a drastic bubble situation (let's say several 1-2BB ultrashorties while we are 3rd in chips vs 1st and 2nd for a racing kind situation), I might be ready to give up ~1BB ChipEV (but most only <=0.5BB ChipEV) for the sole reason, that it is an approximation of ICM, while the usual tools like SnGWizard can't handle multitable tournament situations (like last 3 tables with 20men on 180's). But even here, the more safe way is just to take most +ChipEV spots anyway.

@musaire,

so your math would mean on average with a 10BB stack + ante that you would push
15% from UTG and nearly
70% from MP2 and then the
rest HJ-SB would be 80-100%..


is that correct?

fixed it for you

Dont think passing +cEV edges on mid stages are the way to go, specially when poker its getting tougher and tougher everyday

Very good post, kamel.

If most of the players are giving it up too much the good players may afford give it up a bit more too, I guess. Otherwise they would gamble too much in a situation where they are better than opponents anyway.


At a tightish table, yes, correct.

Even more at the 100/200/25 blind level in 45-man for exmpl. where the antes are more than 1/10 of the BB.
Later the antes become less significant, but not much in 180-man.

Obviously making adjustments if there are short blinds, cutting the lower end of the range if there are micro stacks when pushing a wide range, loose players, and if pushing more than 3 hands in a row, in which case my stack would be bigger already from collecting blinds anyway, thus making me more tight.
Sometimes pushing a bit less for image.

Don't start calling me light, please...


Thanks, haha,
it is especially true for 180-mans, yes.

Don't know much about non-turbo games.

nice one +1!

You will take chip ev as the "safe way" !?!?! It's NEVER 100% chip ev in any tournament with more than one prize and it is always considerably less on or near money bubbles.

This would be very exploitable. If Regs see you shoving this wide many of your future shoves will be -ev.

@topic:

There are several concepts that you can use:

1. Use every tiny Edge you can find

2. Survival vs Chip accumulation

In the second concept you have to judge if you can pass on small edges in a spot, because survival is more important. For example you have 14bb utg with Ante and you have Qts. A shove is unexploitable +ev but you only win a fraction of a bb and your risk of busting is pretty high. The chance is very high that you will find a spot in the next orbit where you can win much more chips with a much smaller risk of busting out.
But if we have like 5-8bbs in late position we should take every tiny edge, because we risk much less and survival is not so important anymore.
its is of course harder to play this way than just playing chipev but i think it is more +ev.

If we would play cashgame and could reload our stack after every Hand then i agree that we should take every tiny edge but not in a tournament.

@Maniac81:
that is tigerbalm strategy, never worked for me. THough i dont push these ranges i posted.
i just assumed musaire must be pushing these due to his post!

If you make big plays which are only slightly unexploitable you might not even overcome the rake/fee.

I don't believe in fixed shove ranges. You always need to adjust for the players left to act.

there is a lot more flop play in non-turbos, dont think anyone would push 15% utg with 10bb left. There will always be better spots in a non-turbo.

I'm trying to wrap my head around these MTT SNGs (18-180 man at $15+$30+$35 stakes)

How much can I expect to win if I just 6-8 table and play near perfect (just assume I do..) ? Who is the best example of a winner in these MTT SNGs?

I'm trying to find out if this is even worth my time compared to playing MTT's.

When I look up guys that for instance have 41k games, they only have a ROI of between 5-10%..

Who has the best ROI% in these and what is achieveable in your opinion?

And the additional question... what is a standard downswing?

You might have to answer seperately for the different stakes and fieldsizes (18-180 man at $15+$30+$35 stakes)

And thanks in advance

I actually tried to calculate this 1 week ago, I might try it again but at moment I dont have the time. I`m pretty sure that you should use an Edge(1-2BB is WAY to big it`s more like 0.2bb)

Like 80% of this post is wrong.

I really should start writing my own book about SNGs lol.

Well it works very good for me longterm so i keep playing this Style.
What do you think is wrong with my post?
I have no problem to admit when my opinion is wrong but you have to be a bit more specific.

100% of it is correct.

Doubt you are anywhere near close to "longterm". Even 20k games have a huge deviatiation of your true winrate. Because of that samplesize ignorance, people will never be really good in MTT-SNGs. Yet I have to see a good MTT-SNGplayer, a lot of people who get a lot of respect are IMO medicore.

There is edgefolding in Cashgames, for example if we got a huge fish who is deep covered, then we should not take small edges.


How is shoving with QTs ever unexploitable? Just because the Nashcalculator of holdemeresources tells you to shove QTs it`s not unexploitable. Just make some scnearios up with SNG-Wizard.

Let`s say we are on the button and shoving 72o got an edge of 50 chips, but we bust in this spot like 40% of the time. How likely would it be to get a Hand with an edge >50 chips the next hand, which we wouldn`t see 40% of the time if we shove?

You are nit-picking in my opinion. My statements were general. Of course there are some very rare cases in Cashgames where you can take a big edge, but in most cases you should take every small edge there.
And yes there are some very rare cases where shoving Qts for 14bb post ante is -ev if the whole table calls very wide. But when does it happen that everybody on the table calls a 15bb UTG shove with AJo?
My last point was that we should take every tiny edge if we get to 5-8bbs. In your Example it is true that we could find a spot later, but if we dont find a spot we lose fold equity and if we bust we dont lose much equity in the tournament.
With a big stack we dont lose fold equity even if we dont find a better spot and we risk much more tournament equity.

Shen888 is one of the best imo. Look him up on sharkscope or even OPR.

On the general debate no-one has conceded that it's NEVER chip EV due to the prize structure although it's obvious. Another good reason not to shove chip EV is that you might have a fish or two at the table who are likely to offer you a better spot eg if a player is shoving every hand it's wrong to call when you're only 51-49 because you will get better in the next hand or two or three. I suppose this is the sort of scenario that OP is trying to generalise. Unfortunately it cannot be generalised as it depends entirely on the table that hero is on.

We will get these spots a given %.

The concept of Edgefolding gets much more interesting if we factor in ICM. Then we have to factor in the mistakes that our opponents in future hands would do.

Jabracada should have the best ROI, at least for the last year.

100 BI happens like every 4th session 250 you might get once a month as a good multitabler and 400+ all couple month(Those are examples for strong multitablers)

I think if I would 6-8 table I could get like a 35-40% ROI. But if you multitable you got a smaller winrate but highter hourly.

The 35s are really reginfested even with 6-8 tabling I just highly doubt that anyone is >20% ROI.