I play mostly HU online and live FR and I play, at most, 3 or 4 live MTT's a year so I'm far from a MTT master. I do to the TPE podcast regularly and I have been playing poker for many years and started out playing mostly online and live MTT's so I'm not a complete MTT fish.

As a relative outsider and one with a decent amount of poker knowledge I may have a slightly nuanced perspective relative the "standard" MTT grinder. Maybe I sniffed out a leak in conventional wisdom or maybe I just "don't get it". I hope you'll let me know which it is. Or, better yet, maybe this will spawn a discussion??
Debate???

Let's see;

Ok, so the conventional wisdom when it comes to open ranges in MTT's seems to be that you should (or rather have to) open a tighter range with shorter stacks behind you in many standard steal spots than you would if the short "reshove stacks" had more chips.

eg; Hero has a medium-large (slightly above average stack) and is in a spot where he would generally tend to come in for a steal with about 30% of hands. Unfortunately for Hero, he notices that there are three players yet to act who have stacks between 7 and 18 bb's so he decides to tighten up a bit because he would have to call a jam from one of the short stacks if he open raised and got shoved on.

So, my intuition here is pretty strongly that ^^^THAT^^ is horse crap.

let me explain;
1) While it may SOUND like semantics, I think it is very relevant that we don't actually HAVE to call any jam. What we mean by "have to" is that we "ought to" or even more to my point "it would be profitable to".
2) If you replace those short stacked players with medium or big stacks then our opponents could actually force us to relinquish our equity with a 3 bet.
3) It is better to call a short stack jam when we have the proper odds to than it is to fold our equity pre-flop after open raising and give up our open raise and equity.

I truly believe what's happening here is that people are thinking something like "it would suck emotionally for me if I raised and got shoved then had to make a slightly +EV call with a weak hand. I don't want to do that so I will tighten up my range."

I mean, just think of it like this;
How on Earth could the INABILITY of a villain's stack depth to force you to fold a hand be a problem for you?

Look at two spots;
spot A) we have a profitable open raise. we are near the bottom of our range. we get 3 bet by a medium stack. we have to fold our hand.
spot B) we have the exact same hand and same EV open raise. we are near the bottom of our range. we get 3 bet by a short stack. we have a profitable call against the re-shove.

Which of those situations is better?
which is worse?
which do you find yourself trying to avoid?


Am I right?

Where's the flaw in my argument?


Thoughts?

obviously we don't have to call, as we don't have to do anything. It's just unprofitable to fold getting odds. I personally don't understand people folding because they are affraid of getting shoved on. If I have a hand that is profitable to open and has enough equity to call off I would do it. I think people don't realize how equities work and also, how rarely shorstack will be dealt a hand he can reshove with, with no fold equity.

so it sounds like you agree with me?
but that's not the way people talk about it.
I hear people saying "i had to tighten my opens because i'd have to call a shove from ___ " and similar statements with some frequency. It really doesn't make sense IMO.

any other thoughts?

You're right that situation B) is better but regarding the points of decision as making the original raise ... the flaw is that against what I call "3-bet stacks" it's a lot easier for situation B) to occur - when I (as villain) do this live, regardless of holding, I balance my tells by turning to take hold of my beer and takes sips smirking at my opponent knowing he has a difficult decision and he has to fold some of his equity.

In situation A) when we have what I call "4-bet stacks" the original raiser can just 4-bet all in back in 3-bettor's face making him fold out equity, so the 3-bet ranges are not the same.

EDIT: But if a hand like e.g. 55 is good enough to call a 3-bet jam then you just do it - but villains have to be quite shallow before that's the case (i.e. more like "jam/fold stacks").

So, the basic argument seems to be that we can expect the short stacks to re-shove more often than we expect a non short stack to 3 bet? Is that it?

I mean, to hear people talk about these spots it def sounds like they are saying "I don't want to open here because I will have to call if one of the short stacks shove" and that SEEMS to translate to "i don't want to open here because I will have a profitable call against a re-shove" which pretty obv doesn't make sense.

So, surely it can make sense that we would not want to open too wide if we expected opponents to 3 bet shove on us a lot but the fact that we would "have to" call a 3 bet shove seems like it should be incentive not disincentive for us to open raise.

If we agree on that point, that it's better for us to get 3 bet shoved on when we can call then it is to be 3 bet when we have to fold, then it seems to me that those 3 bet re-shoves would have to happen at a much much higher frequency than most players would 3 bet off a normal/medium stack for the presence of short stacks behind us to actually dissuade us from opening.

So, is it the case in practice, that short stacks re-shove a lot more often than most stacks will 3 bet in a lot of MTT spots?

I actually doubt it but don't have the experience to back that up.

The explanation is a bit simplistic but quite often you should drop the bottom of your range. You have to get quite specific though and so general rules often need adjustment.

I think generally low stacked players do 3-bet shove much wider than mid-stacked players would 3-bet. Mid stacked will call to see flops more etc.

If we use a model of hero as CO and 3 to follow all have 15bb, play a simple push/fold game, and on average 3-bet push X%.

If you do open 30% if X is 20% then you should fold a good amount to a single open shove, perhaps even half of your holdings (simple model, can call more if the V. range was capped, opponents with QQ+ may well flat call not 3-bet). The thing is though that at each opponent being 20% you still make a profit with all 30% opening hands (easily and you could open wider).

But it is difficult to predict an unknowns 3-bet range and many can be 30% in MTTs. I think at this rate many of your 30% opening hands will be losing overall and so some should be open folded, even though you can call a 3-bet a bit wider now, calling maybe 3/4 of your holding.

This is for the simple, always 3-bet shove, model but actually some will flat you and then we get into another difficult spot. What to do with the weak part of our range? Should we always 3-bet or sometimes weakly check-fold to aggression? The stack/pot ratio is very low and again it is quite difficult to put opponents on a range. It is difficult so avoiding some opening hands may be wise to simply avoid this, you don't want to have plenty of just slightly positive chip ev hands.

Perhaps from the CO you could normally open 30% and make a good profit using this range but in the current online game when facing 3 low stacks will make it a difficult spot.

Quite a lot depends on your range and if you are in early position, tight, it may not be much of a worry, but if on the button you probably should drop a decent amount of hands you normally play as they don't get through often.

A lot of the things people say don't make sense.

One of my favourites (or anti-favourites) is "We have to steal wider later on in a tournament because chips are worth more." Apart from "steal" being an annoying, inaccurate term, the obvious response being "Do we have to steal wider in a super high roller because chips are worth more?"