Hero is in 6th place with $100 to 10th and $1.7k to winner. Pay jump to 9th is $30, and I believe the tournament uses the standard Stars payout structure. Average stack was around 500k at the time.

SB is chip leader and has been fairly active in the last couple orbits, with a couple 3b bluffs and one cold 4b/fold from BB just a couple hands prior to this. His sizing has then been similar to this hand.

Hero raised last CO and folded to a 3b from BTN. I hadn't been very active with 3b, and mostly been stealing the blinds in good spots.

Poker Stars, $5 Buy-in (6,000/12,000 blinds, 1,500 ante) No Limit Hold'em Tournament, 5 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

SB: 1,102,598 (91.9 bb)
BB: 167,444 (14 bb)
MP: 408,960 (34.1 bb)
Hero (CO): 215,599 (18 bb)
BTN: 183,818 (15.3 bb)

Preflop: Hero is CO with 8 8
MP folds, Hero raises to 25,200, BTN folds, SB raises to 66,000, BB folds, Hero?

Should we have open shoved, or is raising to prefer? As played, do we shove or fold?

I don't love the spot. SB kinda commits himself to the pot against both me and the shorter BB. Is this usually a strong hand when a reg makes this 3b size instead of just shoving?

Its ok to raise gii/call 66> in this spot.

You could open shove it's prolly the lower variance route raise/call is fine aswell

With less than 20bb for me is a shove or a fold. Do your ICM mat first and then don't worry You have 0 post flop play against SB and BB is so short that if he decides to play is gonna probably raise shove. Now facing the reraise from SB you don't have much fold eq cause you will be giving him great odds if you shove and calling is really bad cause you gonna have left less than the pot.

Raise/Gii i meant or call if he shoves .

Totally dig shoving - my feeling however is instead of shoving I raise gii with 100% that way I can induce with my mobster hands with squeeze happy dolts whom are yet to act.

Shoving is pointless, you're not making him fold any better hands. He's still snapping you with 99.

Way better to just raise and widen his range. However if you do raise you have to go with it 100% of the time.

Yes make sense, so basically is a delay shove, no matter the flop? Cause otherwise if we are playing for the set then is better folding

Thanks for all the replies! I was pretty confident that raise/gii was the best play. My only doubt was that there were so many short stacks left, and that ICM played a bigger part.

disagreed.

Shoving is not pointless , if we shove and get villain to fold hands like KQs/ KJs/QJs/ATs that's actually a good thing , as 8s does not really play well against that range plus the added bonus of having fold equity.

so ya by r/c we have no fold equity and we're not doing as well as you may think we are.

Exactly.

also someone with this stack can often just call and shove atone of flops into you and you won't have a clue what to do.

Have you seen villain make any 3b shoves in similar spots before this hand? It's really important here to try and think about whether he always makes this type of 3b or is more inclined to shove the weaker parts of his 3b range.

The other side of the coin being that when we shove we don't give aggressive opponents the chance to spaz with 22-77, A8-A2 & any other jazz with one card 8 or lower. Most of the time those hands won't call a 18 BB shove.

I think standard opening is better than open shoving in this spot.

To me the mistake is before. Who cares of his 3bet range? With 88 you have 10.5% of flopping a set and 87% of flopping any avercard. You just can't play post flop with 88 and 18bb. Shove or fold

It's not that often you'll be dealt a pocket pair though. 8s does not really play well against a wider range as i mentioned previously , there's going to be more combo's of hands which villain may shove which will be 2 over cards rather then a pair vs pair match up , its still ev+ to open shove in this spot. Fold equity is so important , even if that means hero's shove makes villain fold the bottom part of their range , getting the middle part of their range to fold is good too!

Yeah, all of this, they only call 30% of the time so I think pockets is right in this spot.

you can't be exploited with 18bb's.

If you think that one of the 3 remaining players will call your all in with 99+, AQ+, KQ there is a 17.8% chances that they have it. And against that range you have 36.5% eq . That means that 82.2% of the times you'll Win the blinds and antes. And of the rest 17.8% of time you gonna still win 36.5% of the times. All this make shoving a +ev play of $13.160

The argument isn't about whether shoving is profitable or not.

That's what denker asked. If he should've shove pre or if raising was ok. My answer is: I would shove pre because is profitable. R/F it's ok but it doesn't really matter if you have 88 or Q9 cause is just a stealing attempt.

It's nowhere near a steal attempt and the majority of the time it's not a r/f.

The only other option is 4bet shove knowing that he is gonna call. I really don't see another option if is not putting all the money in preflop . What would you do?

This so much. We aren't seriously r/f vs an active chipleader here, are we?

And imo the only reason to shove > r/c is if ICM pressure is really high (doesn't seem that bad here).

Thanks. Finally someone that sees how easy it is. If you are ICM scare just fold. Otherwise shove. With 18bb on the CO it's gonna looks so much as a steal that you gonna get call with anything. And if you just raise is just a delay shove

How can that be so. Can someone maybe do the icm thing please?.


We have a pretty bad stack to be raising here on the bubble period in most circumstances. My guess would be that we need something like jj/qq at least considering hero's chip position or current (share of the prizepool)

maximum investment is $20 dollars, so passing the bubble is 5X buy ins which seems like a pretty significant jump. Not to mention payouts are top heavy raise calling off seems like really bad.

Even if we are pretty good favorite vs their range. And given the stack sizes behind us, we have a really bad stack to attempt a steal. The reason is that in today's game the shorter stacks will often shove putting us in a horrible icm spot. Here a call will cripple us and even though we may be ahead of their range and know that they are light, icm will not allow us to raise call in fact it will be -$ev and probably not close.

The same way the smaller stacks can 3b shove light and we cannot do anything about it so to can the huge chip leader do the same thing with almost any two. Even if he doesn't do this and the other short stacks are weaktight. Very often someone with this much of a lead will defend and basically leverage their stack and apply max pressure postflop. 88 does not play well on the majority of flops and you will basically be guessing in the dark as to whether you are still ahead or not. And raise folding sucks b/c in today's game we are inducing from worse too often and having to fold vs a range your ahead of blows.

Would do it myself but I'm stil kindof icm noob and can't seem to get it working without more info and for rebuy. I did approximate this condition if it were 4 left in a one table sng and it basically said like jj+. Infact it was a shove, but surprisingly barely making the cut. And if it's saying it's a fold in that instance it has to be much more pronounced with more buy in's at stake and a very topheavy price pool.

Being on the bubble here and the payouts makes this not "the majority of the time"



This being said, I do think there is a large chance he is just trying to take advantage of the situation with a bigstack and 3betting with two napkins.
I hear a lot of posters say how horrible it is to 3b fold b/c of the potodds on a call facing a final shove. However, our stack can make a significant dent to his and there is often more fold equity than you think.