I was playing a brick and mortar tournament last night: (I divided this up when I got home)

I had about 28 BB left
He had about 16 BB left

I have pocket eights on the button and raise with intention of calling this kid's shove. He looked ready and most likely had two high cards, making me a likely favorite.

He shoves, I call. He shows KQo.

Note-I was willing to gamble a bit. Even though I had the second biggest stack at my table, the biggest stack had me massively outchipped (and was good) and I knew I was going to have to get closer to his size to stand a chance of winning the tournament overall.

Now the Nash Charts:
Link for the shove/fold, call/fold Nash Equilibrium Tables

http://justplaypoker.net/2009/07/nash-equilibrium-sage/

My interpretation of the chart for calling (2nd chart) is that the big blinds remaining of the smallest stack had to be 20BB+ for me to make that call.

The part that confuses me (if I have not already screwed up) is that the 20+ goes all the way from 33 to AA. To be damn sure it is not saying fold aces to a shove if the effective BB for the stacks is not 20+.

Could someone help clarify this mess for me? I have got to be missing something.

Thanks

It shows how much BB can you call for.

For example if you have T8s you should only call if effective stack is 9.3 or less BB. If its more you should fold. If you have AA you can call more then 20BB.

+20 means you can call when the smallest stack has up to and OVER 20BB.

As in,,,,with AA, are you suggesting you should not call a 10BB shove?

Pretty sure he's not...





grrrrrr, meant to quote,,,but added this as an edit. sorry for stepping on yer toes, ninja.:
of course not, ninja. Just pointing out that AA and his 88 both have the same +20.....and to extrapolate using a different way to look at his example

This is not entirely true. Nash equilibrium is one of the most commonly mis-understood concepts in tournament poker. To quote Wikipedia, a game is in Nash equilibrium "if each player has chosen a strategy and no player can benefit by changing his or her strategy while the other players keep theirs unchanged." It assumes that each player knows the strategies of the other players, which is one of the farthest things from true in the case of poker.

Basically, the Nash tables show the maximum stack depth at which your opponent cannot, over all hands, "benefit by changing his or her strategy" if your strategy is to open shove that hand in addition to all the other hands you would open shove at that depth. They don't say anything about whether its a +cEV idea to shove that hand.

Exactly. The call chart is only correct if the shover is slavishly using the push chart.

Game theory assumes all players are rational and always act in their best interest, which for human players is not always a sensible assumption.

There's a nice chapter in Easy Game which points out the difference between game theory optimal and practically optimal strategies - in summary: you are playing people, not robots, and people do not always follow the script.

I'm not sure I fully understand the push/fold charts, but the way I tend to use them when I'm considering calling is to look at the effective stack size, and then see which hands have a figure that is higher than that.
In your example, the effective stack was 16bb. If villain shoves 16bb, then you can call with any hand that is rated 16+. It is theoretically profitable to call with all suited aces and 33+ (20+), A3o+ (16.6), K8s+ (17.6), K9o+ (17.1), Q9s+ (16.1), QJo+ (19.5) and JTs (18).
It would not be correct to call with pocket deuces, because the figure there is 15. You'd only call with 22 if villain had 15bb or less. If villain was way down on 8bb, then your calling range would include hands like T9o and J7s. Although those hands seem like junk, if villain only had 8bb, then he should be shoving J7o.