Hero is shortest stack at the table ($75) and UTG +1.

Villain is drunk off his ass and shoves $200 UTG without checking his cards.

What range does hero shove with?

I shoved with A9o because I’m a table games dealer and I actually know that against one player this is an Ultimate Texas Hold ‘Em problem and that any ace, most kings, and any pair are a favorite against two random cards.

But I didn’t adjust nearly enough for the players behind me, think table has nine chairs but one was empty.

This is actually a fairly interesting problem because of the schooling effect. If the next few players to act have cards good enough to shove with then late position winds up with odds to call with anything remotely resembling a good hand. But if there’s a bunch of folds then only better hands are calling from late position.

I’m also realizing that the chip counts of the other players starts to be a huge factor here. In this situation no one had more than $500, but the presence of two or three players with $1000 or more would still have to play the hand normal-ish and depending what seats they were sitting in can change the math immensely.

This is fun, poker is interesting even if I lost $100 to a pair of 8s.

IME people call off way too tight here so you're unlikely to see even one overcall. A9o does seem fairly borderline with 6 players behind but I think it's fine. Any reasonable strategy prints money here.

My experience is that many people, even drunk, peek at their cards when others aren't looking before declaring, "I'm all in blind. Wow, I have AA. I'm very lucky."

Treat the blind shove like the BB and ask how many BBs do u have? Looks like less than 1. U can use the app snap shove and ur good to shove A9o for sure

If you do that it would literally tell you to shove ATC. It doesn't account for the fact that there's no SB and that there's rake.

If you want to get a range which is probably too tight you can use 2bb starting stack. I just downloaded the app and it has us shoving 40% of hands in a 9-handed game (UTG) at a 2bb stack. So hands as weak as J6s are shoves. I’m surprised, this is a bit wider than I expected. I wonder if the ranges are constructed specifically for tournament poker where each hand played increases the risk of being blinded off?

I don’t want to make a new thread every time I lose a hand but here’s another hand entirely:

I’m in $100 or less everyone has me covered.

Middle position I look at pocket kings and raise to $10, $1/$2 game.

One or two people call.

Flop 89T we’ll say rainbow.

Villain glances at my stack. I have sunglasses on and I had my hand on it and he was very obviously looking at it.

Villain raises to $15, I raise to $30, anyone else still in folds, villain calls.

Turn is a low card, 3 or something, dang I’m missing all the details even though I went to WalMart and bought a few notepads to actually write this stuff down with.

At any rate I raise to $20 on a river that didn’t significantly change anything. The one thing I’m sure of is that he goes all-in. I decide to think for a minute…then look down and realize it’s $35 to me to win a pot of at least $150 and that my decision was made a long time ago.

Sure enough I get shown 2 pair 8s and 9s.

I guess the question would be how much stock should I have put in him looking at my chips, and also, how often do I run in to hands I can beat like JJ and QQ.

U ever play chess?

U know how the 2 components of the game are strategy and tactics?

Same **** in poker.

U wanna play a good strategy or do u wanna focus on tactics?

Tactics will make u more money in the short term, strategy will make u more money in the long term.

Tactics work on bad players, strategy works on everyone.

U wanna know about him looking at your chip stack? U think that’s a tell? U wanna establish a pattern, see if there’s a correlation between the tell and his hand strength. Then u can exploit the tell. That’s a tactic. It will make u lots of money against this guy if u can establish it. But I won’t make u a better strategic player in the long run, and u will real a local maximum if u peruse this line of play. Maybe u Max out the skill tree and become the next Phil Helmuth idk.

U wanna really get good at this game? Focus on strategy. U get good at strategy then nothing matter. U can’t lose. U just jam math down these fishes throats until they choke. Jam a couple hundred K hands online. Focus on fundamentals.

Good luck kemosahbee

play with a full stack and you wont run into these trivial spots that have no value practicing and nothing to learn from

OP is kind of interesting. If last to act trivial call. With entire table left to act I think V's blind all-in is only getting called by hands that mostly dominate you. Would feel a lot better with AJ but I can't see it a huge mistake to call and just ask the dealer to pick you.

Assuming full ring something like any pair, jts+, a2-5s, a8+, kqo will be fine

Playing weaker ax and 22-55 is mostly optional.

If you only have $75 in a loose 1/3 game I would advise that you either pick up your chips and cash out, or rebuy to at least $300. I know that's not what you wanted to hear, but it's better advice than any range advice about calling allin short OOP to a blind shove.

He may have been unwilling or unable to buy more chips, and there's nothing wrong with playing with a short stack. It may not be manly to have less than $300 on the table, but poker isn't about manliness, though many people here seem to think that it is.

The OP didn't want to hear that "advice" anyway. He had an interesting theoretical problem that almost never comes up. People here have an irritating habit of not answering OPs' questions and instead criticizing something irrelevant, like what the OP had for lunch before he played the hand.

To answer the OP's question, he's a significant favorite over two random cards, so he should call. There is, of course, the chance that someone behind him has a better hand, but that's compensated for by having his all-in effectively called in the dark. Also--and no one has mentioned this--some players might call with mediocre hands to try to snap off the $200, which would increase OP's equity as long as those hands were worse than A9.

I've been working on a C++ program to answer this question, and what I can report so far is that programming is hard.

I mean this is now totally off-topic but if you ever wonder why computers have so many bugs, I was trying to write a program that could tell if there was a straight in 7 cards. Simple right? You just sort the hand, and then a straight has to use cards 3, 4, and 5.

This leads to six combos of straights:
Cards 12345 (ie the lowest 5), cards 23456, 34567, 123456, 234567, and 1234567.

Except that's wrong, because a hand like 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8 is a straight but breaks my program.

So then I removed duplicate cards, and there's still a problem, because TJQKA is a straight but I was only checking for A2345.

Details, details, and more details.

Back on track, I'll listen to any well-intentioned advice on anything. But I don't see how not knowing how to play poker well with $300 is significantly different from not knowing how to play poker well with $100. Especially when one of my problems is probably giving up way too easy. As I get more comfortable with what I'm doing I'm sure I'll start playing poker in a more customary manner.

I said what I said because he wanted to play a hand that relies on implied odds to be profitable and was using direct odds. Not understanding the difference is a formula for going broke.

Also, short stacks shouldn't be making high variance plays without rebuy money in your pocket, which his hand is.

Why "shouldn't" players with short stacks make such plays? Maybe he doesn't want to rebuy, for any one of about ten thousand perfectly good reasons? Maybe he's down (say) $225, he's near his loss limit, and wants to take a shot with his remaining money?

I repeat (sigh), the OP wanted an analysis of this situation from an EV standpoint, not some tiresome and uninformed lecture on whether he should have been playing the hand or not. Not understanding that other people may have different goals and motivations than your own is a formula for not only going broke, but being a failure as well.

First of all, this situation is unlikely to come up again. So it's an interesting theoretical exercise rather than anything from which a strategy lesson can be derived.

Second, if you're short stacked, you should welcome any +EV opportunity to double up. This situation is exactly that. It's fallacious to consider that others are yet to act, because that is an unknown and can't be quantified. Also, if other players come in, you move from a possible double-up to a triple- or quadruple-up, which is great for you even if it diminishes your overall chance of winning.

Third, you have to realize that many posters here think that playing with a short stack shows lack of manhood; that you're a novice; that you don't understand the subtle nuances of poker (not the way THEY do); or that you're too broke or too dumb to realize that you can buy more chips. So you have to filter any advice you receive on these forums.

How do you figure? IMO calling standards increase substantially after each call / stack off.

So our expected loss when we get it in vs 100% and TT+,AQ, AK

is about 1/3rd of our stack.

Our expected win when we get it in vs 100% range alone is 21.54% of our stack. So running into a superior hand from behind has to occur 40% or less to justify this stack off imo. Actually it is kind of close, but probably fine once we factor the EOR of the A.

Huh? We can (and should) consider that there are players left to act. We have to be tighter calling the original jam if we're next to act (and still have the rest of the table behind us) than we could if everyone folded to us and we were closing the action. We don't know whether any of the players behind us are interested, but if we assume they'll rejam with a certain range that's mostly ahead of us, we have a much more profitable call if everyone folds to us (i.e., they have nothing) than if we call first to act.

I'd consider providing some amount of programming help/advice. I am not a great coder but I have done some poker stuff before. I have a fully functioning and tested HU equity calculator, for example, which could probably be modified to fit into your program if you provide input/output specifications.

Shortstacking is fine. Playing deep is more profitable if you have a skill advantage over your opponents when deep, but shortstacking has advantages for inexperienced players and players on short rolls. Shortstacking == bad is just advice people parrot without really thinking about it themselves, IMO.

If I get around to it I'll take a look at whatcha got, but as you probably guessed I'm doing this little project more to learn C++ than because it's super valuable at learning how to play poker.

What implied odds are you talking about? It is all in or fold.

A9o is a top 18% hand. Against a random hand (if it is random), it is a comfortable 60/40 ahead. Easy call.

I think you're off on your thinking about your opponents. With your call, they are going to want to have a big pf hand, not any kind of implied odds or marginal hand to play. There aren't any implied odds. Even if the two of you were the UTG and UTG + 1, I doubt anyone is calling without at a minimum a top 10% hand and probably 5%. Half the time with a threshold of 10% they will fold leaving you HU. If someone calls, you're probably in trouble.

It is a good play short stacked. In fact, I'd start making 30-40 pf raises against a bunch of limpers in late position in general.

I too as browni said was willing to help with the c++ till you said you have no real interest in improving your game

good luck