Sorry no HH available but I remember the details well enough.

$30 2R1A on Global, 10 players left. 10th pays $177, 9th paid $215, 3rd is like ~$1300 and 1st was ~$2300; not familiar with the in-between payouts off the top of my head. 5 handed obv.

Blinds are $1500/$3000. I have about 69k and am on the button. SB to my left has the shortest stack of ~$25k; couple others have $50-60k. BB has ~$90k At the other table there are a couple $35k stacks, two $60k stacks, and the CL with over $100k, iirc.

Short/med stacks have been nitting the **** up. I also feel like I have a pretty nittish image going but I've gotten involved enough in spurts for observant players to probably guess I'm stealing with at least some minimal frequency, etc. Big stack in the BB has been the most active, nothing terribly out of line (that we've seen) but def not afraid to put pressure where pressure is due; hasn't had to show down much of anything. (It's also perhaps of note that, earlier, sometime within the past hour or so with 2-3 tables left, when he was CL and I was #2, both ahead of the pack by a large margin, I folded to him twice in spots where I was raised, or didn't cbet and he bet, basically situations where the pot wasn't that big and I just had to let him have it because he was using his position/leverage well, and I had nothing strong, and because he was the only one who could take me out. I felt at the time that he was well-aware of all this and was likely floating/betting much more liberally that otherwise, but I felt fairly handcuffed by the situation and played meekly vs him. But also note that I never/rarely saw his hands so this is just speculation based on frequency.)

So now 10 players left as described, I pick up 75s on the button, villain is BB. Folded to me; I limp.

Note that I'm not really trying to defend this limp much, but if it helps assume this is like 1 time in 10 that I will limp with a weak hand like this on the button in this situation instead of folding or raising. I had my reasons that I don't want to bother listing mostly because I don't want to focus too much on this part of the hand, except to acknowledge that we're not machines, and we often make suboptimal plays for various reasons, and find ourselves in tough spots afterwards. It happens, and because it happens, I think it's still useful to discuss post-bonehead plays.

SB folds, BB/possible bully raises 3x. At this point the pot is $13100 and it's $6k to call, so easy call, imo (leaves me with $60k). This actually felt like a fine outcome for me imo, because I wanted to raise/see a flop but felt there was a good chance he would apply too-much pressure pre on me with a wide range if I open raised on the button; this way I got to see the hand in position against a player with a stack who was now all but compelled to continue being aggressive with a slightly inflated pot on the flop. Although obvious downside for me of not having a lot of chips to get fancy with in any case.

Flop is JJ7, one of our suit. Villain 1/2 pots it into like a $22-23k pot; standard for him. I have about $60k at this point, and am itchin to take a stand. But ICM, final table bubble, etc. Call puts us at $49k and about a $45k-46k pot, although honestly I didn't even seriously consider calling at the time.

Shove? Fold? Call and pot-sized-shove the turn if he checks? I can't decide if caution should win out here or not, or if his range is wide enough/he doesn't have a J or, say, 88+ often enough (assuming he even calls all 88+....?) that I can feel comfortable making a move. Also assuming he might call AK, possibly AQ with a flop/situation like that some percentage of the time.

1st...oh and I find it kinda funny that OP provides extensive background info + history btwn himself and villain but neglects to provide suits of the flop cards? Kinda relevant on a paired board imo...

Call flop... re-eval turn

Oh, my fault. I did say "one of my suit" because I thought that was all that was relevant. Neglected to say "rainbow flop otherwise".

No prob ...vill will potentially have > bluffs on 2-flush boards, which is good for us obv...doesn't change the action tho...still an easy call otf.

Hmm, really. Yeah like I said I didn't even consider calling at the time, I just assumed with stack/potsizes by that point, and with my assumption that he would pretty much be betting the vast majority of turns, that shoving/folding were my two best choices as far as not really getting more useful information anyway and losing some FE/protection against overcards. Plus calling and getting away leaves me with that awkward stack size that I hate. Not sayin you're wrong though.

I do feel like the situation/flop is simple enough though to have a full plan, re: re-eval on turn. Are we calling all or most turns (assuming 50% pot+ bets), or folding if another overcard falls (and what if it's our suit)? Are we checking behind if he does check, in hunker-down-and-protect-my-stack-instead-of-my-hand mode (prob)? I suppose he might think we're trapping if I call but given history I feel like he going to keep attacking on the turn with most of his range.

Curious also to hear thoughts on if we were to discount calling, if shoving or folding would be the worse play. Obv I did one of those things and was wondering if I should've... or now, since it looks like maybe I shouldn't have, how close it was. I just can't decide if one or the other is too obv spewy/nitty given context.

Fold pre

Disclaimer: I don't ever employ this btn limping strat with 20bbs eff (or with any other stack size.) The closest thing I do is limp 100% range in SB during antes w 20-50bbs eff.

That said...I don't hate it in theory and it may be "selectively" employed in spots that satisfy certain variables (namely don't wanna r/f or r/c and we think we will be put to those choices at a high freq.)

I do however, think that IF we do decide to limp btn, it requires that we have an overall strat, where we would be balanced enuf to limp-shove and limp/call when we get shoved over. We should also have a subset of our range that can continue vs smallish BB iso's. Obv we will also have a subset of our range that folds to any size raise. In other words, we need to distribute our hands wisely in order to prevent SB/BB from shoving 35% or BB from iso'ing to 3-3.5x.

This range is not easy to construct...and imo (even under "ideal" circumstances) it prob isn't the best/most EV+ line/strat to employ.

But w/e...we got here, so play the hand. I will say that 75s def has a place in a limping range BUT...it is prob the stone bottom of the subset that can cont. vs a small iso. IMO folding > calling vs the BB 3x, but it's close.

Otf i do believe that we have what will very likely be the only easy decision in this hand. Here's our flop strat from a Sim that I ran. We can discuss the ranges but I gave the aggro BB a 27% iso range and gave hero a ~12% btn limping range (that was somewhat balanced with some of Axs and a low freq ATo and AJo.)



I can understand OP's trepidation RE calling the flop but there are some good reasons to do so:

1. We are not committed, nor are we committing ourselves to calling future bets. We will have 49.5k after calling the cbet (which means we have only committed ~28% of our stack.)

2. While our overall equity hasn't improved much (from pre to flop) BB still has a ton of air. Below is breakdown of BB's range otf. Notice that ~67% of it is 3rd pair or worse*:

*vill is cbetting ~77% freq.

3. It's not necessary to shove this combo for protection since there aren't many draws and we can get to SD a decent % of the time by calling. Our calls are protected by our J8s+; QJo; KJo combos.

4. After his cbet is called, villain will most likely shut down since the SPR ott will be only 1.2.

The plan for turns is pretty simple, assuming villain uses the only 2 bet sizes that make any sense (in the Sim a gave 30% and shove.) I think 25% on some turns makes some sense too. Vs the shove we always cont. (on any card) when we pick up a BDFD and on any 2-7; J; and mix vs Qx. Vs the 25-30% sizing we cont. on almost any turn, mixing only on Tx.

RE your question about a shove/fold strat otf...i just don't think it makes much sense on this texture since we do have a decent amt of 7x/medium strength hands. If those are the only 2 options then shove >>> fold with this combo since we do have a BDFD and vill will have to call his better Ax combos at min defense freq.

Moral of the story imo: use a less-complex strat

Excellent analysis, thank you.

I mean if I'm being honest what really happened is I tried to sneak in a ****ty hand during a long period of inactivity, hoping that with the nitty table I might be able to play it like I'm trapping, but also was just scared of that guy. HIs raise was not wanted or ideal but I cont. on, using the well-known "naw **** this guy" play. On the flop he bet, I shoved without even really thinking it through, he snap called with AJ, and I've hated myself ever since.

For years I've been comfortable with Harrington/Sklansky shove guidelines, but I think I don't really have a solid game when I find myself at that awkward stage where I'm not desperate enough to shove too marginally yet but don't really have enough chips to splash around like I like to (with 75s. And such.). That period is usually over pretty quickly given the speed at which the blinds rise in the tourneys I play, but still, it has to hurt my game some.

I think I had (have?) it in my head that if my stack = ~pot-sized bet, then I'm committed if I have anything at all to want to continue. This prob makes more sense for something like a stop and go play on the flop, but for more complex hands on later betting rounds, it's probably... well, more complex...? I guess...?

Anyway. Rambling a bit. Again, thanks for the analysis. I think I need to really examine my game with this kind of stack size. Even back in the day I never got familiar with perfect frequency play using HUDs, and after not being able to play for so long I'm still catching up on all the available analysis tools/methods that are much more commonplace these days.

this

Because you dont seem very confident in that type of spot. try not to get cute on a FT bubble with a 75ss limp otb. just saying... imho. Cheers and gg tho

Also this. BTW very in depth analysis coach. How much did you OP for that pretty good work?

Yeah, pretty much, and usually what I would do. But at the same time I want to get more comfortable in this type of spot rather than just always continuing to avoid them.

While I'm thinking of it, anybody know of any good centralized discussions/threads/books/etc that specifically focus on modern tournament strat (with smaller standard bet sizing, etc) with a focus on these kind of dwindling-but-not-desperate-stack-size situations? Although there was kind of a lot going on here besides stack size; it was also a 5 handed game and a final table bubble situation, and a big stack/bullyish BB. But still. All of the above.

After a long hiatus from the game I'm in the process of rereading some of my old favorites, mainly Harrington and Sklansky/Malmuth books, also reading the Modern Harrington book for the first time. But literally the only "dwindling" guidelines I remember/go by are 1) old Daniel N. small ball rules in the vein of "stop raising your ****ty one-gappers and such if the size starts to approach 10% of your stack"; 2) Harrington M zones, i.e.: "as your M falls below 10-12 or so maybe stop playing low PP, especially early, but once M falls to 6 or so look for good spots to start shoving them again"; and 3) Some random forum post I read and bookmarked once (it sounded solid) talking about how (assuming antes) "when your BB falls into the 15 - 20 or maybe 25 range, look for good reshove opportunities, for instance vs steal raises with something like either medium Ax or perhaps something like 87s depending on how likely it is you think you'll get called." (Does that all still seem sensical/solid? Might have lowballed the M numbers for stopping PP play.)

But these are all preflop adjustments. I feel like I understand preflop and postflop play pretty well in general (pre solver analysis), and the more broad stoke tournament strats as well (have studied and done fairly well over a sample size of several thousand games over the years), but when it comes to nuanced postflop play with a shallower stack I obviously start to stumble. I'd like to really brush up my conceptuals re: some of these type of nuanced spots if anybody has any good recommends.

Also, anyone know if is there a good solver for Linux machines? Never really foxed with one of those before (RIP Pokerstove). Rather not delve into Wine if it can be helped.

He OP'd a LOT.

How much did you charge OP* ahaha love that sense of humour