It was the live session, buy-in €30+€10, re-buy on first 3 levels, one add-on before level#4, 40 players, 6th places paid. My total investment is €100.

All V's in this hand play very basic form of poker, i.e. they don't care about their stack size, no one of them 3-bets, they love to play with any Ace, etc.

We are on level#4, no antes in play, no re-buys allowed anymore.
LJ with ~25BB raises 2.5BB
HJ with ~25BB calls 2.5BB
CO folds
BTN with ~30BB calls 2.5BB
SB folds
Hero on BB with ~25BB and has 32o - the worst possible hand.
But...Pot odds are now 6 : 1. This is huge. And OTF I will be certain whether to play with this hand or not. 6 : 1 is a very good price for such an oppotunity.

But...should hero fold given the table dynamics, stack sizes and position?

Yes, fold. 32o does not have the equity to continue. You are OOP and will fold more often than 5/6.

I am not sure about that. First of all pot odds preflop are 6:1, so the big blind defense should work only 14% of times. And here is the statistic that shows that 32o hits the flop(meaning that I would check-call or check-raise OTF) 20% of times.


So, it seems to be profitable call at the first glance...but indeed even if 32o hits gs or oesd, it still can lose...Hence, we need good implied odds. max pot I can win in this hand is my stack + pot size pre = 33BB, so the max implied odds are 33BB : 1.5BB or 22 : 1..also looks OK.

This is why I doubt whether it's fold or not...

The hand is not over OTF. At best (discounting the low% of 2 pair or straight flops) you will have bottom pair. You will be facing 2 streets of RIO, counterfeiting, or just being behind. Even 2 live over cards have decent equity and you are OOP the rest of the way.

You may occasionally catch a good situation, but long term everyone loses money in the BB. Playing hands from the bottom 20% will only accelerate your losses.

Okay, thanks for the detailed reply. Here is how this hand processed:
Hero calls
Flop(10.5BB) : J45 rainbow - we hit OESD!
BB(Hero) checks, LJ checks, HJ bets 5.5BB, BTN Folds.

Hero shoves ~23BB. LJ folds. HJ calls with A5o(really?)

And OESD does not complete on the river..

Anyways, does push look OK here?

Just past the rebuy period? No. In a low stakes (40 euros) MTT you never have as much FE as you think. BTW, his call might have been influenced by a live read. Just sayin'

Calculation says the FE that is required to make this shove break-even is just 18%. It does not seem to be huge, even for 40 euros buy-in.

Belongs in small stakes or beginners

Also...let's say that BB applies the following HU post-flop strategy with hands like 32o, 43o, 54o and 65o :
He shoves with gs or oesd and folds otherwise.
V calls with middle pair+top kicker or better and folds otherwise.
I put this parameters to CREV and it says that this strategy is +EV on a long run, here is the screenshot:

It depends on V range indeed and I gave him very wide 30% range.
And indeed it depends on the pot size post-flop. Dead money makes this strategy profitable, here is the corresponding plot:


so it's not me, it's the math that says that this strategy is profitable on a long run.

18% is not often and I'm not saying it's impossible that you sometimes get a fold, but when a guy bets into 3+ people he's usually not going to fold for an allin that's a little bit more. Unless he's just betting no pair no draw for no reason, you're probably getting called.

If you could play perfectly obviously you can defend here, but in practice it's just hard to realise your equity (if it comes 842 you're definitely folding to a bet, but you're also folding a bunch of equity vs AA). Also, I don't know why you're analyzing a 4way pot with headsup ranges. Math only works to prove things if you use the correct input.

Also you should consider that even if it's +EV you bust a lot here which denies you opportunity to get into more profitable spots later.

The table would have to be pretty bad to make this +Cev. If they are that bad, we will surely find better spots that are even more +Cev. I guess, if this was cash, you might make the call thinking you are +ev, but in a tournament, there is no combination of bad skill by opponents that make this a call.

Multiway pot decision tree in CREV quickly becomes quite complex to build and analyse, so I replaced it with HU pot considering that:
0) In actual hand before I shoved, there were only 3 players including me as one of V's folded.
1) it's was HU pot in the end.
2) I set up super-wide calling range of V OTF based on what V did in the actual hand: (mid pair + top kicker or better = 34%)! It's super wide. I assume it should be a good replacement of the multiway pot when one of 2 V's will call.

Ok I'm not sure what's going on, but something somewhere must be different from how I understand things. I make the following assumptions:

- We c/shove when flopping an openender, pair + gutter and two pair+. Of course when it comes A54 or 222 we're not going to shove but for clarity's sake let's simplify to only c/shove.

- We gain a little bit of equity because sometimes it comes K72 and everything checks 3 streets and our pair of 2s wins, or we pick up two pair/trips on the turn to win, etc. We lose some equity because if we flop our best hands (222, 333, 332, etc) it'll check through a higher % and it'll be harder to get someone to pay off because we crush the board so hard.

- We don't have any medium strength c/c's with this particular hand because we fold every bottom pair to a flop bet.

- Sometimes two people get involved before you, your FE drops to zero and you must shove even less often.

According to your chart, flopping two pair + is about 4%, openender is 3% and pair + gutter/openender is 2.5%. This means we're folding over 9/10 times facing a bet, and with this range I'd venture to guess our equity doesn't do that much better than breaking even considering we will always have the worst 2 pair, worst kicker on trips, etc. This is normally not too relevant, but these guys are in there with A3o etc so it matters some. We need a bunch of fold equity where there is probably hardly any when someone bets into 3 players and gets good pot odds on our shove.

I think your specific shove on K54 might even be too light, villain will almost always call, have a pair that leaves you with max 8 outs (covering the A more frequently than other cards) or a better draw which has you in horrible shape as well. But if we don't shove the 54x flops we c/f even more frequently.

You frontshoved in your simulation. This gives you more fold equity, but less money won when you win the hand. Your 34% calling range is not a good replacement for a multiway pot, because 3 people calling 12% of the time each will greatly increase the average strength you're up against compared to the best 34% of the CO range. It's a lot easier to draw out on Q5 on 542 than it is to draw out on 54 or AA. Same is true for if you check/shove over a bet, the fact that they bet makes their range less than 100% of the hands they're involved with.

I think that this is the key. In this specific table V's love Aces, they gladly flat pre with Ax offsuit etc...This should be taken into account when making the decision because Ace is the paramount part of our strategy and multiple V's block aces quite often.
thanks for your time and patience! The case is closed.