Online 4 left of 190. Blinds are 15,000/30,000 3000

UTG(570,000)=Villian
Button (275,000)=Hero
SB (130,000)
BB (950,000)


Villian has been solid. With maybe one exception he called my All in pre from UTG +1 with 6 players left from his BB, he was chip leader at the time and i was the short stack but the double up made me chip leader so it was still a hefty amount. I had AKo he called with Q10 diamonds and I held up. I guess that could be considered loose or a decent gamble, not sure? We played at the table for a while, but it was late and I forgot most of the hands that went down.

Hand in question:

Blinds posted. Villian raises 490,000. Hero on Button has AQss. IS this kind of situation a snap call? snap fold? is it a break even-my decision? Should i be waiting for spots where I can use fold equity?

Being Online his particular raise is usually a read for me, with that being said I still have a top hand. Do we want to win? Yes. Do we want to come in at least 3rd? Also Yes.

Not even close to a snapfold with 4bb stack in, also villains action suggest a range that makes it even more so a fold

OK so you're saying this is a tank fold? Just curious, what if he played pretty wide & aggressive in general?

All in

This feels like a close spot with the shorty but I think I still call it off.

Im not an ICM genius but I know Payouts for 4th-1st are necessary to calculate ICM considerations.

Arguments for calling include:

You aren't going to get many great shove spots 4 handed with the shorty on your left and the top stack in the BB when you have the button.

AQss is a monster 4 handed.

After the blinds hit you, your fold equity is going to go down considerably.

Its +cEV call. "You play to win the game" Herm Edwards

Reasons for folding

I dont think UTG is supposed to shove a super wide range into the CL's BB.

You noted him as tight and solid.

Icm makes you play pretty tight but aqs is getting it in

You must be hating money but that's ok

Considering the stacks I just don't think anyone would be pretty wide here, but in general as long the shorty is in you don't want to get involved in any spots besides you opening it up or holding QQ/AKs+ (TT/AKo+ when feeling adventurous)

I didn’t run the sim but your stack isn’t worth that much from what i see and if he’s shoving Nash aqs should still be +ev even with icm
But anyways icm is for nits and it’s probably cheeseburger stakes anyway who gives a f between 300 and 975

I snap.

Ya the stakes were double that but yes who gives a F that’s why I called. Higher the stakes the more likely I’ll fold. I did just win a $1,000 worth in satellite tickets so hopefully I’ll have a chance to get out of these cheeseburger patties and fold this hand.

Alright you taking this one home. Please keep playing "Nash" champ

(nevermind it isn't even a pf shove but yeah who cares arguing with ******s on the Internet over a randoms hand)

Top of range = call at this stack depth. The real question is what would you do with AJ,KQ,AT s/o icm is impt now esp if it is top heavy

Ok thanks for the input. So lets just say you have a read on villian and you know he has a pocket pair 22-JJ. Do you still call?

If I know it's a flip, my snap goes into a fold.

I snap, because short handed, I believe there are hands I have dominated. Know some have me dominated, but he could have A-J, A-10, A-9 suited, K-Q, and random garbage, in addition to things that have me dominated and things that I am flipping against. If I saw pair of 7's in his hand, I lean towards a fold and wait till I can be aggressor.

Thanks, this helps.

Hi Snowmanvil, I hope you don't take the below as condescending as that is not the intention here but this is a common mistake. You actually can't 'know' V has a pp 22-JJ because the cards are dealt facedown. As such if you hear someone at a casino or homegame say: 'I knew he had xyz' you can label them as a fish because its actually physically impossible to 'know'. Additionally there is 6 possible ways to be dealt any pp and 16 possible ways to be dealt a non pp, so from a probability and combinatorics point of view your opponent is nearly 3x more likely to be holding a non pp then a pp.

Instead what we do is calculate /run range aggregations based on a myriad of factors including position, player profiles, stacksizes etc and calculate the equity our hand has vs that range and let that guide our decisions. So thats what we would do here, when calculating ranges you are better off being inclusive and starting wide because then you can have every scenario accounted for and not have your opponent show up with a hand that you didn't input into your range, so your better off including rather than excluding when it comes to putting hands in your opponents range.

So as a starting point I would assign V: 44+,AT+,KQ then pull up equilab / ICMIZER and just sit there crunching / running sims to see how the various parts of our range fair and what effect ICM plays.

I havn't actually done the sims (someone feel free) but im guessing based on past studying.

CALL: AK,AQ,AJ, 88+
DECIDE: KQ,77,66 (based on in-game factors, payouts and ICM)
FOLD: AT,KJ,55-

In poker everything happens at some frequency, so when we range V at the above range we are saying he has all of those hands at the same time (think of quantum mechanics and the double slit experiment of the electron being two places at the same time and only the act of observing results in a static value.)

Also payouts is super impt here.. flat payouts will be different to top heavy and this effects how ICM is calculated. Did you have any info on the payouts or think about this before making your decision?

I hope this makes this spot a bit clearer, if not let me know any Qs, il be happy to help out

Thanks for the insight. I like your analogy. When I asked the question, I think i was trying to figure out how ICM would factor in if I was "50/50". Like if i had a 50% chance to win this pot at this moment, should i take that gamble considering the short stack next to me. But i get your stance that I just cant know I'm actually 50/50. And I guess its all relative to the stakes. Yes i did factor the payouts into this decision and that's why I called cuz it wasnt a huge deal.

Results were he had JJ and held up. So i felt good in that at least I wasn't dominated and I was flipping.

Nice run, 4th is all good!