I think 22-25 people were left, field was 600 or so entries. No reads on villain at the time of hand.

UTG: (24 bb)
LJ: (50 bb)
HJ: (24 bb)
CO: (53 bb)
BU: (18 bb)
SB : (21 bb)
BB (Hero): (35 bb)

Pre-Flop: (120) Hero is BB with A♠ 6♠
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, SB calls 0.5bb, BB shoves

Only dynamic was 10 hands ago SB had limped and folded to my 3.5bb iso.

My question is, should we jam here or check back pre? I think that raising non all in is bad because we can't call any jam from villain and as such we're throwing away the equity of our hand.

I find myself in these spots a lot, and I think at ~15bb or under effective it's a clear jam, but at what stack depth do we start to check back and play flops with A6s?

Thanks

Check back and let good things happen post
Ripping ore just lets V play perfectly instead of getting stuck with worse post

The fact that you post that hand indicates that check was the right play in that particular instance but shove has to be OK. V limp/folding earlier is also an argument for checking, we should expect him to trap after that, but it's tough to have a good enough hand to trap with.

I mean, the thing is if SB open-shoves we have to call so shoving ourself has to be decent.

Don't see how 20bb jam vs a limp with 3bb in the middle is more +EV than making a normal 3.5x-4x open BvB or just checking it back and playing some postflop poker

Jamming here just implies you don't like playing postflop. What were you hoping would happen?

I would recommend checking back sometimes and raising to 4x sometimes. You have position and should be able to take advantage of that in both cases.

If you always do one thing in this spot, astute players will figure that out and play closer to optimally against you (in this case, if you mostly check back then SB's will complete wider). By mixing it up, you get to surprise people. At least thats what I try to do.

What I don't do is shove here. Not enough to gain for the risk. In the case of limpers I tend to raise based on the number of limpers and effective stack size, with an extra x if I will be playing out of position. If that would put me over 30% of the effective stack size, then I shove pre-flop. I also try to limit my 3bet shoves to between 6x and 10x the original raise.

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

Yes, it definitely "feels" like too many bb to rip over his limp. I don't think I would've iso'd to 3x or whatever there, simply because competent villains will have a limp/shove range at this stack depth and it's a real shame to have to fold the hand to this action.

I think checking back definitely has merit if for no reason other than the fact that it vastly reduces variance in a spot where ripping is +cEV, but there many very well be more highly +$EV uses for my chips in the future.

I am, however, quite curious as to the stack depth at which we're supposed to be shoving here. It's a bizarre spot, because if villain just ripped it pre we'd be somewhat hard pressed to find the fold button, no? I can't say I would've called in game, but if he had, say, 15bb and jammed, I'm never folding. Also, at what stack depths are we always ripping over his limp? For an extreme example, if he had 10bb, aren't we happily ripping it over his limp? He simply can't be dealt enough trapping hands for it not to be massively +EV.

I agree that playing A6s in position post is very attractive, but there's also merit to denying equity to hands like Q9s that he's limping, in my view.

I don't like the risk/reward of jamming pre here. I would definately do it against a recreational player but don't like it without a read.

I think less than 20bb it becomes more standard

mate there's so many people playing a limp-jam strat correctly BvB now at this stack depth that we could be raise folding to a ton of paint/worse. i'm only ever raising to induce a call or as a pure bluff into a tight V with the bottom 5% of range.

ofc jamming here is +EV and perfectly fine also. but checking back keeps some Ax in that range and we can peel at least a flop bet on virtually every texture and still be deep enough to get significant fold equity in play when we feel like getting funky on some spade turns

when you get below a certain stack size and V hits anything on the flop, you will have zero fold equity on any semi bluffs.

let's say you have A6ss pre it's checked through and the flop comes 842sxx. your opponent has Q4 and leads 1.5BB, you call. with antes there's now 6BB in the pot

the turn comes a 3, 5, 7 or spade (quite decent odds of that happening when you peel). V leads again for 3BB or 1/2 pot. what's the minimum remaining stack that V would fold when you semi-bluff shove/commit?

If you started with 10BB and V has committed 5.5BB he/she is never folding. they sigh-gii.

If you started with 15BB and V has committed 5.5BB it's really borderline and V-dependent. someone calls the clock, then they sigh-gii or sigh-fold.

If you started with 20BB and V has committed 5.5BB you have some significant fold equity.

So imho it's a clear limp at 20BB and I'd probably stop mucking around and shove at 15BB.

With all due respect I'm not sure what your point is.

You raise way too tight vs SB limps then and seem to have MUBS when you get l/rr BvB. You should be raising upwards of 35% of vs a SB limp.

I didn't say raise/fold. I also suggested checking it back. So I'm agreeing with you!

OP potentially getting bluffed is his problem, he needs to look at some preflop GTO trees if that's the case. And in case you're wondering, A6s is essentially a mixed strat either check it back or raise/call in that environment. So exactly what I suggested in the first place.

Jamming 20bb to win 3bb is just bad. It's +EV, so what? Is it the highest EV way to play the hand? Hell no IMO. If you wanna take a stab at proving otherwise, please do so.

Lol, your first post looked like it was advocating a raise/fold line so I’m glad we agree.

cool the aggro just a little tho OK? running GTO lines against your average live $350 punter is a little problematic in that they think GTO stands for Gerald the Octopus and in reality we’re still running into value heavy ranges too often. PIO is cool for $25k live and $500 online scenarios where people play close to GTO tho for sure.

I have no problem r/f with 21 bb effective here in a $320 tourney.

Even if their range is AT/77+ (which in itself is somewhat unlikely) it is a huge win for us.

I doubt anybody is limp/shoving KQ/KJ/QJ etc in a $320. They are much more likely to shove KQ here for 21 bb's than limp/shove IMO.

Again, thanks for the replies all. This is exactly the sort of discussion I wanted to engage in by posting the hand here.

Just to be clear, this was a $320 online, not live.

For what it's worth, I think a lot of regs are taking the limp/shove line at this stack depth with exactly those sorts of hands. With pocket pairs and broadways in the SB here, I'm playing the spot mixed (and rolling to see what I'll do), but with a heavy preference toward limp shoving if I perceive the opponent to be even mildly aggressive. I eliminate limp shoving at shallower stack depths, however.

I say this to say that I think that raise folding A6s here has a very real risk of being owned by his paint cards that limp shove, and that I disagree with the idea that nobody is limp shoving hands like QJ in a $320--at the very least, I'm actively doing it.

Thanks for the advice.

I've only played online for the last several months so that's where I'm coming from.

Never mind...

For some reason I thought this was a live $320. The extra $20 should have tipped me off.

Oh that makes a huge difference. Eggs may have some insight into what PIO says about shoving pre at 10BB 15BB 20BB etc, but intuitively I’d expect 15BB for the reasons I mentioned above.

I'd be happy to run a preflop tree and report the results.

PIO+rented server is my one expensive shiny toy I own and it's my pleasure to show it off.

These trees are MASSIVE and take forever to run so I'll just drop them in piecemeal

Unless you're sure that vill is playing a 100% limp strat from SB...Jam > c/b > 3.5x/c. Never r/fing any Ax bvb w ~20bbs eff. Vs the limp strat you can mix jam/check back but mostly jam.

A really good SB limp strat will prob make you close to indifferent vs a limp/jam if u iso but it's never gonna be a fold preflop.

OK guys I ran a 20bb tree.

Tree Structure:


SB Limp-Jam-Open-Fold Strat:


BB Strat vs SB Limp:


So a few things:

-I personally need to really work on my SB BvB game; I'd have opened or jammed several pure limps

-BB have very few viable 20bb shoves; essentially 22-55 (our weakest pairs) and A2o-A9o (our weakest offsuit Ax)

-Think the polarization of our BB raise vs limp strat is really interesting

-A6s in particular is a pure open to 4bb

- I haven't shown the SB l/j strat nor the BB response, but BB has no open/folds except for the polarized portion of his range

- I think there's a little bit of noise still, but these should be quite accurate; they're trained on 177 flop subsets and ran down to an exploitability of 1.5bb/100 hands, which I'm told should make for very accurate results

Will reply more later but for now I don't want to forget--quick thoughts:

1. So very bizarre to me that AA for the SB is a pure r400, and that the limping rate goes up as we descend from KK down to 66. It doesn't seem to make much sense to me. An important followup Q: does PIO allow for SB to limp AA and then merely flat a BB raise? This is something I've done with AA in the SB vs. aggro opponents.

2. The BB strat of raising with the trashiest hands makes sense, and I'm glad to see something I do in game be validated with PIO--I typically make it 3.5x or so with really bad hands in the BB vs. a SB limp, figuring that that approach has to outperform checking, but was always wondering in the back of my mind if I was secretly spewing.

3. PIO seems to advocate raise/calling from the BB with hands like KTo or QJs, but I can't say that vs. population I feel particularly great about implementing this, as I think their limp/jam range is far from correct. I would typically check these back or raise/fold in game. Tough spot in game for sure.

This is where I'm ignorant, for I have no firsthand experience with PIO. I don't want to derail the thread away from strategy too much, but could you explain the 177 flop subset part? What constitutes a "subset" here? I assume this isn't the same as 177 individual flops, as there's 50C3=19600 total flops--I imagine many of the flops can be bucketed, though.

The exploitability part is new to me but seems fairly intuitive.

Hey Angel, I'll type out some responses in a bit (and continue w/ our PM convo as well!) but just wanna drop this here regarding the flop subsets:

https://www.piosolver.com/blogs/news...the-whole-game

It's a really interesting exercise. And yes the flops can be bucketed--just read the link.

Won't have time to fully respond till later though.

great thread

@eggs - what are the specs on your rented PIO server ?