youd be surprised at what people call shoves with. ATo might call a shove and a 3xBB raise exactly the same, and id rather get all their chips in.

Okay, but no distributions of opponents play as wide against a shove as they do against a good raise.

What is this forum's problem with good advice anyway?

You honestly think openshoving is bad when close to half of the remaining players to act have close to 10effBBs, and are basically in push/fold mode PrF?
Even using OPs eff CSI, and assuming we never get called by the SB, (SBs CSI, and calling freq. changes this range slightly) we can optimally openshove top 9% (66+, AQ+, ATs+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs+) of hands. Opening ~2.5x std is fine also, but our open/calling range=our openshoving range here, and while AKs does have high SD value, we also dont mind getting all folds either.
I dont see how you can debate one being better than the other in this spot, barring some awesome reads on the majority of the players left to act.

We can't "optimally" open shove anything if there are better lines to take (2.5xing or so). Also, we have 8 players to act behind us, 4 of who cover us. So yes, we do play our stack size here. Of course we do.

What is "CSI" btw?

Shove your chips in pre-flop since you remove the disadvantage of being out of position post flop (you cant be outplayed now) & you only have 11bb's anyways once you factor in the antes.

We have 18.5 bbs, because our stack is 18.5 times the big blind.
If you want to use numbers that are adjusted to ante size, but don't use already existing terminology ("big blind").

If we raise 2.5x here and get a caller from out of the blinds, we have about 2xPSB in our stack - not exactly super short.

Pretty sure you're not completely understanding optimal, given your first sentence. Openshoving that range at our depth, cannot be exploited.
My openshoving range given, is using our stack as effective.
CSI=Chip Stack Index; ie stack/PrF pot.
Im def not debating which line (2.5xing, openshoving) is better; just saying they both can be effective.
If we have some reads of some players who call light, or reshove light,etc..etc..I think we could debate the better line. But in isolation, I dont see how we can.

I'm pretty sure I understand what optimal is in a GT sense. But that's not really what you're doing, is it? Maybe you're trying to first come up with a play (shove, in this case) and then find what range we best do this with.

A hint to why opening small is better than shoving here is mostly how people do call the small open lighter than they would if we shoved.

Well played.

Regarding the hand, shove this prf. After you get 2 callers the way you played it... I'm not c-betting then calling here.

Yes, but we have AK, not AA. Getting multiple callers sucks ass because one of them won't fold when we whiff. So shove (and not adjusting for antes is retarted).

Wtf...I am clearly one step or two above almost all posters in this forum, so why the flak?

Oh, and we don't open shove nearly 20bbs. Don't be ****ing ******s.

Also, getting multiple callers is clearly profitable. The idea that we have to c/f some flops might disturb some people, but really, it's easy to see how getting called in multiple instances is profitable.

Blah blah, our M is 7, who cares how many BBs we have.

Maybe, but now our M is 5.5 once we post the BB, and we are getting shorter and shorter. And I'm not sure if at this stack depth a normal raise is more profitable because we won't get paid off by very many hands when we hit (we are really looking for a domination scenario with AQ, AJ or KQ), for which we are 1 in 8 to hit on the flop. QQ/JJ etc can fold when we hit the flop instead of giving us their stack when we hit. If we get it heads up, AQ will stack off to us pre, but unless an A hits, he won't stack off to us after the flop. Which is why I like a shove here. We get better value out of the hands that call us most of the time AND we get to see 5 cards, not 3, with our AK.

NOTE that at an AGGRO table where people are 3/betting often that a normal raise is quite possibly preferable because people will 3/bet lighter than they will call a shove. However, even at an aggro table we are UTG so even that factor is mitigated as not many people 3-bet UTG raises light very often.

WHY ARE YOU ****ED IN THE HEAD YOU ******ED PIECE OF ****??????

JUST REALIZE I CAN TEAHC YOU THINGS YOU DEADBEAT ****LLORD GOD DAMN GAAAH YOU'RE SO ****ING STUPID IT'S ******ED

WATCH ME

LEARN

IMPROVE

FOR SOME ****ING REASON IT'S FREE

Seriously now.

You need to let go, and trust me.
I am a thinker.
You're not playing well.

Strong reply, please explain your position.

It's rather obvious to me you don't want to understand why shoving 18.5bb isn't the best play. We'll see in a day or two, if I will feel foolish enough to try and write up something on the subject.

Your a funny guy.

I think I'm on eury's side here. I don't think we should be shoving anything with 18.5BB, unless the antes are truly ridiculously high, whilst here they're fairly normalish. 3BB is fine, standard, etc.

The basic "reason" for open shoving when "short" is that we're never going to be raise/folding so we may as well shove it in now. That doesn't apply with 18BB, we should be raise/folding some hands. With 15BB then we'll need less than 40% equity to call a reshove, so we're raise/folding very rarely & so it's marginal whether to open shove or not. With 12BB we can happily open shove, since we're "never" raise folding (though there are some spots when you can in LP with very weak holdings versus nits). So I'm definitely on the side of don't shove 18BB with any hand here.

For the specific hand we want calls from AQ,AJ,AT,KQ, etc. & we're a lot more likely to get value from them if we raise ~3BB than shove.

The flop is tricky & marginal. 4 way I'd happily c/f. I'm in general happy to c/f 3-way but on this paired board we probably have to get it in because (a) there are hands we beat like QJ that will get it in (b) we have a lot of equity against underpairs (c) less hands hit paired boards.

This would be fine if there were no antes but you have to factor them in, this is the reason harrington refers to "M" when calculating stack size.

If you still want to judge stacks by bb's then it costs 3150 per round in blinds + antes so your "effective big blind" is 2100..

Not that Eury cares, but I consider this borderline (I use an M of 7 as my switching point, which is exactly where we are here). So I don't think Raising is "horrible", but that shoving is slightly better, especially at low buyins where people CALL (at higher buyins this sort of **** happens less cause people will 3-bet instead).

sonneti, antes are already factored in...

We have 18.5bbs, antes are fairly normal in size. Hence we don't open shove.

We have an M of 7, that is all that matters.

do people really shove for M value instead of BB's? I'd think if you were shoving 18x bbs in preflop all of the time, you're only getting called when you're beat, or at least not enough to make it profitable. I respect a couple of you players alot and your opinions like random, but shoving 18x bb's open is just bad. Throw in some limpers or make it a reraise and it's a good shove, but you force out hands that will give you the value more often than not, and when you do get called, you're normally looking at a better hand.



Push according to the table dynamics above all but push since you're getting shorter on BB's, not since your M is now single digits.

well put...3X is fine but heads up I think I'm going all the way here

I only use M for these decisions, the number of BB's is irrelevant IMHO. I use an M of 7 because that is when I no longer want to raise/fold no matter what. At lower buyins too many people don't pay attention to our or their stack size and make insane calls of a normal raise, and we get these horrific multiway pots with AKs where we need to hit the flop and can't c-bet. So for this hand, we raise 2.5bbs, then hit the blinds the next two hands and our M has gone from 7 to 5, which means we can't even consider re-stealing and we now need to open shove only. Keeping our stack with an M of 7 or so is valuable enough that I am willing to potentially lose a bit of value from my AK (and again, I don't think I am losing much if any due to the difficulty of stacking people post flop with AK).

It also depends on how I got to my stack. If I have been shoving and just doubled or won 3 sets of blinds and antes last orbit or whatever, I keep shoving. People do not pay attention to stack sizes and start calling insanely light and in numbers when you go from shoving to normal raises (and AK isn't the hand we want when this occurs). And again, this is my "inflection point" of shoving vs normal raising. Eury's or yours isn't much different, just a bit less.