PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 16 Tournament, 300/600 Blinds 50 Ante (4 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t5510)
Hero (BB) (t3625)
UTG (t4030)
Button (t335)

Hero's M: 3.30

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q, A
2 folds, SB bets t5460 (All-In)

Next move?

It sucks to do but this is definitely a fold IMO

Fold and its not even close. I think QQ+ here?

It looks basically like the higher stakes players are just *alot* tighter than most idiots?

FYP

W/o reads, gotta be super tight.
If Villain is ATC (he should be in this spot, but a random $16 villain probably isn't...) you can only call with 99+ (Not even AK!)
If Villain is only shoving top 56% (22+, Q2+, J2s+, J7+, T8+, T6s+, 97s+, 87s), you can only call with QQ+
If Villian is top 36% (22+, A2+, K5+, K2s+, Q9+, Q8s+, J9s+) you can only call with KK+
If Villain is top 7.5% (77+, AJ+, ATs+) you can only call with AA

uh?

wiz it ........
or just look at what happens when you lose and shorty makes the money.... or what happens when you fold and shorty bubbles and you stack stays almost intact.....

Hmmm. This is interesting. I really need to spend some time getting to grips with wiz and studying hard.

Say you can see his hand.

Do you call versus AX and QX? What kind of percentage edge would you take in terms of you being the favourite? Is this the wrong way to look at the situation?

Cheers for the replies thus far.

I don't have the software, but here is my back of the envelope thinking. Suppose you believe that if you fold to a shove from a bigger stack that you'll make the money (micro will go out soon). I am approximating that your 1st/2nd/3rd pcts are 20/30/50 (these are probably conservative). So your equity if you fold is $39.15.

If you call and lose, you are out of the money. If you call and win, suppose your 1st/2nd/3rd pcts become 60/30/10 (wild guess). Then you need to be at least 71% likely to win for it to be +$EV to call.

I tried to be conservative, so I am guessing that the "true" cutoff point is 75-80%.

Snapfold !

Right idea. The actual % breakdowns for your chance at 1st/2nd/3rd are derived via ICM. SNGWiz (and similar software) makes the calculations trivial as it does it all for you, but it's important to understand what is going on behind the GUI.



ICM results in 28.2% equity if you fold, 0% equity if you lose, and 39.4% equity if you win. So, you have to win more often than 71.5% of the time for calling to be +$EV.

So, if you *knew* your opponent had Ax (but not AK or AQ), or Qx, then you're roughly a 3:1 favorite. This means you have about a 75% chance to win the hand, so calling would be +EV.

Understand, though, that a call under these circumstances, while +$EV, only yields about a 1.35% $EV gain (about $1.82). That's a startlingly slim edge despite the fact that you "dominate" your opponent's hand.

You don't need any fancy software, just a plain ol ICM calculator which are free. Try this one.

Your guesses were pretty close without an ICM calc, so I'm sure you will have no problems doing the calculations, but just to be clear you use:

Equity needed = (EV_fold - EV_lose) / (EV_win - EV_lose)

EV_lose is obv 0 for this hand so it simplifies to EV_fold / EV_win.

In reality you need a bit more equity since the short stack will be put all-in by the blinds soon.