eury - remember not everyone plays as tight as you! you need to remember to not base your rangesof others on your own. maybe thats what you are doing wrong. if i were you i would really consider varying your play a bit more as i think it helps a lot to keep people guessing.

again if u r raising to 1000 with some of your good hands like AA-JJ and AK then u have to do it with some of your weaker hands too. Or maybe u never make that play. i find it v profitable to sometimes make 5 x bb pre flop raises.

Why the h'ell do you want keep ppl. guessing which you have never played against or who have no clue anyways?

Varying your play means that you sometimes have to take a non optimal way to play the hand in the hopes that you will recover this EV loss in future as you keep ppl. guessing. This is absolutely not necessary in a $16/27/38 tournament, IMO.

This might only be necessary if you play against a reg. you have some history with.

To the OP: raise/fold without ante and pushing with ante seems the only way to play this hand to me. Min raising is mehh.

in spots like this where there is no clear best play then how can u play non optimally?

also i find people remember an idiot esp if u do a bit of chit chat with them so it definitely helps u to be viewed as an imbecile. i am deliberately cultivating that image on here!

Making out of line raises (which actually isnt such a crazy play here imho) can definitely make it difficult for your opponents. i mean u know u r calling sb raise anyway so if u raise 1000 sb is less likely to push as they know u r pot committed and then what does bb do with a hand like AQ or JJ-TT. There is no good play for them. As they dont know whether they are calling for 1000 or the whole of your stack. This is especially so if u made a big raise with a premium pair pre already. And do they really want to shove with hands like AQ JJ-TT when u look like u r committed to the pot. I mean AJ is really the worst hand u could have here to raise 1000. Often if they shove u will call and they will be 18-30%. It can present them with a lot more opportunity to make mistakes than by just shoving. obv u cant always fold to a shove if u raise 1000 though. but im not sure u lose much FE by raising 1000 v shoving as if i am in BB and someone shoves here with your stack its so highly unlikely they have AA - KK so i am more inclined to call with JJ type hands whereas if i have JJ and someone raises 1000 i have no clue what play to make as all of them look horrible.

Also if they are a weak player they will often call a 1000 raise with a medium pair as they dont like to fold medium pairs and often are too scared of your big raise to push them. and then u have a big advantage post flop unless they get lucky and hit a set.

Im not going to turn this thread into a circus so i wont post on it anymore but i think that to say there is one raise size that is clearly better than the others here is incorrect in my opinion. I just dont think there is an optimal play here.

Again, how the **** could you think I was saying that when my minraise gets called it's usually by a hand that beats AJ?

eury - i have no clue how u think. all i know is i will keep reporting all your offensive posts to the moderator as i am trying to be civil with you.

Explain why the **** you can't read bloody English then. How on earth could you even write that? How does your mind warp what I said to "my minraise gets called it's usually by a hand that beats AJ?" It's impossible to communicate with you!

*grabs popcorn*

So u agree that we can get reg BB to call wider when we shove AA/KK instead of getting tricky with a raise.

it was really hard for me to guess that chever bombed the hell out of this thread when i saw 25 replies since i last posted in here.

anyway, with antes shoving and standard open (500 or 550 or whatever) are both fine imo. lets not get too paranoid about getting shoved on vs a guy we hardly know.

I don't open shove AA/KK here I would balance that by raising trash here some percent of the time. In this spot I would rarely raise 72o type hand here because of the sb's stack, but would be more inclined to raise a7o, 22 type hands where I can still call the sbs shove.
Idk enough about the bb's restealing range here if he is restealing wide I think raise/call is better than open shove since he can reshove lots of hands we have dominated. However if he is going to resteal tighter where he fair poorly against his reshoving range I would rather open shove to maximize FE when he has hands like 88 and prevent us from making a mistake when he has AT type hands.

ty pudge i always enjoy reading your posts v interesting

bones, stfu, I am very good at articulating my point when needed (for instance, when talking to someone who might understand). I don't for a second believe you think I am down on the level of the baboon, so just gtfo.

PLZ DON'T TELL ME TO STFU MY OPINIONS ARE IMPORTANT AND DESERVE TO BE HEARD

Also neither Timmy nor Jimmy are baboons.

17 bbs on the button its a fairly unexploitable shove i believe. Just because I am not shoving AA doesnt make shove exploitable, he needs a hand to call this, which he wont have. I really dont want to face a shove and figure out whether he is reshoving me light, and anyway my btn raise is pretty wide so if i start folding AJ to reraises i can as well transfer my money to them.

q - its not that shoving AJ is exploitable. its that by shoving it they know u havent got AA and they know when u dont shove u often have AA or KK as u shove your weaker hands.

pudge counters that by standard raising weak and strong hands and shoving his medium strength hands. but most dont as they fold their weaker hands, shove their medium strength hands and standard raise their monsters.

What was that post about? Are you asking or answering? Something in between as usual? I said im raising pretty light on btn so i have plenty raise/folding hands in my range along with raise calling.

Q - so by raising v light on button v big stack u r very exploitable! if u shove Aj the only way u can avoid being exploitable is to have a FEW randomisers for your standard raise. If generally a standard raise means u r gonna fold to a reraise the BB is correct in shoving ATC. U r 82-85% when u standard raise AA and are shoved over but often only 72% when u raise KK and only 53% with QQ v AK. So u cant standard raise that many weak hands before it becomes correct for the BB to shove any two against u. And if u follow ICM then u should prob fold your AK and QQ to a shove. So u r basically left with two hands where u standard raise and want a shove from BB. Thats 12 combinations. So to be unexploitable u need to keep your raise fold hands below 50 combinations (and when u think there are 16 combinations of all unpaired cards thats very few steals u r making). And even if you do that they still will always know a shove means u dont have AA -KK. Its unavoidable.

If u compare that to where u standard raise your whole range and that range is fairly tight u r basically unexpolitable. Say u only raise AA-JJ and AK-Q here and u always raise to 1000 and u always call a shove u cant ever be exploited. It doesnt mean its the best way to play though. As u never exploit them playing that way.

The aim of poker isnt to be unexploitable. The aim is to let people exploit u a bit so that you can expoit them more. Trading your small mistakes for others big mistakes is the most profitable strategy as Sklansky points out.

I think a lot of people open shove far too much based on the fact it is unexploitable.

Stop witch hunting me and derailing my threads, I have a brilliant mind and you just leave my threads be if you aren't going to take part in the topic.

chever, please...I dunno...start grasping math.
How can you say "If generally a standard raise means u r gonna fold to a reraise the BB is correct in shoving ATC." for instance?

Depends on whether you have a very dodgy definition of "generally", I suppose.

You say QQ and AK are 53% against villain's three bet shove. So...what range is that?
QQ is 53% against TT+, AQs+, AKo, while AKs is only 46% against that range. So what range are we talking here?
Against TT+, AJs+, AQo+ - AKs is 53%, while QQ is 56%, etc.

Also, do you understand what it means that shoving AJo is unexploitable?

Oh, and I think your posts would be far more readable if you went ahead and spelt "you" properly. Seriously.

You're right. You're basically John Nash, but emo and with some mommy issues. My apologies.

Chever: if you want a shove with AJo to be unexploitable you have to shove AA/KK in this spot as well. Pudges line of not just raising AA//KK here but also raising stuff that will fold to a re-raise from BB is also unexploitable and in general a better line. Problem in this spot is a lot of your raise/fold range against BB puts you in a marginal calling spot if SB shoves and BB folds.

The worst line here is to shove your holdings you will not call a BB shove with and only raise AA/KK. Thats an expliotable line as you have outlined.

What is your ****ing problem? I'm smart and useful to the community, I help out. So get the **** out of here. There is theory talk in place. If you have some beef with me, by all means, contact me via pm. I'd have no problems listening to whatever it is you think you need to tell me. But what you're doing right now is not helping anyone.

I highly doubt you have any idea of what sort of person I am or how well/bad your comments reflect upon me. I also doubt that you're interested to find that out. So, again, **** off and leave me be. At least in this thread.

ger - if u read the thread u will notice i said exactly that earlier!

eury - i have an idea for you. become a full time poster and stop actually playing poker as it may save you a bit of money.