Ok, well, there really isn't much else to say besides I don't agree with pretty much everything you say, and have already explained why. Not folding because of image in a turbo is pretty lol.

Not folding based solely on table image for your stack is stupid and I never suggested that is the right play. The hand in question was pretty decent and stood a good chance of being best. Folding the hand when you are the pf raiser is not good for your table image when blinds are starting to bite. It means you were either raising light or folded a good hand. If you were raising light then of course you fold to all-in. Either way you mark yourself as someone to steal from though because you have shown you can fold.

In one turbo I played in there was one player with about t2000 chips who raised UTG. The blinds at this stage were t50-100. It was folded to the player to my right who shoved with about t1400. The early raiser thought about it a bit and folded. The next 3 times this same guy raised and it was folded to me I put him all-in and he folded each time. The only reason I did this was I saw he could fold and he was a bit on the loose side. Two of the times he thought pretty long before folding so he was clearly not game enough to risk busting out with a good but not great hand even against a clear steal. He finally took a stand as the shortstack on the table, got all-in as a slight fav, got unlucky and it was all over. His table image as weak and loose played a major part in his being busted out of tourney.

Table image matters and should be taken into consideration when deciding your move though its not the main consideration.

Dobi, when you decide to defend blinds more often in a turbo - is playing that hand the way you do +EV?

I can only hope and pray that players will be like you and come over the top of my raises because they saw me raise/fold one time.

As far as tourney EV goes I would say yes it is +EV in that people are going to be less likely to attack my blinds light. Taking the hand in isolation and looking at chip EV maybe not. In tourneys the chips you have you cant cash out when you triple up and book a nice profit like you can in a cash game so looking at the ev of just one hand in isolation isnt always the most profitable route.

Take for example the reasoning for defending your blinds in tourney. If you don't defend your blinds ever then people will attack them more liberally which will hurt you as the blinds get higher. It will hurt you not so much because you are slowly bleeding chips away but because you cant buy in again like you can in a cash game. You havent got time in most tourneys to set elaborate traps for players. Aggression is a much more valuable factor in tourneys than it is in cash games because players can't buy in again.

Thats why I would disregard the ev in a particular hand if it wasnt too unfavourable if the aggression I showed would help me more further down the track.

I was playing in a $44 buy in 6max tourney once. There was a player there whose blind I raised UTG with AJs or something similiar. He moved in on me. The blinds were still on the first level so I thought it wise to fold. Couple of orbits later I raised his blinds again with suited connectors and once again he moved in on me. Again I folded. By now of course I marked down this player down as extremely aggressive and thought I'll get you next time. A few hands later he raised from UTG and I reraised him with my AQo hoping he'd shove. He did I called and he had J9s, he flopped a straight and I was gone. I'm thinking what a donk player he was and I looked him up and found he was in the top 300 of online tourney players with over $200K profit. His plays might have been -EV but his style was obviously one that worked well. You can imagine as the blinds got higher not many players will be trying to steal his blinds or resteal off him.

Just out of curiousity, in that spot what is your opening range? Because I'm pretty sure auto pushing with any 2 is pretty profitable against most players who are folding TT. Maybe I'm opening too many hands here, but I'm trying to steal with a TON.

head asplode. I mean obviously eury is the cockiest **** on the forum, but coming from you? What did I say Chever? What did I sayyyyyyy?

lol - sorry AMT!

You...are going to make a losing play in order to establish a better image? Also, why are you talking to me as if I'm not aware of the differences between tournaments and cashgames? Are you ****ing levelling me?

Also, you the differences you are talking about is the very same frame work we others refer to as ICM, right? By the way, if your decision to defend your blinds is -cEV, it's bound to be even more -$EV - making it downright horrible.

An altogether different situation arises, of course, when our stack depth is shorter and we can punish people who steal too wide by making resteals all-in. A very important concept indeed. Especially against people who blindsteal mindlessly.

I don't make ******ed blind defenses early or mid tournament, yet I don't have any major problems with people picking on my blinds later on. Magic? Oooor, there are two kinds of people - those who play poorly and therefore either a) Steal too little or b) Don't pay attention. Then there are the better players, who understand that I just pay well and won't let them steal too wide later on.

What does the "can't buy in again" comment even mean? We discuss tournament poker here, that's our mind-set. That we can't buy in again is a given for every post we make. No need to state the obvious. But what the hell, I have to ask: How does that relate to this discussion?

As for the "not have time to set elaborate traps" - I kind of can against people I play with often, just as an aside. But most of all, so what? STTs aren't about setting elaborate traps anyway, so why even mention that? Oh, and we don't have time for the traps, but we have time to establish a blind defense image? Think about that.

Also, what is with the stupid ****ing blanket statements all the time?

You grossly over estimate the importance of having a certain image. Especially for a turbo SnG. Also, you haven't explained how this does not pertain to regular speed SnGs.

Oh, okay. Convinced. End of discussion. (stack depth? more approximate action?).

What happened to your presence in this thread, anyway?

dob I am very interested in what site you play/levels/SN.

What kind of range do we need to put villain on to make this a call ?
He's 20/4 over 100 hands , based on that alone I'd have to put him on TT+ , AK here. Maybe AQ and 99 .

Players with stats like that don't make moves like this with 55 or AJ
imo , CL or not.

20/4 players are bad, bad players get bat**** crazy when they have lots of chips. Kind of.

LOL sounds like you're trying to convince yourself of that as much as the rest of us

I think it's wishful thinking to think a villain like that shows up with a small pair here or any other nonpair hand but AK and maybe AQ.

These guys open limp 99 otb , what makes you think he's going ape**** with a small pair or KQ here ?

They do show up with weird stuff fairly often.

Can't this be a squeeze play which would open CL's range up considerably.

I know what ICM is but it is not an exact science in most situations outside of the bubble. To treat is a such is to make a mistake IMO. Yes I've looked into it and found it useful for bubble time and in the money but the further you get away from that the numbers get less and less meaningful.

As for defending your blinds you don't always know when you are -cEV so 3 betting a button raise with 23o for example might be -cEV depending on the buttons range which you are never 100% sure about but you know that button raising ranges are normally wide. Being -cEV doesnt mean you'll actually lose chips. It might be more likely but you might get a fold in this instance or you might get called and get lucky you don't know. A lot of times you'll get a fold and pick up some chips which will make up for some of the losses when you get called and lose. But since most people are more reluctant to attack the blinds of players who will play back at them you have gained on that front. In a high blind situation that can offset the theoretical loss on the intial hand.

After having said all this I will admit I don't normally defend my blinds that much in tourneys when blinds are high. I don't do it because people normally leave my blinds alone probably because I'm usually the first on the table to start open shoving once the blinds get higher. Maybe they think I'll shove on them if they raise my blinds I don't know. I don't see the point in raising with TT and folding to shove like OP did I'd rather just open shove and either pick up the blinds or race for stacks. If I got called by JJ+ well so be it but I'm not keen on raising, getting called by A2, see a flop of A67 and cbet and get reraised all in. If someone wants to play garbage let them play for stacks preflop.

I think some important information is missing here. How often was hero raising villains blind? If he raised last 3 orbits for example then villains range might be much wider than stats suggest.

1) Feel free to answer all the questions I pose for you.

2) When you say you know what ICM is, it probably means you've heard about it. There is no way you actually understand ICM, judging from how you think about tournament poker.

3) ICM is an exact science to the extent that it gives an exact value for every single chipstack in the tournament. It's limitations are however numerous:
a) It does not account for players' individual skillsets or tendencies
b) It does not take into account chip stacks' relative position at the table
c) It does not take into account the size of the blinds, nor their relative position at the table

Those would be the key limitations I can think of at the moment. Many of the things you say in argument for not playing according to ICM are completely or largely unrelated to this. Ie, you suck.

4) The ICM numbers do not get less useful as you are more players at the table, they just differ less from cEV numbers and hence ICM mistakes are not compounded as much.

5) "As for defending your blinds you don't always know when you are -cEV", when I read this I simultaneously shook my head so hard I dislocated my neck and both my shoulders and spit a hole in my computer screen with a jet of cool water. Honestly? Of course you don't always know, but with exerience and skill comes the ability to better judge when you are +EV and when you aren't. What I was saying is that if a move is -cEV, it's definitely -$EV (in early to mid stages situations). Also, if it's +$EV in a turbo tournament, it's also +$EV in a regular tournament).

6) "Being -cEV doesnt mean you'll actually lose chips." This is the stupidest thing not posted by chever all month. If this is how you think regarding poker, you have huge problems.

7) Do you have any sort of vague idea of how much more often an unknown attacks my blinds compared to your blinds? There can definitely be advantages towards not having these players raise as often as they otherwise would have, but I have a very hard time imagining the difference would be anything but miniscule. And so obviously not enough to account for the mistakes you do by blind defending too liberally earlier on.

8) Ah, you start open shoving early. Me too.

9) The point in raise/folding TT in this situations would be that the raise is profitable, but the call isn't. Now, I do believe that the call would be profitable, but it's certainly not hard to imagine circumstances where it isn't. As for open shoving - that's fine, and I will do that reasonably often in this spot. But clearly both 2.5xing and shoving are profitable plays, unless you respond poorly to further action preflop / play very poorly postflop.

I LOL'ed

2) I'm no expert at ICM. It gives a rough guide to the value of chips in a tourney. Why do I say rough? look at your point no 3. I don't like to follow mathematical models where too much is left to guessing. I could be missing something but I'll live with it.

4) ICM numbers get less and less accurate the further from the finish you are. At least that was my read of the situation. If you have half the average stack early on in tourney you are in a better situation than having half the average stack on the bubble. As far as I understand ICM doesnt account for this.

5) It can be +EV to make a move thats -cEV if it affects how others will respond to you later in tourney. For example you raise a reasonably shortstacked player with utter garbage (23o,27o etc) just trying to pick up the blinds while you have a big chip lead. This player is a nit so you dont need a hand to raise his blinds. Out of the blue he moves all-in. You know you dont have the pot odds to call because your 23o is a major dog to his AA (he's a super nit). If calling his all in isnt going to dent your stack much I will make the call. I make the call to send a message to the other players that if they want to reraise me they better have the goods. The chips lost on this play can be made up fairly quickly after this because you can raise players blinds 5 times in a row and they aren't keen to play back at you. Of course you need some weak players at your table for this sort of play to be effective.

There is post on here somewhere where the bigstack folded AK preflop in the small blind while the BB was the shortstack in a bubble situation. Obviously this was -cEV and according to ICM would be -$EV as well. But by keeping the bubble going longer and open shoving every hand except when shortstack was on BB he was able to dwindle down the medium sized stacks till they posed no threat and get an easy win.

7) I don't defend my blinds liberally unless someone is getting out of line. If Im in a tourney and the blinds are getting high I might make a move if someone raised my blinds say 3 times in a row and nobody else called his raise. Usually I'll just move in on him with any 2. It's rare that I'm called. If I'm sitting on a lot of chips or winning a few pots I'll wait longer but if I'm card dead I'll move rather than be blinded down to a shortstack.

8) we agree on something

9) OP's hand was interesting. For me a call also. There could be players that I'd fold to but in the turbos I've played in such a move could be 55+, AT+ and rarely AA which would normally min raise or call. So I'd take my chances rather than second guess myself. His stats are tight but unless they were filtered for the blind level could be way off the mark.

Raising TT 2.5x is ok but I wouldn't do it at the 50-100 blind level unless I had a bigger stack or was prepared to call shove.

This is easily the most ******ed thing said on STTF so far in August.

I think you are suffering very heavily from FPS, and really overthinking STTs, this is so bad it's not even funny. Seriously, re-read what you just wrote and if you honestly believe this is a good strategy for STTs then you need to go away read some more, and work out why it's so bad.

LOOOL I don't know where to begin.

If I see you open raise 32o and call a shove w/it I'm not giving you respect later on I just have a marked as a bloody idiot.

I spotted at least 5 mistakes in that one paragraph above, DUCY?

It doesn't give a rough guide, it gives a very exact guide with clear limitations. Again, you don't understand ICM, hence you don't understand how to value a stack in a tournament setting. Can you then perhaps concede that you are dead wrong here? Also, where did you get "guessing" from? How do I "guess" more than you at the table? I basically don't guess. Do you?

Yes, you'll be able to live with it - but you won't be adding much content of value to this forum. You're welcome to take part and engage in discussion and receive advice from others here, as well as hand out advice you're capable of. But please don't think your ideas are very meaningful to others if you are unwilling to improve from this state you're in.

Could you please stop talking about ICM when it's so blatantly obvious you have no clue whatsoever on the subject? Your "read of the situation" is useless. Like I said, ICM is always very accurate. Reread my #4. What do you mean by "better situation"? Because, every ****ing monkey with half a brain understands that 750 chips fourhanded is way way way way more valuable than 750 chips ninehanded.

I don't really see the point in you sharing your "ideas" with the rest of us. Also, please spend some time thinking about why a play that wins you money in one tournament, loses money in another tournament, where the only difference is blind speed. If I could only urge you to do one thing, it would be to spend some time. Like...more than just a few minutes, pondering this.

Yes, extreme bubble situations are just about the only time where it's definitely OK to make -EV plays. How does this relate to your unrelated ******ed plays?

It's rarely correct to make a resteal with anything even close to ATC. At the moment, all I can think of is extreme bubble situations where you punish a middle stack. Also, are you actually saying you might alter your play based on what cards you have been dealt previously?

AA will shove far more often than minraise or call.

You are prepared to call a shove here.

FYP

Sorry Beerocrat , I tried to get the discussion re-focused on villain's range but it seems like we're digressing again

I don't want to bash ppl for giving advice but a lot of these threads recently have gone to hell because some of the less experienced and less knowledgeable posters are trying to reinvent the wheel.

If some ppl here exercised a bit of discretion when it comes to posting we'd all be better off. Even the ones who don't have much knowledge of ICM can contribute if they stay focused on what should be important , villain's range.

If the better posters here spent more time addressing op's issue rather than having to call out bad advice coming from other posters we'd all be better off , obviously this generates some useful discussion but a lot of it is not even relevant to the hand in question.