I am now officially back in the swing of things. Last night I did a stop-n-go; Tonight an action limp. This hand was really interesting to me.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t600 (4 handed) Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: FlopTurnRiver Cards)

UTG (t8212)
Hero (t2554)
SB (t2070)
BB (t664)

Preflop: Hero is Button with , .
1 fold, Hero calls t600, SB raises to t2070, 1 fold

BB has t14 left after his fold.

I thought SB would collude with me (ldo) but this result seems even better. SB is pretty loose/donkish (I guess I should have figured he wouldn't know to collude) so I think this is just a foolish play rather than a big hand. What do you think of my original plan? I should call now, right? What about if BB had called, should I overcall then?

lol this is a horrible spot for an action limp and I would never action limp in this spot with anything in my range.

this looks really really bad. your hand is garbage, if you had anything decent you should be shoving it.

Yeah, as played this hand is ridiculous. Even if you are results orientated and plug the before/after stacks into an ICM calc it looks like you made .2-.3% EV, but really if the shorty doubles up next hand you are screwed when the BB hits you, loosing at least the EV you gained, probably more.

Just push top ~30% maybe top ~40% if SB is ******ed enough to give BB a walk. Only ever "action limp" on the bubble as the short stack with < 2 BBs

Austiger,


yikes

not a good spot for an action limp at all.

I don't understand. Is this some sort of supersophisticated play that I just don't have in my repertoire? In this spot, I do the "action fold".

I don't think anyone has seriously thought the play through. In this scenario, I've gained EV by the result if I fold, as someone pointed out, and I'm pretty sure that calling is >>> folding since I'm getting 3400-1400 odds and If I call and win I'm virtually guaranteed 2nd (the stacks would be 8000, 5000, and 14) with a great shot at first. If I call and lose, and the next hand goes anything other than shorty>SB>me then I get at least 3rd.

The idea of the whole play to begin with though is to gang up on the short stack with SB though so if SB doesn't push, I've made the right play too (unless I'm missing something.)

If SB pushes and BB calls then I have to call and then it has to go shorty>SB>me for the bubble to continue and even then I'm still not knocked out. Any other result puts me in the money and sometimes heads up. Seems like a lot of good stuff that can happen compared to folding, which leaves a coin flip b/n SB and BB and if BB wins, the bubble is full on and I'm in the BB with the giant stack in the SB next hand.

I don't see how you can expect to win this pot w/ j3o and thinking about calling after limping (which is also horrible and spewy and should be seen as exploitable, i.e. if you action limp you should be folding to SB shove unless your action limp is like JJ+ or something ridiculous that you should just be shoving in the first place) is absolutely ridiculous.

I was trying to point out why can't just trust ICM here, if you fold after limping this is still a bad play for the reasons I gave above.

Calling is even worse than folding after you limp. Plug stack sizes for the 3 outcomes into an ICM calc you get, EV_fold = 26.74%, EV_win = 37.87%, EV_lose* = 21.27%. But EV_lose* involves a supershort stack on the bubble and ICM will be way off, so use the Nash calculator to simulate the next 2 hands when you lose the all-in:

Checking EQDiff, you lose 2.006% next hand. The hand after that you lose 7.663% EV when the shortstack survives, this happens ~50% of the time, so you expect to lose 3.83% EV.

So an estimate of your true EV_lose = EV_lose* - 2.006% - 3.83% = 15.43%

That gives +11.24% for winning, -11.31% EV for losing. 11.31/(11.24+11.31) = 50.15% equity needed to call, which you don't have, so a limp-call is worse than limp-fold, and limp-fold is clearly -EV for the reasons I gave earlier.

Also, your hand is negative chipEV in a 3-way pot against random cards.

There are inaccuracies in your calcs. Offhand, shortstack does not survive the next hand 50% of the time since CO or BTN are pushing some and those occasions will be better than average hands.

Also, you're giving limp/call the "next two hands" treatment, but not limp/fold. Limp/fold isn't actually 26.74%, it's lower. So your +EV for winning is higher and the -EV for losing is lower. Now, that makes your open folding suggestion look better because if 26.74% isn't correct, then I don't really gain the .2-.3 EV by limp/folding, but then you have to realize that the open folding option gets lower over the next two hands as well. The fact is, we'll be in the BB in two hands so our EV is shrinking no matter which option we take. So it's not fair to only use the nash calculator on the limp/call scenario and pretend that our ICM is accurate in the others. Know what I mean?

I realize J3o is -cEV against random hands. The idea is to gang up on shorty, which is what I was trying to do in the first place. It's not like I expected SB to shove. Plus I was multi-tabling. I guess the whole thing is just FPS though. Thanks for doing the calcs and for all the replies.

The difference is that if you lose this all in you are put all in on the BB, but your points are still valid for the accuracy of the calculations. I'll assume shorty doubles up 40% instead of 50% and correct EV_fold for the next 2 hands:

Hand 1 ICM Nash Calculator Results
Hand 2 ICM Nash Calculator Results

EV_lose = 21.27 - 2.006 -0.4*7.663 = 16.20%
EV_fold = 26.74 - 0.518 - 0.4*2.282 = 25.31%

This gives +12.56% for winning and -9.11% for losing, 9.11/(12.56+9.11) = 42.04% equity required. More accurate result, still doesn't really change the conclusion of limp-calling being bad.

Edit: I suppose I could make it even more accurate by checking the EQDiff for posting the BB when shorty does bust, but it still wont make a limp-call good.

I actually limp/folded. My hunch afterwards was that limp/calling was better but your numbers seem to show that's not true (although I don't really trust that Nash calculator since some of those ranges are off given the situations. I had never seen that tool before.)

So is limp/folding a better or worse result than if SB completes and you collude against shorty?

So long as you don't both hit the flop and get all your money in, busting you out before shorty, it has to be worse. But why wouldn't SB shove everything here?