hey-

I never play these unless it's on a whim (this was my 1st tournament this year). I've come to appreciate how fun they (and the players) can be and might be looking to fire a few more! Was this a torch preflop? I was ~11/13 in chips iirc. I don't have any ICM sims for these, so not sure if I'm overdoing it.

Hold'em No Limit - 250,000/500,000 (50,000 ante) - 6 players
Hand delivered by Pokeit

UTG: 21,604,194 (43 bb)
MP: 13,825,216 (28 bb)
CO: 5,744,306 (11 bb)
BU: 6,814,784 (14 bb)
SB: 24,998,646 (50 bb)
BB (Hero): 5,773,705 (12 bb)

Pre-Flop: (1,050,000) Hero is BB with J 4
4 players fold, SB raises to 1,200,000, Hero calls 700,000

thanks

Are you calling J4o for the memes? I'd fold. This hand is so weak. We want to conserve our stack so we can maximize FE and stay close to the other short stacks.

lol no, i skipped that whole drama (didnt even make the connection until after the fact)

called bc my limited heuristic from looking at bb defense mtt sims is “call counterintuitively wide as fk, even when short, and especially bvb; practically any high card.” i wanted to win, wasn’t trying to ladder

i’m a 100bb+ 6m cash reg, so a leak of mine in mtt’s has been playing too tight everywhere preflop. not too worried once i see the flop, but rather getting there with a hand that i shouldn’t have in the first place. as long as it’s a call pre idgaf what happens after

The reason why you defend wide in the BB is because when opponents start raising less (2bb ish) is because you're getting a massive discount to see a flop (only have to put in 1bb plus change usually). When SB raises 2.5bb you don't have defend quite as wide compared to a 2/2.1/2.2bb raise. GTO says you call j4o about 11% of the time in this exact scenario, but when you consider that SB covers you very handily, you need to be ready to stack off if you hit a jack or any really good draw. With respect to ICM and ease of player execution I would have just folded j4o 100% of the time and waited for a better spot to jam and pick up blinds and survive longer vs the smaller stacks (maybe you'll even win a flip!)

yeah I kind of "feel" like it was a waste of equity, live and learn i guess. this is the most tilting thing about playing these for me (***** up later stages that happen so infrequently and always wondering "WHAT IF???"). like i said i was trying to win (1st was 40k), kept telling myself "this isn't life-changing money, fk waiting for spots like a nit, go for it all" but probably too emotional and tunneled. fkkk expensive lesson, but won't be my biggest nor last high eq spot!

this was the whole hand:

Hold'em No Limit - 250,000/500,000 (50,000 ante) - 6 players
Hand delivered by Pokeit

UTG: 21,604,194 (43 bb)
MP: 13,825,216 (28 bb)
CO: 5,744,306 (11 bb)
BU: 6,814,784 (14 bb)
SB: 24,998,646 (50 bb)
BB (Hero): 5,773,705 (12 bb)

Pre-Flop: (1,050,000) Hero is BB with J 4
4 players fold, SB raises to 1,200,000, Hero calls 700,000

Flop: (2,700,000) J 8 2 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets 910,075, SB raises to 23,748,646 (all-in), Hero calls 3,613,630 (all-in)

Turn: (11,747,410) 8 (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (11,747,410) 9 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: 11,747,410

Showdown:
SB shows 7 3 (a flush, Jack high)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 41%, Flop: 38%, Turn: 18%, River: 100%)

BB (Hero) shows J 4 (two pair, Jacks and Eights)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 59%, Flop: 62%, Turn: 82%, River: 0%)

SB wins 11,747,410

I think your mindset of trying to make a top finish instead of blinding out and praying shorter stacks go first is fine and good, but folding j4o pre isn't nitty by any means lol. It's in the bottom 28% of hands, there are legitimately a LOT of better spots to defend with to try and double up or chip up a few extra bb. What you should do before next tournament is learn blind vs blind play, and know what SB will be limping or raising with because when it folds to blinds, both of you are going to play a very high% of hands.

lol thanks, i agree, my ranging in these needs some improvement. it's tough to fit in study for other formats alongside my real grind (a full branch review of a single cash hand can take me >5hrs) but i'm going to plan to at least learn 10/20/30bb preflop for BvB and BBvLP so i'm not forcing anything. just being "allowed" to coldcall everywhere is pretty fun, wild west out here

As weird as this sounds, I’m actually ok with this. At 11/13 we do have a risk premium here but it’s not enormous and this hand is on the cusp either way. We do have to defend this really wide, like something in the 75% range, if our opponent is playing correctly.

Folding makes sense if we think SB’s non all-in range is value heavy and they are not finding the bottom of range bluffs they should have here. So a fold is probably fine versus population.

Actually, you are supposed to be wide, but I think this one might 1 or 2 pips too wide.

I'd just fold this pre. I think you can justify calling a suited jack or as low as J7o, even though those might be on the wider side, and I don't know if I'd call the weakest of those hands here pre. Once we get this deep in a tournament and I'm this short I tend to err on the side of... well, I guess I'd say calling as little as possible and just jamming or folding a great deal of the time.

As far as ICM goes-- playing for the win always sounds well and good, but our goal as poker players is to make the most money possible, right? Once you get this deep in a tournament, decisions like this are high-leverage and can cost you a ton of equity. Especially once you're on a short stack, you want to be tighter preflop but look for spots you can get first in to steal pots, especially with good blocker effects or hands that have good equity when called.

In terms of ICM effects: The real problem with playing this hand isn't so much missing the opportunity to ladder one or two spots; it's that your chips are so valuable when you're this short and you really want to conserve them until you can get them in as good a spot as possible. That, and you want to leverage your fold equity whenever possible. You don't have to blind out waiting for other players; you just have to pick the right hands and spots to shove.

Definitely study your shorter stack ranges if you're going to play any more tournaments. You spend a lot more time in tournaments short-stacked than you do deep. And even 1BB decisions late in a tournament can have far more impact on your equity than anything you do early on.

you're too short to be defending unsuited jack rag, esp w icm implications

that bb you put in could be used to double up

It's probably ok in theory, but in theory villain is supposed be polar and have some super trashy hands that they raise. When villain doesn't have those hands and/or their non all-in raising range is more linear, then this becomes a pretty clear fold.

In ICM it is a fold.

To know if you torched pre flop would require payouts. BvB this could be a fine defend and I find it strange how everyone is making assumptions with no info on the pay structure. Is this ITM? Is the there a payjump at 12th? Better yet, what are the payouts?

Post flop looks std.

We know there are 13 left and OP is 11/13. I was assuming this was an MTT in the money with individual pay jumps starting at 9. (This is true even on ACR where the final table isn't until 8.)

I know ACR has a pay level from 12-10 but Ignition's is 13-10. But even without knowing whether there's an imminent pay jump, knowing how close we are to the final table and how short our stack is, I am inclined to play tighter and to try to enter the pot first with a shove for most of my playing range, or with a re-shove. I do not want to call off close to 15% of my remaining stack preflop with a hand this weak and unconnected. Again, based on my assumptions above on where we are in the tournament.

The big thing in that ICM GTOWizard sim is that the SB in that case is a giant chip leader over the rest of the table. That gives them the impunity to jam really wide and raise with a pretty polar range of their best and worst hands. So against that

This is the SB open range in the sim you posted.



Now if we were to look at a different GTOWizard ICM sim where there's a couple of other big stacks at the table, you'll see that the SB's strategy is quite different, not the least of which is the idea that the SB is opening less in general and also pulling their non all-in raises from other parts of their range.



Which in turns significantly changes the BB response, and suddently J4o is not only in range, but even raising sometimes - in part because raising now folds out better hands like J6o and Q9o



Now this sim isn't perfect either, but there is an argument that the existence of another similar sized stack should change the theoretical response of the SB to the point where J4o becomes a call again. I thought that might be because risk premiums are dramatically different, but in each of these sims the risk premium is still fairly modest.

All of this being said, I think folding this against most players in practice is probably just fine, because you're not going to see that many players find either of these strategies with any frequency.