This was my thought as well. The jam looks very bully-like so he may have been hoping someone would interpret it as a steal and call wide.

It really matters how often he's doing this. If it's the first time he's done it, there's a good chance he's getting tricky with a premium, IMO.

How are you exploiting SB & BB by shoving premiums when population tendency is to over fold? You take away 3-bet bluffs and jams you have dominated. Doesn’t make sense

Kind of my point.

The guy who goes all in first is the aggressor and has a head start.

If he is balanced here he forces the SB/BB to call a lot more than they normally would. And it also opens up a situation where they may call way more than they should.

My guess is that while he has some hands that are weak like 44/A5s/etc. He will also balance with some strong hands like AQ+/99-QQ. This is especially true if he has been having a tough time winning against the blinds when raising from the BTN with Ax hands blow AT. This is especially relevant if the SB has been calling some min raises and the BB as well. Which I asked about earlier but did not get a response.

Maybe he is hoping someone goes through the same thought process you did and calls him. It's Moorman. You don't get that good without being a few moves ahead

His jam is not good period regardless of his range. Maybe it's slightly profitable but certainly not the most profitable move here, and a major increase in variance that he shouldn't take on with his current stack.

He is 20 tabling. He won´t think about that. His shove is capped. I would give him the following range:
22-55, A9o-A4o, KTo, K8s-K5s, Q9s, J8s, T8s

If he wants to balance it, he might take AJo into the mix here and then, but nothing from top range.

That said with 30bbs eff in the SB I would call: 66+, ATo, KQs

Also take into consideration, that it is a good spot to get chips from a sick good player and doubling puts him into a tough spot 60bbs vs 60bbs OOP

If we bust 4 tables left in a $88 it is also not the end of the world; not much ICM pressure. Situation changes on FT for sure.

If this is the range we believe him to have, shouldn't we be calling with 55/A9/KJ even perhaps KTs if you truly think he has all these mid suited Ks in his range?

Fwiw, I like where you're heading with this and my student had A9o in the hand, which we both at first glance believed was a standard fold (as most of the responses lead me to believe seems the consensus as well) however, to play devil's advocate, if Moorman's range is roughly broken up into 3 tranches-

22-66
A8s, A7s, A4s, A5s, (maybe A9o-A4o like Mr Fab said)
KJ, KT, K9s (perhaps the K8s, K7s which I think may be a tad wide fwiw) QTs Q9s


Shouldn't A9 be a call when we are literally never dominated, flipping the pairs, dominating his weaker Ace's, slightly ahead of the King high/broadway jams, and also dominating K9s/Q9s (if those are indeed in there) ?

Of course we are doing quite a bit of assuming here but I think with the information we have re: this very specific villain and how he is perceived by the population, I think the aforementioned jam range above is a pretty reasonable assumption (and I'd be shocked if he wasn't raise/calling AT+ 77+)

I mean you’re the MTT coach, you tell us?

Part of being a coach is having constructive dialogue and learning from your students as well. This forum has some great contributors who I value getting feedback from, plus I enjoy good discourse. Coaching, like poker, requires you to be adaptive and always changing/pushing boundaries. It's only when you find some contrarian approaches that you can separate yourself from the field.

Really enjoyed this thread, guys. I'll be sure to post more tricky student hands in the upcoming months.

I think his suited Aces want to raise/shove vs 3bet as a bluff rather than shoving first in.

I would not go down to A9o or KJ as I think that the most frequency of his shoving range will be the lowest pairs.

If we widen our calling range here too much, we are basically starting to flip or worse. I don´t want that.

Especially after a little more thinking I would discount K8s-K5s from the range in my first post, they are better played as raise/fold or raise/shoving (unblocking an Ace)

Why not? I think it's far better to flip vs one of the best players in the world than just get picked on by his bigger stack for as long as we have the misfortune to be at this table. If we win Moorman goes down to 90 BBs and we go up to 60, which means he's much less likely to pick on us. Great outcome

We have position on him, table lineups change, and we're pretty deep in a large field. Winning puts us in a much better spot, sure, but I don't think we should be looking to call off with 40-45% to try to get that.

I would definitely call with 55, because he should have small pps, Axs, and unsuited high card hands, so you are way ahead of his range. This is never junk, but always a marginal hand.

at the end of the day I dont think it matters what his range is. Its unquantifiable. Ive never seen someone jam 30 bigs from the button.

Better question imo is how much extra can you potentially win by doing this. I think people are willing to stack off surprisingly often compared to what Id have guessed

this so much, not even about being a coach (never coached nor received it) but just being a better player

it's all about discussion and digestion, if you look back at all the greats during their peaks, they were all doing things which at the time seemed stupid but was later understood to be correct

it's the people who insist on poker being static with hard strat rules that you must abide by lest you're a fish are the ones who are forever stuck as bad regs of the micros

I don't like the 30xBB shove. Sure software will tell you it is cEV+ compared to folding with a lot of hands and you put pressure on the shorter stacks. However, you have position on the button, and I don't like throwing that away. I guess he never limps the button, as that would be donkish, but overshoving is supposedly not. You could limp/shove 22 or A2s or whatever you are shoving and win a bigger pot. You could also bet/3bet shove those hands. Similarly for value you want to play a big hand that way, not just open shove. If it goes as a raised or limped pot, you have position and presumably a skill advantage. You also want to have raise/folds or maybe limp/folds to balance with. He should be playing a really wide range on the button with the big stack, and shove have lots of raise/folds. Maybe he was playing a zillion tables and didn't want his time taken with postflop.

There is another reason not to be jamming 30+ blinds as first in.

In a 6000 Crown tournament in Prague (so about $270 which equates to like an $800 or $1,000 US field) a guy periodically jammed 30+ blinds from late position. He turned his hand over a couple of times for some reason (to show us the bluffs and tilt the other players I guess). This was in and of itself the reason I refused to chop when we got down to 5 players though there were 2 other players I had reads on. We ended up HU and after some time he jammed 32 blinds first in. I insta called with AQ and won vs JTo. Now I would have called anyway if he hadn't done it before but it seriously put him at an extreme disadvantage. And had I had a hand like Ax/KQ/KJ I would have called as well.

I don't know why you are looking at this hand "in a vacuum" and not as one hand in a series of hands.

He has 4x average stack. I assume there is no real icm pressure. Making average stacks play for their stacks preflop is better than gambling against the other big (if there are any at this table) or small stacks as average stacks are the most conservative. He does this 7x uncontested vs average stacks and he adds an average stack to his chip stack.....

It is unlikely he does it 7x uncontested. There are 2 players maybe calling with 10% of their hands each and high cards should be live since it was folded to button. If you look at the probabilities, it is probable he gets called in 7 pushes. If he gets called 10% of the time, there is a 52% chance 7 pushes go through. If he gets called 20% of the time there is a 21% chance 7 pushes go through. A 5% range for 10% calls between 2 players is 99+/AQ+. There range should be more weighted toward pps than that. It is unlikely they are calling that tight, like folding AJ and 88. Obviously, the more he pushes like that, the more likely he gets called.

I would call 77+, A9s+, ATo if I thought he was getting out of line &
88+, ATs+, AJo+ normally vs this player type

You should call looser with pps, as he could have small pps or Axs.

He should be bet 3-betting premium hands, as his button raises should be frequently raised or shoved on. It is hard to say getting out of line, as this is an unusual play. However, the more he does this, the less likely he has a premium hand and the more likely he doesn't have a hand which is a cEV+ shove versus a reasonable calling range.

If he is getting called by 88+/ATs+, he is getting called about 13% of the time, so it is a cEV+ shove with ATC. He picks up 2.5xBB 87% of the time. If he is 25% to win, with a very weak hand, he loses about 14xBB if called.

I don't think he has ATC, but he could have a pretty marginal hand he doesn't want to raise/3-bet with. The more he does it, the less effective it is as a steal.