hello poker, friends! It’s been 9 years since I activated this account but now that I’m back to playing SNGs on WPT Gold I look forward to participating in the forum.

I have a question for you to basically settle debate between a friend and I.

We were playing against each other in a couple single table SNG. 2 situations came up which were similar. I disagree with Villans bet sizing. I don’t have access to solvers and I was hoping you could help me.

in both of these situations we are 6 handed in the middle stage of the tournament. We have the following hands positions and chip stacks.

I’m in 2nd position with JJ and 12 blinds Villan is in the hijack with AK off and 9 blinds. I open for 2.5 blinds / Villan in the cutoff re-raises to 4 blinds. I of course put the rest of Villans chips in and we are off to the races. Result is unimportant as this is exclusively a question about bet sizing.

In the next hand villain is in the hijack with JJ and 8.5 blinds. Villain open min raises to 2 BBs. I am in the SB with tens and reraise the rest of villains chips and we are off to the races. again the results of the hand are unimportant.


so the question is - is the villain making a mistake not opening all in with these hands and chip stacks? .My argument is that the villain is under 10 big blinds in both hands and should only be open raising all in regardless of what hand they hold.

I’ve played probably 50,000 SNGs in my life and I’ve always played if I am under 10 big blinds I am playing a near 100% push fold game except for some unique situations maybe when I have aces or kings in the blinds.

so the basic question is is the villain making a mistake min- raising jacks with 8.5 blinds in the Hijack

for the other hand, is it a mistake for the villain to re-raise my 2.5 BB raise to 4 blinds with AK off instead of going all in with villains remaining 9 blinds. I think the minimum raise is a total mistake and should 100% be going all in.

what do you think?

Your questions aren't easy to answer. Modern solver-based poker ranges do have some non-all-in opens with stacks of 10 bb or even less. Most commonly at those stack depths the majority of hands that don't fold prefer to jam, but in some cases the absolute strongest hands and hands slightly too weak to jam can minraise instead. Basically a polarized range can raise small while the hands in the middle jam. The strongest hands in the polarized range then typically get it in when reraised, and the slightly-too-weak hands raise-fold.

Oftentimes the EV difference between jamming and minraising is very small at equilibrium, so you can make arguments either way depending on assumptions about how players will respond. In practice you're mostly not going to be giving up much by just jamming or folding with 10 or less BB. That's much better than raise-folding too much, which is a common leak.

Here's an example 10 bb RFI range for UTG+1:



You can see they're mostly jamming but also have some minraises.

If UTG+1 minraises and faces a jam from the LJ this is how they respond:



These presolved charts (from pokercoaching.com) only go as low as 10 bb, and then they only have push/fold charts for stacks shorter than that. However I've run my own preflop solves in HRC and found that especially in ICM-sensitive situations late in tournaments, it can sometimes be +EV to have a minraise range as short as 8 BB or so. Like I said though the EV difference is typically pretty small.

Personally I would say in the two example hands you gave it was likely a mistake for villain to raise small, but it's not clear cut enough to say your friend is definitely wrong. If I was the judge I would rule the bet a tie.

The first hand you should be minraising, not 2.5x. He should be jamming, not min-reraising.

Not as sure on the second hand. JJ is usually a hand we can mix in our minraise/call range off a short stack, but at 8bb I'm not sure if we still have any minraises.

Yeah I was also going to say what Nath said.

I don't think you want to be minraising with JJ specifically in the second hand when you're in the HJ. Like I said the presolved charts I use only go down to 10 BB, but at 10 bb you're basically only min raising with AA and balancing with a sliver of bluffs when you're in that position.

Mostly you're just going to be jamming or folding at 8 bb. At 8 bb jacks is definitely going to prefer jamming. It could still be OK to minraise with aces specifically, but I likely jam those too because as you can see even at 10 bb aces is indifferent between jamming and min raising, meaning both actions have the same EV.

I really appreciate you taking the time with this response! Thank you very much

I hear you and these responses have been very helpful thank you!

thanks for your response! I hear you about the open raise size. I’ll probably gonna make another thread about why we minimum raise nowadays. I’m an old school player from the early 2000s and we used to always 3X. I realize now all professional players open men raises. I’m still not 100% sure why we do this. I feel like it just makes the range in the big one too wide but. But maybe our big advantage is post flop and we want weaker players to call out of the blind so we can out maneuver them. But anyhow, thank you so much for the response!

this is fantastic. Thank you for taking the time with this great response!

You probably don't need to post the same thing four times in a row, but I'm not gonna get you in trouble for it or anything. Now:

Well, as someone who started in the early 2000s as well, here's what I can tell you:

-We don't really need larger open sizes unless our goal is to take down the pot preflop, and by and large we don't need to focus on that in tournaments because they're not raked. In a raked cash game we actually lose money and EV from the rake if we go to a flop, so we might want to size up to discourage action.
-If you raise smaller, you can have more hands in your raising range because you're putting fewer chips at risk. Just think of how costly raising 3x / folding is compared to raising 2x / folding.
-The chips at risk factor becomes more and more true the shorter our stack gets. I will open 2.5x most of the time with effective stacks over 100BB and 2x most of the time with effective stacks under 30BB. (Another reason to do this is that it's easier to build a pot when you have the goods deep-stacked if you start with a bigger pot.)
-The chips at risk factor also becomes more and more true with ICM, where we want to preserve our stack and maximize fold equity. That means more minbets for minimal risk and more jams to maximize fold equity, and less in between. And if you're a covering stack at a final table, the threat of elimination is often enough to make BBs fold a number of hands they would defend for chip EV even just to a minraise. And if you're covered, there's really not much benefit to raising 2.5x instead of 2x, except you stand to lose more when you get called and have to play a pot, or when you get 3-bet and have to fold.

-Defending ranges are wider in the big blind, and that's fine. You will generally still have a range advantage, and more importantly position. Most often, you'll c-bet and they'll fold. It won't always happen, but it's the most common result.

I would recommend studying GTO preflop ranges and sizes, and PFR vs. BB spots, at various stack depths and positions. It's the foundation of your game, and there's a good chance you've played enough poker that if you solidify your foundation you can adjust properly for how your opponents are actually playing.

I appreciate the response and I can tell you are a serious student of the game! Sorry about the multiple responses after a 10 year hiatus. I’m just remembering how this forum works. what games do you play anyhow?

I agree with most of the points above. I definitely wouldn't raise higher than the minimum this shallow. I would jam the JJ as low as this - 8 BB - facing a preflop raise.

Its worth considering which hands are going to play well post flop when thinking of flatting rather than jamming, or min betting rather than jamming.

I would suggest low pocket-pairs and ace rag are good jamming hands first in, for example. I may be guilty of jamming too deep at times, but I'm trying to get myself out of the habit and closer to GTO.

In the first hand with 12 bb's and in relatively EP I would jam with JJ. I do it this way because playing OOP with JJ is going to be difficult. But if I was going to raise and not shove it would be 2.1x or 2x. That villain clicked it back with AK and 9 bb's is ridiculous. Its an auto shove.

In the second hand with TT I would likely be 3-bet shoving assuming you won the first hand and had like 23 bb's. But making the 3-bet 8.5 bb's is excellent sizing. I would typically make the 3-bet 4x in the SB. In general if any bet I make is > 30% effective stack size then I jam. In a way it matters how big the BB stack is. But our bet size seems to be >33% our stack size.

But I don't play online (anymore). I used to play WPT online in order to practice final table strategies with 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 players. Now in live games they sometimes start with 3 or 4 players at a table and it is decent practice time but it doesn't last long.

In that $580 Borgota Day 1E tournament yesterday I jammed about 6 times with 7.5+ bb's and less than 12 blinds. I did it with Q6s, K2s, K7o, 66, A3o, J8s. I wasn't called but there were two or three times where they tank folded and were clearly ahead preflop. Had I min raised I would have been called and I would have been behind most of the time. Because I was doing that when I 3-bet jammed with AQo and 12.5 blinds I was insta called by A4s.