Two spots in live home games.

1st spot –

We are ITM with 3 left and I’m the chip leader. The tourney started with 16 players and we each started with 10k in chips so there are 160k of chips in play. Prize money is

1st $135
2nd $100
3rd $75

Chip stacks:

Me: 80k
Villian 35k
Other player 45k

Blinds are 4k/8k

It folds to me in the SB and I have K4. Villain is a tad on a loose side and calls with any pair, any ace, QJ sometimes J10. If the cards are sooted forget about it, he is calling!

Is this a no brainer push or is there another way to play this hand?

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2nd spot –

Same group of guys this time it’s much earlier in the tourney. We started with 22 and we are down to 17. Blinds are $600/$1,200.

Prize money is a bit higher than above. $300 for 1st; $225 for 2nd etc.

I have $9k in chips having started with $10k. I’m the SB and it folds to me with Q5 off.

My brother is in the BB and has $8.5k. My read on my brother is that he is a solid player who knows that I like to push a wide range BvB. That being said, I have a long history of sucking out on him and this has to weigh on his mind to the point where he probably folds ace rags, KQ etc against me fearing a suckout. I know he has a serious pucker factor about calling against me.

Who likes a shove here and if not what’s the play?

In the first one, I might shove, it really depends on what's been going on. Short-handed at a FT it's more about patterns and feeling than it is the cards.

In the second, you're not that much below average, and the hand really sucks. I probably fold it. You have an entire orbit to find a better hand, and it doesn't seem like there are even any antes to win.

(BTW, for tourneys we tend to use T, not $, because they're Tournament Units, not Dollars.)

1st spot
You are in a shovefest here. It's either shove or fold. I would most likely shove here.

2nd spot
Why would you even consider shoving here? You are only going to be call by a better hand. Why risk most of you stack at this point for most likely being at best a 3:2 underdog? So either fold (hint, hint) or call.

Hand 1: 3 handed, and his stack size - the range you gave him seems tight to me, not loose....maybe I'm wrong with that opinion. At any rate, if that's his range, then I'd shove here. -- If he's folding Kings lower than KT and Queens lower than QT, I'd probably shove.

If I'm not understanding your range on your villian - I'd reconsider, but it's damn close. He's close enough in stack size to the other player, than it pumps up your fold equity imo.

Hand 2 - I'm folding here every time.

Sarge

So, villian now has 27k after posting the BB? Raise to T20k- it looks stronger.


How are you only down to 17 players, with T10k starting stacks, and you're already at T1200 BB? What is your structure and length of rounds?

With your wide shoving range, and his expectation (ignoring the sucking out part- if he's REALLY going to fold an Ace or strong King, then pushing makes more sense. Don't overestimate this.) I'm folding your hand here rather than shoving. You have a whole round to find a better hand, or a less obvious spot.
Of course, any hand you're going to play later, you're probably shoving anyway.

With 14 players until the money, you're going to have to gamble somewhere.

Shove both, and I don't think either are too close.

The second hand is interesting, in that you only have to get through one player to pick up some much-needed blinds. It's risky, though. Brothers can have sick reads on each other.

At this stage, assume I folded here, and posted the BB in the next hand and folded it. I have 7,800 left. My M is now a tad over 4. Depending on how much time is left at this level, if I got as bad as Q9 UTG I would consider a shove. Q5 here looks better than that.

So shoving is not a bad option. It is not a mistake to fold, though, that is for sure.

Larry, our blinds go up every 20 minutes and because we doubled our buy in (this was considered a major) people were playing pretty tight. I am going from memory so maybe we were only at 500/1000 because after I typed it - it seemed odd to me that we still had that many left at that blind level.

100/200
200/400
300/600
400/800
500/1000
600/1200 (we would have been at the 6th level)

I know for a fact that we did have that many left because I'm the league statiscian that tracks finishes for everyone in our league and my brother finished 17th when I once again sucked out on him. I did shove and he snap called with AJs. It looked real bad for me when the board ran out 9944 but past performance was indicative of future results in this case when I river a 5 to make a better two pair!


I ended up shoving the first hand as well and got snapped by K10 off and lost the hand and ended up finishing 3rd. I kind of like your T20k raise but in this case he might have shoved and I'm pot committed so same result I think. Not positive he shoves though so if he merely called I would have put him all in on the flop that we both missed and he might have folded.

Thanks for the replies

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

15,376,489,920 games 20.771 secs 740,286,453 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

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since we're almost flipping against a 45.7% calling range, the fact that he folds slightly over 50% of the time should mean that a shove is profitable without actually doing all the math

Perhaps, but a 5% equity edge, vs. my tourney life, isn't the situation I want to be in that often. Therefore, it's not an auto-push. You certainly could justify a push, but it's a bit thin imo.

Agreed, you generally don't want to flip early in tourneys. The chips you win aren't worth as much as the chips you own.

Tho' I'm too dumb to really understand cEV and ICM, I'm more of a holistic player.

I'm shoving both hands here.

Especially 2nd hand because you can easily take down 1800t which is almost 20% of your stack. Your brother has tons of fold equity here.