I think it has been covered, but pre-flop is awful. It looks like you are only 25 big blinds deep, so there is no such thing as implied odds here and QJo isn't a good hand for that anyway. You are playing a basically all-in pre game.

We don't need to assume villain is a nit and 3betting 2% for this to be bad. He could be 3betting 30ish% and QJo could still be a dog.


.......Equity ....Win .......Tie
MP2 45.02% 42.87% 2.16% QJo
MP3 54.98% 52.82% 2.16% 99+, A2s+, K5s+, Q7s+, J8s+, T8s+, 98s, A7o+, A5o, K9o+, Q9o+, J9o+, T9o

I don't know what you are talking about. If Player A is open raising at a good frequency, then Player B with a 25 big blind stack can 3bet a lot.

Yeh but, they've never played each other before and it's the first hand. In general people are doing this fairly tight.

If so, they are playing the 25 big blind very wrongly. Which, yes, most all of them are.

How often do you really want the BB to open??

Even if he opens 17% (which is shoving range), Then he can shove any 3-bet without any worry about losing money (ignoring rake).

Do you really want the BB to be opening like 30%+ of his hands? If so, then yes I agree, the 3-bet range has to loosen. I wouldn't actually say this is better though, it is just different.

In my experience, though, this is just suicide. I don't play these spin n gos but I play hypers. I occasionally loosen my range but it doesn't generally increase my profit. I just do it occasionally as a one-off against tight players just to steal blinds. I get that if the players are tight you can min raise profitably but when people simply start flatting it becomes more difficult since the flop becomes rather difficult to play with a hand like 10 8 off or whatever.

I could see the SB 3-betting a hand like 10J suited but if the BB is going to shove 100% then this is simply bad since now he has to call and is probablyl behind.

I don't know, I could certainly see the SB 3-betting a hand like 55 or A9 suited. I just can't see him 3 betting a hand like 109 suited. I just don't think you're going to make money this way. Am I wrong?

I'm assuming a 7% 3-bet range perhaps up to 10% or so if the BB is betting loose. But I just don't see much looser than this.

Actually I don't think your play was particularly bad. I didn't mean for it to come off that way.

All I meant is your hand was shoveable. But since you min raised and got reraised against most normal players you can expect to be behind preflop. This doesn't mean you absolutely have to fold. And I actually think it would be wrong to fold preflop against an average player. I would prefer to simply shove and stand my ground and hope for the best. You can't put the guy on KK or AA. It's just unrealistic. On the other hand you can put him on a smaller pocket pair in which case you can never fold postflop.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with postflop play here. Preflop you could consider fold but it's not necessary to maintain an equilibrium profit (disregarding rake).

Okay, but would you consider shoving QJo?

I get that this once you min raise and then get raised it becomes harder to call. But QJo can shove. If you min bet call your entire range then aren't you doing okay overall (ie. he's often going to be screwing himself over by raising loose vs. your entire range)??? I understand folding the QJo after the 3-bet but this becomes a little tricky if we assume that the blinds are going to raise loose. How is shoving okay but min raise/callling not? Doesn't this lead to some discrepancy?

This isnt even really an ICM problem since the 1st player winner takes all, right?

Juggle, I lost you. I think you mistyped talking about the big blind opening. I don't understand it.

Here, I agree ICM has no place. Here chip EV = $EV.

I don't understand your question though. I feel like you asked more than one.

And I do not play a shortstack; I learned some to get better at it ... the weakest shortstacks back in the day were simple to play against. They'd minraise like 80% buttons. I would 1.15X or so 3bet them wide and they would fold 80%.


It is harder now. But no, the way this hand in the original post went, fold pre. Minraise is correct, but you have to fold to that 3bet, especially completely informationless

Okay, well I think I answered my own questions. I still think shoving Qjo pre is okay. However, I understand min raise folding but not sure if it is correct or not yet.

I have downloaded HRC rather than using the free trial and it appears that min raising a wide range is rather good. I have never used this in the past but it looks like a much better resource than the simple push/fold charts. I'd recommend it to the OP. I don't fully understand it yet but it looks fruitful.