Sigh. Especially when my cards run cold (35o, 85o, J7 etc). I know they are pickin on me because they do it like almost every round. Sometimes I stand up to them by pushing AI, but then they would fold and start doing it again the next round. I don't dare to keep pushing AI eveytime they do this because I see the calling with marginal hands sometimes, and my cards are pretty much trash. Of I call you could be sure they bet aggressively otf and again I don't know what to do if i don't hit. It's frustrating and juvenile this whole getting bullied business and I keep gettin busted at third place I'm sick to the stomach.
You guys keep sayin there aren't lag at micros only loose idiots, but well if the loose idiots get lucky and make it to top 3 it's huge problem for me.
What to do god damn it.

And Harrington? All in vigorish my ass. They call and i die.

This is going to happen especially if you are playing a nitty style. Just remember they will do this to anyone who is in the blinds on their button. They aren't just targeting you. A lot of the times they will be doing this with a really wide range so you are able to fight back with a wider range of your own. If you make it known a couple times that you will defend your blinds before it comes time for bubble they will most likely tighten up their range to steal (if they are decent players)

Also I've been told "Don't be afraid to bubble" and the reasoning is if you tighten up just trying to skate into the money then you really aren't playing to win. Keep your same play style and be even a little more aggressive in my opinion.

The goal isn't necessarily to win. It's to make the decision that most favorably effects your equity of the prize pool. If you're 4th in chips then you don't have much to lose so may as well take a shot at a resteal with a decent hand, but if you're 2nd in chips and you bubble, most serious SNG players view this as a disaster.

To the OP: Are you familar with ICM? It stands for Independent Chip Modeling, and it's essential for you to understand it if you're going to be a winning SST player. You can't simply use pot odds to make decisions in a SNG, because pot odds assume that all chips are worth the same amount. There a more detailed explanation here, as well as an ICM calculator.

Edit: Also, really? Your first account gets banned, and you make a new one by just adding a letter to your old name?

The real question is why aren't you stealing too?




His original account was one of several that were closed after getting hacked.

Ship da chips in, next time the ****** trys to steal imo :P

This is essentially a fear issue. Don't get me wrong - fear is good, in general. It keeps us healthy and safe. Fear exists for a reason, and don't believe all the hype - making decisions based on fear is very often a good thing to do.

However, there's something you need to understand about tournaments that will remove some fear that shouldn't exist. (I'm assuming you're not talking about 50/30/20 style payouts of SNGs, but regular tournament style payouts.)

Tournament payouts are highly skewed toward the top. If your goal is to cash as much as possible, this will likely result in suboptimal long term results. Your goal should actually be to finish very high, and not necessarily that often.

Consider: who do you think is a better player of these 2 in terms of their tournament finishes? Assume a tournament of 100 players that pays the top 9.

Player A: 38th, 61st, 8th, 12th, 21st, 7th, 10th, 15th

Player B: 100th, 100th, 100th, 100th, 100th, 100th, 100th, 2nd

Your probably guessed it - Player B crushes. Even though he looks like an aggro donkey maniac sometimes, he still crushes. Even though Player A looks solid and competent, he still loses to Player B.

The point is, it's worth some risk (and even some -EV in the particular hand you're in) to get to the top few spots, as opposed to squeaking in past the bubble. It's hard to get past that, because you signed up for the tournament, you spent hours there, your next tournament might not be for another month, and you want to finish as high as possible. That's fine, but you just have to understand it's hurting your long term EV.

So just decide what you want. Surviving is OK. But if you really want to accumulate some chips and make a play for the top, then you just have to shove it in. When you understand how you win long term in these things, it might be frustrating, but at least you shouldn't be afraid any more. Just shove it in and to hell with it. Even if you get it in with the worst, you've still got a decent chance to double up. Otherwise, worst thing that can happen is they stop picking on you.

Mind elaborating about sngs? Because I play them both rather evenly.
-ev situations would help? Do you have an example in mind? Mind elaborating?

I don't understand the math in icm but I do have sngwiz and I'm just playing around with it for a few days. Here's my prob, it conflicts with what I learned. Dan Harrington says get it in and all in vigorish and everything, but when I check wiz and did the hand ranges, it says I shouldn't push with 77 when that god damn bully raises pre. He's raising almost every hand. Harrington on the other hand says we should push with much lower. Another example, A8. To Harrington that must be a pretty damn good hand for all in vigorish, by again sngwiz says we shouldn't push.
Who is right here? Or is Harrington on holdem not applicable when it comes to sngs?

SNGWiz, however, do you have SNGWiz configured properly with the correct ranges? You can't just use default ranges.

against a guy raising and calling all iins every hand, 77 is a great hand to push

Fold equity is everything in late game tourney play. Thats why habitual blind stealers abuse it. Do not let yourself get into a situation where you cant resteal the blinds back. Once you get down to 10BB's you need to be either stealing every hand, or restealing anyone raising your BB. Sure they're going to show up with big hands sometimes, but you might as well bust in 10th heroically defending your blinds than hit 9th by folding away until you are forced to ship for 1.5BB's and lose to king high.

Yeah, thanks for pointing that out. Turns out sngwiz didn't let me go beyond 17 in CALL% unless I modify OPEN% to beyond 17...
Turns out I was right to push after all.

The thing that strikes me as odd is that they seem to have a system. They know what kind of hands to raise pre, what kind of hands to bet otf and what kind of hands to fold. They have a system.
I'm not a nit in general, my VPIP are always over 20, so I could open up and call their raises, but like I said, idk what the hell I was supposed to do otf. I was off balance the entire time I was playing their style. And it probably isn't +ev to push AI to resteal everytime when all 3 of us have about the same amount chips.
I need to know how to play late stage and not just pushing and shoving.

Keep playing with SNGWiz, watch the tutorials, adjust ranges, stack sizes, your starting hands etc and it will help your end-game.

Lets say you are SB and it folds around to you and you have 10bb left and you have T9s. This is an unexploitable shove. In other words, you could turn your cards over and shove and it would still be +$EV

If you don't know the difference between chip EV and dollar EV, then you need to do a bit of reading into ICM. A good starting point is

http://www.chillin411.com/node/7

Good luck

But that's exactly what you should be doing at the end of the tourney.

If you feel you are getting outplayed OOP then your life is just going to be hell and theres nothing you can do about it. Sometimes you get a ****ty seating position at the table and you're kinda screwed.

Would you say this if 3 players are around 4000+ in chips on a 3 handed table, each with 20BB+ or so, and basically no one pushes preflop?

Wow, lots of stuff there and unusual website name. Did you write this yourself as a blog or something?

No, it's just a site from my favourites when I was learning this stuff.

ICM is much more useful in SNGs than tournaments, because they resemble more satellites than tournaments do (again, because of the skewed payouts for tournament play). A well known example is that in a satellite where 2 players make the same (and only) prize, and there are 4 players left, and you have AA, and all players before you go all-in, and they have you covered, you should fold. (If you fold, you almost surely win the tournament - 99% probably. If you call, you stand a strong chance of losing - at least 25% probably.)

It might not be this extreme in a SNG, but it might be close. You should be very very tight in situations like that. The reason is the rather flat payout structure (50% 1st, 30% 2nd, 20% 3rd.) (30% or 33.3% of players get paid)

This is very very different from the skewed, very top heavy payout structure of a tournament (only 8-12% of players get paid, and out of those, only the top half or better really make you much profit). In this situation, to have good long term EV, you almost have to shoot for the top few spots and be willing to put up with some risk to get there (more risk than in an SNG).

This is similar in concept to playing video poker, where you have to make some "bad looking" draws to go for the royal flush, which is what a lot of the EV of video poker depends on. See example below (you would play this differently if playing video poker vs. cash game)
http://www.videopokerballer.com/strategy/

What I mean is, if you just count pot odds (or think of EV in those terms), you're missing the real EV, which is money payout. In cash games, you can think of pot odds and probabilities of hitting your hand and winning the pot as the same. Chips are cash. In tournaments, that is not true. Cash comes from finish position, not from chips won in pots. It might very well be that you should take a -EV chip situation (such as drawing to a flush with 3:1 instead of the 4:1 you need, or not drawing when you're getting 5:1) because of the implied cash odds (which, as mentioned, don't equate to your chip odds).

It's very situation dependent and I don't know all the details, but hopefully you get the basic idea. Here's one simple strategy. Let's say you're (meaning you specifically) playing at a table of seasoned pros at the final table of a tournament (you have to make it to the final table to make the money). Let's say everyone has equal stacks of $100,000, and you flop a flush draw. There is $10,000 in the pot. First player checks, second player checks, third player bets $10,000, you call, first player moves all-in, second player folds. You know first player has you beat. You should probably call. In a cash game, you should definitely fold. In a tournament, you don't stand much chance against these guys, and this represents probably your best chance to double up + without having to outsmart anyone. This isn't the best example but this is a well known strategy.