Hello-

Hoping for some thoughts on this hand and this type of spot in general.

12 players left, 11 get paid and we are on the bubble. We are 8th in chips but 8-11 are all fairly close in chips. Smallest stack is ~4bb.

Villain is competent player who has ability to bet counterfeited A2 and naked A3 type hands after we check it to him. I put him on a range of (A[2-3]$w, A$w$w$B, A$w$L$B, A$w$w$L)!AA. I think he raises pot pre with AA hands. I feel his smooth call tends to mean a quality low type of hand with not a ton of high potential. Although there is a chance he is controlling the pot in position with AK$w type hands as well and included them in his range. However, overall I think hands like AK$w$w get repotted pre.

Thoughts on all streets welcome. On the bubble is it possible to fold pre? Should this be bet/fold on flop or are we always getting it in?

What do you think of the range I assigned?

Thanks!

Range you have suggested (A[2-3]$w, A$w$w$B, A$w$L$B, A$w$w$L)!AA
is it preflop, or do you think he will bet all this range after your check ?

IMHO (and I am not expert) it's definitely possible to fold pre with 10 bbs, but raise with this 4% hand is standard. Important to play cautiously on later streets on the bubble . Like C/F on this flop, not C/R. You have only 55% (and this is not enough on the bubble) against range you suggested. But really I think his range is more narrow on the bubble and his bet assumes even more narrow range (ex A3$F$F) so you are behind. Besides he could play coin flips on the bubble, but you are not with your stack.

Easy fold pre, always bet-getin this flop.

Thanks for the replies.

Fold&Forget- The range I assigned is preflop but I think he has ability to bet 100% of his preflop calling range after I check it to him.

Amok- Thanks for the insight. Is the fold strictly because it is the bubble? Is this still a fold for you 6 handed non bubble?

Thanks again

Yes, because of the bubble. I think I'd fold roughly half of the hands that I'd otherwise open and IMO this hand is clearly in the bottom half.

Thanks, seems pretty reasonable.

If the short stack UTG opens would you consider reshoving? Or is this a spot where hands such as this just need to be folded pre?

I'd definitely fold this and maybe like 75% of a "normal" opening range. There is no reason to try to knock out a small stack considering your vulnerable chip position and the fact that there are several players behind you.

This. Fold pre. Why does the HH say it was an $800 MTT; is that for real?

Haha, no its not 800. Its $8.80, HM2 records it as 800.

I will tell u that in reality even the nittiest of regs isn't getting that in pre.

This doesn't make sense to me.

Great thanks for your always helpful (for me - beginner, especially) answers.

It would be even more helpful if you could add a bit of explanation.

What hand will you open in this case? What changes are enough?
What if we change 4 to 3? Would it be OK or still not?
What if we change Q to K?

I realize that high 4% rank of this hand is mainly due to it ds, so I guess it's important when stacks are deeper and not in this case, plus not on the bubble? Is it true?

Why do you think we should go in on this flop? Is our second pair (on FD flop) and second law draw (+ backdoors) is enough on the bubble?
I suggest that best 2% hands will 3 bet us preflop, and vs 2-10% range we have about 50% equity, is it enough?

On both spots (pre-flop and flop) my opinion is based on where we are at our range. Even if our hand is top 4% pre-flop, it doesn't have massive equity vs villains range like a 4% hand would in say NLHE. I wouldn't be shocked if even hands like AK2x or weak AAxx should be folded due to bubble.

It's clearly a good flop for us. You can't expect better than a pair, 2nd ld and a bdnfd. We need less than 37% to break even in chips. How often are we scooped against his range on this flop? Like 20% I'd guess. All this combined makes it a no-brainer getin for me.

You shouldn't be building big pots first and then check-folding decent hands due to ICM. Best street to nit is always pre-flop.

Appreciate your answer

We will be scooped in 26% against 2-10% 6H.

Main problem for me that not all this (4% due to cards removal) range would call us. Let assume rather loose one direction AT,A3,A4,KK,QQ,JJ range(sure only from initial 2-10%). Against this range (3% out of 4%, so it’s about 75% of his preflop calling range) we would have 46% equity and be scooped in 30%. And I am not sure it’s OK on the bubble according to ICM.

Sounds right

OK. If we get it in against the portion of his range you describe with 46% equity and he folds the rest (a quarter of the time) we are making quite a lot of chips anyway. Not sure if it's good ICM-wise though, so your point is valid.

Not sure if 2-10% range is correct for villain, I think many play way looser than that (like 5-18%).

I missed the word 'not' after isn't

amok Great thanks for sharing your vision.

if i opened this i'd pot pre

having done zero calculations i'd say this is a good c/f on the immed bubble

This is almost exactly theoretically backwards in standard-sloped-payout MTTs.

The bubble is the time we brazenly take chips from the other players who are trying to sneak into the money. The bubble is NOT the time we try to sneak into the money. Unlike our weaker opponents, we understand the vast majority of our equity in tournaments comes from the top spots, not mincashes.


IF YOU ARE NOT BUSTING OUT ON THE BUBBLE MORE OFTEN THAN YOUR WEAK-TIGHT OPPONENTS, YOU ARE PROBABLY DOING IT WRONG. Because sometimes you'll be aggressive where you should and it won't work out. More often you'll rob them blind and help yourself win the bigger prizes.




Specifics about the hand


We have a pair and a 2NLD. Our SPR is 1.3, very very low (in other words the pot is huge relative to our remaining stack). ICM is not that big a consideration on the bubble; doubling up chips makes us almost 2x as likely to win the big prizes.

Check folding the flop is atrocious. Since we're never folding, we may as well XR pray we have some fold equity. Folding out something like AK92 that has two-pair outs is excellent for us.

Preflop, opening is OK if our opponents are playing weak tight to sneak into the money but otherwise folding is better. My general advice above is slightly mitigated by the fact that Shorty is UTG so folding to the mincash is slightly more reasonable than our usual mentality should be (although still worse than most people seem to think).

I don't know if you play MTTs much, but if so then bolstering your MTT theory is urgent. It will keep you from giving away money. Get some free ICM tools and play around with them. Or just derive ICM through a spreadsheet--great way to learn. There are videos on this.



We can construct exceptions, extreme ICM cases where folding to the money is good. Maybe you have one chip on the button, the short stack is all in for the BB next hand, and so you can try to fold and hope shorty or someone else busts out. Your tournament equity isn't great anyway and you have no fold equity so that mincash probably exceeds what you'd expect by trying to make the big money.

That's the rare exception. If you have enough chips to scare your opponents and win pots without a fight you should be trying to do it, even at risk of busting out.


You damn sure shouldn't be taking the flop at SPR=1.3, getting a reasonable flop, and thinking "I could fold to a mincash." You're hemorrhaging money.

(None of the above applies to sit and gos or multiseat sats, just standard sloped MTTs.)

doubling up our stack in this spot doesn't double the $ value of our stack

when we get this flop after a flat pre and check, and he bets 12k, any reasoning of 'brazenly take chips" goes out the window. you seem to suggest that we have fold equity with a minraise here. i don't think so

i'd say we have small +cEV that could reasonably be -$EV

Not sure if you've read the thread, but it's already been pointed out that against a super nitty range (3-10%) Hero has 46% equity. Hero needs 37% equity in order to break even in chips, so the cEV gained is far from small, it's 2bb even against an extremely tight range.

He raised pre which makes a gigantic difference.

Right. I don't think we have much FE. Against a good LO8 player we should probably have almost none. At an $800 tourney maybe everyone else is a good LO8 player.

But the point is, I believe we shouldn't fold ever in this hand. We can check-call down or XRAI. I think the shove is better because we're very unlikely to check-call our way to showdown without being all-in, and even if we do, it means we were probably ahead. So even just FE 5% of the time is much much better than zero fold equity, plus we get all-in the times we're ahead too, not just the times they're ahead.

Yeah, I way overstated my case (thinking about larger tournament structures) but I think folding with this much equity is still pretty bad, esp. in a split pot game.

It probably comes closer than many people seem to think though because everyone seems to just accept trying to fold to the money as a matter of course. Here doubling up will increase our equity to a bit more than 1.5x our starting equity. (The OP doesn't give payouts so I made some up using a schedule from the Borgata.)

However the chips we've already put in the pot have already decreased our equity by almost 1/8 of our starting equity. We could solve the ICM problem for each outcome.

One more thing: Our stack size is a little awkward for confronting the big stack at our table since we're closer to many stacks below us. (My assumption was that the other table is a duplicate; probably not a good assumption.)

Right. Maybe I'll work through the math later for my own learning.

The point is folding isn't as atrocious as I thought because a bubble where 11 get paid isn't as flat as a bubble where say 50 or 100 get paid, which is what I had in mind. But folding still seems pretty bad since the chip overlay is huge.

Do you read thread? It's $8, not 800

Payouts are very strange, not sure that Merge has anything close
9th - 27.5
10th - 2.25