Obviously, the first pusher doesn't have the top of his range, but he also doesn't have the bottom of his range. This is usually AQ, AK, 88-JJ. Think it is not such a clear call, as I think the ranges of both opponents should be stronger.

Man, I love how masque and betgo can range any utg, with no info or stats down to the same range. Two guys who havent played on stars in years know it best.

I dont but there was a element of sarcasm to my question.

People that babble like that usually talk alot better game than they play.

I was just as sarcastic He(?) has a good theoretical/mathematical approach but non realistic when it comes to applying it in today's game. Basically, a good mtter should know all that standard "gto" data that MdZ is talking about but deviate from it on case by case, as each situation is so different in mtts

Basically what Rownin says too

OP can you please give us what is the avg stack at this time you got AKo and how long till next blinds rise and what the stack of SB was if you remember (is every level like 10 min or what 12,15 this time, which is it)? Is the structure very top heavy with the final table getting over 50% of the prizes? Those are all important details if you can provide them. Also was this a tough table or you thought you were better than them having seen them do random errors on occasion?

And where exactly is it that i said something that convinces you that if i had been at the table and knew these guys were loose and playing bad, unable to understand their own errors, i would be not calling with AKo if i had the proper equity vs their wrong ranges?

What do you personally think are the ranges of these 2?

Exactly how can you be so sure someone (he) that can be a very motivated theoretical researcher of the game will not be fast to adapt when the details warrant it. And where is all this drive coming (and attention to detail exhibited many times) if not from real life poker experience? Exactly what will prevent me from adapting when necessary?

The thing here is that one must know how to play under the assumption they are the best in that event or in the best 20% of the remaining players and still respect the random opponent to be close to them (even if statistically not likely based on prior assumption) until they know more. Yes audacious as this sounds this is why one plays poker and studies it to be the best and participate in events they can win not bs random walks paying rake and fees.

And the best will not tolerate marginal crap unless they play a ton of events per day and they multitable, at which point taking risk is important and necessary because what matters is not the individual ROI per event but the ability to play as much of your bankroll per day as possible. So either make a stack big or start a new event in that portion of screen! So if you play for example 4 events in your screen with ideal focus (and not frying your brain with 8), they must be 4 deep stacked tables for hero, not 4 short ones playing nitty careful poker. Its better to have 135% ROI in 4 deep stacks using 5% of your bankroll instead of 150% ROI using 2% of it per day. (to make it a crude example). Also a deeper stack probably improves significantly your edge over the table if already better than them provided they have stacks that can give you action of course for the effective stack to be relevant and not far lower. You have 2 competing terms, the fact you play better with larger stack, having more moves available to you and the fact your tournament life is worth more than a random player's (ie the real equity for a given stack is higher than the equity a random opponent with same stack would have had or what ICM imagines).

This here is an event that something similar to that happens once a day it would seem. You do not have 4-5 like that at the same time. Maybe you can combine 109 and 162 the same day for this format (but they still have 3h difference right?). Anything else like that at the same time? So the event must be respected unless you can find and play another 3-4 like that at the same time.

If the winner take all format says TT-AA,AKs, what will the proper 162 big 238 with 198 paid say? It will certainly be even tighter than that.

One final post as a summary of all the rethinking i did until op comes with some more details.



If i were to guess how a typical not ideal player behaves here i would give them these ranges;

utg not typically QQ-AA but not A5s and QTs,JTs cute stuff either here, instead pretty much overestimating lower pairs and afraid to play them as raises and also missing the removal or suited/straight effects of hands like QTs, KQo. JTs etc something like;

JJ-66,AJs+,KQs,AJo+ . He would have raised other hands that are also some of them push material. (takes real balls to push A5s or JTs or 44, 55 etc here i mean vs 8)

btn then forced to be like 88-AA,AK,AQs . Noway this guy is risking so much with AQo or 77 here vs that utg range otherwise if we know he is loose/risky adjust.

And so under this situation;

AKo has 30% on the main pot and 43.3% vs the btn.


What that means in chip EV terms (we will do tournament EV later if OP provides what i asked him) is this; (the following are approximate results the real math problem of what happens in 3 way all in is a bit more complicated as there are some conditional issues on how often you win the second pot having lost the first but the numbers below are not bad approximations)

1) 56.7% of the time hero loses everything because he loses to btn.
2) 30% he wins everything and goes to 3*15+1.5+8+8=62.5bb
3) the rest ie 13.3% he loses the main pot but wins the secondary one and goes to 16bb

Overall then;

0.3*62.5+0.133*16=20.88 that is worse than folding (22bb)


Now you guys may want to imagine wider ranges but you do that based on what evidence?

You think its casual to push KTs or QJ,or JTs or 44 or A5s for utg with 15bb with 8 left to act?

Or do you think its ok to escalate to 48bb with AQo while having less than 48% vs utg range and introducing a 3-4% risk the blinds come up with JJ-AA,AKs to call you and deliver a nasty result on the extra chips risked.

By all means open up these ranges and tell me where to stop. Will it ever get better than the winner take all format?

http://www.holdemresources.net/h/web...=25&s9=23&s10=

Just settle on some ranges you would give people at the table if you had no clue about their styles (as i am forced to do here clearly)

Then try to relax even further things by removing btn AA,KK hands and opening up utg a bit and AKo will become plus chip EV then as some have it here. But you still now need to pass the hurdle of this being MTT and although its not bubble, its so close to the money when 238 out of 1550 with 198 paid (7.5/9 make it ie 8-7 per table survive it) that even at 23bb stack your chances to cash are very big and your equity value due to the above minimum cash part of the pool is not huge either if the avg stack is say 40bb or whatever much higher than 23bb. It will be surely important that in this event the final table gets over 50% of the prizes so if i were to redo the kind of MTT equivalent using a 9 players sng mode (i cant link icmizer that requires to enter by hand a different format than the ones it has to fit big 162), offering the last prize to be 50 times smaller than the avg prize of the final table, i would have something like this; (very top heavy)

http://www.holdemresources.net/h/web...=25&s9=23&s10=

still suggesting utg 8.6%, TT+ A9s+ AJo+ KTs+ KQo QJs , btn 4.2%, 99+ AQs+ AKo

and leaving hero BB with 1.4%, QQ+


See what i mean ?

What more do you want me to do but give the top prize in that equivalent a 50 times larger value. What more incentive to try to risk you want here?


One must not overestimate AKo in such tournament spots,thats all.

Now you saw the guys had 99 and QQ respectively. If you knew that then it becomes a call. But if you were told they have only pairs and AK for sure it becomes a fold again. I skip all this guessing game and i give you the winner take all result, the best MTT equivalent freeware program result and my personal guess for the ranges above that forces one to have only TT-AA,AKs here after having taken out QQ-AA from utg.

Sorry, are people making cEV- 15xBB UTG pushes on Stars? If you are getting called by 99/AQ, I can't see how you can push much lighter than the bottom of the calling range. If AJ/KQ is cEV+, it is only slightly so. You could probably get more profit with r/f, or even fold and avoid the variance.

AJ,KQ are not just chip EV plus they are tournament EV plus also. Not a lot but they are. Here blockers are very important because the calling ranges are very tight to begin with like 3-4-5% generally and missing 2 cards in them reduces them significantly over 8 people (adds up a lot eventually to fold equity improvement ie 3% goes to 2% happening the 4.4% becomes easily 3.8% etc while with a hand like 88 it does nothing to improve the situation and relies only on its own equity). So the blockers these hands have and their not terrible equity when called (ie need to be around 30-31% when called if the hand has 2 blockers) saves the day (the fold all probability is significant over 70% typically so it works ok and maybe better than raise fold).

Of course not everyone will push like 8.6%, TT+ A9s+ AJo+ KTs+ KQo QJs (that the last link suggested for a top heavy "equivalent" icm spot) or the ultimate pure cash winner take all (basic chip EV) range 11.3%, 44+ A9s+ A5s AJo+ KTs+ QTs+ JTs. Of course in real life people may be afraid to push 44,55,66, A9s,KTs,QTs,JTs,A5s and even KQo sometimes with almost 8 covering left to act and might raise of fold them instead.

There isn't enough info but it looks like a snap call. I'm guessing it's slightly ev to very positive ev based on table dynamics.

Lol Masque

Slipslope you lol at the fact this is even a fold in terms of even winner take all mode let alone top heavy ICM structure?

I dare anyone here to counter my links with better ones.

Are you sure you are the ones that know people who push from this spot better than i do? My read that the guys are both heavy in pairs was correct by the way. Only one of these pairs to be KK-AA or one of them to be pair and the other (almost always the first) to have an ace or K taken or be AK and you are done!

If you are in a table that utg pushes light at this spot you better believe it you are aware of them by prior history and the same for the btn too. Then call whatever.

So where the f is the lol coming from? What is so unreasonble here that i said?

The lol is from using 9man sng tools for a large field mtt. Once again there is not enough info on the table but the 1st raiser could be as light as a2 and the button as light as 88 and ajs

How can you push A2s for 15xBB UTG when you are getting called by 88/AJs in late position? You need to steal 2/3 of the time, and if you are getting called that light, you are getting called about 1/2 the time.

If UTG is pushing all sorts of hands like that, then of course snap call.

A huge what the f for not getting it guys (in an amusing not mad sense lol). Yes laugh all you want for me using an 9 player table equivalent (get an icmizer to have the structure of that exact event and paste images of it here, i choose what is available to all people reading) but its not wrong, wanna bet money on it? 1 in 9 in this table on avg wont make the money, agree? 1 in 9 in this table will reach top 20 agree? The structure i used is 50 to 1 same as the top 10-20 avg vs the min prize in recent big 162 results. But i even used winner take all mode that is basically a cash chipEV mode and even then the AKo has problems. So even if the 9 p table equivalent isnt convincing, the fact the cash model is close to it in conclusions should tell you that the real thing should be in between the 2 cases and closer to the equivalent i used than the cash model.

By all means put various stacks for SB or others in that table and see what happens, how things change or dont change. I tried in the absence of information to use a random distribution around the stacks we knew about and even have the SB a smaller stack to make the case for AKo calling more close than it might be by having the btn not effectively risking all 48bb.

The thing about pushing garbage utg or overshoving AJo in btn are arbitrary and unreasonable for a good poker player or even the avg ones when approaching the money where the majority of ignorants are usually out or very loaded because of luck. If you have evidence of such bs plays then call but realize that in a very bad table you are not going to suddenly make a good play that is still not very big in EV risking everything when these guys will tend to give you tons of better spots all the time. Even vs 2 10% ranges AKo is never more than 37% (but call then). If you had JJ for example it would be over 40%.

The most likely hand people push from utg is a pair and AK and the most usual hands they get called is also a pair or AK. So by all means be the 3rd guy that is still drawing...hopefully not nearly dead if one has AA,KK

It's what happens, I am not saying it's optimal.

All this is besides the point, ak does well enough with almost any ranges, but table dynamics could change this from ok I will call to **** yes snap call.

I was basing it on what you could profitably shove for 15xBB UTG, which is probably something like AJs/88+, and a calling range against the lower part of that range. That would make it probably a fold with AK, considering variance issues.

I am not sure if pushing 15xBB UTG is a good play with any hand. If it was, maybe with AQ/99/TT or something like that.

If people are making bad pushes with weaker hands, but would rarely do this with big pairs, and the callers are adjusting, then it is a snap call.

Are good players really pushing ranges capped at like 99 here? Seems pretty bad imo should at least push 1010+ AK 50% or something for balance. Doubt many players are shoving anywhere close to gto here but haven't played online mtts on stars in over a year so don't really know.

Don't need to balance, because you need a strong hand to profitably push UTG. Don't need to make a stronger range by including JJ+/AK or whatever, and who notices exactly what your range is here. If you do have a capped range, 99 seems to low, as TT/AK should be good pushes. You should probably have a polarized minraise range. It is generally better to r/f rather than open push a lot of hands, so you can balance that with r/c with big hands. It is more important to balance your raise range than your push range, which can never be that imbalanced.

It is possible people are pushing too light here because they are used to correctly shoving 15xBB with marginal hands in mid to late position, and don't want to r/f, play postflop maybe OOP short stacked, or open fold with QTs or whatever. If that is the case, and you are getting called like half the time, then it is fine to push JJ+. With JJ+, you should raise or push mainly based on which gets the most action.

large fan.