90% of the hands I raise preflop:
https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/520118181
KJo, raise 4bb, it dissuades no one already in the hand from calling, flop completely misses, coming in low, someone bets pot ahead of me, I lay it down. Cost to me: 160 chips.
Sometimes it works out tho:
2BB raise (1200 chips) on AT, flop flush draw, lay it down to set of 9s, because that’s what always happens when I raise. Just give away the chips by the shovelful.
99, let’s be super aggressive here.
Not a great spot to be super aggressive. If you get called, you are usually either a small favorite (vs 2 overs) or a big dog (vs a bigger pair).
Not an ideal spot to shove for your tournament life.
I don’t agree. You’ve got 4 BB’s ; Pretty large FTS (first to speak) player raises 3x. This play was not super aggressive, it was a good one.
If you don’t shove 99, you’re wanting to wait to get AA with no action before you ? This actually is an ideal spot for a shove, knowing that you have to double up atleast to survive this SNG anyway… Being a nit and trying to collect the blinds is not the way to go, you’re going to get ran over.
What is he raising with 3x FTS ? ATo+, maybe all pockets, KJo+, QJs maybe, …
So yeah, you’re either a big dog against a TT+, got a coin flip against two overs, and are dominating smaller pocket pairs. I’m just almost never folding here, maybe, maybe only against a guy who I know and who is a big big nit. But even then, you’ve just got too much equity here.
Yeah, ok. I posted that at the end of a long night and didn’t notice the blinds were so high. It’s still not an ideal spot to shove, but you can’t always wait for ideal.
In general though, shoving over an EP raiser with midling pairs is not a great spot.
I can see both points of view and think it is a toss up. However I think I lean slightly in favor of folding the 9s, the reason being that from a tactical point of view you are on the bubble, I think with three players getting prize money, and the three lower stacks are all roughly equal. Ideally you want to get the two other smaller stacks playing against each other and not get all-in with the large stack where most likely you don’t have better than 53% against his unpaired hands, are crushed by his overpairs, and a favorite against his underpairs, because you may have better chances to get into the money by outplaying the smaller stacks.
My philosophy of playing tournaments these days is increasingly leaning towards ALWAYS being the raiser, and NEVER the caller unless you have AA, or have stack domination over the raiser and can afford to let him win the pot and double up without losing too much position. Even then, I don’t like letting small stacks double or treble up and would often fold a good hand if the small stack shover has already been called by a large stack.
Of course there are always certain exceptions, like this hand. I could have ducked, but I played QQ in this three way hand because the small stack was tiny, and if we both went out on the hand, then I would take third place and win 1.63 million chips for a 250,00 buy-in, which was what happened, and was about the best I could hope for.
Often I would rather raise with a bluff hand like 8 6s than call with AK. For my raise with 8 6 s I will pick a cautious player with a middling stack who is not likely to make a desperation shove and not a tiny stack who is certain to shove any two cards, or a vast stack who will swat me like a fly if I get second pair on the flop. If I make that raise and DO have AK, then sometimes I will show the hand, just to show that I am not some kind of donk bluffer trying to steal pots, but I rarely show bluffs unless I have just forced a player to fold a winning hand in a huge pot, in which case he needs to know, so that next time he will call a bet that looks the same.
My two worst beats over the last couple of days were my call with AK against a small stack shove with JJ, where I lost, but not fatally at this point. The player with JJ went on to win the tournament , but I made the money. The other was my JJ calling a shove by a player with QQ.
I appreciate that in cash games you can reliably go on the balance of probabilities, but in tournaments you want to win ever pot you enter and lose none, and you do not need to win many pots as long as they are big ones and at the right time.
Fold equity plus card win probability will always beat a 53/47 horse race. I am slowly but consistently increasing my chip stack and lowering my RP rating, based on this style of play. It might not work in cash games and it might not work at the Main Event of the World Series of Poker, but it is working right now on RP.
Yes to this. 99 is borderline to me. Most smaller pairs are a fairly easy fold for me there, anything bigger is probably a shove.
I would shove vs a limper. I would shove if isolated against the BB. Against an EP open? Eh, could go either way I guess. You have almost 0 fold equity. You won’t win the tourney by winning, you will lose it if you don’t win the hand… it’s just not a good spot.
I discovered a few days ago that I no longer care about winning on RP, so maybe I shove there too.
I was clearing out emails from July, and saw that I won 4 MTTs, surprising because I haven’t been playing much. What shocked me was that one of them was a small Omaha MTT. As far as I remember, I have never won an Omaha MTT before, and it didn’t even register. I don’t remember playing the tourney and don’t remember winning it. I seem to be pushing apathy to new levels!
Yup, I agree. Puggy, please give us your notes on vilain here, would be interesting. It’s pretty important in this spot…
So if we win, the chips will disappear into a big crater in the middle of the table, right ? 
But for you, it’s not a good spot, or is it borderline ?
Also… we’ve got 4 freaking blinds. Unless we’re lucky, we will have to be shoving crap like J7s later on with 2 BB’s and lose it all. Ok, there is one shorter stack, but still, you’re shoving 3900 to win 8500 (45%)… This big open size just gives us great equity to be shoving, against the open-range I mentioned before. But how does it precisely look like ? Does he raise A5s-A10s ?
Vilain’s stack size also gives him the opportunity to be aggressive, so we have to adjust our range to this also.
And also, this is a SNG though… !
But anyway, if other players could maybe answer, would be interesting.
In general, it’s borderline. Against that specific player, it’s not a good spot… usually. I don’t think it’s a great spot ever.
That V doesn’t usually open from EP light. On the other hand, he was the big stack, so hard to say.
There’s been a lot of great comments since I posted on this thread last, and I want to thank each and every one of you for your responses.
I’d agree with you here. It’s not ideal.
But I can also agree with @ValueFish, that this was a reasonable play to make.
It was my hope that I’d get Nomad81 to fold here in response to my raise.
This is indeed the crux of the matter, isn’t it?
I don’t really keep notes on players, other than mental ones. I find that people’s play can change over time, and if I play someone based on notes about them that I took 6 months ago, I could find that doesn’t work so good. I remember some of the names I play frequently, and have a sense of who’s good and who’s not so good, and a bit of a flavor of how they play.
I don’t really have that on Nomad81, but here, at this table, he’d taken a big stack early, and had been using it to bully the table, laying in bets that no one could call, using that stack very effectively. Bets that were maybe 10% of his stack, but 50% to 2/3 of anyone else’s, and every hand that advantage just grew. No one would call him, I don’t recall him winning too many hands in showdowns, and maybe this was just his table, but I couldn’t not play the 99 here, and I couldn’t just call and then give up if the flop produced an overcard and I didn’t flop a set.
Previously, I’d open-shoved TT and JJ and only gotten blinds with them. This was the first hand where there were significant chips laid out on the table before I acted. I didn’t necessarily expect the villain to lay down to my shove here, considering his stack advantage, he could have survived doubling me up quite well, but if that ended up being the outcome, I felt like I could outplay him from there, and as others have pointed out, the blinds were too high relative to my stack size to think I could expect to wait around on a better hand to come.
So 99 wasn’t ideal, but it was what I was dealt, and if i was going to take a stand, that was the hand. I did, and it didn’t work out. And I’m OK with that (well not really) but I am trying to make correct decisions, not focus on outcomes.
By shoving there, I was counting on Villain to have raised something marginal, or junky, like K7, or JT or something like that – not having AA. That much of it is just a “murphy’s law” “woe is me” pity party hand. But seriously, WTF do these hands happen so frequently?
I know not to be focused on outcomes, but JFC why does this @#%@ always happen the one time I raise a big hand? I’d be posting here extolling the virtues of aggression if the hands ever worked out right. But what happens to me time and again is, I win some small pots, and then lose a huge one that wipes out whatever gains the had brought me.
I don’t really believe that aggression is wrong. I’m not that dumb and arrogant to truly believe that everyone else in the world is wrong and I’m right.
So then, the conclusion I should be coming to is: aggression is something I’m doing wrong.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
Some observations:
When to be aggressive?
++Don’t do this (very often) if there are players who like to sleep on top pair from early position, or when you miss a “scare flop” like solid suited, or a paired flop. You can steal scary flops if you can represent a good flop for you, but if you run into someone who really does have it, you’re going to lose big. It’s pretty much a guessing game whether someone else happens to have it or not, unless you have a very good read on your opponents. It might be best reserved for when you’re desperately low on chips and can’t afford to lay down the hand, but can accept losing it. Keep in mind that strong hands played well try to rep weak, so small bets can be better than big ones to induce folds on scary flops when you don’t really have it; the big bet will only be called by a hand that has you beat. You see a lot of big pots go to players who bet into a two pair flop (pair on the board) and get destroyed by sleeping trips.
+++Conversely, if you see someone doing this at your table, sleep a strong hand on them to induce them to bet, and then trap them with a raise big enough to beg them to call.
Out of position: When nobody’s got it, the first to bet often will take it. Being early can be an advantage. I find this to be true more when you’re truly heads up, rather than in a heads-up situation because you’ve isolated the hand with an aggressive preflop bet that only got one call. Why? Because, in a true heads-up situation at the end of a SNG, the blinds are very big, the limping ranges are very wide, and anyone could have anything at any time. Any flop you whiffed on is plausible to bluff when you’re limping. And due to the blinds, you can often do it just a well with a min-bet as you can with a pot-size or shove, which makes it one of the safest forms of aggression.
On the bubble. There are two cases where you absolutely should be aggressive in the bubble period: with the big stack, and with the small stack.
With the big stack, you’re able to make 2-3BB raises that amount to 10% or so of your stack, but 40-60% of your opponent’s stack. Unless they’re holding at the top of their range, they’re probably not going to challenge you. If they do, you might have to back down, but you might just take them out. Knowing what kinds of hands your opponent will shove from a desperation stack is key.
With the small stack, you want to be shoving in situations where your normal open raise would be more than say 25% of your chips. You want to steal the blinds, but doubling up is OK too. You want to do this before your stack is too small, when your shove is for at least 1/2-2/3 your opponent’s, it’s ideal. They will not want to call here unless they’re holding something premium. Stealing blinds when the blinds are big is just about as good as doubling up when you’re that short and the blinds are that tall, and at the bubble you’re looking at a short-handed table in a SNG, and it’s a lot more likely to get 3-4 folds than to get 8, and 3-4 folds x 400/800 chips is a lot more chips than 8 folds x 15/30. It’s best to look for situations where you’re not shoving into the big stack, though, as they’re the most likely player to call and take a chance that they knock you out.
Middle stacks, you should mostly sit back and let your opponent make mistakes and knock each other out, at least until you survive the bubble. Play hands that you have to, like limped blinds, strong pairs, but don’t overcommit, and don’t chase draws. Use aggression if you can see it working – by which I mean if the signs are right, not necessarily if you see someone else doing it . When you see someone else doing it, if you try to do it too, you’re going to end up clashing and it’s going to hurt one of you bad. Bide your time. But if the table’s real soft and playing extra tight, it can be a great time to steal a few pots, if you don’t push it too far. If you’re raising every had, you’ll lose credibility, and you’ll eventually run into a big hand that crushes you.
When not to be aggressive?
Hell if I know, if I ever figure it out, I sure as hell won’t write about it here. Some players just seem to get hot cards, dumb opponents, and amazing flops that hit them time and again. They shrug off big beats, come right back and bet big again, and yet somehow survive. I hate them.
Now, all that said, nothing can work worse than being aggressive in a situation simply because it’s the perfect time to be aggressive, and everyone knows that’s the only why you’re being aggressive. Last to act in a hand, everyone has checked, you bet pot, thinking to take it, and get 3 calls from players with anything from bottom pair to a draw to the nuts. Why? How’d they know you had nothing? Because a pot sized bet to no action ahead when you’re last to act reads like “I have nothing, and I want these chips that none of you seemed to want, and if I had this hand I’d have bet at a size that was reasonable for one of you fools to call so I could get more chips out of you.” Even if you fold half the table or all but one, that one who stays in has something and it’ll beat you. You might as well give him the rest of your stack and your watch and your underwear and car keys.
How to be aggressive
This might be the part I need more work on. Bet sizing is perhaps not my strong suit. Maybe I’m overthinking it and outthinking myself. It seems to be different at every table. Some tables a 2BB raise will get the entire table to fold. Other tables, a shove will induce a cascade of 4 more shoves behind you. It changes hand to hand. The rule of thumb that I’ve heard for opens is to make it 3-4BB, + 1 per limper ahead of you. I tried this for a while and could never get it to work reliably.
When I say “get it to work” it sounds like I have something in mind, and honestly maybe that’s my problem, not knowing exactly what I’d like to see come of my action. The ideal, so they say, is you get one caller, isolated, and then you beat them, and you get a lot of chips. Well, it’s a great theory.
How do you beat them? Simple! A) By having a better hand or B) By making a bet they won’t call.
It’s funny how both of these things work, because both of them seem to be inextricably bound to pure chance.
It is easier to beat a good player, though, than it is to get a bad one to fold. So lesson one, don’t ever bluff someone who’s too dumb to fold, and don’t bet someone to put them all in to call if you’ve got nothing. You do not want to see the showdown when you’re bluffing. The right sized bet will prevent that, but only if your opponent is a thinking player who has knowledge of fear, or better yet, probability. Know your villain and know the size bet that will work, and you can make aggressive play work for you. Otherwise, maybe think about checking and folding instead. A player who isn’t “dumb” per se, but doesn’t care about winning/losing and just enjoys seeing what chance brings can be a terrible opponent to bluff aggressively into.
Sizing. How? This is an area where I need to develop science, but so far, there’s too many loose variables (players mostly; but also the hidden cards) for me to figure it out.
Post-flop: If you were aggressive pre, you almost have to be betting post. If you don’t, it’s a sure sign of weakness. The only way you want that is if you just flopped the nuts, and are hoping someone hit too, something like top pair, and feels confident but also wants to end the hand right now and is prepared to overbet to make that happen.
Some time ago, the entire community of players on RPP must have gotten the memo that they should always call when I bet on a flop, and then see what I do on the Turn, and if I check the Turn, then shove. This has become such a standard textbook tactic that you can set your watch to it. I exploit it now, betting a flop that I know will get called, then checking when I want everyone’s chips, and get them more often than not.
Sometimes, better players will sense the trap potential and will call the flop bet, but then just check the rest of the way. Sometimes they were on a draw and hit nothing. Sometimes they were on middle pair and didn’t want to lay down since it might improve. These hands then to be tense and interesting but of small consequence.
I used to double and triple barrel after my preflop raises when I missed the board, and that used to be successful for me for a long time, until it stopped. But maybe I should try doing it a bit more. It seems the single barrel C-bet bluff on the flop doesn’t often do it, when sometimes it just takes another street to convince them to lay it down. The Turn can often mean the end to someone’s draw dreams, and if they haven’t hit by now, they’re probably not going to sustain another bet.
The thing to keep in mind is that probability dictates that on average you miss the flop 2/3 of the time. (Except when I aggressively bet preflop and then c-bet, in which case it seems to be more like 85% of the time, you hit. Go figure.) So if your opponent is soft enough to give up on the flop when they miss, a c-bet is great. If they’re not soft enough to give up on the flop when they miss, that can be even better. If you can get a caller to chase draws with bad odds, that’s winning poker right there, even if they do suck out on you 7/10ths of the time… if not by hitting their straight, then by making a better top pair than you had on the flop.
I dunno what else to say. Despite playing pretty well and having some very solid profit for much of the past year, this is still something I’m figuring out. And I guess it’s part of that lifetime learning curve that is poker, and which makes the game great. I’m frustrated with aggression because I’m Doing It Wrong, and because outcomes are not matching what I feel should be expected based on probability.
I bet big on cards that are very good against Any Two Cards, but apparently not Any Two Cards That Would Actually Call. The thing is, you’d think that variance would even this out for me, and mostly, it doesn’t. At the moment, my aggression wins me small pots and loses big ones. Still. And I’m still trying to figure it out.
Here’s some good illustrative examples of what to do and not do involving aggression from tonight’s play:
AJo, calls a 3.5BB raise from UTG+1 in middle position. 3 more players after call as well. Mistake #1: Not raising. Mistake #2: Calling. This should have been a 4x raise or fold.
Instead, I flop just the wrong thing, T4Q for a broadway straight draw, which of course misses. I sustain a half-pot bet on the flop, which commits me, everyone checks on the Turn, which was my last chance to take it, but I too only checked. River fills a flush for the player behind me, while I bet pot hoping to take it down with a bluff, they shove, I know I’m dead so I just obligingly give them the entire stack so I don’t have to sit at the table staring at a few hundred chips for the next twenty orbits until I shove all on 33 and lose it. I just love giving it away.
AQo in the BB. Blinds at 20/40, full ring very early. My curse is that I only get “decent” open cards in early position, usually UTG. I open raise to 175, a couple of limpers folds around, only UTG calls. Flop is Q with 2 rags, I bet pot and take it, but it’s paltry, 470 chips. But not bad for an early hand. Could I have done better here? Maybe check and let them see a Turn card for free? No, I don’t think so. Maybe a smaller bet to induce them to call? Maybe, but then I run the risk of them having a King and hitting a pair of Kings, or Qx and hitting two pair. Best to take the hand on the flop, and not go for something bigger this early
A7s, in the BB, blinds 400/800, I have 2400 in front of me. UTG+2 raises 2BB, 2B calls, so that’s 2000 out there. I shove my 2400, everyone else now has to make a decision to put in another 1600 chips to call, or fold, table folds. Exactly what I wanted to happen here. This is textbook. Good pot, minimal risk. Exactly how a shove is supposed to work in this situation.
I’m T5o in the BB. SB min-raises, I fold. This hand is about the Button’s aggression. AA4 on the flop, SB bets 1000 into a 2000 chip pot. Button shoves, SB mucks. We don’t see what they had.
Nicely done, if it’s anything but an Ace. If they had an Ace here, I’m thinking call and let them continue to bet is a better play to make. One more bet on the Turn and they’re probably all-in.
Another AQo in the BB, blinds 100/200, table is 7-handed. I raise 3BB, UTG shoves. I’m sensing I’m dead, so I might as well get it over with, and call. We both have AQo, and chop a pot. Eh, good call, I guess? But I felt so sure that this was going to be another one of those hands where 66 makes a set or just wins outright when the board completely misses me; no, we both hit a pair of Queens, backed by a pair of 8s onthe board.
KQo in the CO, blinds are at 150/300, I have 1155 left in front of me, pretty desperate here. UTG limps, I shove. SB calls, dominating me by a lot, and hits a pair of 9s with his K9o, I miss and am eliminated. What did I do wrong here? Shoved with too few chips, I guess. It should have been a good hand for me, KQ dominates K9, except when the only card on the board that hits either hand is a 9. Typical me luck
#520418430
88, on the button. Small stack accross the table shoves from early position, I should have laid down here, but I figure the play is to isolate and call, so I shove, hoping that it will make the player behind me fold, and then it’ll just be me and the small stack. I’m not worried about the small stack, I have them well covered, and I figure they’re desperate, they’re maybe shoving something dumb like two high cards. Wrong. They’re on JJ, and the player behind me? Well, they called, they’re on QQ. FML. QQ hits a set of Queens, I river a set of useless, meaningless 888s, and me and Mr JJ are both eliminated. If I just sat out this hand, I could have maybe got into the money, but nope, I’m out 5th, a hand later. Someone needs to remind me you don’t have to play every pocket pair you pick up, they’re not always invincible. Just when the other guy has them. But, you know, when you’re down this low in chips, any time you see a pair, it seems like it’s a good day to die.
Nice pot won with AA. Flop is QJX, I call a bet from my villain. An A on the turn gives me trips. This feels great; I’m ahead of any pair or two pair or set my villain could have had on the flop, now, for sure. I could slow play here, to try for more value, but with two other broadway cards on the board already I’m afraid the trips are vulnerable to a straight, so I decide to bet half-pot and see what that does; it ends the hand. Decent sized pot, not too much risk.
Opening hand of the game an Ace-rag diamond draw that falls one short on the river. I really misplayed this hand, and tried to suicide on the river, but my all-in didn’t get a call my villain is notoriously loose, but apparently didn’t want to take a risk of going out on the first hand for once. I guess this was a good play? Knowing my opponent I kinda predicted they would KO me, but it’s late and I don’t care. Instead I pick up a decent starter pot.
In this hand we see a post-flop shove onto a small pot. Flop came in low, shover is holding JJ, I had AQ and had to lay it down. I figured it was a big pair or maybe a lucky set. I find the play made here questionable; a shove really isn’t necessary to close this hand, the odds are the only hands that could call here have you beat, and yeah I guess there’s a chance a foolish call loses big but these aren’t the type of players who would do that, certainly not this early. I feel like this shove is losing them value for their hand. Although, who knows, maybe they saved themselves from a Turn Queen. What do I know?
AKs, typical blank flop, like you get. Win it with a c-bet. I got a little credit here, but mostly I’m thinking it’s because my opponent missed and didn’t want to chase something expensive. Small pot, but at least it’s not a disaster like all the other AKs hands.
A9s in late position, 2J2 flop, no action, I take it with a min bet on the Turn.
No aggression, big win. BB special, 86s, flops 2 pair, I manage to fish in a calling station for all his chips, calling all the way on a flush draw and a pair of 7s. I do it by check-raising the flop and then betting every street like I’m trying to close the hand. This guy had terrible pot odds to call for his flush draw, but stuck do it, putting all-in on the river even when he didn’t hit.
I just won this SNG, my last game of the night.
A few piddly pots aside, these five hands were my entire game.
Was this good play?
Perhaps I shouldn’t ruin my mystique, but I think I just got super lucky in each of these hands. This is remarkable considering how my luck often seems to run. But I have to document this as evidence that sometimes I get through by the grace of the poker gods. If I think I can play like this and win most of my games, I guarantee I will run off another string of losses that will drop me back down to 12 million chips in an evening.
But maybe it was good play that I decided not to play the many other hands over the hour. I didn’t know I could win any of these hands, and I thought I would lose most of them, but the hands I didn’t play, I knew I couldn’t win any of them.
But also, I have to note how aggression did help me in this game: Inducing the laydown in hands 1 and 3 which allowed me to take those pots, inflating the chips won in the pot from hand 2, not laying down to the shove after I raised in hand 4 or 5. But really hand 5 was a freakin miracle and I should not be here.
I think anyone who refers to Pulp Fiction and worries about their mystique has to be playing well.
As I often say, it’s better to be lucky than good.
@puggywug, Doug Polk posted a really good video a few days ago about how “good” players think about poker (and other strategy games). A healthy chunk of the video was how to discuss hand histories. What’s the really pertinent information, compared to anecdotal/low value? For example:
Nowhere in this particular hand history do you mention the “big stack” position, starting stack sizes, preflop action, or the board runout, though it’s implied that the top card on the flop is a 9. You “shove on the Turn,” but don’t say what the turn card is. Overcard to the board? Complete a potential straight? Are there flush draws out there?
One of the weaknesses of your game is that you’re too results-oriented. In this particular hand, would you have “played it poorly” if @jazzbythebay hit his straight? What if he hit a jack or a ten? Was it the right decision (or set of decisions) only if the runout favored you?
Better questions: Were your decisions (open/call, raise sizing) correct? If you were betting for value on the turn, what worse hands did you expect to call? What did you expect to fold? Which bluffs would you use to balance out your range? Did you charge draws an appropriate amount, or were your bet sizes too large? How did ICM factor into your decisions? By asking yourself (and the people on the forums) better questions, it’ll give you deeper insight into your strategy, ideally improving your game and win rates, but also helping you gain more comfort when competitors make bad decisions yet end up sucking out on you.
You raised some good points. I’ll have to watch the video later when I can. Thanks.
I don’t give every last bit of detail on the hand history, for space and time reasons, but I provide links to the hand so you can reference it and get all the relevant details yourself. But you could have a point in that if I don’t mention something in summary, it’s a clue that I don’t value that bit of information as much as what I do mention, which could be a problem if I am not focused on the right stuff.
To answer your question, I was between the small stack and the big, their acting behind me gave them position advantage, which I hoped shoving would mitigate, and I think that was right. I don’t recall what the Turn was specifically, but you can replay it. I’m certain it wasn’t an Ace, Jack, or Ten, and beyond that I don’t think it was a particularly scary card for me. I think it was an under card, and could have possibly made a straight with this board for the right hand. That might have helped the big stack to fold here.
You might be right that I’m too focused on results, and that’s something I’m working at trying not to be. To some extent, I think that the tournament format encourages being results focused, since you only take chips out of the tournament if you win it, not with every hand played. So I’m not sure if being results focused is necessarily bad for me, but to the extent it clouds my decision making and hand analysis, I think it’s important to not focus on the specific hand, but to take from it lessons that are applicable to the type of situation that the hand represented at various stages of incompleteness.
On the A9s hand, I didn’t like the situation, but I felt like I needed to win the hand in this spot, or I wasn’t likely to go much further into the tournament and finish ITM. Thus, I was thinking “all or nothing” but I really didn’t like being “all or nothing” on a pair of 9s, even if it was top pair at the flop. I entered the hand hoping to see a flush draw, but didn’t get it, so the Top Pair I it was a consolation prize. Having top pair, I felt like I might be ahead, but it was too marginal for me to check, and if I wanted to take the hand, best chance was to bet and close on the flop. I really hoped I could end the hand on the flop, but instead I got myself into deeper trouble, getting two calls where I hoped for two folds. The shove from the small stack forced my hand, it was only a few more chips to call, but then I’d have to see the river if I wanted any chance of winning this pot. This in turn made me think I needed to get the big stack to lay down, so I would only have one hand to beat, and that made the turn shove mandatory. And if it wasn’t good enough to get the fold, I was probably going home. My shove was about pot-size at that point, and while big I was concerned I couldn’t make the pot odds unattractive enough to get the big stack to lay down. Bottom line, I was not feeling confident with a mediocre top pair, top kicker, and felt like winning this hand was akin to dodging a bullet.
I’m not sure if I could have checked this flop, but I do think my bet sizing wasn’t the best if I was hoping to take it on the flop I should have gone bigger. But sized as I did, it forced me to call the small stack shove, and then shove myself on the turn.
Maybe a bigger bet at the flop closes the hand, or maybe it just folds the big stack while inducing the small stack to shove, in which case i have worse pot odds to call, and if I do call and win, I win fewer chips. Or maybe the big stack calls a bigger flop bet too, leaving me with too few chips to induce the fold on the Turn if I shove, in which case who knows, they could win the hand and knock me and the small stack out both.
From a results standpoint, I think I ended up optimal, but from a play standpoint I think it was weak and I was very lucky. If small stack hits his draw, I’m crippled and busting outside the bubble. Winning, I went on to win. So, like I said, all or nothing. Really wasn’t an inaccurate way to look at it. Yet, to win it all, I still had to luck out in two more hands. So I can’t say that I “deserved” to win this one.
Could I have played “better” and made different, better decisions in other hands, and still won, but in a more “deserving” way, using skill rather than relying on luck? I don’t know, but I doubt it. I was taking the best hands I could, and did the best with them that I could, but I still had to rely uncomfortably hard on luck. If my skill helped me decide when to make these plays, maybe my skill won. But I could equally credit my sense of desperation allowing me to accept risks and accept busting early as well.
Where do I go from here? How do I get better? How would you have played the hand?
When you’re 4 handed in a SnG one off the money with the big stack the “EP raiser” range is definitely wide enough to be shoving 99 off of 4 bb’s. Yeah you don’t have fold equity but you don’t need any with 99.
Yup, +1, but here we still take a normal player as reference. Is he tight, is he aggressive ? We don’t really know much.
In SNG’s, I’ve seen many big stacks just limp garbage hands and raise the premiums, because they feel they can afford to see a flop with any two. I think he’s only raising his premiums 3x, so basically TT+/JJ+, AQo+, KQ…
So yeah, you’re playing a coin against AQ, KQ and AK basically. Would not be ideal in that case, but yeah, it often isn’t ideal in poker.
But anyway, I still agree that if you feel you’re better than the other tiny stacks, and that you just want to get ITM, you could fold. It wouldn’t be a good fold, but I feel like V is going to limp many hands I defined as his open range. Honestly, his 3x sizing with AA is pretty interesting.
And also, I would rather be shoving 99 than TT, mainly not blocking AT, maybe KTs, JTs who knows.
I wasn’t really considering this, so good point. We are 3rd in chips with the 4th place player going in the blinds before us. For that reason if getting ITM is important to hero then folding 99 is reasonable. Shoving is +cEV but may be a bit closer to -$EV. I don’t have the app to plug it into as I don’t play tournaments that often.
This is 100% accurate. Nice!
Always appreciate your answers 
Exactly. Not sure about the -$EV though, maybe at this stake yes, on higher stakes not. But in general, if you win this particular coin-flip, you’re the chip leader at the table, so we shouldn’t forget that. More chance to get 2nd/1st.
BTW, what app ?