Daily Hand Quiz

Well. 6 handed, folding is pretty ridiculous. I don’t like shoving 2400 to win 300. I don’t like raising 5x almost half my stack in case I meet crazy resistance. Limping is pretty stupid, the stacks compared to blinds are not high enough to hope for a set, and open limping is just asking to be abused as dead money, and I’m not going to war with a pair of 3s if I get raised. So that leaves raising 3x. If they’re gonna fold, this should be enough to do it, and if I get played back at hard, well then I have lost the minimum.

Am I missing some detail or consideration that makes this a lot harder than it seems? Because this seems awfully no brainer to me, and even our plan for what others might do is easy. Maybe its a SNG thing.

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Waste_Of_Paint Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 5:50 am

If the quiz is 88 as per the graphic and not 33 as it says in the description, I think this is a little trickier.

We’ve got to like 88 six-handed, but I certainly don’t want to be flipping at this stage for our whole stack. If we open-raise from the cut-off to a standard 3x, we are really vulnerable to a light shove here from any of the three players acting after us, given their description. Any broadway cards, a lot of random aces, any pairs and occasionally complete air could well come over the top, so we would have to call but I wouldn’t be thrilled by the prospect.

This is one of the incredibly rare situations where I actually think there is a reasonable argument for limp-raising. As you mention, shoving 2400 to win 300 is not great and we’re mostly only getting called by hands that have us crushed.

If we limp here, however, I would say it is pretty likely that one of the players behind us will make a move for the 500 in the middle. If they do, we can come back over the top. That way it will be more like 2400 to win 1000. We will have some fold equity, and if we get called then that’s ok with me, we would have been willing to get it in anyway. If the pot doesn’t get raised (unlikely) then we’ll see a flop in position with little invested, which is also fine by me.

Having said that, I’d probably still go for the 3x raise option.

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Morat Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 7:08 am

Limp raise is terrible IMO, since 80-90% of the time SB completes and you’ll see a three-way flop, rest of the time one of the blinds shoves (or to put it another way: they cannot raise small enough not to be committed, you’ll never have FE here).

My preference is shoving > 3x raise (inviting a 3bet) >>> 5x raise (after raising 1000 you won’t fold ever, so why not push) >>>>>>>>> call (what’s the point, really?)

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Whether I have 88 or 33 I don’t really want to see a flop. And since I have only 12 bb I don’t want to raise and fold. So to me that leaves shoving.

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raise 3x, call a shove. this is short handed low stakes sng, and we’re up against aggressive players. we have a pair, have to put pressure on them. if they jam, so be it, lets find out whos got the mojo today. if not, we take it down. i dont really see any other option that makes even a bit of sense.

limping with a pair in short handed is just a waste of a solid hand, might as well fold, save the 200 and the hit to your self-esteem when you realize how badly that was played. raising 5x or jamming is risking too much to win too little, and makes it so we’d basically have to jam every good hand we get in order to be consistent with any kind of pressure….at which point we’ll get called by hands that beat us and get crippled. thats just not winning poker.

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Morat Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 9:01 am

You’d raise to 3x and call a shove, but you think open-shoving would be risking too much? If you’re ready to play the hand anyway, wouldn’t it be better not to see a flop at all?

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_CityBorn_ Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 9:28 am

the problem with shoving here, is not necessarily this hand, but what it means for our betting pattern and image. if we’re shoving here, are we shoving any hand we’d like to raise? if so, its only a matter of time before we get cracked. the risking too much is more of a general point about making huge moves when there are better options available. personally, i want some flexibility. i want to put pressure and be able to do so at a reasonable clip, with and without premium hands and without risking my tourney each time.

if they jam with a weaker hand than wouldve called all in, so be it, we go for the double up and if we win, our standard 3x raises get more respect, we can steal more, etc. if they fold, we picked up some chips and they dont know what we had. the cycle repeats when we raise 3x in the future. do we have a primo? are we stealing? our raise sizing will be consistent, and wont give away factors like “seems like a scared mid pair”. if they call, we play poker in position which isnt a bad spot to be in all in all. the point is by leaving room to maneuver, you set the table for future hands and avoid putting your tourney on the line unnecessarily

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Morat Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 10:33 am

I see the point in the second part of your reasoning, and used to think the same but I changed my mind recently.
You say shoving screams “I have 22-JJ” (or something like that). So what? Will 22-66(-88); Ax-Kx (x<”J”) call you? It would be a mistake for them IMO as even if they estimate your range well, they’re either crushed or flipping, so they should fold. The key is, if you shove first you will make it a bad call for them.
On the other hand, if you raise 3x than they can come over the top with the same hands they should’ve folded to a push, since they can reasonably hope to have FE and therefore this can be a +EV move from their point of view.
By the way I’m not sure that calling a 3bet all-in with 33 is +EV in this spot: there’s virtually no hand you crush, it’s a flip at best.

Oh and one more thing: this is a 9 plr Sit’n'Go. No need to balance much – they don’t have time to understand your game.

_CityBorn_ Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 11:08 am

i disagree with a fair amount of this. just because you make it a bad call for most of the range in 2 random hands to call, doesnt mean you wont get caught sometimes and be on the rail. i think its a mistake to forget that in tournaments, whether or not something is truly EV is about whether it gets you into the money, and then further up the money ladder, not whether your big move has a 55% edge in expected outcome.

i strongly disagree with your last statement, that theres no need to balance. i play more sngs more than any other format, and have a lot of success. im positive a big part of that is balance, consistency and unreadability. yes, its a faster format than an mtt, but its the same players throughout (no changing tables) and good players are watching. presumably as you get down to fewer remaining players, youre dealing with the better players who are now playing against image. i know for myself, the toughest players are the ones that have a balanced vpip and raise % and make the same moves with air to the nuts and everything in between. when they raise, it forces you to play your hand since you really cant put THEM on a hand.

as for calling a reraise, i can see a case for folding, i just wouldnt personally. were against aggressive players and its short handed, so im willing to flip, especially once ive invested 20% of my stack. gotta take some chances, if i double im in good shape. another benefit is if i win the flip, a player is either crippled or out, and i can open up my game since my raises will be more intimidating.

I’m surprised that shove is the third most rated. It’s the right play for me.

Limp and 5x are poor options. 5x will give you a predictable betting pattern, and seems pointless when you have to call all-in anyway. why not just shove? As for limp, you are just asking to be raised, and as for limp/shove, you haven’t got the right stack size or reads to expect a fold if you shove over someone’s raise.

We could raise/fold but we would pretty much be priced in to call a shove, especially if it was the BB who shoved. Also we get reshipped on wider when we raise than if we shove. For some players, we may get reshoved on quite alot wider.

It’s especially bad if you started doing this against a reg since if they see you raise/fold here you’ll go in the notebook and get less respect for your raises next time you play them.

Having said that it MIGHT be better to raise/fold if you KNOW you’re against some tight/bad players… but generally I would shove.

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The question is not whether to raise, fold, or shove our hand–invert your thinking. The real question is what our raising, folding, and shoving and ranges look like with this stack size.

Our raising range is easy: there are no hands I will raise a regular amount with 12BB. Any raise commits us to calling a shove, so there’s no point in inviting resteals, and shoving weak hands and raising small with monsters is easily exploitable.

I do not want to delve into a discussion of a good shoving range here, but suffice it to say we should be shoving all PPs as a matter of course. Folding a pair would be ridiculous.

TL;DR – Fist pump shove.

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_CityBorn_ Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 3:43 pm

we have an above average stack. average stack is 11 bb’s. taking a short stack approach with an above average stack wouldnt seem like the way to go. THAT will be easily exploitable, we’ll shove anything raiseable, and get busted pretty quickly, wasting our ability to play poker. raising 3x puts a good amount of pressure on players who have 11 bbs average stack too, without having to shove every hand we want to play.

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