Lame endgame?

[Nate tha' Great]

Last night I made it to the final two of the Party $100+$10 MTT buy-in. I had quite a substantial chip lead over my opponent, roughly 2.8:1. However I was pretty exhausted and my opponent seemed solid. I have not played a lot of tournaments lately and am not all that confident in my NL heads-up skills.

In two of the first three hands once it was heads up, I received AKs and JJ and pushed before the flop both times. My opponent folded both times and I did not show him my hands. At that point my lead was up to better than 3:1 and I resolved to either push or fold every hand that I played.

(1) How much am I giving up by adopting this line against an opponent against whom I probably have a slight skill disavantage?

(2) Assuming that I do decide to play this way, approximately what percentage of my hands should I be pushing with?

(3) If my opponent doubles up and the stacks pull to about even, do I need drop the strategy and start playing poker?

(4) Was it a mistake not to show him my cards when I went in the first couple of times with big hands?

-Nate

[betgo]

I agree it was pretty lame. Usually, the short stack plays push or fold to avoid being bullied. The big stack can bet the flop all the time, and it is hard for the short stack to call if he missed. Unless the blinds are very big or you are a very weak player(which may be the case if you are playing the big stack this way), I think this is a bad strategy.

If the short stack has 300K and the big blind is 40K, then allin is 9xBB, so it may make sense for either player to go allin with raises. However, you could still limp or maybe miniraise in this situation. If the blinds were 80K, either player should definately push or fold.

[Garland]

I think you need to mention what the blinds were in relation to the stack sizes.

Given your read on your opponent's ability and your own as well, your tactic is a sound one. You are removing your opponent's edge postflop by making him put it in or not preflop. Not exactly rocket science and gripping poker, but not a bad idea at all either.

In fact, it's the same strategy Chris Ferguson took to win the WSOP in 2000. He knew his postflop skills did not match T.J. Cloutier and pushed with A9 vs TJ's AQ and won when the 9 came on the river.

You have a commanding lead, and you should be leaning on your 3 to 1 advantage as much as you can. I'd raise all-in any hand that's better than average. Any pair, any A, any K, Q8 or higher.

If your opponent doubles up, then you're even again. Why change your strategy? If you truly don't feel confident in your NL heads-up skills, why reintroduce it again? Just keep hammering preflop and don't show cards. Keep your opponent on edge until the end.

It's your choice whether or not to show cards. I would to weak opponents to condition them into thinking I have strong hands every time I raise, but strong opponents are vastly different. When you start showing cards and then stop, they'll know you are starting to take advantage and adjust accordingly. Never show cards to a strong opponent.

Garland

[nolanfan34]

I don't understand the idea behind pushing or folding right off the bat on the two hands you mention. You may get a dominated hand to call, but you're not likely to get the small stack to call with the marginal type of hand they may push with if you only min-raise.

As the other poster said as well, seeing flops as the big stack gives you a lot of chances to chip away at the small stack, when you have position on him.

[eastbay]

That you didn't even say what the stack/blind ratio was is disturbing.

That's the critical piece of information here. Nothing sane can be said without it.

eastbay

[Nate tha' Great]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't understand the idea behind pushing or folding right off the bat on the two hands you mention. You may get a dominated hand to call, but you're not likely to get the small stack to call with the marginal type of hand they may push with if you only min-raise.

As the other poster said as well, seeing flops as the big stack gives you a lot of chances to chip away at the small stack, when you have position on him.

[/ QUOTE ]

One thing I should add is that I'd had a big stack advantage for quite a while and was really bullying people around from when it was 5-handed or so. I thought there was a reasonable chance that he'd call with a worse hand when I shoved the AKs, and even more likely that he'd call with a big underdog to my Jacks when I pushed that just two hands later.

It retrospect I don't think the blinds were quite large enough to justify the strategy as we'd pushed through the final table pretty quickly - I think he had around 12-14 big blinds worth of chips when we started.

[betgo]

If you had 12-14 BB, then your opponent must have had 3 BB. In that case, I would definately push or fold.

[Nate tha' Great]

[ QUOTE ]
If you had 12-14 BB, then your opponent must have had 3 BB. In that case, I would definately push or fold.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think I miswrote. My opponent has 12-14 BB and I had in the neighborhood of 35.

[C M Burns]

At this stage even with those blinds, you can't be too far off pushing with every hand. it may not be optimal but basically your chance to win will be close to your chip lead. With that kind of chip diference, there is no counter strategy that the oponent can use that will win more than about 60% on average. For example lets say he has ak 2 hands in a row and you have 47. he is only a 60% favorite here and has to win twice, while you only once, so if you push both hands here you'd win once 65% of the time, and this is with a verry favorable situation for your oponent. More often he is going to have to wait for a better spot but get ground down, or make due being less of a favorite on averge.

[Tosh]

[ QUOTE ]

(3) If my opponent doubles up and the stacks pull to about even, do I need drop the strategy and start playing poker?


[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly Nate, you had probably been playing upwards of 5 hours, can you not just play poker for a little bit longer anyway?

[MLG]

Nate, I know from your posts in other forums you have a lot of game. Given the blinds this pushing strategy, while perhaps not optimal is not all that far from it. It might even be optimal if your opponent played too tightly. The risk, of course, is that you must push with a good degree of frequency in order for it to work...as in more than half the time. If you are comfortable with this strategy you might want to throw limping the button in instead of folding the button ever, and then push some percentage of the flops that you see.

[Nate tha' Great]

[ QUOTE ]

(3) If my opponent doubles up and the stacks pull to about even, do I need drop the strategy and start playing poker?


[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, I think I might have psyched myself out a little bit. I was rather tired and a little bit impacted by the couple of beers that I'd had earlier in the night, but I was pretty happy with my play throughout and if this were a $50 SNG or something, I probably wouldn't have adopted such a crappy heads up strategy. Fortunately my opponent seemed duly confused and eventually called with A9o against my QTo (on the lower end of the hands that I was raising) and I won the damned thing after pairing up on the flop.