Folding Equity Subplot

[Jason Strasser]

My title sucks.

Anyhow, I wanted to bring up a little thought of mine, to see if I was on track or not. The 10xBB rule is a little bit of a simplification. I really believe that 9xBB works for me better, but 10x is fine too. The idea is that you can only move all in or fold when you are this shortstacked or if all the people to act after you have less than 9 or 10x BB.

Anyways, so we have this 'rule'. The real trick is deciding what to push, and what to not push. When you have 11xBB, you can afford to fold marginal hands like K8s from the CO, but if you had 6xBB, this fold would be a crime. So obviously as you lose your stack relative to the blinds, you get more desperate.

This is all simple stuff so far. The thing I wanted to say was that I think that most people think that this is a linear regression. So that at 11-14xBB you can afford to fold marginal hands (instead of opening for 3xBB), and at 8-10xBB you get more desperate, and at 6-8xBB you get even more desperate, etc.

I think that at 5-6xBB you should be the most desperate. What exactly this range of hands is, depends. But for the most part, this should be the height of your looseness. Why? Because you have folding equity, but not for long. When the blinds go up, or when you get blinded, or when both happen, you are sure to lose almost all of your folding equity, and you have no chance to survive and build a stack without showdown. If you have less than this, say, 1.5-3xBB, your folding equity is almost gone. You shouldn't be desperate now because you wont be able to make anyone fold with trash hands. So now you should be fairly selective, and worse case scenario just go down with any random two from the BB.

Like?
-Jason

[lorinda]

I agree with pretty much everything in there and it's well explained.

One reason I will often raise to 3BB when i have 9BB is because I still have some folding equity with 6BB.(When I would now push on my next raise)
The smaller the game, the more folding equity the 3BB raise has.
This is NOT because it has good fold equity, but because raising to 3BB or 9BB would often have the same results. These low-limit players are looking at their cards, not the bet sizes.
In a higher limit game, the players will smell the weakness and put you in, so you should have pushed originally.

There is another sub-plot that I don't hear mentioned often, which is the difference in sites.
At Party, when you hit the 7BB or so mark, you are looking at not only posting 1.5BB in blinds to take you to 5.5BB but also at the blinds increasing before it gets back to you, which might take you down to 3-4 BB.

This means your folding equity is soon going to be cruelly taken from you by the rules of the game.

In a game like the one at Stars, you can often know that you can fold down to 5.5BB and that you'll still have those 5.5BB for at least another orbit.
This means that by not raising you have cost yourself a little less time than you have on Party because you will still retain your chances of a push working next time around.

Lori

[Phill S]

[ QUOTE ]
In a game like the one at Stars, you can often know that you can fold down to 5.5BB and that you'll still have those 5.5BB for at least another orbit.
This means that by not raising you have cost yourself a little less time than you have on Party because you will still retain your chances of a push working next time around.

[/ QUOTE ]

the obvious link in my mind is that thoughts pushing should also include thought on blind levels due to increase. since blinds usually double (give or take a bit). when you had 10BBs two hands ago you now have only 5.

so when you take into account cards, position, your stack size, the blinds stack size, current blinds and also future blinds.

how you interpret this im unsure. if you have enough to steal when they go up do you pass up the current opportunity in order to preserve image. or do you steal now and hope you can steal again when they go up. and finally do you steal in desperation now cos when they go up you have near zero folding equity.

i think this takes more than my level of expertise to put into a few simple rules.

Phill

[JasonDB]

Excellent topic. More than an answer, I have a question. At the 6x BB level you will all in with K7s. Is it because of the rank of the K or would you push with 10/9s also?

[lorinda]

Jason's post is too interesting to be on page 2.

Bump.

Lori

[JasonDB]

Agreed. Overall, it puts a great focus on aggressive play late. I sometimes tend to let the tournament come to me. When I say that, I mean I will let others try to knock each other out and not play some of the normally marginal but justifiable starting hands while watching my stack decrease due to the blinds.

[Bigwig]

I posted a similar topic recently, but since my board rep falls short of yours, I didn't get many responses. That's okay, heh. I find that we're in agreement here.

[ QUOTE ]
The 10xBB rule is a little bit of a simplification. I really believe that 9xBB works for me better

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree that 9XBB is a better all-in or fold decision than 10XBB, as long as your standard raise is 3XBB. This is because I've done calculations with hands that you might steal with and/or push with depending on stack size, and found that when reraised all-in with 10BB, you're often not getting proper odds to call, if the hand is somewhat marginal. But, with 9BB, it is pretty much always right to call.

[ QUOTE ]
I think that at 5-6xBB you should be the most desperate.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree completely. At 4BB, the BigBlind only needs to have two live cards to make a call correct. Which means his 85o is getting even on his money vs your all in with AQo. That means your fold equity is just about done.

At 5BB, I'm pushing from everywhere with any reasonable hand as long as I'm first in the pot. This includes garbage like 64s, J7s, and KTo.

[RavenJackson]

Jason.

Good post [as always]. I note you provide a range to account for the variant of BB that may provide folding equity. I am often surprised at how table dependent and situation dependent these variants are.

How does bubble play factor in here? Does that increase your folding equity?

[morgan180]

[ QUOTE ]
If you have less than this, say, 1.5-3xBB, your folding equity is almost gone. You shouldn't be desperate now because you wont be able to make anyone fold with trash hands. So now you should be fairly selective, and worse case scenario just go down with any random two from the BB.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree - I think that some people take this linear progression too far. When you are at 1.5 - 3 BB and you're clearly targeted and forced out you have to *tighten* up from where you were at >9 BB. And I think many players overlook that. Because you'll be called by almost anyone in the pot at this point you must win the showdown to stay alive.

That being said it comes down to which cards are more preferrable to push with at 1.5 - 3x BB? Outside of premium hands would you look more towards having as many live outs as possible rather than a weak high card that may be dominated? Or do you pick a high card that runs good hot/cold and take your chances?

What hand is more valuable a hand like A4 vs a hand like 98o?

Or do you pass on both and wait for something better, knowing you'll be called no matter what.