Middle Play Review

[Scuba Chuck]

I don't regard small pairs all that strong. I'm curious, what's your move?

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t200 (5 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

BB (t2670)
UTG (t1060)
Hero (t1140)
Button (t1365)
SB (t1765)

Preflop: Hero is MP with 5/images/graemlins/heart.gif, 5/images/graemlins/club.gif.
<font color="#666666">[i]1 folds/i]</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero... Do you play small pairs?

I'm not going to hide anything. I folded this.

[curtains]

im allin for sure here and I don't think it's close.

[TruFloridaGator]

MP, im all in too

[johnnybeef]

me three. when you take in all of the possibilities, it is definately +ev. most times you will attain a blinds steal. when you add in coinflips and suckouts i recollect you will win in the neighborhood of 75% of the time you make this play.

[Jman28]

I find middle pairs tough when you have around 12-15 times the BB.

Here, I push almost always. You don't have the stack to wait around.

-Jman28

[mcpherzen]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't regard small pairs all that strong. I'm curious, what's your move?

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t200 (5 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

BB (t2670)
UTG (t1060)
Hero (t1140)
Button (t1365)
SB (t1765)

Preflop: Hero is MP with 5/images/graemlins/heart.gif, 5/images/graemlins/club.gif.
<font color="#666666">1 folds</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero... Do you play small pairs?

I'm not going to hide anything. I folded this.

[/ QUOTE ]

<font color="black">IMO, the cards you have been dealt are about the final thing you need to consider here. This is the "folding equity" portion of the SNG, so once the action is on you, you're mainly just considering "what are the chances I go all-in here and everyone folds, giving me the $300 in blinds?" Clearly, this depends on many factors such as:

a. the blind amounts
b. your stack size
c. the stack size of your opponents still left to act in the hand
d. the stack size of your opponents already out of the hand
e. when the blinds will go up again
f. what will they be when they go up
g. what kind of players are left to act (aggressive, solid, poor, disconnected, whatever) and how have they been playing up to now
h. what is your image (aggressive, solid, poor, whatever) to them?
i. statistically, how likely is it for ANY of the remaining "x" number of players to wake up with an auto-calling hand after I push?

This is obviously a ton of information to process, and many of the factors cannot be analyzed correctly by simply reading the figures in this post (the BB might be a maniac, for instance, that just doubled up when he called all-in with 4-2 and sucked out). What I can tell you is that even though any of the Button, SB, and BB can call and break you, you have enough chips behind your push to get rational players to lay down quite a few hands. If they call and you win the showdown, it is unlikely the Button or SB would be able to go on to make the money. And the BB's sight is likely on winning this SNG (because of his current significant chip lead), not on just finishing in the money, so it unlikely he would put his big lead at risk without a pretty solid hand. None of the players behind you are so short-stacked that they call with almost any 2 cards, so my read is that you have a ton of folding equity here. Therefore, I might consider pushing here with any 2 cards.

Finally, the fact that you have a hand (55) that plays pretty well against a single opponent if you do get called (the calling opponent will most likely have 2 big overcards to your pair making you the slight favorite), I would almost certainly push here.

--McPherzen </font>

[Scuba Chuck]

McPherzen, thank you.

Very well articulated. I follow completely. I think you've opened my eyes to a part of FE that I had not been thinking about. Thanks.