+EV vs. Higher +EV

[J-Lo]

On the bubble, do you take every +$EV available? Or do you pass up on +$EV situation for greater +$EV situations down the road?

Ex.Folding JJ in BB (w/ large stack) to small stack to keep bubble alive and rob the other 2 stack.

Ex. Not pushing w/ 67s in SB when all 4 players have 5x BB on bubble, because you hope to pick up a better hand later.

I see that these two examples are totally different. Especially the 2nd ex. I should push 67s and then whatever better hand i get later. But what i am asking is, do you pass up on some +$ev situations because you expect greater +$EV situations later?

[citanul]

i'll pass up on the first example easilly, passing up on the second one sounds pretty tragic though.

i've been thinking about this a lot lately, and here's a couple thoughts i've come up with:

say you're playing a 200, and you have a push that has a relative ev vs a fold of a dollar or two. i'm likely to pass that one up, especially since in late game situations, i'm likely pushing often. so these very thin pushes, when i look at them, all they are really doing is adding variance, since the dollar or two is irrelevant. additionally, every time you push, you're clicking your image down a notch against your opponents, so sometimes it's good to pass on one every once in a while. so why not pass on the thin value pushes if you're going to pass on a push at all?

citanul

[microbet]

If you have been getting a lot of clear pushes it is easy to pass up a marginal push, IMO.

Each push widens the calling ranges of your opponants and thus robs $EV from future pushes.

[citanul]

[ QUOTE ]
If you have been getting a lot of clear pushes it is easy to pass up a marginal push, IMO.

Each push widens the calling ranges of your opponants and thus robs $EV from future pushes.

[/ QUOTE ]

haha, you said "getting a lot of clear pushes" i mean, there's a lot of times when pushing almost hand first in from any position with your given stack size and your opponent's stack sizes is +ev, against any set of calling hands you choose to allow your opponents to call with as their range. so them widening their range (which shouldn't happen all that much, esp against good players) is a bit silly, but does indeed happen. indeed, them widening their calling range often subtracts EV from your future pushes, but does not often make them negative EV plays.

citanul

[johnnybeef]

[ QUOTE ]
Ex. Not pushing w/ 67s in SB when all 4 players have 5x BB on bubble, because you hope to pick up a better hand later.

[/ QUOTE ]

this is something that i have been doing a great deal of thinking about and i wanted to actually make a worthwile post about (surprise), but i have been struggling with how to present it in as academic a manor as possible....so here goes.

as a result of a recent downsing and some faulty advice i gave someone here (for which i was promptly corrected about) i have been doing a lot of thinking about/research on bubble play. most of us know that it is +EV (even if only slightly) to push with any two if we are the first to enter the pot. but as a result of raptors recent not calling with ajs post, i got to thinking that even when i push with a hand as strong as aj, im not necesarily sure that i would want someone to call with as weak a hand as 23o (especially when the blinds are big.

im not sure how it is at the higher levels, but at the lower levels where players are much less disciplined, people will eventually call your pushes with garbage (examples of hands that i have gotten called with in the last two days are j7, q6, jt, qj, a6). to put it plainly, when you push several hands in a short time period at a lower level, you can expect to eventially get called by a weak hand (which may or may not be better than the range of hands that you will push with).

to get to the point that i would like to make, take an example out of small stakes holdem in which ed discusses a situation in which someone holds a big hand like aa or kk. several people call a preflop raise, and a draw heavy board flops. ed discusses that it is usualy correct to check the flop in ordder to push a much bigger edge on the next card if a blank hits. if this concept can work in low limit holdem, why not low limit sngs? it is for this reason that i say it is correct to pass on a slight edge on the bubble such as mentioned above by j-lo, in the hopes that you will be able to push a much bigger edge in a few hands. the reason for this is two fold. the first is that if you have been pushing like a demon the last few hands, taking a few off will make people less likely to call you four or five hands later. the second is the more obvious notion that pushing with a hand such as k8 or a7 in contrast to 67 is going to fare much better even if called.