How to play when it is down to 5 players early

[derdo]

When aggresive players get lucky at the beginning, people are quickly eliminated and it is down to 4 5 players at level 3. Then what happends is bad players lots of chips and I am the smallest stack with T600. For example:
$22 Level 3: Blinds 25/50

Seat 1: derdo_bitlis (685)
Seat 2: miketiger74 (2690)
Seat 6: pierless (1475)
Seat 8: DVaut1 (1535)
Seat 9: VegasTodd719 (1615)

With three of the big stacks playing 40-50% of the hands. What would you do with a hand like A9o UTG?
The problem here is if I pay the blinds one more time I am down to T610 and I don't believe it would be enough to make these guys fold when the blinds are 50/100.

What do you think?
Cem

[Nicholasp27]

u still have 12x BB, so no need to get desperate yet

if u steal these blinds, it's only 75, which is still only 1/8th your stack

if u steal the blinds at 50/100, then that's 25% of your stack, which makes it a much more profitable move

also, doing it later than utg is better as well

i think i'd wait for better positioning, blinds and cards

everyone but mike will not wanna lose 700 chips, as that would make them the target for 4th place...and the composition of the table may change by the time you get higher blinds and are folded to in a better position

[Nicholasp27]

according to icm:

your equity if you fold: .1013
your equity if everyone folds: .1111
your equity if all-in and beat: 0
your equity if all-in and beat the big blind's call: .1857

so you need to steal blinds or win the hand a high % of the time...


so you need to steal or win the coin flip a high % of the time to make this +ev:


50% of time, they all fold: .5 * .1111 = .05555
25% of time, called and win: .25 * .1857 = .046425
25% of time, called and lose: 0

total: $10.19


so slightly positive if they all fold 50% of time

the problem is, these guys are loose aggressive and play 50-60% of hands...so i don't think you will steal 50% of the time from utg, maybe from button or sb...

[schwza]

one thing this analysis misses (i think) is that one guy might bust another on this hand if you fold. i'd muck.

if you're playing pretty tight, it should make your first few steals at 50/100 easy. of course, they might be too dumb to notice you're tight....

[Nicholasp27]

yeah, i didn't say that explicitly, but that goes along with the fact that he still has 12xbb so shouldn't be panicking...and if they are all that loose, then they will feed on each other

the main thing with going in first is for FE, but with too loose of a table, u don't have that, so wait for a better hand...at least a top 10-15% hand, which should happen to you (i know, variance) in the next few rotations of the table