SNG theory - early edges vs late

[teamdonkey]

From reading various SNG guides, FAQ's, and posts on this forum, the general thought seems to be to play conservatively in the first few rounds of SNGs. People advise against pressing small edges early and let the loose players knock themselves out. I'm a newb that doesn't have a great feel for the right moves in different spots just yet, so I look at ICM an awful lot to help analyze play. The advice of not pressing matters early doesn't make sense to me, so i ran calculations for different stages of the game.

This table assumes two things:

1. everyone has an equal stack before the hand
2. if you play, you either double up or bust out

these are oversimplified, but i'm trying to figure out a general rule, not analyze a specific situation. Also if the numbers seem weird, i play on stars, where its 9 handed and 1500 starting chips.

-edit- apparantly im a moron and can't make a table look respectable, so this is just the number of players left and the % edge needed to make a play break even $EV.

9- 54.24
8- 55.55
7- 56.62
6- 58.14
5- 60.61
4- 65.22
3- 55.72
2- 50.00

This table suggests I'm better off pressing smaller edges early, and being gradually more conservative until ITM. For example if i know the SB has 34o, im in the BB with AKo (63.6% favorite) and he pushes, with 9 people left this is clearly a call. On the bubble ICM says to fold (i'm ignoring the amount in the blinds, just giving an example).

This goes against the impression i've gotten from reading guides and posts. Thoughts?

[eastbay]

You're going to have to explain where those numbers come from in a lot more detail for anyone to make a judgment about their validity.

eastbay

[teamdonkey]

they come from the ICM calculator, figuring $EV before a hand vs the $EV from busting out or doubling up. For example, 9 handed your starting $EV is 0.11, doubling up puts you at 0.2028, busting out gives you zero. The break even point for this situation is 54.24%. I had a table with these numbers for each number of players but can't seem to enter in a way that is readable.

[microbet]

IMO

One factor is, when there are more players at the table you need a better hand to have an edge than you do with fewer players. This is very significant and why AT is not very good at a full table, but is very good HU. This doesn't show up in ICM directly, but it shows up in the range of hands you have to put your opponents on. This doesn't answer your question, but I think a lot of people look at Aleo's guide or the advice here and think it is more based just on being careful early when it is largely just how to play a full table.

The other is fold equity. If you bet and all opponents fold, it doesn't matter what edge you have. As the number of players decreases the likelyhood of everyone folding to your bet increases and as the blinds increase they obviously become more worth stealing.

In a typical SNG you will have a good chance to steal a lot of blinds. You may pass up something that ICM says you should take early on, because you expect to have even better opportunities later.

People can obviously take the idea of passing up $EV opportunities early on too far.

Also, ICM doesn't take ROI into account.

Ok, I gotta go, no time to check that I made sense.

[eastbay]

Ok, I think I see what you're doing. The numbers aren't surprising, I don't think.

Generally speaking, what this doesn't account for is that if you have an edge in SnG play, you have the most opportunities to exploit it when there are more hands left to play, so ICM is undervaluing your equity early on (because it assumes everyone has the same $EV for a given stack distribution, which clearly isn't true strictly speaking.)

I proposed a method to account for this a few weeks ago (by scaling stack sizes to account for the value of your chips relative to other players before plugging them into ICM). You might want to run your experiment using that model just for kicks to see how it compares.

eastbay

[rickw]

[ QUOTE ]
if you play, you either double up or bust out

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this assumption is quite unreasonable early on in an SNG, unless you have other people in the hand holding what they believe to be a "monster" hand (ATo fits this category for some of the people in the Party 10+1s).

In your example, are you talking about theoretically moving all in with a small edge, calling with a small edge or raising w/ a small edge?

Again, maybe I'm not following your example, but I have found that when I pursue marginal hands early on, sometimes I get lucky, but mostly I end up "chip-spewing" and regretting it.

Can you explain your theory more?

Is it possible that the answer to your theory is the statement (to paraphrase) in the original 2+2 book on tournament play which says "in a tournament you sometimes avoid pursuing certain marginal +ev opportunities early on that you would pursue in a cash game?"

I struggled with sng's for a while, not quite believing the advice on this forum about how to beat the Party 10+1's (playing supertight early, etc.). It seemed unintuitive to me. After playing about 150 sngs or so, I've concluded it's the only way to go.

Play very tight early (THROW OUT MANY OF YOUR CASH GAME NOTIONS); if you get a good hand early, maybe you can double up, but if not preserve your chips so you retain as much fold equity as possible as the blinds move up.

Early in the tournament you will be throwing away many hands you would call/raise w/ in a cash game and later on you will be aggressively betting many hands you would throw away.

Based on my limited experience, it seems to be working but I'll let you know after 1000.

[Rolen]

Thanks for posting this, it made me think about why I believe conservative play to be best early and I think I know why now - read

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...14&fpart=1

..And let me know what you think!

[lastchance]

Two words: Gap Concept.

[teamdonkey]

[ QUOTE ]
if you have an edge in SnG play, you have the most opportunities to exploit it when there are more hands left to play, so ICM is undervaluing your equity early on

[/ QUOTE ]

i would assume a big part of your edge is correctly identifying when you have the advantage in a hand, and deciding when to press it. If you're passing on an edge early that you would take later in the game, simply because it's early, I think that's a poor choice. I'm just suggesting it's more profitable to press a hand earlier rather than later. If you feel your main advantage is in bubble play, this obviously wouldn't be the case.

[ QUOTE ]
if you play, you either double up or bust out

I think this assumption is quite unreasonable early on in an SNG

[/ QUOTE ]

The model was easier to run with this extreme example. I'm concerned here with whether it's right to push an edge or not, the total pot size will really only affect your variance, not whether the decision is correct or not (assuming the odds you're giving yourself are correct).

Eastbay do you have a link to that thread?