Is it good to stay in the red zone?

[betgo]

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The strategic advantage in tems of BB/hand of a smaller stack over larger can't possibly be larger than the difference in stack size. This thread is ridiculous. I'm done.

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You are the one who is making a really silly argument. Of course you are better off with 12xBB than 5xBB. If I have 12xBB, I am not going to purposely lose a pot to get down to 5xBB. However, in real life, I don't have that kind of choice.

I may have 5xBB and I can call a raise to either get to 12xBB or bust out. I may be at 12xBB and can call a push to get to 21xBB or 5xBB, depending if I win. I may have 30xBB and I can call a reraise allin and either wubd up at 5xBB or 60xBB or fold and have 27xBB. I may have 10xBB and I can push and wind up at 22xBB if I win 12xBB if I steal, or bust out: if getting blinded down gives me more opportunities, I am under less pressure to make a marginal move.

I presented it slightly in a ironic way. Of course you would rather be in the orange zone than the red zone, but you don't have that choice straight up. The only arguments against my post have been this moronic "this is ridiculous, you always want more chips".

[ChrisW]

Folks,

This concept is not that difficult to understand!

Let's say that you have a 5 BB stack. Because you are a studious 2+2er, you are going to play it skillfully, moving in frequently to gain 1.5 BB at a risk of only 5 BB. What is your expected # of chips at the end of the tournament? If you're good at pushing, let's imagine that your chip expectancy is 7 BB.

Now, imagine instead that you've got an 8 BB stack. You can't raise and fold to a reraise, so you're stuck with the all-in move. However, you are now risking 8 BB to gain 1.5, so you need strong odds of winning on the occasions when your bet is called to justify the greater risk/reward ratio, constraining the number of hands that you can successfully play. Again, let's assume that you are going to play this stack well. Perhaps your expected stack size at the end of the tournament is 9 BB.

So, if you pay two rounds of blinds to go from 8BB to 5BB, you've really only cost yourself 2 BB in expectation instead of the 3 BB which it appears that you've lost. Obviously, that's still 2 BB lost, and it decreases your $EV, but perhaps not as much as you might have thought. So, if you know that you're really only costing yourself 1 BB per round in chip EV instead of the 1.5 BB which it appears that you are losing, you'd be less likely to push with borderline hands while you're getting blinded down.

Now, I'm not saying that these numbers are accurate or that you have to agree with betgo's analysis. FWIW, I believe that he is right. Either way, it is ridiculous to flame him for such a thought-provoking post.

[Roman]

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Sometimes I think it is advantagous to maintain an M of 5 or less.

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rofl

[betgo]

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Sometimes I think it is advantagous to maintain an M of 5 or less.


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rofl

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Another intelligent argument against my theory.

[Roman]

your "theory" is rediculous... What do you think your ROR is with a shorter stack compared to a larger one? Even if there are more "+EV" spots to push, you bust out far more often too.

[kuro]

This conversation isn't really going any where until you talk about what kind of marginal situations you are passing up with 9xbb. There's a good chance that others are passing up the same situation hoping for a better situation but they aren't doing it because they want to be in the red zone where anything you push is ev due to the blinds + antes making up 1/2 your stack.

[betgo]

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This conversation isn't really going any where until you talk about what kind of marginal situations you are passing up with 9xbb. There's a good chance that others are passing up the same situation hoping for a better situation but they aren't doing it because they want to be in the red zone where anything you push is ev due to the blinds + antes making up 1/2 your stack.

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Say the blinds are 200/400/25 and you have T3600 and AJs UTG. Pushing may be about EV even, but you may be better off folding. After going through the blinds, you have T2700 in late position and you will probably have better opportunities to push. If the blinds go up to 300/600/50, you will be able to push with almost anything and even get good pot odds to call a raise.

[Superfluous Man]

Imagine you have an exam in Differential Equations. You get the exam and the questions are too hard. So, instead of doing all those tough integrals and stuff, you write your own questions, like "what is the product of 8 and 7?" It's easy to come up with 56. Much, much easier than actually thinking about differential equations.

...but you're still going to get an F.

It's easy to be right for the sake of being right. It's much less trivial to maximize your EV in a tournament. To win the tournament, you must accumulate all the chips in play. Having more chips in a tournament increases your EV, at the cost of having to make more difficult decisions. Am I missing something here?

[Autocratic]

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This conversation isn't really going any where until you talk about what kind of marginal situations you are passing up with 9xbb. There's a good chance that others are passing up the same situation hoping for a better situation but they aren't doing it because they want to be in the red zone where anything you push is ev due to the blinds + antes making up 1/2 your stack.

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Say the blinds are 200/400/25 and you have T3600 and AJs UTG. Pushing may be about EV even, but you may be better off folding. After going through the blinds, you have T2700 in late position and you will probably have better opportunities to push. If the blinds go up to 300/600/50, you will be able to push with almost anything and even get good pot odds to call a raise.

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The difference in position there is significant regardless of stack size. A late position push with mediocre cards if you're the first in, will usually be a better option than pushing a decent hand UTG.

I still think your theory is ridiculous. It has truth to it, but that doesn't defeat the simple premise that when you have a shorter stack, the ideal outcome of these slightly more abundant +EV situations is that you then double that stack. You may have more opportunities for +EV, and it's certainly a bit simpler to play, but your ideal result is a double up, which leaves you with your less ideal stack. It's not that your theory doesn't have merit - it's just irrelevant.

[Whitey]

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It's not that your theory doesn't have merit - it's just irrelevant.

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