OK, let's talk about wmajik's article

[EnderW27]

Can this concept truly be applied in all analogus situations?

Imagine a 5 or 6 handed game where blinds are 25/50 and you're in the SB with 500. BB also has 500. It's folded to you.

Now, according to the math shown, it would be right to push with any two cards. But is this really the case? Chances are, you'll never be called except by premium hands and so your EV on the play itself has to be positive.

But...there are a few key issues I'm trying to think through.
First, when you are called, you're going to lose most of the time.
Second, even when you double up, you still don't assure yourself a payday, merely a greater chance at getting there.
Third, you're risking your entire stack to gain 50T, which is such a small amount compared to the chips in play.

I haven't done math on this, obviously. But it seems to me that this type of play would not be +$EV, even if it could be shown to be +EV.

[LinusKS]

[ QUOTE ]

That I won't spell it out should be an indication of the value I think is there.


[/ QUOTE ]

That depends on whether you're taking the Irie/Sucker line that if information is really valuable, you should only hint at it.

[ilya]

Irieguy, you are saying there were SIXTEEN times in 4 tournaments when it was folded to you in the SB and you pushed where before you would have folded?
You are including post-bubble play, then?

[ilya]

Obviously Sucker is talking about raising every single hand on the bubble from any position. Almost.

[mason55]

[ QUOTE ]
Can this concept truly be applied in all analogus situations?

Imagine a 5 or 6 handed game where blinds are 25/50 and you're in the SB with 500. BB also has 500. It's folded to you.

Now, according to the math shown, it would be right to push with any two cards. But is this really the case? Chances are, you'll never be called except by premium hands and so your EV on the play itself has to be positive.

But...there are a few key issues I'm trying to think through.
First, when you are called, you're going to lose most of the time.
Second, even when you double up, you still don't assure yourself a payday, merely a greater chance at getting there.
Third, you're risking your entire stack to gain 50T, which is such a small amount compared to the chips in play.

I haven't done math on this, obviously. But it seems to me that this type of play would not be +$EV, even if it could be shown to be +EV.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would think in this situation you would want to back off just a bit. You can still push with almost everything but once you either steal a couple of times, catch a good hand when you're not on a steal, or if you're lucky enough to double up then you can back off and wait until you're starting to get blinded away again, or the blinds go up, at which point they will be worth stealing. If you manage to steal a few times or get caught with bad starting hand but double up anyways, this will help you the rest of the tournament because you'll be "the maniac" and, like stated in the article, can probably get some looser calls or someone to reraise into your monsters.

[LinusKS]

Brad, here's what I've come up with.

If you want to check this, and/or add to it, I'd appreciate it.

First of all, there's some mistakes in magic's chart.

The one I'm working off is Table #4, the last row for table type "loose."

In that row, magic has 46% for "Fold%". The number should be 36%. For "Fold Equity" he has 0.8 BB. The correct number is .54BB. The others are 64%, -.325, -.208, and .332.

The final result isn't much different - .332BB, instead of 0.5BB, but I wanted to mention it, because it affects my own calculations.

What I did was to assume a four-player game, with approximately equal chips, and a standard 20/30/50 split.

I'm also assuming the total prize pool is worth $100.

To make the math easy, I gave player 1 T2375, player 2 T2250, the sb (Hero) T2500, and the bb 2500.

The small blind is 125 and the big blind is 250, which have already been paid (they're already in the pot).

In this scenario, the Hero's chips are worth $25.07, as are the Villain's.

It looks like this:

_____FOLD__WIN BLINDS___DIF___WIN ALL__DIF___LOSE ALL__DIF
EV%__.2507__.2731_______.0224__.3936___.1429___0__ ___-.2507
$____$25.07___$25.31____$2.24__$39.36___$14.29_0__ ___-$25.07
Chips_2500____2875______375____5375_____2875___0__ ___2500

I'm just converting to $ values for ease of comparison, but you can already see the differences -

The 375 chips in the blinds you're gambling to win are only worth $2.24 in real money, and the 2500 chips you're hoping to win from the villain are worth only $14 to you if you succeed.

If you plug these numbers in (and I haven't checked this part of my math yet, so if someone would i'd appreciate it) you get:

Blinds: $2.24
Fold%: 36%
Fold Eq: $0.81
Caught %: 64%
Caught EQ: -$7.36
Caught Result: -$4.71
Total EQ: -$3.90.

In other words, if the math is right, you should expect to lose $3.90 every time you did this in a tournament.

[ilya]

I'm no mathematician but your calculations look good to me, Linus.

However...who the heck is actually going to call all-in for 10xbb with 64% of their hands? I think even at the $10s it's extremely rare to find that loose a caller on the bubble. If one of you is down to, say, 5xBB, then maybe -- but by that point, winning just the blinds is much more profitable proportionately, no?

[wmajik]

As a general reply to what has been said so far:

I do indeed understand independant chip models and why chips are not on a linear correlation with $EV. There has been disagreement with what I assume are my remarks of a 10% late game improvement causing an increase in ROI. I can agree with that - more chips don't mean more $EV. But, I also happen to think that most (not all) ICM theory goes out the window in STT games once you're on the bubble. You should always be shooting for 1st, so this strategy is directly pertinent to the all-or-nothing mentality.

I _do_ believe ICM is a very strong concept and is fundamental to deep stack games like MTTs or early level STT where blind:stack:table ratios are all important. Late game STT, not so much. All that a STT really becomes late game is a steal and coin-toss circus, seeing who can pull off the most stunts before exiting the stage. There's not a lot of edges to exploit and no time to go around waiting for a clearly advantageous call or double-up situation. You have to hold a monster or see a flop for that to happen first. With a short stack, that's just not going to happen.

In addition to just stealing more chips, there are secondary effects that result from this strategy that I only skimmed over. So, I am also talking about an overall game improvement, rather than just quantifiable 10% chips or something of that nature. This strategy is just as much about control in critical situations as it is chip building. This is why correct timing and application of this strategy is directly relevant to ROI.

Also, this article was not and is not a comprehensive STT guide. I can't imagine how it can be construed as one. I do have a real STT guide on my site and have had a limit STT guide that has been sitting there since October of last year. In addition, I never remotely mentioned anywhere in my article applying this strategy from any position outside of the SB/BB - that's a whole different ballpark.

As for myself, even I don't play like a wild gunman that some may imagine - but it's getting quite close. This month as part as a rapid STT tournament on my site, I 6-tabled $10+1 games for 4 hours. Since I am not a STT terminator like ZeeJustin or Jason Strassa, 6-tabling was still difficult for me. But applying this strategy in many situations (enabling me to go on auto-pilot), I am still able to pull off solid ITM and ROI numbers. Long term, who knows if this is still valid, but I tend to think so.

Lastly, it's poker we're talking about here. When is any rule a rule when the best answer for most questions is "it depends"? If someone reads my article and decides to raise 23o to steal 50 chips with a 700 stack in Level III because they saw a +0.2BB expectation on the play, that's their prerogative. Is it mathematically correct? Yes. It is +$EV correct? No. It's not meant to be a hand-holding article. I wrote it, because I think the concept is important and can enhance the game of those players who already know what they are doing.

I realize most of my reply has been a rebuttal so far, so I apologize. For those who are looking for some more bones to chew on, consider a reverse situation, where you are sitting in the BB instead and the SB limps in.

Say you put the SB's limp on a 'Loose' hand; you can see that you are good to push, given apropriate stack counts. Most likely this person then folds and you win the blinds. How often do you think they want to limp in on you when you've demonstrated you're not afraid to shove your chips into the pot? And what do you think it means when they finally do limp again? The answers are pretty clear. This is the type of control I'm talking about that isn't just +chip EV.

[Irieguy]

Yes, from 5 players down to 2.

[Irieguy]

Yes, Aleo, I have been doing the same: developing an intuitive feel for when the general concepts may be applicable to other situations, namely when you get a limper involved. My initial thoughts are that including a limper when you have any reason at all to think that he may add some folding equity makes the move even more enticing.

In the past, if I was in the SB or BB on the bubble with absolute garbage and was able to see the flop for free or cheap, I would do it (generally speaking) if I felt that pushing would be too -$EV. The implied odds are good, risk is low, and there is some residual chance of being able to play poker post flop.

My current thought is that I am missing some opportunities to push with garbage in this circumstance.

Irieguy