Would you rather

[ilya]

***** Hand History for Game 2515154655 *****
NL Texas Hold'em $20 Buy-in + $2 Entry Fee Trny:14735370 Level:5 Blinds(75/150) - Thursday, August 11, 01:48:34 EDT 2005
Table Table 13945 (Real Money)
Seat 9 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: BobBarker8 ( $635 )
Seat 2: BudGal ( $408 )
Seat 7: StneColdCall ( $1375 )
Seat 8: mlivnj ( $2647 )
Seat 9: tryn2play ( $2460 )
Seat 10: timd354 ( $475 )
Trny:14735370 Level:5
Blinds(75/150)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to StneColdCall [ 9c 5s ]
BudGal is all-In [408]


Which of the big stacks would you prefer to call & bust the shorty?

[ChrisV]

It only makes a miniscule difference, but you want the larger stack to get the chips. If you look at ICM models, the more uneven the distribution of chips in opposing stacks, the higher your equity (right up to the ideal case where one opponent has all the rest of the chips and nobody else has any).

[ilya]

[ QUOTE ]
It only makes a miniscule difference, but you want the larger stack to get the chips. If you look at ICM models, the more uneven the distribution of chips in opposing stacks, the higher your equity (right up to the ideal case where one opponent has all the rest of the chips and nobody else has any).

[/ QUOTE ]

But what about

1, he's gonna be in the BB when you're in the SB
2, he's gonna be UTG when you're in the BB, and will be in a position to steal-raise through the smaller big stack in UTG+1. if he folds, UTG+1 will be biggest-still-live, and ready to steal. Whereas if UTG+1 wins the chips, UTG will have to go through a bigger stack if he wants to steal my BB.

[ChrisV]

(1) is overrated as a problem. If you steal for the rest of the game, it's going to be allin steals, it's not like he can come over the top of you. While he may be slightly more likely to call, he won't commit suicide just to spite you. He's not going to be calling with K3 just because he's big stack. Having him in a position to steal from you is a far more serious problem. Which brings me to...

(2) Huh? How can you be worried about him stealing when he's UTG when you're BB?

The scenario you should be concerned about is when one of the short stacks doubles (or triples) up and we get a real 4-way contest. In this situation, as one of the shortest stacks you will benefit from the big stack bullying the second biggest stack, which he'll be in ideal position to do. You aren't going to be able to avoid having steal pressure placed on you - as the second smallest stack, every other stack has a reason to pick on you. You have to just accept that and be grateful the big stack is exerting his pressure mostly on the second-biggest.

[tigerite]

As I have no control over it, I don't really care either way and just let what happens, happen.