Theory: Stack Efficiency in SNGs

[curtains]

Well your opponent would be less willing to make a move in some spots and more willing in others, if there were 4-5 players left. Also it seems like with about 4000-4500 in combined chips between these two players, there could be some other game conditions that apply. Give me an exact example (# of players, stack sizes etc) and I'll give my answer [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Hurry though, gotta go in 10 minutes.

[curtains]

Oh I didnt read your theory btw, because I wanted to answer on my own before seeing it. Don't like to read too much so I can be unbiased. In my opinion you want to steal most often from mediumish stacks as opposed to small and large ones. I thought this was a reasonably basic concept, but you seem to have given it a different name.

When you steal from a small stack they are pretty desperate, and will move allin a lot, whereas if they are a medium stack the risk/reward just isn't there a lot of the time. A large stack can reraise a lot for other reasons....as the chips they are raising often don't mean so much to them (although when you have 1900 in chips, its almost impossible for them to reraise on a bluff with the idea of folding, so theoretically its not that big a deal)

[HesseJam]

[ QUOTE ]


(making percentage comparisons is correct, since this takes into account what is being put at risk to achieve the gain).

...

Me: If I lose the result would be the same (bust).

You: This is your mistake. The result "bust" isn't the same each time any more than the result "double up" is the same each time. You lose more equity when you bust with a bigger stack.


[/ QUOTE ]

Those are very good points and I will have to think about them....

I probably looked at it from a wrong perspective. Of course it is better if you call if you have 2000 then if you had 1200 because, well, it is better to have 2000 chips than 1200 in first place. But, well, you have what you have and you cannot chose how many chips you have. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

The mere fact that I said that I would be more likely to call with 1200 than with 2000 in some way says that it is better to call with 1200 than with 2000 in terms of return on equity.

[tigerite]

Yep, good post. I do kind of instinctively follow it, you're right.

[pooh74]

Great post chris!

I just wanted to add a couple of things (and I play lower limits than you so: Disclaimer).

First, at lower limits obviously a lot of game thoery goes out the window as players are playing their cards much more than the situation. But, I would be more apt to give the smaller stack more respect than the larger stack. Where stacks are roughly 1:2:2:3. If you guage the risk of a reraise all-in from the smaller stack at a "1 risk" then, I think the risk of reraise from the large stack is lower...maybe a .75 or less. This might be part psychology, but when at the table, I like to think it by doing simple subtraction.

For example:

4 left:

A: 2000
Hero: 3000
C: 1000
D: 3800

If blinds are 100-200, I would much rather steal from D than C. I like to think D is thinking that a resteal that is called brings him into 4th intead of 3rd so he more apt to respect a raise, whereas:

Same scenario but hero has 2700 and villain has 4100, here, those extra chips still put villain within the top 3 on a loss so you are risking much more by stealing in this case.

In any regard, assessing threat level is difficult because often the absract is not even being contemplated at low buy-ins...but, I think on some intuitive level, most players are aware of these things.

[pergesu]

It seems to me like, at least in this post, you're ignoring one player's "stack efficiency" - your own. Why'd you make that raise in the first place? Your stack is too big to just open push, looks like, so you throw in a raise and hope BB is either very weak, or is multi-tabling and has the check/fold button clicked.

YOU made a mistake with that raise, imo, because you put yourself in an extremely exploitable situation. If the BB is aware of your stack efficiency concept (and it seems we've established that most solid players intuitively do), then he'll use it against you here. If I'm the BB, my thought process is something like, "That could very easily be nothing more than a steal attempt...and he's got a lot of chips behind him, so he'll almost certainly fold if I push." Then I push.

I get what you're saying, and it makes sense, but I don't like your example hand. It seems like you're raising because you have position and it feels like the correct play. But it's hugely exploitable...so I think you could only do it a % of the time you have hands that you'd fold to a push, and have that balance in some way with the times you do that with AA-QQ, AKs, that way your opponents can't resteal knowing that most of the time you're going to have a bad hand.

Anyway to answer your question, I think the most preferable opponent to steal from is a medium-stacked opponent, because they're not feeling tremendous pressure from the blinds (often waiting for the shorty to bust out), and are willing to fold too many hands.

[tigerite]

Indeed it can be used to great effect with a hand you would normally push with at 10bb, but you have 13bb and a stack comes over the top. Something like JJ say, even under some circumstances TT and 99. It's so often they will have A-rag or even worse, and yet they wouldn't have called a push. That's another facet of the theory I guess.

For me, the more intuitive concept (worded in more traditional terms) is a resteal is bad if you don't have fold equity (your stack is too small), or if you'd be making too large of an overbet to pull it off (your effective stack is too large). The flipside being that stealing -from- a midstack will leave you in a tough spot if they resteal allin.

That being said, the candidate villians most ripe for a resteal are also the ones most ripe to be stolen from for the same reasons (chips not worth too much or too little to them)--enough so to negate this resteal risk hero-as-raiser side.

Am I missing the point?