All-in hand rankings for short stacks

[betgo]

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Are you thinking about Karlson-Sklansky rankings? They are the specific answer to what hand should you push headsup with a given stack size given that villain sees your cards face up and calls optimally.

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I have never played holdem with the hole cards face up. Is this some new game I don't know about? I don't think hand rankings from this different game would apply to secret card holdem.

[Che]

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I have never played holdem with the hole cards face up. Is this some new game I don't know about? I don't think hand rankings from this different game would apply to secret card holdem.

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They definitely apply to NHL. They are most frequently useful in SNG's, but are sometimes useful in MTT's as well.

The rankings tell you what hands you can push and still be profitable if your opponent plays perfectly (i.e. calls when he has odds to call, folds when he should fold). Since your opponents in "secret card holdem" do not play perfectly, you can actually be profitable by pushing a wider range than the rankings recommend, but you have to guesstimate how much wider that range is based on how overly tight your opponent plays.

But the good news is: even if you are not sure how tight your opponent is, you still have a range of hands you can push that you *know* is +CEV.

Later,
Che

[ChrisW]

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It also depends on stack size.

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Very true.

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With 15xBB in middle position, you can open push 33 or AJ.

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Very untrue. Once you hold meaningfully more than 10BB, open-pushing is virtually never correct. Basically, this is a game-theory issue. If you push on decent hands but not excellent ones, your opponents will figure it out and call you too often for your pushes to show a profit. If you push on all decent+ hands, you will lose more EV by killing action on your excellent hands than you will gain by stealing the blinds on your mediocre hands.

With 15 BB, AJ is a MP raise, planning to fold to a push from a non-maniac who has you covered. 33 is a MP fold if there are no limpers.

http://wizardofodds.com/holdem
This site has it for 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10 players.

[betgo]

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With 15xBB in middle position, you can open push 33 or AJ.


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Very untrue. Once you hold meaningfully more than 10BB, open-pushing is virtually never correct. Basically, this is a game-theory issue. If you push on decent hands but not excellent ones, your opponents will figure it out and call you too often for your pushes to show a profit. If you push on all decent+ hands, you will lose more EV by killing action on your excellent hands than you will gain by stealing the blinds on your mediocre hands.

With 15 BB, AJ is a MP raise, planning to fold to a push from a non-maniac who has you covered. 33 is a MP fold if there are no limpers.

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Pushing for 15xBB without ante from 6th position with AJ or 33 is EV+. You could standard raise with a small pair, but pushing is better than folding. It is very favorable if you get called by AQo or AKo. You are a significant favorite plus pot odds.

In general, it is probably better to standard raise with most hands. However, if I raised with AJ from mid position, I would usually call/push a reraise.

If you are thinking of folding a small pair, you are better off pushing it, even if people know what you have.

It is not necessarily bad to push some hands, standard raise some hands, and limp others. Your opponents may not be able to tell what type of hand you have by your actions. Say you push from mid position with small pairs, ATs AJ, KQ, KJs, and some suited connectors. You standard raise with AQ-AK, 99-KK, and various speculative hands and mediocre hands, particularly if you think you can steal the blinds. You limp with some speculative hands and AA. You could mix this up a little, sometimes standard raising with AA, sometimes pushing with AK, sometimes limping, raising or pushing with JTs or 77.

It becomes hard for opponents to put you on a hand. They can't get out of the way of your standard raises, because you mix in enough raises with speculative hands with the premium hands. If they come over top of your limps, you may have a big pair. You can also play AK or JJ for a limpriase sometimes, so it is harder to read a limpraise as a big pair. When you open push, you probably have a marginal raising hand, but it could be a pp, high cards, or a suited connector.

An overbet open push is much more playable in live tournaments where there is 3xBB is blinds and antes. This is different from Party Poker with 1.5xBB in blinds. With a large ante, you could just open push or reraise allin most of the hands you want to play with 15xBB. This approach is most useful if you are one of the shorter stacks and/or you are not as good a player as the others postflop.

[Paragon]

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Pushing for 15xBB without ante from 6th position with AJ or 33 is EV+.

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This is misleading. Since AJ and 33 are likely to be the best hands with 4 people remaining to act, as long as you don't fold it's +EV almost regardless of your play. Certainly you aren't arguing that it's optimal to open push... right?

I think pushing is the safe, small gain. In sng's maybe that would be best because your +$EV can rise substantially by just surviving... But from my simplistic point of view, MTTs seem more oriented towards accumulating. It is rare that someone gets down to 10 bb's early in a MTT and actually push/folds his way to victory for 5 more hours... And I doubt anyone would claim it was more than pure variance if he did win that way. I do suck at MTTs though, so I could be wrong [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[tshak]

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Very untrue. Once you hold meaningfully more than 10BB, open-pushing is virtually never correct...

With 15 BB, AJ is a MP raise, planning to fold to a push from a non-maniac who has you covered. 33 is a MP fold if there are no limpers.

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If I have 15K in chips and the blinds are 1000/500 with a 125 ante, I will open-push with quite a few hands in MP. I know there's been some sensativity towards the "M" word around here, but I think that this is a great example of where M is a much more important consideration than BB. Once the ante's come into play, the numbers change dramatically. In my illustration, your M is a bit over 5 at a full table (10 players). This means that in 5 orbits you're blinded out - less if the blinds go up between now and then. This paints a *much* more desperate picture than BB does. In this situation you're getting desperate with 15BB. Making a move to increase your stack by almost 20% is very attractive here.

[ChrisW]

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If you are thinking of folding a small pair, you are better off pushing it, even if people know what you have.

It is not necessarily bad to push some hands, standard raise some hands, and limp others. Your opponents may not be able to tell what type of hand you have by your actions. Say you push from mid position with small pairs, ATs AJ, KQ, KJs, and some suited connectors.

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After an hour of math, I have determined that if we assume

a) five players yet to act

b) antes totalling 1 BB

c) that the opponents will figure out approximately what you are doing and call you on a range of about 77+, AQs+

d) that a third player will enter the pot only with JJ+

moving in on the hands in your range (I assumed "some suited connectors" included QJs to 76s) would show a profit of .8 BB over folding. Tweaking the calling ranges slightly does not really affect the number, as the increased/decreased chance of being called virtually cancels out the decreased/increased chance of winning when called.

Of course, the alternative to the betgo all-in strategy is not to fold all of these hands. With five players yet to act, most players would raise AJo and ATs, with 88/77 possible at tight tables. Those are very effective raising hands when they are the weakest in your range . If your range is 88+, ATs+, KQs, the only hands which are preflop favorites against your range are AK and JJ+, so the opponents will often be forced to fold and concede the pot.

88, AJo, and ATs make up almost 25% of betgo's move-in hands. So, if making a normal raise with those hands would show a 1.25 BB profit on average (that is, half of the dead money in the pot), the real chip EV of the betgo all-in strategy is only .5 BBs, a 3.33% increase in stack size.

All-in with 15 BB is an unacceptable risk for such a small gain. You're out of the tournament about 1/5 of the time on this play. So, you risk losing the opportunity to make later +EV plays, plus your edge is not signifigant enough to overcome the rake in the long term.

I do agree that a player who is weaker than the game might want to play in the way that betgo describes. However, no consistent winners will play this way.

[Exitonly]

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I do agree that a player who is weaker than the game might want to play in the way that betgo describes. However, no consistent winners will play this way.

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Er... that is so not true. And same goes for what you said about pushing w/ 15BB's.

Pushing is
A) A lower variance play, which often is the better choice in tournamnets
B) Alright because w/ normal raises a normal continuation bet will put you into critical mode if you get raised. Not a fun situation
C) Depending on the table, you'll get called by much worse hands. (i.e. you've stolen the blinds two hands ina row by pushing to get up to 15bb's, if you pick up QQ+/AK i'm pretty sure the best play would be to push again, you'll get called by a bunch of inferior hands that you dominate.

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Try not to follow rules like 'Pushing w/ 15bb's is never correct' because they generally don't always work.

[sirio11]

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