Late stage strategy--11s and 22s

[the_joker]

[ QUOTE ]
Push or fold isn't poker. It's the lottery.

[/ QUOTE ]

Eventually in every tournament you're probably going to be in a push or fold situation. On PS the percentage of time spent in push/fold mode is less then on Party, but still you usually get to that point.

[sahala]

[ QUOTE ]

Push or fold isn't poker. It's the lottery.


[/ QUOTE ]

Last time I checked lotteries were -EV.

[ QUOTE ]
Less chips, faster tourneys, more money.

[/ QUOTE ]

FOR ME

Noooo you are still completely missing the point. In fact, you are getting the basic concepts right but misinterpretting it all. The main thing points are that:

1) You are not practicing the concept of putting the enemy on a range of hands. If you check my previous posts, I did state as you did that a good player will not want to risk taking a 50-50 to win so little. But...this is a way better than 52-48 chance man. People raise with a whole lot more hands than just pocket pairs here. In your example, people will raise with mostly any ace and some kings too. You MAY be a 52-48, but you are PROBABLY 70-30. It's not gonna get much better than that when you're gonna be blinded out in 4 orbits 4-handed. Are you somehow expecting to find a situation better than this when you potentially have 12 hands left to go?

2) You are not taking any consideration of pot odds. In short, you are doing exactly what you say that we shouldn't do: thinking about winning the most pots. As a good player, you want way better than 52-48 chance early in the tournament because you can wait for it, but as the blinds increase compared to stacks you have to be willing to get closer and closer to coin flips or else you'll be blinded out. Take an extreme example. If the blinds were 200/400, you're on the button, and your stack was 800, and you absolutely knew that this hand was a coin flip, would you not take it? Just by going all-in, you already gained 300 chips, because the pot already contains 600 chips and you're entitled to 300 of it.

Now let's look back at your AK example. Blinds 150/300, your stack 1350. I believe it was the big stack of 4400(?) that raised to 900. Since you seem to think that this is a coin flip, let's say that from your reads, there's a 55% chance he's holding a pocket pair lower than kings, 25% chance that he's holding A-x or K-x, 5% chance that he's holding AA/KK, and 15% chance that he's holding 2 cards lower than a king. Now go ahead and calculate these ridiculous percentages and see exactly how much money you make in the long run if you push here. By the way, pretty much anyone in this forum will tell you that the percentages I have given is about as pessimistic of a percentage as you can imagine within the bounds of sanity.

If you wanted to see the forest, you aren't gonna accomplish it without posting some type of blinds and stack sizes because...every tree is different, if we follow your analogy =P. Can't do the same thing for every tree in the forest.

[Nicholasp27]

a) pooshing isn't about taking 52/48 chances...when your opp will fold 80% of their hands to your push, your odds are more like 90%...Folding Equity is the most important concept...it doesn't matter what cards you hold if it doesn't go to showdown

b) blinds are ALWAYS important...no matter the situation...even in ring games...if u don't have a sense of where the blinds are, you can't examine all of the variables...doesn't matter the site or the structure

[Nicholasp27]

a) less chips, faster tourneys = more money for the smart players...+ev
b) push or fold is poker...it may not utilize the same skills that ring games do, but it's still poker
c) lottery is random chance and is -ev...pushbot is utilizing math and strategy to take smart gambles that make money in the long term


and i still can't believe u'd advocate calling 900 of your 1350 instead of pushing or folding...if u are scared of coinflip, then fold...if u wanna make money, push...but why just call? why look to trap? the pot already has over 1k chips! TOP: "win big pots early"...most likely they will call ur push, which will give you max chips if you win the hand (and u need to recognize that ak is not a flop hand, but a full board hand)...and heck, they may even fold once in a blue moon...which gives u >1k chips for free...win/win

[Fletch101]

[ QUOTE ]
A lot of players reading this board do very well indeed getting down to the bubble--last 4 or 5, but then they get a little lost because they've have to shift from ABC poker to much more feel, intuition, reads--which are simply informed guesses. We can discuss specific hands until the cows come home, but that hand will usually be for that time in that place. Change virtually any particular, and you've got a whole new ball game. Yet, that's exactly what happens every SNG you play.

[/ QUOTE ]

I get the exact opposite from my readings here. From what I'm seeing, it's just as ABC as before the bubble. It's a set of principles, based mainly in the gap concept/folding equity and structured hand analysis(a la SnG Analyzer). Reads and intuition, as you stated, play a role, as in determining when you have pushed too hard/too often and are going to start getting calls from lesser hands than your opponents would have called with before you pushed into their blinds four orbits in a row.

If this isn't the case, then I have really misinterpreted what I have read from many of the posters.

[ QUOTE ]
If this isn't the case, then I have really misinterpreted what I have read from many of the posters.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you have the idea right

[Cactus Jack]

I'm very glad I posted this, originally. (There were times I had my doubts.) I may have been wrong, and if so, I'm going to have to change my game in order to keep growing. I thought I was on the right track, but perhaps I am really going further OFF track. (Kinda like taking the wrong fork in the road.)

I guess I'm going to be like Tiger Woods tearing down his swing in order to reach a higher level of play. I'm winning where I am, but I may have peaked.

Yesterday, with some of your replies running through my mind, I got killed. (Cold deck, ice cold, but that only exacerbated my problems, not created them.)

I'm in the SB--level 3?--with TT, four limpers, I push. All but one fold. He calls with J8s. Jack on the flop.

Maybe this was the wrong time to push all in, but I have to fall in order to run. I have a lot of work to do. Thanks for the help.

CJ

[CatfishKing]

You are not going to get enough monsters or "trapping" hands on the bubble to justify your play. So you have to push to maintain a healthy stack. You are also missing the fact that the push/fold strategy is generally against small stacks and tight players in the blinds not against loose spite callers.