SnG General Strategy Question

[soda]

Let us say that I have T4500, my opponents have T1500, T1000, and T3000. T3000 is the BB and I am the button. The other two are irrelevant.

Blinds are 200/400. Folded to me on the button and I raise 1400. Is this a mistake? Should I always put everyone all in when it's 4 ways and I have the lead?

Now, SB folds and BB reraises all in. It is my belief that I hold the best hand. Should I muck here despite my strong belief that I hold the best hand?

If I call and win, the tourney is basically mine. If I call and lose, I'm in a dogfight to just make the money and if I fold, I am in good shape overall with 4 opponents and can try to outplay the big stack whom I thought to be a pretty weak player overall. Or at least transparent.

I ask this because all three times I've called this reraise all-in, I've held the best hand and lost. This is costing me tournaments and lots of money. I'm relatively new to this, so my initial questions will be rudimentary.

Thanks for your help,

soda

[Michael Davis]

Soda,

If you are going to call the reraise, you should just raise to all-in yourself and make him make the decision whether or not he wants to risk having to see a flop.

If you are not going to call the reraise, making it 1400 is fine. You could even go a bit smaller and just call an all-in reraise from one of the small stacks. Be aware, though, that very good SNG players may come over the top of you from the BB here, knowing that you raised this amount so that you could fold and likely stay "in the money."

-Mike

[Bozeman]

I think you need to call in this situation. However, I think this is the wrong size raise. You should either raise smaller ~1000 and fold to many reraises, or go allin or at least enough to put everyone left to play allin. Choice depends on how your opps are playing.

You've mostly just been unlucky here.

Here are some approximate values of your stack given equal skill players:
beforehand: 0.36 prizemoney
folding: 0.33
call and lose: 0.21
call and win: 0.45

So you should call if you have x or better cahnce of winning where
x*.45+(1-x)*.21=.33
==>
x=0.5

Craig

[Prickly Pete]

It sounds like part of your frustration is that you are getting sucked out when you have the best hand. If you are a good tourney player, this is going to happen sometimes. But you have to keep getting yourself in that situation. You can't win all the chips without ever getting to a showdown.

And as for the raise, it's a little higher than what I do, but just be consisent with the raise amounts so nobody can put you on a hand. And I don't think you have to raise all-in necessarily either. If you have a big pair, you want to give him the hope that he can bluff you off the hand.

[Schmed]

Like everyone else I guess my question is why the 1400???

Like BF was talking about I make pretty much a standard raise when I am first one in all the time. I could have a 109s or AA and the raise is the same.

You will find when the blinds get that hi you don't have to raise 4x BB to move people off. If they'll call 3x tey would have called 4x. Personally when they get bigger I cut back to 3x, and at times just the min.

You want to put people all in with the best hand. For example, today I had an AQh, I raised enough to put someone all in, he called, turned over AJo, hit his J on the flop and won. Now I had him outchipped by like 3-1 so it wasn't that big of a deal. Give me the best hand for all of my chips up against a guy with a 3 outter any day of the week.

Another thing too, you could be saying something like, 'I had 33 on the button, raised it up, the guy went all in with AK and hit a K'. I mean yeah, you had the best hand there but not by much.

[soda]

This is helpful, call and lose is a terrible proposition, much worse than call and win is good according to those numbers. But, call and win is almost a lock on the tourney, so I'm not sure where the numbers come from. Maybe it's not as much a lock as I think?

I had suspicion that this was the wrong size raise and that's why he went for it here. That's why my read on him was easy though, because I made the wrong size raise. It was a raise that screamed - I don't want a call. So he reraised, thinking that I would get off it easy.

Ok, I'll lower my raising towards the end. I just hate to let the other big stack in cheaply, but it may be worth it to keep him from playing back at me.

BTW - I'm still making numerous rookie errors. You should see another post soon.

Thanks,

soda

[Bozeman]

1st place pays 1/2 the money, so .45 moneyEV is a near lock on 1st. The difference between folding and call/winning is the same as the difference between folding and call/losing, with the dead money you have put in (I ignored the SB because I don't know who had it and whether these were stacks before the hand or after blinding). Because calling is so often a mistake in these situations (+ chip EV calls are often - money EV), I will more often raise big (allin) than raise small if 3x is 35% of the effective stack.

BTW, picking up the blinds is 0.38, so raising allin is better than calling allin if you are less than a 70% favorite over the range of hands with which he will fold to an allin but raise a smaller bet.

Craig

[soda]

Craig - this is very helpful info. TYVM!

I understand perfectly now. OK, I've managed to take quite a few more firsts today than I did yesterday using an improvement in my raise sizes and consistency.

I still have more questions on a different topic, so I'll post one of them now.

Thanks!

soda

[Bozeman]

You may not want to take my advice, because after a 30 game stretch of no 2nd's, I am now 4 seconds in a row [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[soda]

I don't mind second, as long as it's consistent enough to bring home a profit.

Congrats on your runnerupsmanship!

soda