MathrimC's poker journal

[MathrimC]

Also, I got some practice in folding KK this evening:

 

[Magicadil]

Folding Kings there is terrible. UTG will shove with almost anything because under 4 BB, crazytot only has 4 BB also so him knowing previous player is shoving wide will probably shove any ace. SB only has you to worry about since he has others covered so very likely he shoves there with 99, 10,10, A,Q etc.

[MathrimC]

You're right.

I really need to practice my ICM intuitions.

[psrquack]

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@MathrimC wrote:

Also, I got some practice in folding KK this evening:

 

 

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I think this is a very simple hand. Call, no question. Your real enemy is the other big stack. If we presume that the go allin only with AA then you both have the 2 best starting hands.

[WuDu]

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@Magicadil wrote:

Folding Kings there is terrible. UTG will shove with almost anything because under 4 BB, crazytot only has 4 BB also so him knowing previous player is shoving wide will probably shove any ace. SB only has you to worry about since he has others covered so very likely he shoves there with 99, 10,10, A,Q etc.

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🤣 How do you know? You don't even play for money...

@MathrimC

KK fold is a tough decision! The question is whether or not "smurf" raises two other all-ins with anything else than AA. As someone who's actually a reg at those 10 Euro SNGs myself, I'd probably call here and

a) hope that smurf doesn't have AA and pushes with AK, AQ, AJ, QQ, JJ or worse or

b) hope that smurf has AA, wins the hand and you finish ITM at the end of the hand.

How did the hand play out in the end?

[MathrimC]

Smallstacks had JTo and 66, bigstack had QQ and took it all down. Then I beat him heads-up 😃

I did't pay enough attention to the gap between the smallstacks and the bigstacks to realize I'm still at least a favourite to take down a 4500 sidepot.

[WuDu]

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@MathrimC wrote:

Smallstacks had JTo and 66, bigstack had QQ and took it all down. Then I beat him heads-up 😃

I did't pay enough attention to the gap between the smallstacks and the bigstacks to realize I'm still at least a favourite to take down a 4500 sidepot.

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Congratulations! Make sure you don't go crazy, the next 30 BI downswing is only a matter of time, so be prepared! If I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about not calling here. Honestly, I'm surprised to not see an A in this family pot.

[ArtyMcFly]

Firstly, it's great to see you're crunching the ICM numbers, Mathrim. The best way to develop an understanding of the concept it to literally do the math. Sometimes the results are quite shocking aren't they? (e.g.  You find out you need 70% equity for a call to be correct, whereas in cash games we happily take flips, and literally always call if we think we have the best hand.)

The KK spot is pretty interesting. I think I call there with JJ+ and maybe AKs too, but I don't hate the fold. On a satty bubble it would be a trivial fold, but in a SNG with two paid, it's highly unlikely that all three players will beat you and both the shorties survive. Sometimes there will be the rare triple bustout (when the big stack has aces or makes the nuts), but you'd still get 2nd place money if that happens, so you're not really risking a great deal in this spot, whereas scooping the pot would be extremely advantageous for taking a big stack into HU play.

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psrquack wrote:

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I only agree with that if we are sure that the shorty will fold. He is under pressure too, because winning is more efficient instead of playing for the be the second place. If hero calls and he folds he will almost give out the chance to win that SNG. If he is a nit and thinks that the 2nd place is a good result then fold but if he is a regular then he has the opportunity with hero's possible call to treble up and back to the game again. In that case I think the shorty should call with any two cards.

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 You're misunderstanding the whole concept of how to make money in SNGs. Obviously winning is better than second place, but second place is infinitely better than third. It's not really "nittiness". It's just about giving yourself a better chance to make some money instead of no money. Overcalling with any two would be like burning your bankroll. On tourney bubbles, survival is much more important than accumulaion of chips. Anyone that puts their stack at risk is "donating" EV to the players that fold, because the folders will automatically grab a bigger slice of the prize pool when someone busts out. In satties in particular, when I have a medium stack on the bubble, I often fold every hand for several orbits, while "ICM lemmings" jump off the cliff by making plays that have no upside. I mean, when it's bubble time, I get more excited about two other players being all in than I do about getting all in with aces for myself. When I fold to two shoves, I have zero risk of busting, and often a 50%+ chance of winning. That's a very profitable spot to be in. I like making money with zero risk. Fold pre.

[psrquack]

@ArtyMcFly: I read your post but I'm still not convinced. First I don't know why are you writing about MTT satties bubble. I think the sng and a MTT bubble can't be comperable. Second, I think this is a special situation and don't think leaving the other players take so huge gap and erasing our winning chance is a good move. Maybe wherefore I don't play sngs. I have no more new arguments so GL to you.

[Mrdonklee]

I think we call with KK. 

We cover everyone. We win the hand we win the ait and go. We lose to one of the shortys we still have a big side pot. 

Its actually very hard to bubble we are prob 80% to cash maybe even higher.

If we fold and one of the shortys triples then we are holding on and all have equal stacks and still just over 10 bigs not a great situation.

[GamesDean]

@psrquack: Did you actually see MathrimC’s ICM calculations for that spot? It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not because after the calculations are done we actually know that calling with ATdd is wrong. There is a huge difference between busting in 2nd or 3rd place! I also don’t understand why you are thinking that we can’t win the SNG when we are folding in this spot. We still have almost 9bb and more than enough time to find way more profitable shoving spots where we have additional fold equity to count on. Even if the short stack is calling and doubling up vs. the big stack, he only 2k chips vs. hero’s 1,5k, that’s just a minor difference.

[MathrimC]

The rungood continues. After 80 €10 SNG's, I'm up €260, that's a ROI of 32%. Bankroll is now at €1274 😀

[BillyR23]

WOW, well done @MathrimC 🆒👍:cash::cash::cash:

[MathrimC]

Another fun spot:

[nightshopper]

First of all: really well done, SNG wizard ;) If I ever see you at a SNG table, I will run away as fast as I can.

 

That last spot really is interesting. These are the possibilities:

1. You beat them both. Then you're ITM and chipleader.

2. You beat the chipleader but not the other player. No one is out, you'll be 3rd in chips.

3. You beat the other player but not the chipleader. You're ITM, 2nd place.

4. The chipleader beats you both. You're ITM, 2nd place.

5. The other player beats you both, the chipleader beats you. You're out, not ITM.

 

I know it's important to think of their all in ranges, obviously. But if you just look at all the possible outcomes, in only one scenario you are certainly not ITM. My thought process might be too simple, but wouldn't that make a call a pretty good decision already?

[GamesDean]

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@MathrimC wrote:

Another fun spot:

 

 

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Terrible spot – it somehow feels more like a fold to me since the short stack should overcall with an insanely tight range that you don’t want to face with QQ. If you loose vs. the short stack you have to win vs. the big stack that should shove more hands since he is the chipleader. However, you are short yourself and I’m not sure how light he will be in reality since you shouldn’t minraise a ton of hands with such a small stack. If you opened a lot of hands with not much of a stack, I could see the call but perceiving myself as a reasonable player I would expect to be sometimes crushed here, other times I have to hold against a lot of equity or I have to suck out to win it all, or I lose vs. the small stack and I have to hold against some Ax type of hand that the chipleader shoves.

Maybe I’m too tired – it’s 9:37 AM in Germany – but I’m not a 100% sure what to do here. Depends a lot on your opponents I feel like.

Congrats to your SNG results, I hope to never see you at the tables. :P

[ArtyMcFly]

That QQ spot is very unclear to me (but I also can't remember the exact payouts in those SNGs). I assume the BB made a mistake with the cold call (unless they woke up with TT/AK or something like that) but now that both players are all in, you might have to fold everything but KK+. I'm really not sure.

[GamesDean]

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@ArtyMcFly wrote:

That QQ spot is very unclear to me (but I also can't remember the exact payouts in those SNGs). I assume the BB made a mistake with the cold call (unless they woke up with TT/AK or something like that) but now that both players are all in, you might have to fold everything but KK+. I'm really not sure.

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Damn – even Arty has no idea what to do here, what a spot! That’s what I meant when I was saying that it highly depends on the players. I could imagine that the BB makes a mistake calling since I’m playing the €10 SNGs myself and I see a lot of bad calls there but without further information it’s hard to tell.

If it helps you: 2nd place gets sth. around 15,xx€ and 1st place wins 31,xx€.

[MathrimC]

€15,83 and €31,67 to be exact. I ran some numbers, the difficult part being indeed the range assumptions. I assumed a wide range for the chipleader and a strong but slightly too loose range for the shortstack, and it seemed like I had to call. The details are in a file on my pc but I'm not home for the next two days, so I might post details on Sunday.

Given the hard decision I put myself in, minraising seems like a mistake and open-shoving seems better?

[GamesDean]

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@MathrimC wrote:

Given the hard decision I put myself in, minraising seems like a mistake and open-shoving seems better?

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That definitely makes sense. If the chipleader is aggressive and shoves a lot over minraises you don’t really want to trap with QQ because he will show you a lot of Kx and Ax type of hands that have ~30% equity vs. your hand. And you don’t really induce the short stack to put it in with much weaker – I mean, in the small blind I would limp in with QQ all day long just to get shoved on and if that doesn’t happen we still have a pretty reasonable chance to get it all in on the flop. Also: By shoving you weaken your range vs. competent players and you actually get action from hands that could fold otherwise. If I would see you minraising here for the first time ever with basically no stack to do that with I could see myself folding 3-handed monsters like 88 or 99 that I would definitely call vs. an open-shove.

Against weaker competition I would trap but I would only trap with KK+.

[ArtyMcFly]

Thanks for providing the payouts (first gets double the second place money, as I expected) as that enabled me to give the free online version of ICMizer2 another try. QQ is clearly a profitable open shove for you (around 18% can be jammed profitably), but when I tried doing the calcs for the situation in the screengrab, I got a different answer every time I pressed the calculate button, and then I ran out of free calcs! I *think* that SB should jam very wide (and you would snap-call if it's just him in the pot, because QQ apparently can go into your "minraise to induce" range), but when both players go all in, your calling range is something like 99+/AK, so it's much closer. I think it greatly depends on which ranges you assign to the other players and what you have in your minraising range to begin with, as I can't get a full Nash solution for this spot with the free version of ICMizer. If the SB is just spewing anything with equity (e.g. suited connectors) because he's super-short, then QQ should be pretty profitable as a call, as you'll often have him crushed, as well as the big stack bully.

Looking at this spot makes me want to play some SNGs so I can get into interesting spots like this. I never really studied ICM until I played satties, (and I still have a lot to learn) but in those the spots tend to be much clearer because of the flat payouts. SNG bubbles appear to be much more complicated and I think I'd get a buzz about learning from my push/fold mistakes. I doubt I'd be able to get a 30% ROI at the $10 level though. That's very impressive!

[ArtyMcFly]

FWIW, this is apparently the solution if SB shoves and BB folds. I'm not sure if I trust it, because ICMizer seems to have a mind of its own when I press some random buttons, but I think it's saying that SB should jam 92% of hands (!) and you can call with 77+, ATs,  AQo. I'm generally a fan of minraising to induce, but I'd never induce with a hand like 77 at that stack depth in this spot. For a start I don't expect villain to know that he can rip almost any two, and for a second I never win flips!

[MathrimC]

Thanks for the analysis! As for the current ROI, it's still within the 90% confidence interval for variance of a 10% ROI. The longer I can maintain this run the more likely it's above that, but I'm sure my real ROI can't be much higher with all the mistakes I make. Even for a very good player a ROI like 15% should be very hard to achieve in turbo 5 man sngs.

[GamesDean]

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@ArtyMcFly wrote:

[...] but I think it's saying that SB should jam 92% of hands (!) and you can call with 77+, ATs,  AQo. I'm generally a fan of minraising to induce, but I'd never induce with a hand like 77 at that stack depth in this spot. For a start I don't expect villain to know that he can rip almost any two, and for a second I never win flips!

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I wouldn’t call with 77 because I don’t expect that my opponent really shoves 92% of hands since people have very bad calling ranges in general meaning I would expect some players to minraise/call with all pocket pairs, most Ax and some Kx. Against that you really shouldn’t push 92% of hands. But thx for your explanation, I guess QQ probably is more of a call then but it’s definitely not a fun spot.

[ProMode93]

Hey MathrimC'

In that spot with QQ u have to call because the structure aint that icm heavy ( the sb in that spot can be wide because "the little" icm presure he can put on u )

I think with 55-1010+ u got to shove directly preflop from btn

I saw up someone post a pic in icmizer and seem like the calculations are kinda bad there because

1. I don t think any player ( reg on unibet ) know to shove 92% in that spot for to call with 7% of ur range

2. If that player its a recreational and shove like 35-40% of range there u got to fold alot and call only JJ+ ( maybe 10 10 because the structure  its a little strange and u got to win alot of hus and for that u need to have a decent stack )

3. If that its a reg there he should know u can t open to wide there because ( u will open only JJ and aqs and akof and S)

4. If that player from sb thinks u call to much he can t shove even 50%

5. When the sb shoves there u got to esclude hands like KK AA and some AKS maybe (JJ AND AQS)

Sorry for my english im still learning hope i did explain well my self