Pokerhaus

Meh, ICM problems.  Not my strong suit.  I think I jam, 99 just seems too solid and people should be giving you more credit for an UTG jam, you may be able to get people to pitch TT here.  Min raise call seems fine, but I think the extra fold equity the jam gives you makes it more +EV.  I don't really like raise folding.  Turning out hand into a bluff just seems wrong at this stack size.  If it weren't for the ICM of it all I would probably fistpump jam, but I think I sigh jam in this spot.  I think since the shorties each are very close to you in stack the ICM becomes much more negligible.

BKiCe wrote:

i'd probably raise/fold

this, although i may call a jam from the 14bb stacks if they are one of the last to act

BKiCe wrote:

i'd probably raise/fold

So are we open raising our entire range instead of shoving at all?  ie, 99, AA, AK, JJ, etc....and also if we are r/f 99, can we just open raise extremely wide here utg with the plan to r/f anyways, since we have same probability of getting 3b regardless? Or is the fact that the bb or someone else might flat us enough to not raise that wide here?

bootswild wrote:

people are definitely flatting a nonzero % of the time

and yeah it's enough to not open 93o but this is a fine situation to steal with like AJo T9s depending on image, opponents, etc

also I might jam exactly TT/JJ/AK against ransoms but yea you should be raising your range mostly and not stuffing

So should you always be considering your stack in terms of bbs instead of Ms then at the final table?  Because if you go according to Ms, this should be a shove/fold/ or r/c and never a r/f, as it would probably be considered a semi-spew if you think of it in terms of an M of 7. However, according bbs u can obv r/f.

Oly - not sure what you mean, it's the same stack regardless how u calculate it.  I don't make a habit out of raise/folding 7M (17 bb or whatever) stacks, but it's not like automatically spew to do so sometimes.  As a general rule, I'll make opening raises (as opposed to shoving) with a smaller stack from UTG that I would from CO or OTB.   There are lot more variables in action behind you in EP raises, such as which position the 3bettor comes from and/or if someone 4b/overcalls.  So I probably wouldn't be standard opening this stack for much of my OTB range, but might sometimes from UTG.

And Irish basically the same answer to your quesiton.  I think there are a handful of regs who adamantly won't r/f below a particular stack (like 18-20 bb or whatever) but I think that's stubborn.  Sometimes the situational variables are such that r/f'ing a 15 bb stack should be profitable, where shoving your hand would be less or even -EV.  That's up to you to analyze and determine these situations using your experience.

There was another thread in here a few months back where I was basically discussing the same thing.  Point is, there's no fundamental reason why you can't r/f these stacks.  Pretty much starting at around 22 bb is where r/f'ing becomes a bit dubious, and gets worse as you decrease down to like 12 bb.  At that point, yes it becomes pretty mathematically flawed to ever r/f because you'll simply be getting too good of odds against a rather wide reshove range.  The "rules" you guys are referring to are just guidelines that are easy to follow and are very close to optimal for most situations, but that doesn't mean they're ALWAYS the best option.

As far as this specific hand Irish, all I can suggest is to familiarize yourself with the effects of ICM in various situations if you haven't already.  In this type of stack distribution at a FT, chip values are very non-linear (adding 1/7th to your stack does not add 1/7th to your stack's value, doubling up does not double your stack's value).  This non-linear relationship is why shoving a hand like 99 from UTG (which is +cEV) is likely not +$EV.  The reason it's probably still profitable to r/f is that while losing 1/7th of your stack isn't ideal, it's not an ICM disaster.  Again this will make more sense if you actually play around with figures in an ICM calculator.  Other players are subject to similar ICM-restraints as you are, so they will also play tightly versus an open here.  Plus our open here looks pretty strong (and rightfully so, we're contemplating folding 99), as is appropriate for the situation.

Last edited by bootswild (02-08-10 18:10:12)

irishjugg wrote:

<3 boots

thanks sir.  Sometimes I raise/f utg and utg+1 with around 19BB but I tend to get yelled at for it, glad I may not be totally wrong

your not wrong, I'm assuming you make it like 2.5? 

Obvisouly you get yelled at becuase it sucks to raise what is becoming a significant portion of your stack to turn around and fold but you have to take into consideration the ev of every option and sometimes raise folding stacks ~17-20 can certainly be profitable