[marand]

When 2 stacks are really short it's often very important who will be forced to play a hand first. Just using ICM with a tool like SnGPT will give bad calling ranges.

Lets assume the following situation:
Blinds 200/400

CO 3400, folds
BTN 400, folds
SB 9100, pushes
BB 600.

Hero is in the BB. Should we fold or call?

If we fold we will have 200 chips left and be all-in next hand in the SB. Therefore we will be forced to call in the BB with any two cards. We will risk a 3-way pot in the SB next hand so even folding our worst hands is a mistake.

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Now let's change the situation slightly:
Blinds 200/400

CO 3400, folds
BN 400, folds
SB 9100, pushes
BB 601

Hero is in the BB. Should we fold or call?

Now things have changed... if we fold this hand and the next hand we will have 1 chip left and BTN will then be all-in when he is hit by the BB.

How often will the other shorty bust out if hero folds the next two hands?
Villian will either have to push next hand from CO and risk getting a call by both BTN and BB (we can't call in SB). Or he can fold and take his chances in the BB the hand after that. In each situation he risks having to play the hand 3-way, but it can also be a HU hand.

I would estimate that there is about 60% chance that the other short stack busts out before we do if we fold the next 2 hands. If he doubles up we will almost always finish 4th.

So in order for Hero to call in the hand. How many % must we win when we call?
I would guess that we need to win about 60% of the time when we call in order for it to be a good call. SB will be pushing close to 100% of his hands so we should call with something like top 15%. (66 A8 KJ A6s KTs)

If we would just have used ICM with SnGPT it would say that we should call with 86% of our hands in both hand 1 and 2. That is obviously not correct here. To test it just plug in 601 chips for BB and 401 chips for BTN (he would still be all-in before us, but SnGPT cannot handle when a player has <= the size of the BB).

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Is 100% in the 1st hand and 15% in the 2nd hand reasonable calling ranges?
Is the estimation that we need to win 60% of the time we call in the 2nd hand reasonable?

Thoughts?