[baltostar]

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I believe the reason why ppl are angry at taking this line is b/c if he just raised pf he probably wouldnt be in this situation where he has no idea where he is in the hand. And althought SOME ppl play tight in the 1st hr of the 750k/1mil, there are plenty of idiots that are ready to stack off like 400bb deep with TP in these mtts. If anything, I think that your reasoning is very passive(incorrect?) in the fact that you are trying to play small ball when there are lots of donkeys out there at the moment that are just looking to give their money away here. I mean if you raised pf and got a call from QJ/KQ/Qx, instead of being put in a tough turn situation, you could be closer to getting it ai and have a very easy decision. I mean you can even make a 5-6bb raise IMO from EP and get a caller in the 1st hour from someone who "doesnt believe you"

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The guys who are looking to stack-off early are precisely why I think it's good to add this type of variance.

Sure, you can get a call raising in EP, but most likely you then just take down a small pot on the flop, or the turn.

Let's do some guesstimating assuming we're on the 1st hand of the tourney:

A reasonable expectation for an EP big pair might be just the blinds 60% of the time, a single caller 30% of the time, multiple callers 10% of the time. Single caller, you maybe get another 40% of the pot post-flop, on avg. Multiple callers, another 60%, on avg.

So, (.6 * 30) + (.3 * 170 * 1.4) + (.1 * 240 * 1.6) =

18 + 71.5 + 38.4 = 128

So an avg payoff is about 128/3000 = 4.3% of your stack, which is a good bread-and-butter small-ball payoff.

But by limping big pairs in EP in the 1st hour, you can stack people off pre-flop. It happens more than one would think. You get things like JJ re-raising TT and one of them pushes your 4-bet. I've also seen AK get it all in.

Used sparingly, this move has a great reward/risk ratio, taking the risk as a reasonable expectation for EP KK of about 6.5x BB.