A further explanation of my red zone theory

[betgo]

I posted made a post about the advantages of playing a red zone strategy a couple of years ago. It met with extreme flaming. I also made another post about it a few months later which was flamed a little less.

I now will explain the key concepts of the red zone theory limited to its clearest application.

This applies to online tournaments with a small ante of like 5% of BB or tournaments with no ante. When the ante is like 15% of BB and you have 3xBB blinds and antes, you can open push profitably with a fairly large stack up to about the point you can resteal.

If there is a small ante or no ante, when you have about 8-13xBB, your main play is to open push, but you need a fairly good hand to open push with. Sure at the higher end of that range you can make small raises, open limp, or reraise allin, but none of those plays are particularly advantageous.

However, when you have a shorter stack of 4-8xBB, a lot of pushes are cEV+.

Therefore, my theory is that when you have about 10xBB, it is OK to fold rather than push steal in marginal situations. Then you will get blinded down or the blinds will increase to give you a smaller M.

You basically have to steal once per rotation to maintain your stack. Once you have like 6xBB, it is much easier to find opportunities to make favorable steal pushes. Trying to keep stealing to maintain an 11xBB is much more difficult.

Of course, you are going to play when you have big hands or favorable opportunities with any red zone stack. A lot of times, you will get a big hand or win when your steal is called, and build a decent stack, which is your goal.

Also, I am not saying it is preferable to have 6xBB than 11xBB. I am saying there is no point in taking close to even gambles to maintain the 11xBB. If you take those gambles, often you will be out of the tournament.

I also think there is a lot of value in staying alive in the tournament, as explained by Sklansky in TPFAP. This survival approach gets a bad name, because of donks playing weak/tight and blinding themselves out.

Sure when you push for 7xBB, you get called a lot, but the pushes are still often cEV+ with marginal hands. I think people are too worried about getting a pretty small stack.

I have found these approaches work for me. It seems like mathematics and common sense say you don't want to keep stealing with an 11xBB stack.

[Nate.]

Betgo --

A few objections:

-Reraising allin with 8-13BB (more the top end of that range) is often "particularly advantageous" (and in fact one of the most profitable moves in tournament poker).

-Many pushes are not much more profitable with 10BB than with 7.

-Even if many pushes will be profitable with 7BB, you might not get the chance to make them (raises in front, etc.)

-Having 20+BBs is such an advantage, often, that the ability to get that high is a big element of the attractiveness of a push with 11BB and a big part of why it's so bad to be down to 7BB.

-All that said, I agree that the difference between 10BB and 7BB is often overstated--but it's mostly a big vs. huge sort of thing.

--Nate

[flyingmoose]

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-Having 20+BBs is such an advantage, often, that the ability to get that high is a big element of the attractiveness of a push with 11BB and a big part of why it's so bad to be down to 7BB.


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[Soulman]

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-Reraising allin with 8-13BB (more the top end of that range) is often "particularly advantageous" (and in fact one of the most profitable moves in tournament poker).


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Explain this? Did you mean raising and not reraising? Reraising with 8 BBs doesn't strike me as particularly advantageous, while 13 BBs does.


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-Many pushes are not much more profitable with 10BB than with 7.

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Because your FE isn't much higher with 10 than 7 I presume.


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-Even if many pushes will be profitable with 7BB, you might not get the chance to make them (raises in front, etc.)

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This is the biggest strike by far I have against betgo's theory - this goes especially for higher buy-ins, where you're often forced to open shove whenever you have the opportunity when you're low enough.


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-Having 20+BBs is such an advantage, often, that the ability to get that high is a big element of the attractiveness of a push with 11BB and a big part of why it's so bad to be down to 7BB.

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I think another point is that having 12/13-20 BBs is so important since you have resteal FE makes pushing 9-11 important. Pushing 4-8 BBs means you still don't have any resteal FE.


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-All that said, I agree that the difference between 10BB and 7BB is often overstated--but it's mostly a big vs. huge sort of thing.

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Due to resteal FE, I don't think this is entirely true.

[luckychewy]

i really haven't heard or read into your theory before at all before this except one time you mentioned in one of my threads...but the first thing that jumped out at me is that if you are not going to take a marginal gamble w/ 11bb, because you think you can find a bigger edge w/ 6bb, this edge must be pretty huge since you can potentially have 22bb whereas if you win w/ 6 are dwindling down from 11 u are only at 12. am i misunderstanding something? if not i totally disagree w/ this theory because i don't see how anything else can outweigh this disadvantage.

[betgo]

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i really haven't heard or read into your theory before at all before this except one time you mentioned in one of my threads...but the first thing that jumped out at me is that if you are not going to take a marginal gamble w/ 11bb, because you think you can find a bigger edge w/ 6bb, this edge must be pretty huge since you can potentially have 22bb whereas if you win w/ 6 are dwindling down from 11 u are only at 12. am i misunderstanding something? if not i totally disagree w/ this theory because i don't see how anything else can outweigh this disadvantage.

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First of all, going from 11xBB to 6xBB is likely to be partly increasing blinds as well as being blinded down. Also, you are going to be playing good hands and taking good stealing opportunities as you drop from 11 to 6 x BB. This dropping is likely to be a slow process as you probably do steal a couple of times, and may span a couple of blinds increases.

Obviously, I am not deliberately blinding down my stack, but I am not taking unnecessary risks when getting to a 5-8xBB gives me good opportunities.

Also, my stack doesn't always go down in M. Sometimes, you have 11xBB, and double up to 23xBB or steal to 13xBB and resteal to 18xBB. However, if you don't have good opportunities, gradually reducing to a smaller M is not that bad a situation.

[Nate.]

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-Reraising allin with 8-13BB (more the top end of that range) is often "particularly advantageous" (and in fact one of the most profitable moves in tournament poker).


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Explain this? Did you mean raising and not reraising? Reraising with 8 BBs doesn't strike me as particularly advantageous, while 13 BBs does.

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OK, 8 is a little small, but given the texture and overall quality of today's tournaments (even big ones), there are very profitable restealing spots with surprisingly small stacks.


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-Many pushes are not much more profitable with 10BB than with 7.

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Because your FE isn't much higher with 10 than 7 I presume.

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I meant "...with 7 than with 10;" Betgo seems to be assigning lots of weight to the fact that all sorts of pushes are very profitable with 7.


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-Even if many pushes will be profitable with 7BB, you might not get the chance to make them (raises in front, etc.)

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This is the biggest strike by far I have against betgo's theory - this goes especially for higher buy-ins, where you're often forced to open shove whenever you have the opportunity when you're low enough.


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-Having 20+BBs is such an advantage, often, that the ability to get that high is a big element of the attractiveness of a push with 11BB and a big part of why it's so bad to be down to 7BB.

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I think another point is that having 12/13-20 BBs is so important since you have resteal FE makes pushing 9-11 important. Pushing 4-8 BBs means you still don't have any resteal FE.


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-All that said, I agree that the difference between 10BB and 7BB is often overstated--but it's mostly a big vs. huge sort of thing.

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Due to resteal FE, I don't think this is entirely true.

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It's more that people around here sometimes seem to think that there's absolutely no alternative to making all sorts of any-two pushes with 12BBs. It's not always quite that desperate.

--Nate

[nath]

So I feel like the only person on the forums who always errs on the side of pushing sooner rather than later. Does anyone else do this? I feel like making moves sooner when the spot opens up, even if they aren't technically +cEV, gives me a better chance of padding my stack and maintaining it as a real threat, and gives me a chance (if I am called and double up) to have a stack that puts me right back in the game, one with which I can open more frequently and get involved in more pots, which translates to far more +cEV opportunities down the line.

Cliffs notes: The advantage for me of having a stack is such that I take chances much sooner on a short stack to get one back than basically everyone else i know.

[Clayton]

fwiw nath i am the same way (i dont play as many tournaments but am planning to play more), but am moreso inclined to make such moves in tournaments with a more significant ante. as such, im a lot nittier in standard ps freezeouts, whereas in fulltilt and live tournaments i do things like call off my stack with KQs [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

the advantages of the bigstack are worth gambling for imo, and this is way more the case when i can have a big stack and the antes are large.

[Nate.]

[ QUOTE ]
So I feel like the only person on the forums who always errs on the side of pushing sooner rather than later. Does anyone else do this? I feel like making moves sooner when the spot opens up, even if they aren't technically +cEV, gives me a better chance of padding my stack and maintaining it as a real threat, and gives me a chance (if I am called and double up) to have a stack that puts me right back in the game, one with which I can open more frequently and get involved in more pots, which translates to far more +cEV opportunities down the line.

Cliffs notes: The advantage for me of having a stack is such that I take chances much sooner on a short stack to get one back than basically everyone else i know.

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Nath --

I think you're generally good at picking spots but sometimes overdo it (e.g. pushing 14ish BBs on the button with 86o on a site with small antes).

--Nate