Risk of ruin (or crippling) in isolation play

[ras52]

The freezeout period of a live $20 rebuy, with about 1/3 of the field remaining on three tables. I'm the big stack at my table with ~18BB, in the CO with A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]J[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]. The player to my left open pushes for her last ~2.5BB. The button and SB are also small stacks, but the BB has ~12BB so has the potential to hurt me.

My thinking was, this is a raising hand, and I need to isolate the AI small stack. I discussed this situation with someone who advocated flat-calling (with the intention of folding to a raise or action on a missed flop) or even folding my good-but-not-great hand, as losing against the BB would be too damaging.

I did some calculations and decided that pushing was +EV, netting me ~1.3BB. So far so good. But this doesn't consider my "risk of crippling" which influences my inclination to push. Since the BB is only going to be calling AI for all of his chips with the top 2% or so of hands, am I right in thinking that this risk = 2% of my equity against his calling range?

[Cornell Fiji]

shove. not even close.

hopefully someone else will explain why with calling ranges and ev calcs.

[8Adam8]

This is a really easy shove.

Risk of crippling doesn't matter. You have AJs in the CO and everyone else left to act has 12bb's or less.

[JavaNut]

The player with about 2.5BB that pushes has a very big range, any decent hand will do, he will be down to 1BB very soon if nothing happens, so he will take the first reasonable hand. Q9s will do nicely. You are way ahead of that range and may even be dominating ie. against JTs or KJo or even A7. 4BB + antes if any is a nice juicy pot to pick up right now.

If you just call you give the other players pot odds and implied odds to play marginal hands. By pushing your only worry is someone behind you having a big pocket pair JJ+ or AK, AQ which are the only hands that dominate you. It can happen but it is not likely. Against smaller pocket pairs you are in a coin flip and with the 2.5BB + blinds in the pot you are getting correct odds for those.

AJs is not really a type of hand you would like to slowplay right here is it? That should be the only reason to call, trying to trap somebody for a even bigger pot. I wouldn't do that. Shove and cash in those 4BB.

[ras52]

I agree it's a shove, but I wanted to go further and assess the risk. I made a mistake in my OP - I figure the risk as 2% of the equity of his calling range against my holding, not the other way round. Not that it greatly affects the results, as my risk is always <2%, which in this game has got to be acceptable!

Thinking beyond that, if I'm accepting my fate for the 2% of the time he calls, my pushing range opens up enormously - effectively I only have to put myself ahead of AI's pushing range.

I agree that calling sounds like a trap - now that I consider my last point, I'm shoving with a much wider range, or folding.

[Rocco]

Screen name of guy who advocated flat-calling and folding to a raise behind, please!

[levAA]

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Thinking beyond that, if I'm accepting my fate for the 2% of the time he calls, my pushing range opens up enormously - effectively I only have to put myself ahead of AI's pushing range.

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exactly

the only thing you have to bear in mind is the button and the small blind who might try to triple up, so i think you have to shorten the range a little bit (the farther you are from the button the shorter).

[McMelchior]

Your calculation is slightly off, but it doesn't affect the result.

A very tight (I'd say unrealisticly tight) calling range for the BB would be JJ+, AQo+. Since you're holding an Ace and a Jack that makes up for 3.4% of BB's range (42 combos out of 1225 possible holdings). PokerStove tells me your equity vs. this range is just shy of 30% ... not including the OP, of course.

If we give OP a top 30% range (55+,A2s+,K5s+,J8s+,T8s+,98s+,A5o+,K9o+,Q9o+,J9o+) your equite drops to around 25%, but that would only be for the 8BB out a total (3-way) pot of 28BB ... to cut to the chase, 3.4% of the time your total equity would be 8 BB or -4.5BB; disregarding button and SB, 96.6% of the time you have 60% equity in a 6.5BB HU pot for just shy of +1.5BB.

Total pushing equity +1.3BB. Which was what you calculated first time around.

The real question you're posing appears to be: Should the risk of being crippled affect your decission whether to make a +EV move or not?

This boils down to the (usual) question of cEV and $EV.

I haven't read the analysis myself (I know Sylvester Suziki presents one in his very dated book on tournaments), but the consensus here seems to be, that through most of the tournament - that is until the FT - cEV and $EV are so close that you should engage in any situation that offers +EV.

[ras52]

Thanks to everyone for the responses. For my calculations I gave the short stack a pushing range of { 22+, A2s+, K2s+, QTs+, J9s+, T8s+, 97s+, 86s+, 75s+, 65s, A2o+, K9o+, QTo+, JTo } then ran with three ranges for the BB to call a shove from me: loose { 88+, AJs+, AQo+ } (~4.9%), medium { TT+, AKs, AKo } (~2.7%) and tight { KK+, AKs } (~1%). Interestingly, your "unrealistically tight" calling range of { JJ+, AQo+ } is quite close to my "medium" range!

My light-bulb moments in all this have been the realisation that my profitable range for isolation play is a lot wider than I'd imagined, and, by counting out the combinations of "monster" cards available to the BB once I'd taken out my A and J, how small the chance of being up against a monster actually is.

[ras52]

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Screen name of guy who advocated flat-calling and folding to a raise behind, please!

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