AKo pf in a weird spot

[Pokey]

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Pokey,

Are you pushing if both villains have 100BB stacks?

[/ QUOTE ]

If the villains have 100 BB stacks I agree that it changes things dramatically. If I call, there is much more money behind, and if I push I'm risking much more money. The question is, does this make pushing better or worse?

In an attempt to avoid actually answering the question [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] I'll provide a few issues to consider:

1. Player quality. Most of us automatically consider a short stack to be a "tell" that the player is less likely to be highly skilled. It is decidedly a weak tell, but it reveals something. Inasmuch as that is true, we should be more likely to push against the shorties, since they're more likely to call with hands we dominate (like Ax or KQ).

2. Implied odds. With deeper stacks, the implied odds get larger. However, this is not only true for us, but for villains as well. As we all know, AK makes top-pair hands. I for one would have a very hard time figuring out that my AK had lost to 33 on a flop of A73, and I probably couldn't get away from it for 100 BBs after a reraised three-way pot. Since our holding tends to make small-pot hands, that's (paradoxically) an argument for pushing -- we get it all in while we're likely a coinflip, rather than waiting for us to be WAY ahead (with no chance for extraction) or WAY behind (with no way of determining it in time). Reverse implied odds really hurt hands like AKo, and pushing preflop eliminates some of that hurt.

3. Quality of calling hands. Even a loose player is going to be more hesitant to call a 93 BB raise than a 48 BB raise into a pot with 11.5 BBs in it. That means that with 100 BB stacks, we're probably folding out more hands than we would by pushing the 55 BB stacks. If our opponents were nits, this would argue in favor of pushing, since they'd be folding more pocket pairs that we beat. Given that our opponents are loose, this argues in favor of either smooth-calling or making a reasonable raise (say, to 30 BBs) in order to keep them calling with hands like Ax and KQ.

4. The Hammer. Here, I mean Sklansky's Hammer, not Harrington's Hammer: that is, the threat of a bigger bet down the road that makes an early bet even scarier. A push here could get some "eh, what the hell" calls from hands like 44, but will probably fold speculative hands like JT. A four-bet to 30 probably gets called by a wide variety of hands, but they will be playing fit-or-fold on the flop. Given that they miss most of the time, if we fully intend to follow up our 30 BB raise with a push on ANY flop (assuming SB doesn't push), we will win 60 BBs uncontested about half the time (when neither opponent hits solidly), and the other half of the time we will sometimes win 130 BBs, either when we both flop well or when we suck out on the turn or river. If, when called, our hand holds up just 20% of the time, we're making a +EV move. This is an argument against pushing, but also against smooth-calling.

Ultimately, this boils down to our opposition: do they play well post-flop? Can they escape from a second-best hand? Can they fold QQ on an A-high or K-high board? Will they c-bet air into two opponents? With everybody sitting on 100 BB stacks, my default play would probably be to make a strong raise to 30, intending to push any flop: this builds a very tidy pot for me to swipe if they both call, has a reasonable chance of getting called by dominated hands (which will then pay off their stack if we both hit), and has some bonzer folding power on the flop when I push.

I also respectfully submit that this is NOT the only way to play the hand, and that someone who suggests smooth-calling or pushing would be better could easily be right depending on table conditions, opponent specifics, and hero's image.

[jakeduke]

Thanks Pokey - I always enjoy your posts.

[ThePortuguee]

It seems to me that weaker players min-reraise with a small assortment of hands. Do people think this regularly includes hands as weak as 66-99 and KQ, or is it almost always AQ-AK, TT-AA?

[jakeduke]

From my experience it's almost always AK, TT-AA (in this hand SB had AA) from a "normal" bad player. That said, I've seen many a bad lag do this with a weak hand just trying to bloat the pot.

[eviljeff]

to me, calling seems terrible with half-stacks or full. assuming non-retarded hand ranges, the only time we make money is when 1) we hit an A, 2) an opponent has AQ, 3) other opp does not have us beat

also, shoving into full stacks seems like bigtime spew