A further explanation of my red zone theory

[betgo]

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The most damaging argument I can recall from the initial thread, to which I've not yet seen a good response, is that you win less when you do pick up a monster hand. Your argument seems to be that one you should not take a bit more risk to maintain a 10-11 BB stack rather than getting blinded down to 8-10 BB's because the small edges you lose are offset by larger edges as you get shorter and by the inherent value of your last chip. But those small edges you pass up early get compounded when you later do not have as many chips to invest in your AA.

If you're going to keep bringing this up, it's time to put some math behind it. Please give us an example of a +EV push that you would advocate passing up, calculate the edge you think you are losing, and then give us some demonstration of where your future edge is coming from.

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For example, if I have 10xBB M of 5, I might not make a marginal push, like pushing a small pp from early position or J8o from CO.

Once I am down to about 7xBB, I can push steal with a variety of hands and it is cEV+. With 5xBB, I can push almost anything. So it is easy for me to steal enough to maintain that stack.

It depends on table dynamics, but since you don't need a great hand to push steal with 5-7xBB, you usually do get some opportunities to make cEV+ plays.

Having a really small stack like that is not a disaster, and is actually a good situation for keeping alive in the tournament and waiting for an opportunity.

Obviously, if you get AA with 10xBB and get action and win, you get a bigger stack than with 7xBB. However, you are more likely to get action for AA with 7xBB and you don't get AA often.

[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.

[betgo]

I guess the main point of my theory is that you don't want to have to keep making marginal open pushes with 10xBB M of 5. If you have have 6xBB M of 3, you have much more profitable pushing opportunities.

Therefore, if I have 10xBB and don't get good chances, then it is OK to get blinded down (or having the blinds increase)to 6xBB where it is much easier to push.

Sure I am going to be aggressive at looking for opportunities to make plays with 8-13xBB, and at the larger end, you should be looking to make a reraise/resteal.

I am not just automatically getting blinded down, but if I don't have hands and don't get oportunities and I go through the blinds or they go up, then I get a stack that it is easier to play aggressively.

My approach is kind of the opposite of Snyder's suggestions to open push 20xBB no ante to avoid getting short stacked. I don't see getting short stacked as necessarilly a big disaster.

I think a lot of people take Nath's approach of pushing early to avoid getting short stacked, but I obviously don't agree with it.

[Nate.]

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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

[kleath]

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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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I think pushing sooner than later will certainly be more advantageous for someone with a LAG image than for someone with the same stack and a TAG image, because you will be able to utilize your large edges far more than a tight image, while calling ranges for most villains won't change substantially between the two. All that to say it's probably theoretically correct for you to utilize that line of thinking while it may not be correct for uclabruinz to do the same.

[betgo]

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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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I think pushing sooner than later will certainly be more advantageous for someone with a LAG image than for someone with the same stack and a TAG image, because you will be able to utilize your large edges far more than a tight image, while calling ranges for most villains won't change substantially between the two. All that to say it's probably theoretically correct for you to utilize that line of thinking while it may not be correct for uclabruinz to do the same.

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This is quite possible that nath's approach may work well with his style in that it is important he have a large stack for aggressive play. Whereas I play a short stack well and don't mind just push stealing and push restealing for a large part of the tournament, so my approach of keeping in the tournament with a small stack may work for me.

[wpr101]

If pushing a certain hand at a certain table, position, etc is +EV (maybe not the same as CEV) then I think you have to take advantage of that.

In my personal experience when I get to < 10 BB I start looking for good spots to open push. Basically I want good position like being in the SB and folding around or I want a strong hand to do it with. I don't have any math off the top of my head which shows why 10 BB is a good time to go. I did used to fool around with the SNGPT calculator a bunch though then when I used to play sngs.