Sit 'n Go Strategy study group -- Part I: Low Blind Play

[Slim Pickens]

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Hi, I am new to this forum and relatively new to sit and go’s. I grasp the concept of the tournament equity section where all in coin flip confrontations early on can actually reduce your equity. However I have a couple questions:

1. In Hand 1-4, it is recommended to shove with AK after a raise and two limpers. Let’s assume no one has been eliminated, everyone has 2k in chips, and one person calls your push. Is your tournament equity reduced if you are called by someone with JJ and in a coin-flip situation? There is t460 more chips in this situation than if you call an all-in if MP1 open pushes and it is folded to you. Do the t460 chips make the difference or is it because there is fold equity?
2. How big a favorite do you have to be to call an all-in in low-blind play (2-1, 3-1, etc.)? How many chips have to be in the middle to make your all-in call worth the risk of your tournament life assuming only one person will call (t2460, t2600, etc.)?

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The best way to do this is to get an ICM calculator and determine your equity in each of the possible outcomes. Then you can write down some equations, usually using an equality that you want your equity if you call ($EV_fold) to be equal to your equity if you push ($EV_push). There should be one unknown in the equation and you can use basic algebra to solve for it.

[mcpst17]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hi, I am new to this forum and relatively new to sit and go’s. I grasp the concept of the tournament equity section where all in coin flip confrontations early on can actually reduce your equity. However I have a couple questions:

1. In Hand 1-4, it is recommended to shove with AK after a raise and two limpers. Let’s assume no one has been eliminated, everyone has 2k in chips, and one person calls your push. Is your tournament equity reduced if you are called by someone with JJ and in a coin-flip situation? There is t460 more chips in this situation than if you call an all-in if MP1 open pushes and it is folded to you. Do the t460 chips make the difference or is it because there is fold equity?
2. How big a favorite do you have to be to call an all-in in low-blind play (2-1, 3-1, etc.)? How many chips have to be in the middle to make your all-in call worth the risk of your tournament life assuming only one person will call (t2460, t2600, etc.)?

[/ QUOTE ]

The best way to do this is to get an ICM calculator and determine your equity in each of the possible outcomes. Then you can write down some equations, usually using an equality that you want your equity if you call ($EV_fold) to be equal to your equity if you push ($EV_push). There should be one unknown in the equation and you can use basic algebra to solve for it.

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Thank you for the response. I had to look up what ICM was since I did not get to that chapter in the book yet. I will take some time to read this section and try to work through some calculations on my own. I was really hoping someone would explain the difference in the AK hands from Question 1 above as it relates to your tournament equity. If my questions are too "Beginner” for this forum I apologize and would appreciate if someone could direct me to the appropriate forum. Thank you.

[pineapple888]

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Ok, I would like to hear some opinions on suited connectors/1 gappers/2 gappers/ Axs as marginal hands in the early blinds. Here's my personal opinion.

Preflop- I will limp with these hands in position behind 2+ limpers only in the first 2 levels(I dont play these hands past level 2). Limpers who are short (500 or less) do not count. If I am on the SB I will complete vs 2+ limpers if the BB isnt some sort of raising nut. On the BB I am willing to call a min raise as long as there are 2 other callers and I close the action, or are fairly certain there will be no raise behind. If folded to me on the SB I will occasionally steal with these hands if the BB is a good player who will fold to a raise early, but I need to be certain he will fold > 90% of the time.

Postflop- I I flop a made hand- 2 pair + - I will try to get it all in. With a draw, I play it very passively, frequently folding if I don't think I'm getting the right implied odds. If the pot eclipses 500 and I think an all in move will get everyone to fold half the time, I do it, but otherwise I'm very conservative.

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This all sounds good to me. The absolute key is to avoid semi-bluffs postflop in most cases because the ICM tax is too high.

[JeffreyN]

I think your play with the suited connectors is reasonable though I think it is easy to waste a lot of chips playing them early. Also I personaly trash my Ax suited hands as I do not want to be paying to draw at the lower levels. I will however call a standard raise with a small pair hoping to hit a set and stack someone with top pair.

[mcpst17]

Pre -Hand
UTG 2000 11.12 Fold
UTG+1 2000 11.12 Fold
MP1 2200 12.10 raise t200
MP2 2000 11.12 Fold
MP3 1970 10.97 Fold
CO 2100 11.61 Fold
Button 1760 9.900 Fold
Hero 1970 10.97 Push
BB 2000 11.12 Fold
Total 18000 100.00


MP1 Folds to Hero Push
utg 2000 11.12
UTG+1 2000 11.12
MP1 2000 11.12
MP2 2000 11.12
MP3 1970 10.97
CO 2100 11.61
Button 1760 9.90
Hero 2230 12.25
BB 1940 10.81
Total 18000 100.00

MP1 Call Hero Push
utg 2000 11.36
UTG+1 2000 11.36
MP1 230 1.42
MP2 2000 11.36
MP3 1970 11.21
CO 2100 11.87
Button 1760 10.12
Hero 4000 20.24
BB 1940 11.06
Total 18000 100.00


Percentage of hands MP1 Range
0.107 Raise Pre 22+,ATs+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,AQo+
0.083 Call Push 22+,AQs+,AQo+
0.024 Fold to Push


Ok so it appears MP1 will fold to the hero’s push .224 (.024/.107) and call the push .776 (.083/.107) of the time based on the ranges I chose. I ran the ranges though poker stove and used the equity calcs of win = .47338 and lose .52662 (Hero’s AKo vs MP1 call push ranges)

Fold = .224 (12.25) = $2.75
Call Win = .776 (.47338) (20.27) = $7.43
Call Lose = .776 (.52662) (0) = $0.00
Total = $2.75+$7.43+$0 = $10.18

So this seems to be a bit closer to the $10.80 if the Hero Folds to MP1 raise, but I still do not see a clear push in this example so I reran the numbers adding in the two calls from the CO and button which added t400 to the pot. I assumed that they would both fold to the Hero’s push and used the same hand ranges in the example above.

Fold = .224 (14.16) = $3.18
Call Win = .776 (.47338) ( 21.82) = $8.01
Call Lose = .776 (.52662) (0) = $0.00
Total = $3.18+$8.01+$0 = $11.19

This appears to give a better answer. It appears that without the dead money, assuming the hand ranges I picked, folding looks like the better play. But again I may be too tight in the hand ranges I picked or I just messed up the calcs. Thanks again Slim for going through these examples with me. I think once I have this down I will be able to work though most other ICM calcs.

I am sorry for the formatting but I could not paste excel or take a screen shot and paste it into the post.

[Slim Pickens]

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Percentage of hands MP1 Range
0.107 Raise Pre 22+,ATs+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,AQo+
0.083 Call Push 22+,AQs+,AQo+
0.024 Fold to Push

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You seem to have the procedure down, so now we can get to the real heart of this problem, which is the hand ranges. Pretty much all of the discussions on this board are really about hand ranges whether people know it or not.

I thing the ranges are more like this:

Initial raise: 22+,A9s+,KJs+,QJs,ATo+,KJo+ (12.1%)
Call a push: 66+,AJs+,AQo+,KQs,KJo (6.86%)

As a note, the idea of people having "absolute" ranges like that isn't as rigid as it might look. I'm having him raise with all pocket pairs, but fold 22-55. That doesn't mean he always has to do exactly that. Let's say he always calls with TT+, but folds 22-99 (taken as a whole) half the time. That's saying maybe he always folds exactly 22-55 and calls 100% with exactly 66-99. It could also be saying that he calls with 22-99 50% of the time, depending on wind direction at the time of his raise. Since all of those hands have about the same pot equity against AKo, it doesn't change the calculation much to use ranges like that to factor in "he folds a mid/low pocket pair about half the time" without having to know exactly what fraction of the time he calls with each hand. You'll never have that strong a read on a player anyway.

I've done the same sort of thing by throwing "KJo" into his calling range. That means I think he's calling with dominated unpaired hands at a frequency something like the fraction of dominated unpaired big-card hands from his raising range that are in his calling range.

[mcpst17]

Good points for me to consider in my next calcs. In doing these calculations I can see why the heart of the most problems are the hand ranges. Thx, looking forward to part II.

[mcpst17]

When does discussion on part II start?

[xPeru]

First time I've ever done this ... bump!

Nice work Slim.

[Slim Pickens]

As a general comment, the next two parts of the book are more of this analysis, so make sure these calculations make some sense. Part 2 is usually a lot more complicated. Part 3 will be much simpler.