Look death in the eye and laugh. $77 reg, AQ hand, late.

[tigerite]

Ok, but the only reason that might be the case here is because we are on the button, and so there are two to act, not one. However, that should in theory also make SB's pushing range tighter, so it's a double-edged sword. (Especially as he's not even the big stack in the hand) It seems a play that is too risky to be worth it in the long-term to me. He has to be pushing like 20% or more of hands for this to be a good call.

[Slim Pickens]

Yeah, it's really touchy math-wise. You have to make a lot of assumptions about your opponents that have to be fairly accurate. Just eyeballing it (as I might game-time), it looks probable that this play is appropriate here, but unless you have the supporting logic, you won't be able to make it pay off later.

Raising 25-30% of one's stack and then being left with a tough decision for the rest of it is what winning players force losing players to do. That's why the winners win and the losers lose.

[MadScientist]

Quote:"Before you get any pissier than you already are"

I didn't mean to sound pissed off. I am really happy how this thread turned out and it has been very thought provoking.
I appreciate everyone's responses even if I have been very direct with my assessment of their opinions. This is just how I express myself. Hopefully, I haven't prevented anyone from speaking their mind.

As for Slim and Tigerite's comments, given the ranges for both SB and BB, I felt that pushing is marginal which it is, kind of, ~.7% best case and dead even if they both decide to be maniacs.
The positive pushing range is TT+, AJs+, AQo+ for SB on SGPT setting 3 and BB on 2 or 1. So AQo is the borderline hand.

However, raising to 1600 to pick up 900 in blinds is profitable ceV wise if you steal 2/3 of the time, which is about right.
Also, I think that playing some poker with the BB is profitable and getting out of the way of his pushes (monsters only) is very profitable.

I agree with you Slim that this is a very touchy hand and is very read (range) dependent. For instance, if as some other posters thought, SB starts pushing any two, even though calling is correct, the play as a whole turns negative eV.
However, that is not the case and I do not think there are any opponents that would push any two everytime in that spot. 50% seems excessive to me. Maybe if he got the itch, one time in 10 67s, but it is rare.
The thing that makes this spot funny is that UTG is so low and the blinds are small. Also, the other three players have almost the same stack.
Yes, you could make a little pushing AQo and folding everything worse, but if you call some raises yourself and open your raise range up as well, you can steal often enough to make money in these rounds.
If it is only profitable to push the top 5% of hands and you get three spots to do so, you should be losing 1.5 BB a round and making .225 BB per round if all your steals are successful for a net of ~-1.3. I realize that this is very simplistic. Basically, my feel is that in these spots, you will tend to get eaten by the blinds, so you should play more hands, but you can not push any more hands, so you raise. Also, if you push TT+, AJs+, but raise everything else then you will get stolen off often, so you should mix those hands in with your raises. Again, it only has to work like 2/3 to 3/4 of the time to be profitable and you will get your big hands more action.
However, if all you want to do is push when you have a deep stack, please just do that and leave the blinds for me.
Thanks for your responses and input.

[Slim Pickens]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Before you get any pissier than you already are"

[/ QUOTE ]
I didn't mean to sound pissed off.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's all good. No worries.

Just to be crystal clear, you never want to see a showdown here. Even though raise/call is +$EV over raise/fold, creating you own pot odds is never a good excuse for misplaying a hand. This would be a good hand to explicitly state the chips stacks in all three scenarios, calculate the ICM prize pool equities, and add in some hand ranges to see how all three options look. You can prbably finesse the numbers either way by adjusting the push/call/overpush ranges.

[AliasMrJones]

[ QUOTE ]
However, if all you want to do is push when you have a deep stack, please just do that and leave the blinds for me.
Thanks for your responses and input.

[/ QUOTE ]

I just find it amusing that keep referring to 10xBB as a "deep stack."

[UMTerp]

I was thinking about this situation a lot this morning, because I was surprised that my intuition was that far off regarding the call once the SB pushes (and I'll admit, I was wrong with a few of my earlier statements in this thread).

I was also thinking about why it's correct to push here rather than just call. Here's what I came up with.

Basically, it's about giving minimal information to the big stacks, and how they can counteract it. I think we can all agree that it'd be incorrect to push with your medium-strength hands and raise to 1600-call with your best hands, because that's giving away too much information based on your bet sizing. So we're either going to want to always push here or always raise to a set amount (we'll say 1600, since that's what OP did).

If the calling ranges of the big stacks are AJ+, 77+ (and I think that may even be a little loose, but we'll use it for arguments' sake, our push range is easy to figure out with SNGPT. I don't have SNGPT, but I'd imagine it's something like the top 50% of hands.

Now let's say that instead of pushing with those same 50% of hands, we just raise to 1600. The big stacks can force you into a mistake now. They can loosen up their ranges a bit, and push something like A8o+, A5s+ KJo+, KTs+, QJs, 22+ (I'm making that range up, but you get the idea). If they were to push that range, and you KNEW they were pushing that range, you couldn't make the call with AQo, since you'd only have 54.96% equity, and you need 56.61% to break even. You could only re-call their push with AK, AQs, and 99+.

It's not an isignificant amount of time that you'll have to fold that 1600 bet, and a lot of times we'll be folding a hand that we could have won the blinds with had we just pushed.