Should I be shoving this ?

[kev123]

I was playing in a $100K MTT tonight and made it down to the last 12, I have a question regarding the hand I went out on.

I was sitting in 10th place with 12 left, obv the money greatly increases as we get onto the final tbl.
I have 55K in chips & the tbl should view me as a TAG.. I haven`t raised for about 1 orbit, the blinds were 3/6K with ante... I pushed 56s utg, is this a standard push ? & I was just unlucky to get called ? , do you feel a hand like this plays well against hands that might be calling ? or should I be waiting for better spots , ie from later position etc.

Other stacks on my tbl where .. 110K , 45K, 135K, 80K, 95K in that order after myself utg with 55K

I am mainly a cash game player so any advice would be appreciated.

[slik]

Well any call virtually guarantees that you're a 2-1 underdog at best, with a decent chance that you're more like a 3.5-1 underdog. As such, there's no difference between pushing 56s and 23o here. You still have plenty of fold equity if you fold utg, the bb, and the sb in the next 2 hands, so I don't think pushing here is good at all. Say you were in late position, and the opportunity came to steal the blinds, it'd be worth it likely, but as UTG you have to dodge too many mine fields to make pushing profitable.

Edit: I just realized it is 6 handed. Even still UTG here is MP, and you probably want to be in the CO or Button to push.

[kev123]

I understand what your are saying, I just felt by raising this utg;

1. My hand is going to look a lot strong than what it is

2. If I`m called by top 7-10% of hands I have somewhere between 30-40% equity in the hand ( Providing its not a big pp )& 6 handed these hands are hard to come by.

3. I would rather do it with a hand like 56s than KJ etc that could easily be dominated if called.

However as you said & thats what happened I was called by a big pr, meaning I was about 3.5:1 dog.....this is top 2% of hands & the chances of someone having this are slim 6 handed.

That was my thinking behind the push but just wanted to know what you guys thought as you play these situations all the time. It looks like position is key here, as I have 5 others to get through .. but does my utg raise not show a certain amount of strength? . Surely if it was BB that was going to make the call they are going to call more lightly v lp raise than my utg raise ?

FWIW it was CO who called the bet

[slik]

I study the game intently all the time, and used to play tournaments regularly, but I haven't played one in quite some time; hopefully other posters can confirm / reject my opinion.

I agree with you that pushing 56s is better than KJo, but you probably have to do some math to figure it out quantitatively. FWIIW, the play needs to be significantly +cev to be +EV, given the gross payout jump in the final table. Also, more borderline hands like AJ-AQ and 88-99 get me into trouble in these sort of spots, that still confuse me.

I guess if only the top 5% of hands call you, and there are 5 players to act after you, all 5 will fold 77% of the time. Let's say the other 23% of the time that you're called you're a 3-1 underdog to simplify things.

0.77 when they fold you have 12k + 55k = 67k
0.23 when they call and you win you have 55k + 12k + 55k = 122k
0.23 when they call and you lose you have 0

so pushing has an expectation of:
[.77 * 67] + [0.23 * 0.25 * 122] + [0.23 * 0.75 * 0]= 51.6 + 7 = 58.6

So pushing has a higher expectation of folding (58.6k > 55k) under these assumptions, but +cev is not necessarily +EV because of the gross payout change. I wonder at what point cev and EV are both positive.

[erc007]

[ QUOTE ]
there's no difference between pushing 56s and 23o here.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is so not true...

[slik]

---
273,968,640 games 0.063 secs 4,348,708,571 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 29.786% 29.57% 00.22% 81002168 601232.00 { 65s }
Hand 1: 70.214% 69.99% 00.22% 191764008 601232.00 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }


---



---
821,905,920 games 0.156 secs 5,268,627,692 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 21.806% 21.53% 00.27% 176976228 2249550.00 { 32o }
Hand 1: 78.194% 77.92% 00.27% 640430592 2249550.00 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }


---



---
273,968,640 games 0.140 secs 1,956,918,857 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 25.739% 25.47% 00.27% 69780788 735968.00 { 32s }
Hand 1: 74.261% 73.99% 00.27% 202715916 735968.00 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }


---

I guess 56 gives you 4% more equity than 23 and the suitedness a few extra %. So thanks for correction. I don't feel like redoing the math calculations, but I guess pushing equity increases because you are more of a favorite than I had previously thought.

[kev123]

Thx for your replies Slik, I`ve never really worked through the maths in this way so I was just wondering how you got 77% of the time 5 players will fold ?

After making the play & going out, I thought about how often I would get called & I had thought it would be 1/3 although I had given them a looser calling range... I think top 5% at this stage given the stack sizes is more accurate.

Would you recommend any books or posts to read to help me with calculations like these.

Kev

[flopman]

[ QUOTE ]
I was just wondering how you got 77% of the time 5 players will fold ?

[/ QUOTE ]
He is assuming each player only calls you with top 5% of the hands so the other 95% of time they will fold. You have 5 players behind you so 95% power to 5 and you get 77% of time all 5 players fold.

[slik]

As flopman mentioned, 77% = .95 ^ 5

I'm not sure if top 5% as their calling ranges is accurate or not, I hadn't read your initial post carefully enough. You knew the players much better than me, for all I know 10% may have been more accurate. But obviously as their calling ranges increase, your pushing expectation decreases.

It's been a while since I've read Harrington on Holdem, but I believe he makes a lot of similar calculations throughout his books. If you haven't read those, they're definitely a good read.

Not sure where to direct you wrt these problems. You can try searching by my 2+2 username and filter for *Tournament Poker* ---. But you may have to go through 100 posts to find 5-10 relevant posts. Or you can try posting in the other tournament forums and ask for direction. I'm sure someone will direct you to the proper posts.

GL.

[PhatPots]

I hate a push, I would normally fold this from UTG. If your stack where like 70K, I might raise preflop to 15,000 and try and pick up the blinds.

From the CO, I would probably shove this