Colin Moshman's article on Restealing.

[DevinLake]

After reading this article I had a couple concerns, which prompted me to create this post.

1) Colin seems to advocate restealing with less than 10 BBs in a few of his examples. This is very risky. It is very difficult to judge what little fold equity you might have. So, typically shoving with <10BBs should be considered a value shove and not a resteal.

2) None of his examples or theory involves anything specific about hand ranges or the math that is so important to becoming successful at Sit N Go’s. He implies about hand ranges a bit by tagging the player as LAG or TAG, but that’s a long ways from being a complete picture of what the player is doing and how profitable your plays will be against them.

So, here’s some mathematically analysis of a few of the examples Colin provided.

Hand 2-23:

If you have zero fold equity, he needs to be raising 60% (22+,A2+,K2+,Q2+,J5o+,J2s+,T7o+,T5s+,98o,96s+,87s) for this to be a +$EV resteal.

Is this possible? Sure, if the player is good at Sit n Go’s, he could be opening 100% of pots here with a big stack on the bubble. But, most opponents aren’t good and typically this min raise would suggest that. Also, he has to raise through the small stack, so he’ll be more selective.

What if we assume more likely ranges for a typical LAG Sit N Go opponent?

Let’s say he’s opening 30% here, how much does he need to fold to make this +$EV? Well, about 52% of the time. Which means he’s raising
55+,A2s+, A5o+,K5s+, K9o+,Q7s+, Q9o+,J8s+, J9o+,T8s+,T9o,98s and calling with
77+,A7s+,A5s, ATo+,K9s+, KTo+,Q9s+, QJo,JTs.

Is he going to fold 52% of the time to a 8.5BB shove when he’s opened? At most level of Sit N Go’s I’ve played, people don’t like to fold once they have limped, let alone raised, especially to a short stack that is offering really good odds on the call.

So, shoving here seems overly optimistic. Not only does the UTG raiser need to be opening wide, he needs to be folding a lot of hands which is unlikely in my opinion. Also, with two other players to act, this analysis doesn’t even consider the chance of an over caller, or the equity you gain by folding and the other stacks getting involved.

Colin also mentions the blinds are going up, what significance does this have? Well, basically this is inferring that the number of +$EV situations you are going to find in the future are getting sparse. So, you should be willing to push smaller edges or in some extreme cases even take a -$EV play that is likely to be less -$EV than future situations.

However, in this hand example, you are first to act next hand. You will be able to open this pot a significant amount of the time with a +$EV shove. Also, you currently have 8.5 BBs which is far from desperate, and far from the extreme scenarios that would allow you to take a -$EV gamble.

Hand 2-23:

This is another example of a hand that requires some fold equity for the hand to be +$EV. So, you need to be aware that any time you are trying to re-steal with less than 10BBs, your fold equity is going to be very limited. But, people make some strange plays, so you will have some.

So, what’s a typical range for someone that steals frequently from the button? I think anywhere from 30-40% is reasonable. So, let’s look at the case where the villain is raising 35% of hands from the button. How much fold equity do we need for this shove to be +$EV?

Colin didn’t give the chips stacks for everyone at the table so I assumed the same structure as the last example, with 20k chips in play. I assumed everyone not mentioned had even stacks.

Given that assumption, we need the button to fold 25% of the time here. Making his raising range
55+,A2s+, A4o+,K3s+, K8o+,Q6s+, Q9o+,J7s+, J9o+,T7s+, T9o,97s+,87s and his calling range
55+,A2s+, A7o+,K6s+, K9o+,Q8s+, Q9o+,J8s+, JTo,T8s+.

This is probably reasonable, so could be a +$EV push. But, I want to reiterate that restealing with <10BBs is risky. It probably should be thought more of a value shove than as a resteal, so you’re hand has to really stack up pretty well against the villain’s raising range.

Hand 2-26:

I’m going to look at this hand slightly differently. This time I’m going to look at his calling range and see what type of opening range the villain needs to have to make this a +$EV resteal

So, we can assume his calling range will be really tight, tight enough that KQs will be crushed. So, that means we need some real significant fold equity for this to be +$EV. So, let’s assume his calling range is TT+,AJs+,AQo+. So, what does he need to be open raising with? (we’ll make the same stack distribution assumptions as the last hand)

He needs to be raising wider than 16% (66+,A6s+, ATo+,K9s+, KTo+,Q9s+, QJo,JTs) for this to be +$EV. This seems reasonable, but would be a fairly thin edge to push considering that there are two players left to act.

So, I just wanted to make this post to put a more mathematical approach to your Sit N Go decisions. Doing the math behind these type situations will give you a better feel for what factors to consider. It’ll help you in determining the balance of your hand strength and your fold equity that should be in your decision making process.

[DevinLake]

Colin's Article

The second Hand 2-23 in the above post should be Hand 2-24 in Colin's article, the Q9s hand.

[Pudge714]

I haven't done the math, but just looking at these hands. I feel that 2-26 is bad a lot of the time. It depends on reads other chip stacks etc.
I feel the others are fine

[hERESY]

duh, write a book Devin

[hERESY]

edit: I'd buy it

[Slim Pickens]

I worked out hand 2-32 and found pretty much the same thing you found. There were reasonable ranges for both the initial raiser and caller that made pushing +$EV. It also was not hard for me to tweak those ranges to something also very reasonable and have the play be -$EV. I think the ranges I first came up with put it at about +0.2%, so what most SNG experts would call a marginal edge. My experience playing a large number of SNGs over a long period of time lets me say with confidence that anyone who thinks he can nail down opponents' hand ranges in a fairly uncommon situation like that to the precision necessary to make a strong statement about how it should be played is over-estimating his own ability by quite a bit.