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

[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.

[pineapple888]

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I am conservative it has served me and others well. I feel there is just so much equity to be gained by waiting for a few players to bust.

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Not really. It's rare you can just fold into or close to the money any more. You still have to accumulate chips. The key is to find good spots early and avoid marginal ones, and although playing premium hands is a very good start in that direction, you should also be willing to consider other ways to find good spots.

[The Yugoslavian]

If you always raised AA/KK you would be missing out on ~0% potential profit, [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img].

Please make sure everyone concentrates on common situations where players often miss making close to the most profitable play.

Yugoslav

Pineapple,

I am unsure of how loose you are reccomending to play early?

Are you recommending Axs, suited connectors/one-gappers??

Honestly I don't like putting myself in the situations where I don't know where I'm at in a hand. Also playing around with chips early will cause you to gamble earlier/ be shorter later reducing the chance of being able to manipulate the buble play. Granted someitmes you will accumulate a hudge stack but I don't see the value in it.

[pineapple888]

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Pineapple,

I am unsure of how loose you are reccomending to play early?

Are you recommending Axs, suited connectors/one-gappers??


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Well that's what the discussion will be about, see the other posts so far.

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Honestly I don't like putting myself in the situations where I don't know where I'm at in a hand.


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It's poker, you should probably get good at handling those situations.

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Also playing around with chips early will cause you to gamble earlier/ be shorter later reducing the chance of being able to manipulate the buble play. Granted someitmes you will accumulate a hudge stack but I don't see the value in it.

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I'm having trouble parsing this one. You're not "gambling", you are identifying +$EV spots, making sure to correct for ICM. That's your job, from the very first hand. There is some value to uber-tight early for image reasons so you can steal more effectively later, but a whole bunch of Villains have caught onto that one by now.

[Slim Pickens]

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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.
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I'll limp the SCs and Axs at a passive table but I don't have much faith in the gappers early, even for a single bet. Collin suggests playing them up to a point; do you think his advice is too conservative?

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I just took a look in my PT database filtered to cover about 2k 6-max SNGs with buy-ins 50+5 or greater, looking at suited connectors. 93% of my total profit at 15/30 (level 1) is with AKs. It's like 140% at 20/40. Filtered for all hands with 4-6 players at the table it looks a little better, but AKs is still 75% of the total profit for 31% of the hands played. Maybe I suck at playing them, but more likely they're just not profitable enough to be worth playing early in a SNG for the majority of players.

My opinion is unless you're faced with a very profitable situation early on, maybe like a 58% pot equity overall playing smallish pots and never playing a large one, suited connectors aren't worth playing. Since the blinds are low, multiply the bet size you put in on each street by your pot equity at that point and divide by the size of the pot at the end. It will have to be at least 0.58 to be profitable in a SNG but very close to 0.50 in a cash game. That's how steep the "ICM tax" is.

As for Axs, I pretty much never pay it as a speculative hand, although occasionally I'll put in a raise in position with it if there are a lot of weak limpers.

[xPeru]

Slim, this looks like it has potential, please stick with it, ty.

[xPeru]

For my 2c, I've never been convinced that starting chips have equal value. I go with Pineapple when he says you have to create profitable situations earlier these days, but agree that ICM still holds. Is there any way we can provide some guidance as to how much of your stack you can use on "speculative" hands in level 1/2. Eg in LP with 55, I'll call limpers if my stack is good, but at some point, my stack is not big enough to play this hand this way. What is that point?

[Slim Pickens]

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Is there any way we can provide some guidance as to how much of your stack you can use on "speculative" hands in level 1/2?

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A good way to do this would be to do the same thing we do for push/fold scenarios, but slightly more complicated and imprecise. First, take 9 equal stacks of t1500, blinds of 15/30, and a 50/30/20 payout structure. Then determine what the stacks would be in a few likely cases, such as

<ul type="square">[*]win t100 from one player[*]lose t100 to one player[*]win t500 from one player[*]lose t500 to one player[*]stack one player[*]you get stacked[*]you and another player lose t100 and t500, respectively, to a third player[*]two other players play a t200 pot after you fold[*]two other players play a t1000 pot after you fold

and calculate your ICM-based prize pool equity[/list]
After that, guess probabilities for each of these cases and multiply each case's probability by it's equity. By changing the probabilities of the bigger pots, you can see what effect cEV-neutral plays with big swings have on your overall tournament equity.

[QuickLearner]

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<ul type="square">[*]win t100 from one player[*]lose t100 to one player[*]win t500 from one player[*]lose t500 to one player[*]stack one player[*]you get stacked[*]you and another player lose t100 and t500, respectively, to a third player[*]two other players play a t200 pot after you fold[*]two other players play a t1000 pot after you fold

and calculate your ICM-based prize pool equity[/list]
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Okay, I did that:

Secnario / result on my equity
1 / 10.60
2 / 9.39
3 / 12.95
4 / 6.88
5 / 18.44
6 / 0
7 / 9.41 (me) 6.88 (other loser)
8 / 10.00
9 / 10.02

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After that, guess probabilities for each of these cases and multiply each case's probability by it's equity. By changing the probabilities of the bigger pots, you can see what effect cEV-neutral plays with big swings have on your overall tournament equity.

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Here's where it gets confusing for me:

Scenario/ Prob.%/ P * E
1/ 20/ .2*10.6 = 2.12
2/ 15/ .15*9.39 = 1.4085
3/ 5/ .05*12.95 = 0.6475
4/ 3/ .03*6.88 = 0.2064
5/ 4/ .04*18.44 = 0.7376
6/ 2/ .02*0 = 0
7/ 15/ .15*9.41 = 0.4705
8/ 30/ .30*10.00 = 3.00
9/ 4/ .04*10.02 = 0.4008

Changed**/ Prob.% / P * E
1 / 20 / .2*10.6 = 2.12
2 / 15 / .15*9.39 = 1.4085
3** / 8 / .08*12.95 = 1.036
4 / 3 / .03*6.88 = 0.2064
5 / 4 / .04*18.44 = 0.7376
6 / 2 / .02*0 = 0
7** / 20 / .20*9.41 = 1.882
8 / 30 / .30*10.00 = 3.00
9 / 4 / .04*10.02 = 0.4008

Sorry for being obtuse, but what am I seeing here? It looks like the results on equity are small when limping a speculative hand early (as long as you don't get trapped into losing a big pot) and that even a small change in the probability of a big pot happening makes a significant difference in the final calculation. But what does that final calculation really mean? Is it an index so I can see the scale of the change, or is there a more concrete relationship between the answers and either my chip stack size or my tourney prize equity?

I fear I have just unmasked a complete lack of understanding as well as my inability to format a post so that anyone can read it. Sorry. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]