Bubble Play: Playing marginal edges

[_Towelie_]

I may be looking for an overly simplified answer to an inherently complex situation. If so just tell me.

I found myself asking this question after going over HHs a couple of days ago. Should we be willing to take any and all marginal edges when we're on the bubble? At gametime I encountered a couple of situations where I was thinking this looks like a marginal push/call in my favor but decided to opt for a better spot. Sure enough after doing the ICM calcs. after the session they were marginal edges in my favor (assuming my ranges were correct). So should we generally be willing to take any edge offered to us, or is there an argument for waiting for better edges?

[geo8o2]

a lot of the time on the bubble, i'd rather push knowing i'm 40% with fold equity, then call "thinking" i'm 60%. depends on the stack sizes and how short you are.

[Kevin8423]

Without knowing anything about how you play, I bet you need to push a lot more on the bubble that you do currently.

[_Towelie_]

[ QUOTE ]
Without knowing anything about how you play, I bet you need to push a lot more on the bubble that you do currently.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can understand why you wouuld think that, but I don't think this is the case. I'm actually very agressive on the bubble and I think generally my late game play is pretty good (my winrate would concur).

I'm going to try to refine my question. There are times on the bubble when I know that pushing ATC works out to like a 1.5% ev advantage for me, and there are other times when it works out to like a 0.2% ev advantage for me. My question is should we be just as quick to push the slightest edges as we are with the bigger edges?

[Powers_That_Be]

I think the answer is fairly self-evident. If you push every marginal situation, you will perform marginally better, albeit with higher variance (as they are higher variance plays). Sticking with +.5% edge plays (which seems to about the norm here) will be marginally worse, but lower variance.

[_Towelie_]

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Sticking with +.5% edge plays (which seems to about the norm here) will be marginally worse, but lower variance.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you. This answers my question nicely.

[jukofyork]

[ QUOTE ]
I think the answer is fairly self-evident. If you push every marginal situation, you will perform marginally better, albeit with higher variance (as they are higher variance plays). Sticking with +.5% edge plays (which seems to about the norm here) will be marginally worse, but lower variance.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't thick that's correct (assuming you have an edge over your opponent's), as by risking an early bust you will be denying yourself potential future gains later in the SNG. It may turn out (by pure luck) that being able to wield a big-stack more effectively in the late game may cancel-out this effect, but I've not seen anybody come close to quantyfying this either way yet.

Also, it's not the EV gain of the push that matters; it's the chance you will bust (or cripple yourself). For a player with a significant advantage: taking a +0.05% push with only a 10% chance of being called may be more correct than making a +0.5% call when you are sure to bust if you lose.

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[_Towelie_]

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I don't thick that's correct (assuming you have an edge over your opponent's), as by risking an early bust you will be denying yourself potential future gains later in the SNG.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you may be misunderstanding something Juk. We're talking about taking marginal edges on the bubble, not in early game.

[jukofyork]

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I don't thick that's correct (assuming you have an edge over your opponent's), as by risking an early bust you will be denying yourself potential future gains later in the SNG.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you may be misunderstanding something Juk. We're talking about taking marginal edges on the bubble, not in early game.

[/ QUOTE ]
It doesnt matter if it's early game or late game (or even HU); all that matters is the amount of potential future profit you are giving up by taking an immediate +EV push.

Consider an extreme example: You are HU vs a player who calls 100% of your SB pushes but folds his SB every time. Even though your immediate EV gain for a SB push might be +ve, it would obviously not be correct to ever take it...

If you could model the recursive game in your EV_Fold calculation then this would be factored in, but for all but the most trivial examples this isn't possible and the best you can do is add in a skill based term to EV_Fold to account for what you might be giving up (ie: one of the uses of the minimum edge).

It should also be noted that it's not easy to get this value empirically either. The outcome of the SNG is not only effected by the current decision on how much edge to pass up, but also on all future decisions from now until the end of the SNG (consider the effect of using a huge edge which causes you to fold very hand...).

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

EDIT: Fixed typos.

[Weir]

i think it is impossible to quantify, but I can tell you from experience that passing up some chip EV situations on the bubble is certainly good.

I can't tell you how many times I make good calls with king-queen high vs. some random crap and end up getting 4th.
the often I find that playing extra tight on the bubble and trying to avoid being "confrontation guy" gives you ridiculous fold equity (b/c you look really tight) and makes people push into you with complete and utter crap way more often than they normally would. it is really easy to accumulate the chips you bleed on the bubble with the first few hands after you are itm. this is just a random thought/rant, but it seems to work much better than the "call everytime you are ahead/push everytime you are ahead" strategy.