$1.10 NL HE MTT: Is this an ICM nightmare or just a cooler for these opponents?

[tzuriel]

Game

Hold'em

Game Format

No Limit

Table Format

MTT

Buy-in

1.10

Game Options

1. Bounty

Currency

$

It's the FT of this micro PKO. I am a 2:1 chip leader over 2 of the other 3 players and one of these 2 is sitting out. I have about 7.5bb over the 2nd place guy.

A9o is a clear shove from the BTN especially over these chronic limpers, I think. You wouldn't believe what they limp with (well - maybe you would believe it!)

Sitting out player in the SB auto-folds and the other 2 call.
One has TT and one has AJs. Are those insta-calls in this scenario? Or should they be waiting for the sitting out player with 12bb to blind out? I'm sure I would have also called with either of those hands and this is just a bad beat for those other 2 players.

They both bust and I am left with a sitting out player to pick up the rest of the bounty money and win the tournament!

Maybe my shove was wrong? I feel pretty confident that it was correct but you guys know more than me!

Hand replayer

https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/hand/727d1c16-71d8-3fa4-ba12-8ba28d82c085

 

[primrose]

The hand replayer doesn't work in my location, but based on description it's a pretty easy shove.

 

[fundiver199]

Its also geoblocked here in sweden. Perhaps you can find and share the actual hand history instead of this replay, which it seems like, almost nobody are also to watch?

 

[puzzlefish]

The hand replayer doesn't work in my location, but based on description it's a pretty easy shove.

Its also geoblocked here in Sweden. Perhaps you can find and share the actual hand history instead of this replay, which it seems like, almost nobody are also to watch?

Nothing much to it anyway.

Blinds are 3500 and the OP (BTN) opens 19bb over the 18.5bb and 12.8bb stacks of active villains to put them all in if they call. The 18.5bb villain was in late position and had limped 1bb.

Here are the screenshots.

 

[fundiver199]

Ok thanks. So AJ limped, A9 jammed, and then TT called, and AJ overcalled? First of all AJ should of course not limp but either min-raise or open jam. As played I think, TT is correct to call, but AJ should not overfold. When two guys are already all-in against each other, you should generally sit it out and hope, one of them bust, unless you have a really strong hand.

The fact, the last player is sitting out, does not matter much, when he have more or less the same stack as everyone else. If the other players try to win a folding war with him, they will lose almost all their chips and any hope of winning the tournament, and a sit-out player can also return at any moment. So this is not something, which should impact our decisions, unless the sit-outer is about to bust in the next orbit or two.

 

[puzzlefish]

I think this was a cooler for both BB and the late position AJ. AJ should have open raised instead of limping. Maybe that would have made OP/Hero consider calling or folding. I think his idea was seeing a cheap flop which of course OP wasn't going to let happen.

Once OP jammed, TT has to call here I think hoping he isn't going up against overpairs.

What is BTN's jamming range here? Is A9o really a jam?

 

[tzuriel]

Sorry about that. I didn't realize it would be blocked. Thank you @puzzlefish for helping with screenshots and thanks for the comments everyone!

Is A9o a jam here?

 

[fundiver199]

What is BTN's jamming range here? Is A9o really a jam?

Yes I think, its fine, since most people are not having a balanced limping range. They open strong hands and limp weak hands including some, they should just have folded. AJo is really the top of a standard limping range, apart from the occational slowplay with AA or KK. Most of the time A9 either pick up the pot uncontested or get called by hands, that it dominate or flip with. Like people limp in and then call it off with 66, even though they should have either open jammed themselfes or limp-folded. Running into TT from the one player left to act and then also AJ from the limper was pretty unlucky.

 

[eetenor]

It's the FT of this micro PKO. I am a 2:1 chip leader over 2 of the other 3 players and one of these 2 is sitting out. I have about 7.5bb over the 2nd place guy.

A9o is a clear shove from the BTN especially over these chronic limpers, I think. You wouldn't believe what they limp with (well - maybe you would believe it!)

Sitting out player in the SB auto-folds and the other 2 call.
One has TT and one has AJs. Are those insta-calls in this scenario? Or should they be waiting for the sitting out player with 12bb to blind out? I'm sure I would have also called with either of those hands and this is just a bad beat for those other 2 players.

They both bust and I am left with a sitting out player to pick up the rest of the bounty money and win the tournament!

Maybe my shove was wrong? I feel pretty confident that it was correct but you guys know more than me!

Hand replayer

https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/hand/727d1c16-71d8-3fa4-ba12-8ba28d82c085

GTO WIZARD=FREE. Can help you develop heuristics (rules) in spots like this---paid version allows you to do it exactly but for free you can set up scenarios to decide how to move forward in future games and have a stronger exploit strat.

I used 8 max chip ev at 17bb and at 14bb symmetric stacks. Co limps AJS in both-frequency changes only. A9o plays very differently in both scenarios. At 17 it flats 62% of the time and the ev is identical for all actions. At 14 the BTN is shoving 76% again ev is equal.
The EV feature of charts is incredible it really helps you to see if one action is worse than another.

When you get GTO W feel free to reach out.

What does this tell us? The solver at 17 is weighing stack protection above chip accumulation. There is of course playability factors post flop as well.

So in your situation on FT are we weighing stack protection above blind stealing?

A good FT heuristic is we get more agg when we have 2x the next largest stack, that way if we lose to them, we drop from 1st to second not to last place as would have happened here if we did not hit our 8% equity.

 

[tzuriel]

In these low stakes games where nearly everyone is playing WAY different than GTO, can GTO Wizard provide usable strategies?

 

[primrose]

In these low stakes games where nearly everyone is playing WAY different than GTO, can GTO Wizard provide usable strategies?

Short answer: mostly no. Long answer: I think people generally play each successive street worse, so they play best Preflop, then Flop, then Turn, then River. Consequently I think GTO for soft games is by far the most useful preflop, especially RFI (player tendencies really don't change relative hand strength that much), somewhat useful on the Flop but already not so much, and just forget about it for the Turn and River.

 

[primrose]

eetenor used it for preflop analysis, so I'd at least treat it as a reasonable starting point, from which you then might want to deviate if you have a good reason. (Unlike later streets where I don't think it's even useful as a starting point.)

 

[eetenor]

In these low stakes games where nearly everyone is playing WAY different than GTO, can GTO Wizard provide usable strategies?

Yes, as we are not using the Wiz to learn to mimic actions that the bot takes. Instead, we are looking at the two ranges and looking at the why of an action.
Say we want to review a hand we played. Simple example.
Hj opens we 3 bet from BTN they 4 bet we fold to 4 bet. Using the Wiz, we can look at HJ open ranges and see what we 3 bet on BTN. If our V are tighter with their opens, we use an earlier position range instead. Say the V is a nit instead of running a solve HJ open we run UTG open and see how the range changes on the BTN.
If the HJ V is looser we move range to CO and compare ranges for us again. we are looking for inflection point hands. As in this hand with A9off it is the inflection point hand when you use the solver. We would want to know what does A9o do vs UTG HJ CO
With different stack sizes and different positions we learn how the inflection points hands change for BTN for say A9o down to A8o or A7o or up to AT
We can study small pairs and suited connectors, and how they interact with not only the opening range, but the V's continue range etc etc.

We keep doing this for every action. How has the 4 bet range changed for them UTG or HJ or CO and for us from the standard solver solution vs each range.

What we are doing is node locking ranges without paying the monthly fee for node locking.


the more you study using Wiz as a base the better idea you get of hand interactions with ranges and bottom of range inflection point changes.

Add in the fact that you can look at expected EV differences for call raise and shove and you can really get a very good exploit feel for in game strategies.
Just by using the free version of the Wiz.

That is just a start you can study 1 hand per day all streets and equity buckets and range comparison and multiway strat.

When we do not use the Wiz we use our experiences only -we guess at ranges for our V and we often make mistakes as in the posted hand, many players thought AJs was not a limp, but the limp could have the exact same EV as a raise thus making it a very viable play. By using the Wiz we can see the limp was not a mistake just a different line and that we may not want to risk our stack with A9o by shoving vs the new possible limp range

 

[tzuriel]

This is such a great and helpful response. Thank you!

 

[fundiver199]

eetenor used it for preflop analysis, so I'd at least treat it as a reasonable starting point, from which you then might want to deviate if you have a good reason. (Unlike later streets where I don't think it's even useful as a starting point.)

I think, there is a good reason to deviate, when someone has limped (other than SB limping), because as I said already, this is typically a range very far from, what GTO software assume. I will also say, that for preflop push-fold spots like this I think, ICMizer is far more usefull than GTO Wizard. The advantage of ICMizer is, it takes the exact payjumps and stack sizes into account, whereas with GTO Wizard you have to assume, that everyone have the same stack size, which is often far from the actual situation.

So what does ICMizer say about this spot? First I dont know the payouts on Global Poker, but most online MTTs have a fairly similar payout structure on the final table, so I just picked a random pokerstars MTT for the payouts. The exact stack sizes are a little unclear to me from the picture, but I picked 10BB for CO (AJ limp), 21BB for Hero in BTN and 14BB for SB (sit-out) and BB (TT).

ICMizer will only allow us to jam or fold, and at the Nash equilibrium A9o is a fold. We need A9s, a suited wheel ace or AQo to jam. But as I said already, this is because, ICMizer assume, that CO is a GTO player limping top 16% of hands, and this is usually so far from the truth, its not even funny. Now if a strong player limp in this situation with a 10BB stack, then alarm clocks should go off, and we should fold.

But if its the typical online fish, which we should know from our HUD or just paying attention to the action, then he is not limping top 16% of hands. If I manually adjust his range to still include QQ-AA (the occational trap) but remove AQ-AK and 66-JJ assuming, that these hands jam, but instead add "anything pretty", that a fish wants to see a flop with even with just 10BB, like all the suited broadways and all small pairs, now we can profitably jam any AX and any suited KX.

Of course we could limp behind, as GTO Wizard wants us to, but for me this is an extremely weak play taking into account, that the limping range is nowhere near as strong, as it should be. Limping behind sets it up for either player in the blinds to jam on us, and of course A9o is nowhere near strong enough to induce. it also allow BB to take a free flop and SB to complete, which is also not good.

Of course in this hand SB was sitting out, but ICMizer or GTO Wizard can not handle that situation, so its analysed as if, he was sitting in. This does not matter to much, if we jam, but of course knowing, that he will fold even KK or AA, makes the jam a little more profitable, than this calculation assume. So to sum it up this is a fine jam, unless CO is a good player, and we smell a trap with a premium hand like KK or AA. In which case we should of course just fold.

 

[eetenor]

I think, there is a good reason to deviate, when someone has limped (other than SB limping), because as I said already, this is typically a range very far from, what GTO software assume. I will also say, that for preflop push-fold spots like this I think, ICMizer is far more usefull than GTO Wizard. The advantage of ICMizer is, it takes the exact payjumps and stack sizes into account, whereas with GTO Wizard you have to assume, that everyone have the same stack size, which is often far from the actual situation.

So what does ICMizer say about this spot? First I dont know the payouts on Global Poker, but most online MTTs have a fairly similar payout structure on the final table, so I just picked a random PokerStars MTT for the payouts. The exact stack sizes are a little unclear to me from the picture, but I picked 10BB for CO (AJ limp), 21BB for Hero in BTN and 14BB for SB (sit-out) and BB (TT).

ICMizer will only allow us to jam or fold, and at the Nash equilibrium A9o is a fold. We need A9s, a suited wheel ace or AQo to jam. But as I said already, this is because, ICMizer assume, that CO is a GTO player limping top 16% of hands, and this is usually so far from the truth, its not even funny. Now if a strong player limp in this situation with a 10BB stack, then alarm clocks should go off, and we should fold.

But if its the typical online fish, which we should know from our HUD or just paying attention to the action, then he is not limping top 16% of hands. If I manually adjust his range to still include QQ-AA (the occational trap) but remove AQ-AK and 66-JJ assuming, that these hands jam, but instead add "anything pretty", that a fish wants to see a flop with even with just 10BB, like all the suited broadways and all small pairs, now we can profitably jam any AX and any suited KX.

Of course we could limp behind, as GTO Wizard wants us to, but for me this is an extremely weak play taking into account, that the limping range is nowhere near as strong, as it should be. Limping behind sets it up for either player in the blinds to jam on us, and of course A9o is nowhere near strong enough to induce. it also allow BB to take a free flop and SB to complete, which is also not good.

Of course in this hand SB was sitting out, but ICMizer or GTO Wizard can not handle that situation, so its analysed as if, he was sitting in. This does not matter to much, if we jam, but of course knowing, that he will fold even KK or AA, makes the jam a little more profitable, than this calculation assume. So to sum it up this is a fine jam, unless CO is a good player, and we smell a trap with a premium hand like KK or AA. In which case we should of course just fold.

Great point about using ICMizer it is a wonderful tool, but u have to pay for it.
The reason I mentioned the Wiz is you can use it to create a strong baseline for free and then use experience to node lock it by playing with the outputs. As you state icmizer is jam or fold in this spot, you further say weak jam strong fold -- By using the free Whiz you can model scenarios and think more deeply about spots than jam or fold--will it be Nash no, but our V are not Nash either. Our V make huge post flop mistakes, as you state yourself jam or fold only, applies to Nash V in this spot.

When we study, we reverse engineer spots like this the best we can. The free Wiz gives you a base that you can then say what if this weak player is flatting AJs? Does the solver ever flat AJs? What scenario might the solver flat? As I mentioned the solver in chip ev mode limped AJs at 17bb and it responded with a flat on BTN most often.
We then ask ourselves can I apply this in my game?

Sure, you can jam or fold vs weak or strong or you could dive deeper when you study with a free version of the Wiz. Will it be perfect math no, but poker is never perfect math vs V who make non math choices in range actions.