10-20BB and defending against the stop & go
There are many circumstances that come about while playing SNGs regularly. Obviously once you are below 10BB you are pushing preflop, but it is when you are in that grey area of 10-20BB that is can be troublesome.
It starts off simple enough, there are usually 5-7 players remaining and you have a legitimate raising hand (77+, ATs+, KQ+) and the action is folded to you. Now you raise, obviously, with the hopes of taking down the blinds. From here on in it only gets ugly.
One of three things will happen.
1. You take down the blinds.
2. You get a caller and see a flop with the preflop aggression on your side.
3. You are faced with a reraise (usually all-in)
Now I’ll admit that at least 70% of the time you will steal the blinds as all players are tightening up at this stage and aren’t going to be calling with marginal hands as often as they would early game. But when you do receive that caller, it gets messy. Take this hand for example.
It is especially difficult when you are called by the blinds when they are short as well, as it is so easy for them to fire all-in as a stop & go. I mean, the fact is they didn’t reraise me preflop so it is pretty likely that I have the best hand preflop, and if I had less than 10BB we’d get our money in pre and see how the SB really feels about their hand. But due to their position, they can move in first with a goodly amount of chips and push me off my hand.
Additionally, at this stage of the game, when you see a flop as the preflop raiser, people tend to “get committed” to the pot anyways and any fold equity you think you have with a continuation bet is usually lost.
When you are faced with a reraise preflop in this situation with a hand like AQs or 99, it again presents you with a difficult decision. The first thing you have to do is consider the pot odds you are being offered. Generally if you are receiving 2-1 or greater odds then you have to call. That is the fundamental reason that moving in with 10BB late game is standard as if you did a standard 3BB raise and then received a reraise all-in, you are always getting 2-1 odds anways so you may as well move in. But there are times when you won’t be getting 2-1 and you’ll be sitting there with a legitimate hand and the uncomfortable decision of calling off your entire stack with more than 10BB remaining.
Generally if I still have 10BB and I have a worse hand than JJ or AK I probably will fold to any reraise as long as it isn’t coming from a total moron who would push with JT or some shit. 10BB is always enough to mount any comeback and while it is true that you probably won’t get a better hand than the AJ you are currently folding, you have to at least respect the fact that someone has announced that they have you beat.
Ok, so all this babbling, is there any solution?
The reason this bothers me so is because SNGs for me have become so entirely mechanical that any sort of non “pushbot” play that I need to make just puts unneeded strain on my already strained multitabling brain. Every time something like this occurs I always wish that I could have just pushed preflop and let the cards play for me. But unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do in these situations. You simply have to play poker and continue making correct decisions. You can't just start pushing with more than 10BB with AQ because on average the only hands that will call you will have you crushed, and you'll end up risking way too much to win too little. Always keep in mind your remaining chip stack if you are faced with bets and reraises, and always try to avoid going broke with 10-20BB with a marginal hand.
One thing to take away from this inconclusive, almost pointless post, is the fact that once the blinds get to a hefty amount, where they are representing at least 1/20th of even the biggest stack, people rarely will call/reraise your preflop raises with trash. I started to notice this between the 50/100 to 100/200 blind levels on Stars. You can steal the blinds with impunity for the most part, and you don’t need a hand like AQ to do it. Obviously that is pretty common knowledge but I get the feeling that a lot of people are vastly underplaying this facet of the game in SNG’s. I see people wait and wait till they are blinded to less than 10BB then push all in. They forget about earlier game blind stealing. It’s important to start doing this once the blinds are representing 10-15% of your stack size.
So hopefully if you can stay ahead of the game by stealing more than your fair share of cheap blinds, you will be able to get away from hands that end up being dominated because you have enough extra blinds to fold to reraises.
Who knows…
It starts off simple enough, there are usually 5-7 players remaining and you have a legitimate raising hand (77+, ATs+, KQ+) and the action is folded to you. Now you raise, obviously, with the hopes of taking down the blinds. From here on in it only gets ugly.
One of three things will happen.
1. You take down the blinds.
2. You get a caller and see a flop with the preflop aggression on your side.
3. You are faced with a reraise (usually all-in)
Now I’ll admit that at least 70% of the time you will steal the blinds as all players are tightening up at this stage and aren’t going to be calling with marginal hands as often as they would early game. But when you do receive that caller, it gets messy. Take this hand for example.
It is especially difficult when you are called by the blinds when they are short as well, as it is so easy for them to fire all-in as a stop & go. I mean, the fact is they didn’t reraise me preflop so it is pretty likely that I have the best hand preflop, and if I had less than 10BB we’d get our money in pre and see how the SB really feels about their hand. But due to their position, they can move in first with a goodly amount of chips and push me off my hand.
Additionally, at this stage of the game, when you see a flop as the preflop raiser, people tend to “get committed” to the pot anyways and any fold equity you think you have with a continuation bet is usually lost.
When you are faced with a reraise preflop in this situation with a hand like AQs or 99, it again presents you with a difficult decision. The first thing you have to do is consider the pot odds you are being offered. Generally if you are receiving 2-1 or greater odds then you have to call. That is the fundamental reason that moving in with 10BB late game is standard as if you did a standard 3BB raise and then received a reraise all-in, you are always getting 2-1 odds anways so you may as well move in. But there are times when you won’t be getting 2-1 and you’ll be sitting there with a legitimate hand and the uncomfortable decision of calling off your entire stack with more than 10BB remaining.
Generally if I still have 10BB and I have a worse hand than JJ or AK I probably will fold to any reraise as long as it isn’t coming from a total moron who would push with JT or some shit. 10BB is always enough to mount any comeback and while it is true that you probably won’t get a better hand than the AJ you are currently folding, you have to at least respect the fact that someone has announced that they have you beat.
Ok, so all this babbling, is there any solution?
The reason this bothers me so is because SNGs for me have become so entirely mechanical that any sort of non “pushbot” play that I need to make just puts unneeded strain on my already strained multitabling brain. Every time something like this occurs I always wish that I could have just pushed preflop and let the cards play for me. But unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do in these situations. You simply have to play poker and continue making correct decisions. You can't just start pushing with more than 10BB with AQ because on average the only hands that will call you will have you crushed, and you'll end up risking way too much to win too little. Always keep in mind your remaining chip stack if you are faced with bets and reraises, and always try to avoid going broke with 10-20BB with a marginal hand.
One thing to take away from this inconclusive, almost pointless post, is the fact that once the blinds get to a hefty amount, where they are representing at least 1/20th of even the biggest stack, people rarely will call/reraise your preflop raises with trash. I started to notice this between the 50/100 to 100/200 blind levels on Stars. You can steal the blinds with impunity for the most part, and you don’t need a hand like AQ to do it. Obviously that is pretty common knowledge but I get the feeling that a lot of people are vastly underplaying this facet of the game in SNG’s. I see people wait and wait till they are blinded to less than 10BB then push all in. They forget about earlier game blind stealing. It’s important to start doing this once the blinds are representing 10-15% of your stack size.
So hopefully if you can stay ahead of the game by stealing more than your fair share of cheap blinds, you will be able to get away from hands that end up being dominated because you have enough extra blinds to fold to reraises.
Who knows…
posted by RikkiDee at 11:29 PM
3 Comments:
I like the AQ push with blinds at 50/100, when you have 1300...
good post rikki. I hate those middle positions with 4-5 players and you have only played like 2 hands..and you get 66 raise 3xbb and get re-rasied in the BB...sooooo gay...lata
I agree with Will ... push the AQ as it also works on table image.
I like it when people think I am a push monkey because when I raise with legit stuff I want them to play back at me.
People always feel that you are stealing when you push and they might call you with AJ and A10 (sooted of course!) and you are dominating them. I think you are overestimating most people to think that they will give up the blinds to a push. If that is the case then you don't need cards and you should push once in a while... hammer dropping and all!
In the situation with the SB being shortstacked I like using the reverse hoy (bet 1 less than his stack). The reason for this is that it lets the BB know that you are gunning at the SB shortstack and not him.
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