Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Bubble Play vs the Big Stack

Things have been going well lately in the $4.10 knockouts for me. However, with my tight style, I often end up being one of the short stacks on the bubble. I’m trying to work out what my preflop reraising range should be when I’m reraising the chipleader.

Here is a specific example that occurred last night. We were on the bubble and the blinds were at 100/200 but would soon be increasing to 100/200 + ante. Everyone left at the table has played fairly normal. They have been slightly looser than me, but still fairly tight, and they have been slightly more passive than me. The shortstack seems passive hoping to squeak into the money. The chipleader has not been overly aggressive with his big stack.

UTG (6350 chips after raising) raises to 500
BTN (820 chips) folds
Roland GTX in SB (1275 chips after posting)
BB (4255 chips after posting)

There are 800 chips in the pot and I am holding AKo. What should I do?

I can’t call off a 3rd of my stack and then fold on a missed flop so calling is out of the question.
I can fold and hope that I survive longer than the short stack. Or, I can reraise all in knowing that there is nearly no chance that the big stack will fold? At best he has Ax making me a 70/30 favorite. Two random cards make me a 60/40 favorite. If he is holding a smaller pocket pair then he is a 52/48 favorite. The only hand I’m a dog to is AA.

This situation is clearly Ev+, but I don’t know if it is smart according to ICM. Any takers?

Roland GTX
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4 comments:

  1. MrEMC2October 19, 2010 at 12:05 PM

    Interesting stuff ;)
    As you know, I'm not the big theory guy, so I'm not certain what ICM models would suggest, lol. Have you considered one of the tools that are out there?
    Anyway, I would most probably shoved in that situation, I guess, mainly based on following reflections:
    - CL holds a huge stack, and it probably going to raise you and/or the ss pretty often as blinds increase.
    - You DO have a big hand, even it's called Anna Kournikova, lol.
    - You're trying to win rather than crawling itm, and AKo is giving you "slightly" better changes to double up than atc later on.
    -You're M is LOW, and about to get worse.
    My 0.02$ :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. Roland GTXOctober 19, 2010 at 12:15 PM

    Thanks MrE. I'll wait for the others to comment before I post my thoughts on this one.

    ReplyDelete
  3. MrEMC2October 19, 2010 at 12:58 PM

    You're welcome :-)
    What did you do?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Roland GTXOctober 19, 2010 at 1:00 PM

    I don't want the results of the hand to affect how people respond. I'll post the results after I've heard from the others.

    ReplyDelete

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