Can 3b shoving K4o knowing you’ll get called possibly be +EV???

Did we lose to J2o?

No. V called our shove blind, had 7 high and our hand was good.

NH, GG did the math and it seems like a fine shove. At worst if the assumptions are off it's a small losing play that keeps the maniac gambling. I think people underestimate the value of that. You want to keep the maniac happy doing his thing. You don't want him saying, "You're all a bunch of boring nits. I'm leaving."

If you lose, rebuy short and do it again.

Also I think you could probably factor in a small amount of fold equity into the equation, which makes the shove even better. The maniac could look at 72o and say, "I would have called you with anything else."

Although reading the reveal, maybe not. Haha.

These threads drive me up a wall. (The responses even more-so than the initial query.)

This is a relatively simple math problem and a VERY simple reference to a push-or-fold chart.

Where in the world do deep-stacked cash game players get the confidence to just vibe an answer to this, when clearly (based on their answer) they have done NONE of the work to earn such confidence?

Expecting to get flamed for this, but speaking for myself it's a spot where I'm choosing to sacrifice some EV in exchange for avoiding the possible variance of a disastrous outcome.

Sort of like getting stacks in pre with QQ or AK when we'd otherwise prefer to see a flop before deciding if we want to go with our hand. Knowing we had a few percent equity edge with QQ or additional fold equity from jamming AK doesn't make the drive home after getting stacked any more pleasant.

All other things being equal, I'd prefer to play some post-flop poker rather than gamble for stacks with a hand that push-fold charts say is a push. If some wing-nut with no respect for money wants to gamble, I'd rather have a better hand or fewer players behind still to act.

That said, I'm open to learning why I'm just wrong, if that's the case.

Of course we should all be looking at those well researched push fold charts for a SB 2/BB 3/STR 15/CO 100 game.

Gonna close this thread and pop over to bizarro world and study them now.

Using charts is all about transposing between and extrapolating from similar scenarios. They are *very* rarely premised on identical factors as the hand you're playing.

How do the particulars of this hand change the pertinent factors: amount of dead money, call frequency/ranges, reads, etc.

In any case, even if you see zero value in the second item I listed in the sentence you quoted, you can do the first one (math). NH, GG gets top marks as far as I'm concerned.

Hell, if people said "IDFK, tournament NLHE's down the hall", that would drive me far less nuts.

I mean, you're certainly not gonna get flamed because AFAICT, it's a ~0EV to slightly losing shove.

But the "some" in your "sacrificing some EV" statement is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and that's the exact work that we should be setting out to do in these analyses. I'm not a finance guy, so I won't pretend too much expertise here, but no matter how you measure risk aversion, expected return is going to be a critical term.

I'd say we don't need to play dumb and you can just eyeball that this is so clearly a marginal EV / high variance spot that we don't need to do any of that work, but--while that would *happen* to be true here--I really don't trust people to make that judgement based on how far off I've seen people be with where the margins are. (And with how people misunderstand variance in general).

This is kinda ad homineny, but the "fold and wait for a better spot" seems to inevitably be someone who's still playing 1/3NL after 10 years and 5k posts on this sub, so either a "better spot" can take a LONG time to come around or they need to find more "better spots."

In any case, OP asked a specific question right in the title, and they said they're a glutton for stealing dead money, so I don't think responding with your personal risk tolerance would be the appropriate response to them anyway. (Though, perhaps, it would be appropriate to point out *how much* variance making all marginal EV shoves here would take on, but that circles back to the beginning of the post and now this is just one big ouroboros sucking itself off.)

You have an advantage having a short stack if he is raising 100 blind repeatedly. If you shove and win, you lose that advantage.

Also, I did some calculations and I don't see how it is 0EV. You are way overestimating how tight others will call

It is OK if you want to gamble, but it is just gambling and risking a big loss as il pointed out.

NGL, you were one of the respondents I was frustrated with, but rereading your posts I think you just misread the HH lol.

There's effectively 4 blinds (two standard blinds, $15 straddle and $100 blind raise), so there's $121 in dead money. Other players are gonna have to call a LOT wider than AQ+/99 for shoving to be a losing play.

(TBC, my calcs say it's a losing play because they're collectively calling far wider than that.)

There is not $121 in dead money. There is $21 in dead money, because the blind raiser is calling the relatively small shove blind.

I calculate its about $24+ EV if you isolate versus the blind raiser who always calls. If no one else calls/raises about 80%, it is maybe slightly -EV.

I don't see how math isn't poker strategy. It applies all the time late in tournaments.

I mean if it folds to villain, there's 400 and change in the pot. He only needs to put in 200 to call. He doens't need that much equity and he's sitting with a big stack. 21% of the time he has an ace or a pair and is calling. Add in some strong quited connectors with the dead money and is he often folding? plus someone is behind you.

One of the ways that maniacs win is by getting people to magically play bad hands against him.

Yes, everyone else folding a combined 80% is about where it becomes breakeven. (Which is ~7.2% call range for each player).

Where I thought you were misreading OP was saying that we're losing if they only call 3% each.

I guess different strokes for different folks, but elasticity is the beauty of the game for me. The fact that Kxo can be total garbage in a ton of contexts, a marginal hand in some, and a terrible fold in others is what makes poker great (to me).

Turbo MTT regs probably think playing preflop bingo trying to catch a 200bb stack from someone struggling to stack their chips isn't "playing poker."

It's fine to not be confident in it. My precise frustration is with people (not necessarily you, but maybe idk) talking very confidently about a spot they haven't studied and don't appear to be taking this as an opportunity to learn.

Yeah, I may have stated it wrong. Our calculations agree.

A 7.2% range is like 88+/ATs+/KQs. The player last to act can call looser than the one acting after you.

If you had 44, A4o, K8o, or K6s, you would be about 57% against a random hand and pick up about $60 if you isolate, so you pretty much would have to shove. Any generally playable hand is a shove, except suited connectors, and some non playable unsuited high cards and weak aces are shoves.

All fair.

My point about math vs strat is that there are games for people who want to gamble it up. Jamming K4o here feels more like betting it all on a single hand of Blackjack.

If someone is sitting down to play 1/2-2/3 with 150-200 BB's, my assumption is that they were planning to play a "normal" game, not looking for reasons to get stacks in with trash hands versus the human variance generator.

Okay lol, we're in close to perfect agreement after all. I estimate it's one or two ranks wider for each hand type, but I'd give myself a pretty wide margin of error for this type of spot.

Yeah, I would want some margin of error. Low stakes cash players don't understand calling ranges like tournament players do, and they don't like to fold preflop. You could get called by K9s, 77, A8s etc., although those aren't in a reasonable calling range.

Seeing this thread again made me wonder about the minimum threshold of a hand we need. Check out how the small equity difference between K4s and K4o makes a big difference in how much we need the other players to fold to profit.

http://www.pokerstrategy.com
Equity Win Tie
CO 52.33% 50.23% 2.10% { K4o }
BB 47.67% 45.57% 2.10% { random }

http://www.pokerstrategy.com
Equity Win Tie
CO 54.88% 52.89% 2.00% { K4s }
BB 45.12% 43.12% 2.00% { random }

Nice calculator, haha.

Like Doc, I want a simple heuristic for these kind of 3-4 bb situations (because I'm not going to be able to do the math in time at the table), so I found a push-fold calculator to try and answer the OP's question. The one I found had it as a fold w/o antes, shove with. So I figured it was close, even if H is a favorite vs ATC. A pure H/u push-fold chart, ofc, K4o isn't half bad at 3-4 bb.

At equilibrium, the answer might be one thing, but this is the first hand with this kind of action (AIUI). So contrary to deuce's opinion (which is probably correct once everyone is in a tournament headspace), I really don't think the other deeper players want to play flips with a maniac, or even 60/40s for 2 grand, when the nit has already shoved. Some will, ofc, so don't shove into those guys, lol.

They're not going to adjust fast enough, and IMHO, their calling ranges are going to be inappropriately tight. They won't be for hand #2, but that's a later issue.

FWIW, I have a sheet that solves for all the different variables in an EV calc I can think of: EV itself, alpha, MDF, equity needed, EQR needed, bet size at which a play is breakeven, rake at which a play is breakeven, etc. Mine is for students and study buddies only, obviously, but if you're into that sorta thing the time that it takes to make the sheet is significantly less than manually running all those calcs several dozen times, especially if you want to play around with different factors.

I wholly agree that insofar as deep-stacked cash game players are going to deviate from equilibrium, it's going to be overfolding here. I didn't go there because that wasn't the grounds for my disagreement with deuce.

This is different than a tournament situation in that a 3.4xBB shove without ante would have some FE. Also, even though the maniac called with 7 high, we couldn't know that he wasn't folding 72o or whatever. If he folds his worst hands, it actually probably reduces our expected profit, as K4o plays well against them.