Q: Thanks for the great blog. I’m a cash game player who has started to venture into playing tournaments and had a question about tournament theory for you. I was thinking about preflop shoving ranges earlier and I was wondering if this is a true statement: if you think your opponents calling range is going to be rather small, your bluffing range should include more suited connectors than hands like Kxo, but that the wider your opponents calling range it should be reversed.
So lets say, you’re playing a SnG and you’re on the bubble and the average stack is about 10 BBs. It seems to me that you should be hands like AA, KK AK etc for value, but that your bluffing range should include more hands that are in good shape (as good as possible i guess) against those superior hands that he calls with. Does that makes sense? I’d love to hear your thoughts brother.. thanks!
A: Sorry I’m so slow in getting to your question. Then again, it’s a pretty easy one to answer yourself by playing around with PokerStove, so I’m not going to feel too bad about taking my time since I’m not your damn personal assistant! 🙂
Ahem, I think we got off on the wrong foot there. What I meant to say is that that’s an interesting question with some broader implications. Let’s start by playing around with PokerStove:
Vs a 5% Calling Range {88+,AJs+,KQs,AKo}
T9s 31%
64s 28%
K5o 25%
J8o 25%
Vs a 20% Calling Range {66+,A4s+,K8s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,A9o+,KTo+,QTo+,JTo}
T9s 36%
64s 35%
K5o 35%
J8o 32%
Vs a 50% Calling Range {33+,A2s+,K2s+,Q2s+,J4s+,T6s+,96s+,86s+,76s,65s,A2o+,K5o+,Q7o+,J7o+,T7o+,98o}
T9s 44%
K5o 43%
J8o 40%
64s 37%
Vs a 100% Calling Range
T9s 54%
K5o 53%
J8o 51%
64s 41%
The only hand that changes value dramatically is 64s, a small gap-suited connector. The more premium hand of this type, T9s, has the best equity against both narrow and wide ranges. In fact the other three hands remain more or less the same relative to each other, with only 64s dropping off in relative value as Villain’s calling range gets wider.
One thing to take from this is that big cards matter more as ranges get wider. This is because one-pair and no-pair hands will win more often at showdown as Villain adds smaller, unpaired cards to his range.
The matchups that have the biggest influence on your equity are those where one of you dominates the other. When Villain’s range is very strong you never dominate him, so making straights and flushes matters more. When his range is wider, hands like K5 start to do some dominating, while 64s only gets dominated.
The suited connectors perform dramatically better against a very tight range, but the difference drops off quickly. Soon T9s, K5o, and J8 are within a few points of each other. The lesson here is that picking a good spot is generally more important than picking a good hand. There are reasons not to resteal with really junky hands, but finding a spot to resteal with good fold equity will probably affect your equity more than waiting around for a certain type of hand.
Hopefully that’s a little more than PokerStove alone would have told you (or perhaps did tell you, if you got fed up with my taking months to respond – sorry again!)
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