Quote:
Originally Posted by kickboy  one thing I o believe in once you steal enough blinds that several good players may disagree (feel free to express your agreement or disagreement) is i believe in freerolling a hand. What I mean by this is allow your money to get in bad. Calling a short stacked all in with 8-3 against someones AK is a little worse than 60-40 underdog. If you play solid enough at the begining of the SNG and steal several little pots you should have enough to be able to call short stack all ins with cards that are not so premium putting it nicely. |
Disagreeing!
Forget about ICM for a sec, and if you just go to Poker 101, you get three choices of action when you play a hand: raise, call, fold. While there are spots where calling is correct, usually it's widely agreed that raising or folding tend to be better options.
The scenario you have presented is kinda nuts, unless the short stack is so small that calling with any two is correct according to the math anyway. For a start, ok you admit you don't mind taking the worse of it which is fine, but how do you know a short stack is on such a specific hand as AK just because he is pushing. Surely if he's short he might well be playing a pocket pair in exactly the same fashion, which has 83o crushed for the best part. If he has 44-JJ do you really think he wants to see a flop if he is commited on it anyway?
Now if you push the 83o onto the shortstack then things change drastically because you now have the chance he can fold. By calling you are only giving yourself the chance to win a showdown, which is going to be kinda tough considering you're probably at best the wrong side of a 60/40. By raising into the shortstack, you not only have your chance of winning the hand by showdown but ALSO the chance he may fold. You now have 2 ways of winning, not just 1.
If you had $300 on a cash table, and $600 in your pocket, would you call a short stack's all in for $40 with 83o? Probably not. The chances are he has AK more often in this spot than a SNG due to the nature of the play, but there is no risk of anymore pressure being put on you because of rising blinds and your chips can easily be replaced. It would be an insane call and just throwing money away!
Now in a SNG you have a limited number of chips and rising blinds so maintaining your stack is more important. Ok you might get to eliminate a player but at least 60% of the time you will be doubling him. All in all calling here with 83o here is crazier than in a cash game!
