Well, I missed the hand but I tell you the situation.
20€ level
Im playing against an agressive opponent who likes to 3bet wide, during the match I limped twice and he didnt show agression.
I have been raising decently often, so he knows my open range is wide too.
Now Im with 10bbs deep and I have Q9o. What do you do here?
I know open shoving is fine, but then I realised what if instead of open shoving I just minraise-call. The best hands are gonna call the open shove anyway, and by raising I give him the chance to make something stupid (shoving worst hands or even flatting with hands that have me beat like K3 or so)
I dont like the limp here because I think I have such a valuable hand wich can easily show profit by open shoving (and better than OS I realised its better minraise-calling) so I prefer to limp medium hands like 67o and stuff and fold the bottom.
What do you think about my reasoning?
minraise-call, I would do the same at 10BB, and just shove 8BB or less
Hi there AGT89
Interesting question. I would never minraise call in this spot; I'd always open shove, or limp (and fold to a shove). I might also call a raise (and play postflop) with this hand if opponent punishes for 3 bbs or less. Don't know if all this is correct though. Going to try to think about it, bear with me...
If we minraise-call, we need to call 8 bbs into 20 bbs. That means we need 40% equity.
So, according to Pokerstove, our opponent must be shoving wider than 34% or hands, or:
55+,A2s+,K4s+,Q6s+,J7s+,T7s+,98s,A4o+,K8o+,Q9o+,J9o+,T9o.
That's a pretty wide range, although I would imagine our opponent is also shoving 22, 33, 44, A2o and A3o. But I wouldn't imagine he's shoving T9o, J9o, Q6s. I tried to input a more reasonable range of hands, which I would say is 22+, A2s+, K2s+, QTs+, A2o+, K2o+, Q9o+, JTo. Against this range Q9o has 38% equity.
Based on the above, I would estimate that minraise-calling is at best a break even play. I would much prefer to limp-fold, limp-call (and play postflop) or open shove. I think we can do better than break even, despite the fact that we are so short. If our opponent doesn't shove over our limps, we can limp and play postflop. If he does, we can open shove.
If we open shove, I would imagine he would call us with 22+,A2s+,K8s+,QTs+,JTs,A2o+,K8o+,QTo+,JTo (30% of hands). Against this range we have 37% equity. So 70% of the time he folds, and we take the pot (1.5bbs) down (giving us +1.05 bbs) and 30% of the time he calls, and we then win 36% of the time (giving us -0.63bbs). So, we make 0.87 bbs on average, which is much better than raise-calling.
Sounds correct, but could be complete nonsense. lol.
Hello Adam!
Thanks for your reply.
I like your reasoning but I think there is a couple of mistakes.
Fisrt of all, ofc minraise-calling has a negative EV, but thats because ICMez or pokerstove only count the times that we call the shove and the equity we have against that range, but it doesn't count the times he folds (and some more actions like flatting and stuff that I dont even count just to make it easy). So it doesnt tell you the hole history, the overall EV of miniraising this hand against an agressive opponent. Moreover, when you check the EV of open shoving, IT COUNTS directly the times he folds and the times he calls and the equity vs his ranges, and it give you the overall EV of the move.
That being said, if the calculation of minraise-calling is slightly negative and if we consider that it only counts the times he 3betshove and we call, I would conclude that if we consider the fold equity then the overall EV of minraise-calling has to be extremly better that the open shove.
The second mistake I see on your reasoning is assume that he is calling the open shove too tight. Ofc if he is calling that tight then we can exploit his leak by just open shoving even wider than nash. But I think thats not realistic, against an agressive opponent who is likely to call light, I would say he is calling nearly nash, and if he is doind that, then we are getting punished because we are miniraising with our top range and open shoving our middly range, so now he is exploiting us.
In order to avoid this, I prefer to miniraise and give him the posibility of making a huge mistake, for example flatting with a hand like K3s wich he woulda call the open shove, or for example 3bet shove really light like 74s wich he woulda folded to the open shove.
So finally, if you consider that all better hands than Q9o are going in anyway (and you would have open shoved hapily anyway) we can conclude that if he has a better hand then its a "cooler" and by minraising we might win from his mistakes.
It sounds crazy but it looks like we want to induce action with the Q9o lol.
Again, like you said, my reasoning could be completely wrong lol, but thats why I writte here !!!
What do you think now?
Hello, when I put my key, and appears a start and I can not change, this is my key Product ID D9AA-6C30-93A3-9985-859D-2896-B3DE-4CF3. What can I do?
Hi there AGT89
You are right, my calculations were nonsense!
Nevertheless, I've never heard of minraise-calling with Q9o at 10 bbs. It's not a play you'll see in too many videos. My instinct still says that it's wrong, perhaps because you lose folding equity - although I cannot think of too many better hands which would shove over a minraise that would fold to a shove.
I'd be very interested to hear from one of the coaches as to whether this play is possibly the best line?
Interesting facts AGT89 that I think make sense, looking forward to see more about the reasoning of better open shoving Q9o @10bb, cuz i'm pretty sure lots of top players prefer that than minraise calling it, but they may be inclined to better minraise calling Q9s at the same stack depth.
VHL