Hi all,
I'll have another article this weekend, but I thought I'd throw you guys a freebie as well. This article will eventually go up on husng.com, and is intended for beginning-intermediate players (there isn't too much advanced stuff here, although definitely a few tidbits), but I think it's a good overview of shove or fold in the endgame, especially for the people here who play lower stakes or just are looking for a concise, simple explanation of this. Sometimes it says (see sidebar) where the sidebar doesn't exist yet, so you'll have to deal with that. As always, feel free to ask if you have any questions.
Correctly Applying “Shove or Fold” Small Blind Endgame Strategy
By mersenneary
Introduction
At the end of a HUSNG, your options from the small blind often quickly come down to two decisions: Commit your stack, or fold. Most players understand the basic concept that when the blinds get high, it is necessary to go all-in with much weaker holdings than you usually would preflop. However, people often get confused by how to correctly apply “shove or fold”, when limping and minraise/folding are better options, and how to adjust your jamming ranges versus different opponent types.
When to play Shove or Fold
When to go into a shove or fold only strategy will depend on effective stack sizes and opponent characteristics. There is no magic number of big blinds where it becomes correct to stop limping or minraise/folding, but one good rule of thumb is that once you get deeper than 8bb, the small blind is actually at a disadvantage by only employing all-ins and folds as options (see NASH chart sidebar). Thus, I strongly recommend searching for other options to maximally exploit your opponent at deeper stack depths. Common adjustments include limping or minraise/folding against opponents who fail to attack these plays preflop or postflop, and minraising or limping to induce against opponents who attack these plays too much.
Shove or fold below 8bb
Below 8bb deep, the only reasons not to employ a shove-or-fold strategy are opponent types who react extremely poorly versus limps or minraises (generally, this will mean they are playing far too tight). Other than that, shove-or-fold is a very strong strategy. 6bb deep, your opponent is forced to put in 17% of his stack preflop before looking at his cards, while you are only forced to put in 8% of your effective stack in the small blind. That's a large advantage and can be exploited simply by choosing which hands you want to use to force your opponent to go all-in or fold when it's his action.
In general, it is correct to go all-in with a very wide range of hands less than 8bb deep. The NASH chart can help with this decision – 6bb deep, for example, it suggests that the small blind should go all-in with just shy of 70% of hands when playing against an expert opponent. The NASH chart is a good baseline of whether marginal hands are best to go all-in with at this stack depth, but in order to make the most money, you should alter your shoving range based on your opponent type. For example, NASH suggests that when two expert opponents are playing each other, the big blind will call an all-in with 98o at that 6bb stack depth. However, we have all played against opponents who we know are so tight that they would never even dream of committing the rest of their stack with nine high with some room left to play. Thus, it can be correct to shove up to any two cards at this stack depth against very tight opponents.
Against opponents who are very loose and just want to gamble when blinds get high, it is important to adjust your jamming range accordingly as well. NASH recommends jamming a hand like 86o up to 7bb deep, but part of the calculation comes from expecting hands like 87, 97, 98, T8, T7, J7, J6, and 87s all to fold to an all-in that deep. Thus, if you think your opponent is likely calling all of those hands, it's important not to shove 86o at that stack depth, despite NASH's recommendation. A slightly tighter jamming range will do better against this opponent type. Don't overdo it, though – remember that weak high card hands, like Q4o (which NASH recommends jamming at 7.9bb), become even stronger if your opponent is calling with a lot of worse trash. The main hands that are devalued are low connector cards that rely mainly on fold equity to be +EV all-ins.
Shove or fold above 8bb
One important conclusion that NASH tells us is that above 8bb, the big blind actually has the better expectation in the hand if the small blind sticks to a shove-or-fold strategy and the big blind can adjust well enough to it. Therefore, against most opponents who react decently enough versus shove-or-fold, it's important to open up your playbook and use the minraise to induce and/or to attempt to get folds more cheaply and the limp against opponents who are either too aggressive against limps or not aggressive enough (very often, it will be the latter).
Still, there are hands that are still very good to go all-in with: Small pairs and weak Ax, for example, often play extremely poorly by minraising or limping, and all-in is generally the best option with those even up to 15bb. Don't be too scared to go all-in with these type of hands and weak Kx – Chubokov's hand rankings (see sidebar) show that our expectation in the hand is always going to be very good with these holdings, no matter what our opponent's calling range. If your opponent rarely jams over a minraise or calls shoves very loosely, it is often correct to still openjam with your strongest hands, as well.
A common strategy adjustment is to start minraising a balanced range of junk hands you'll be folding against a shove and strong hands that do well against a wide 3bet shoving range. For example, a hand like KJ dominates a lot of 3bet shoving hands, like J9s. By minraising, you can do much better inducing worse hands to get it all-in than you can by simply jamming yourself. However, as alluded to, a hand like A2o might do much worse with this strategy – you'd actually rather your opponent with J9s fold to a shove than go all-in against you 10bb, because it has over 47% equity against you, and it's a disaster when that hand chooses to just call a minraise because of how well it will play postflop against your Ace-rag.
Therefore, above 8bb, it's generally best to employ a mixed strategy that exploits your opponent's tendencies and makes better use of the properties of different hands in your range.
Conclusion
In HUSNGs, the endgame can be a frustrating process that feels like pure gambling. However, when done correctly, there are a myriad of different strategy adjustments that help you maximize your expectation. Learning when and how to employ shove-or-fold will make you more confident you've got the edge, even when stacks get short.
Just a quick comment: I think responding to individual hands provides a lot of value, but I'm also a firm believer that most of your improvement is going to come from understanding the basics of situations.
Great article :-)Looks like I've been playing shove/fold way too deep till now (at ~12bb against fish and ~15bb against regs).I also thought that it would be better to play shove/fold even deeper (up to 15bb) against a good regular, simply because of the equilibrium - I'm guaranteed to be at least break-even, even +EV if he's not calling the Nash ranges.I only employed this limp / minraise strategy against fish, and only till about 10bb.Regarding small pairs and weak Ax, is that something like 22-77 / A2-A7 or would you also recommend jamming 88-TT / A8-A9 ?
"I'm guaranteed to be at least break-even"This is not true above 8bb.
Well, that's what I don't understand :-(If we both play strictly according to Nash at 20 bb, then neither of us can gain any edge by deviating from it. So if he's not playing Nash and I do, then I can't do any worse than the equilibrium.This really looks like being at least break-even to the innocent reader - but when thinking a bit about it, the equilibrium says nothing about the EV of both players.So you're saying if both are playing Nash at 20 bb - can one of the players have a higher EV than the other one ?I'm confused ...
Hey Jack,I hope you don't mind me answering this, but there was a very long discussion about it in the comments of a video and I remembered it when I read your comment.The strategy as a whole is an equilibrium and it is breakeven for both players. But on each individual hand, it is slightly +EV for the BB and -EV for the SB. So you reach the breakeven by losing a bit in EV every time you're on SB and winning a bit on BB. I was very surprised to find this out too :)Very nice article... one about adjustments in calling ranges from the BB would be really interesting imo!
Thanks a lot for explaining this !Woah, that's really a very valuable piece of information, which is really not obvious, and also not well explained anywhere.
Mers asked me to post this for you (he's on a campus that can't access poker sites!)You've touched on a common point of confusion with Nash equilibria in general. Let's talk about it. What NASH does is confine the game to make it more simple than it actually is. "Let's say the small blind is limited to two options - openjam, or fold", is what NASH says. 50bb deep, this is a very silly constraint - it would be a very poor strategy to either go all-in or fold when you have the button 50bb deep. You'd lose money playing heads up poker if you did this – this seems obvious to most. If you're with me so far, it shouldn't be too hard to follow me to the fact that 20bb deep, either going all-in or folding is not a profitable strategy – you'll lose money over time doing this against a good opponent. If you're still with me, what it turns out mathematically is that against an expert opponent, you'll lose money over time employing a shove-or-fold-only strategy until you get all the way down to 8bb deep. At that point, the small blind has the positive expectation using this strategy. The biggest point of confusion people have is with what “unexploitable” and “your opponent cannot profitably deviate” means. Unexploitable does NOT mean we are guaranteed to be +EV. It means that when you use the NASH shoving range, your opponent can never do better than the NASH calling range. If he's already using the NASH calling range, there's nothing he can do to exploit you and have better expectation than he already has. Equilibrium means “here is the small blind's strategy, and here is the big blind's strategy, and there's nothing either opponent can change to increase their profits”, given our initial assumption that going all-in or folding are the only options. There will be opponents when shove-or-fold with no minraising and no limping is best 15bb deep, but those opponents are actually really rare (an opponent who is trying to get it in every single hand, for example, you just want to fold until you get a strong hand, and then you shove). Against the vast majority of opponents, even if they're not playing all that great against shove-or-fold 15bb deep (maybe you have positive expectation), your expectation will be even better employing a more mixed strategy. Does that make sense?
Brilliantly explained imo. Makes is soo much clearer, thanks Ryan.
Mers wrote that post, I just relayed it, so I can't take credit for it.
Oh haha that's funny. You are still my hero anyways Ryan, in fact I actually don't like that post, what kind of explanation is that? :)Great post Mers, thanks!
:) Glad it helped.Just one more correction to make sure we've all got it: it's not a "breakeven" strategy for either player. At some stack depths playing the NASH game, the small blind has the advantage (<8bb). At some stack depths playing solely the NASH game, the big blind has the advantage (>8bb). NASH isn't about either party breaking even.There's a NASH equilibrium for any game - in rock paper scissors, the NE is throwing 1/3 rock, 1/3 paper, and 1/3 scissors.One thing that I think might be useful is the NASH equilibrium for if the small blind has 3 decisions: minraise/call, minraise/fold, or openfold, if the big blind has only the decision of go all-in over the minraise, or fold. That's definitely solvable and it's a little side project. I shall call it, "minraise NASH".
I know from your 6th video and the exemplary range in this video that J8s-JTs, T7s-T9s, 98s, 97s, 87s are hands for an openshove 12bb deep. Now I have a question about these hands if they are offsuited and about hands like 67s, 86s: In your video these hands are in the minraise range. In my thread you recommended readless a limp with T9o 12bb deep in one of my hands as standard play, which I like. I think I know how to decide between limping/minraising depending on my opponent (I use the frequencies of 3betting, of attacking my limp, of folding to my minraise and the postflop play). Now my question is: How deep should I openshove these offsuited hands J8o-JTo, T7o-T9o, 98o, 97o, 87o and 76s, 86s against a standard/tough opponent without obvious endgame leaks (who 3bets enough over my minraises and plays aggressively in limped pots and calls very loose). What do you think about the following classification? 12bb: JTo 11bb: J8o, J9o, T9o, 98o 10bb: T8o, 87o, 67s, 86s 9bb: T7o Or do I also loose ev by shoving these hands like described in your text?I’ve another question about your article: How many minraise/fold hands do you have in your range with 10bb, 9bb and 8bb against a standard player, who is not extremely tight. I avoid minraising/folding under 10bb. Is this right or do I loose ev, because I don’t minraise enough junk hands.
I think your classification is super reasonable and shows that you have a good understanding of the strength of these hands. It's really really important that before you jam, you feel confident that your expectation from limping isn't that good, because these hands have very good expectation in limped pots when your opponent checks behind. But after that, seems very reasonable.Against good players, your minraising range simply has to have some non-inducing hands in it, otherwise it's lol-obvious what's going on (this doesn't matter against the majority of people). I don't think your opponent has to be extremely tight to throw in some minraise/fold hands 9-10bb deep, although 8bb tends to be pushing it a tad readless.
I would just note that T8o is usually going to play better against people's calling ranges of pushes than J8o, & they play about the same post-flop, so I don't think it makes much sense to push J8o but not T8o at 11bb.
Yep, good addition.
Thanks for the advice about J8vs T8. "Against good players, your minraising range simply has to have some non-inducing hands in it, otherwise it's lol-obvious what's going on (this doesn't matter against the majority of people). I don't think your opponent has to be extremely tight to throw in some minraise/fold hands 9-10bb deep" As you write especially if I play more than 1 or 2 games against good players I should have some minraise/fold hands. I am not sure which hands are suitable. Imo I need hands, which don’t have 38% equity against the opponents range and which don’t have +ev for limping or openshoving and which also don’t play too bad if my opponent flatcalls. What do you think about hands like 63s, 95s, 84s, Q20-Q4o, J2o-J6o, J2s-J3s 9bb deep. Additionally I think, if my opponent never flatcalls over a significant sample I could also minraise/fold very junky hands like 23o.
Yep, I think your understanding is good there, too. Well thought out.The main reason for having a minraise/fold range against a static, bad player is that he's not playing 50% of hands (or is, but is flatting too much), so it's simply +EV, forget the balance stuff. Against a more adaptive player, it's useful because it will cause him to jam more frequently into our inducing range, which is very profitable for us.There are plenty of opponents who it's correct to never minraise/fold at 8-10bb, don't get me wrong about that.
"Aces are good to openshove, even like A7o and up to 15bb or even higher bc their postflop value is so weak." quote h2olga 2+2What do you think about openshoving Aces >15bb? What stack size is the maximum with which you openshove A2-A7 against a passive player who only 3bets his premiums?
haha yeah I saw that post, loved that he picked the same inflection point that I've been arguing for forever.So here's the thing. With A2o, your equity against calling range gets really bad once you get to 16, 17bb. With A7o it's not so bad. But A7o also has much much more inducing value than A2o, which adds to its minraising value (and even vs people who you don't induce much, A7 plays much better postflop). Those two factors tend to balance each other out, so their borderlines for openshoving vs minraising are very similar.I think 15bb is going to be a pretty good borderline even against different player types, because the border is mostly made up of what your equity is vs his big hands and what percentage of the time he has those big hands.With A2, it's not like the expectation from minraising gets worse if he doesn't 3bet jam a lot - it's going to be pretty close in expectation whether he jams with J9o or flats with it.I'd be open to arguments about why openjamming is better even deeper than 15bb though.