Shove/Overbet Early stages

I used to play those. And pushing all-in preflop with premium hands is fine lol. It's super easy the early game in the $2.50 180 mans. You could raise 3xBB, get called, make a cbet and the opponent folds. OR shuve and get called by 72o ♦ I think that only works in the $2.50s though.

At low stakes it works pretty good, many fish willing to gamble. Someone better might even overthink the situation and call with AQ/AJ.

It is +EV for sure, but is it maxEV as well?
Imo you should be able to generate more chips by standard valuebetting. Since I don't play these micro's I might be wrong though. I sometimes overrate the avg player's skills in micro MTT's. ♠_grin:

Yeah what I'm wondering is that move to be maxEV.

Thought might have done enough numbers to know so if it is better

imo from EP in early bind level on non reg infected table open shove is maxEV (with range like AK/qq+)

I've often wondered if that was a good idea Just open shove the first hand if you have QQ+, AK. I personally usually call those spazz shoves with a wide range, like 10% or so, because it's a sign of a terrible player. So, if someone did that to me they could totally outlevel me. (And even more, I wouldn't even know they'd done it, because even donks get cards sometimes.)

That being said, not sure if it's maxEV either.

While I am never a fan of making an obvious suboptimal play, if your opponents are calling really wide, it is probably fine until they figure out what you are doing. Obviously in rebuy tournaments, this play has a lot more value because players dont mind losing their first rebuy most of the time. It would be nice to see a sample of 100 pushes or so with the average number of bbs won per shove. I imagine it is going to be tough to beat just playing the hand normally, often by flatting then playing postflop, but who knows. Let us know how it turns out.

Right at the start of mtt's I've found an open shove is definately NOT the max+EV way of playing your Aces but it is the best way of achieving max+EV from hands like KK and QQ for the following reasons.

With the rockets, unless you've a large number of donks on your table who really will call any shove, i've found 3bet to around 1/3 of the average stack of the donk you wish to keep in the hand, or open to around 1/4 of table average stacks(regardless of how many bb's this is).
I've found opening to 3 or 4 bb's or limping on a loose table encourages too many flat calls and subsequent limps and is fatal to your chances of winning regularly with your AA.

This overbet will regularly get you a flat call with hands such as suited picture cards and mid/small pairs and Ace rags, where they would much more often fold to a pf shove, but, more profitably, it encourages shoves from other players too with mid/high pairs and hands such as AK and AQ where the better player realises a flat call would be poor play. Works well when the table is very loose and even the nits are pushing with 99etc.

The beauty of this pf overbet is you're always a massive favourite post flop(on average) and get to increase your stack by 25%+ if the donk folds to your c/bet and generally get the rest of their chips if they catch something of the flop.

The bloated pot also encourages the average donk to have a stab at the pot on the flop, especially when acting 1st. I personally tend to heavily donk bet when out of position to avoid the risk of a free draw with a gut buster or other hand that would only give any more action when you were beat.

Anyway, over 2000 mtt's this has consistently produced a better EV with Aces than when i experimented with shoves(over 500 mtt's) where my EV with aces was nearly half what it is now.
Kings and queens was a different matter. Not gonna go into great detail on these , but playing them like i play the aces ends up with you being much more unsure as to whether you're ahead on the flop, leading you to more awkward decisions when there's the dreaded Ace or a very wet flop. Generally ends up with less EV than when i just shove with these.

Hope my comments help and would appreciate feedback

Muttley66

Hi Muttley66

Thanks for your comment. That you mentioned is quite interesting and you have a nice sample to back it up.

But what type of MTTs your sample is based on? Would be nice to know.

I've been trying open shove in 180mans with $2.5 BI for a while now. Not sure if it's max EV yet, haven't covered enough volume to know.

But I know for sure that it ain't the best move in $8 BIs.

Hi M,
I've generally been playing 5 to 10 Euro buy ins with av. 100 players on boss network. Very soft players on this site in comparison to stars on $10/20BI, but play similar to stars 180man $4 i reckon