Hey guys!
On the SnG Beginner coaching of last Sunday (something like the 3rd of June) amongst the many interesting situations occurred these two little sweeties. I think they are interesting enough to have them posted here. I strongly recommend everyone to think about these hands and to heed my advice after the hands.
Hand Number One - J7s
Party Poker No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t300.00/t600.00 Blinds - 4 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter
SB: t4340.00 7.23 BBs
BB: t5390.00 8.98 BBs
Hero (CO): t5850.00 9.75 BBs
BTN: t4420.00 7.37 BBs
Pre Flop: (t900) Hero is CO with 7♠ J♠
3 folds
Now, our Nash range in this spot is 50%, with any suited Jack. Why did I fold then? Because the Nash pushingrange only works if all the opponents at the table use the Nash callingrange! And the villains of this table have shown themselves not to be the best of players, and if you check their Nash callranges, you can observe that they need to let go of hands like 99, AKo, etc (depending on which opponent we are talking about).
I've set the numbers in Wiz and it turned out that this is a very borderline situation.
Now I'm not saying that this hand should be a fold on every table, but this is definitely not a fistpump on these limits because the average players on the low limits have no idea about proper risk aversion and that they will call you wider here - and if they call you wider, your pushes with hands worse than this will become horrible very very quickly.
All I'm saying is: Try to understand the concept behind the Nash ranges and ICM in general, and don't apply Nash against people who don't use it! Use it as a general guideline, as a starting point.
Generally, when there are biggish/similarish stacks on the bubble and we have them slightly covered then we could be going super crazy on their asses - but this will only work if they really really understand risk-aversion.
Hand Number Two - A5s
Party Poker No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t300.00/t600.00 Blinds - 5 players - View hand 1789747
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter
BTN: t3240.00 5.40 BBs
SB: t5130.00 8.55 BBs
Hero (BB): t5820.00 9.70 BBs
UTG: t1990.00 3.32 BBs
CO: t3820.00 6.37 BBs
Pre Flop: (t900) Hero is BB with A♥ 5♥
3 folds, SB raises to t5130, 1 fold
We have SB as a villain, who is clearly a fish from his early phase game and who has been aggro on us in the previous 2 BvB spots with similar setups.
Now, this might seem like a snap to you, but if you put the hand in Wiz and click on the "Chart" icon - the one with the little graph on it - you will get the numbers printed out in the form of a graph very quickly.
It will be obvious in a second that break-even point is when villain shoves somewhere around 85-88%. Not only that will be visible, but also the fact that we can only win a super-tiny amount here (in case he shoves ATC) but we can loose a significant amount if he tightens up to 70-75% and especially if to 50%.
Now why one could think that this is a snapcall is because we have ~8,5bbs effective. That is true, but there is one thing that you shouldn't forget: our stacksize compared to the other stacksizes. Even tho this is not a bubble yet, we have a clear dominion over the shortie and the two middle stacks. That's the main cause for our higher-than-average risk-aversion in this spot.
What I'm saying here is: do not give the range of a good reg to fishes, even when they are aggro (p.s. A5s is the bottom of our Nash here), and definitely do not give him ATC ranges in spots like this (regardless of whether Nash is ATC or not), because he won't be pushing ATC. He might be very wide, but that usually means 80% at_the_most for these typically bad players. I mean, in order to shove 80% he still needs to shove 94o!!! And I think that even that is quite an assumption for a fish, aggro or no.
Now the main point of this hand - just like in the previous one - is not to use Nash "brainlessly". Now don't get me wrong, this is an unusually tight spot, so in case you would've called this, it doesn't mean that you are a bad player - all I'm saying is that it is very important to see the mechanics behind ICM (and therefore the mechanics behind the Nash-ranges) so you can adjust yourself properly. Be careful with applying Nash against casual players, and be extremely careful when applying a Nash-range as a calling range!! If you are wrong with a push, that's one thing - bad calls are going to cost you a lot more money in general than too loose pushes.
BTW, I suggest checking every single bubble call you guys make in Wizard. (or posting them on the forums) Unless you'd bet your BR on that the call was the right decision 
Best regards guys, I really hope that this post will be useful to some! Remember: use your initiative, adapt to the situation, and think about why you are doing things as you are doing them!
akrammon
p.s. this post does not mean that you should generally be tighter then Nash - there are zillions of spots when you can go way wider than Nash. Typically SB or BU openpushing spots.
