Non All-in All-in Sizing in MTT's

For balancing purposes I generally play push or fold with less then 15BB and open minraise/decide with more then 15BB.

I don't think any other play has added benefits to it that are superior to just open pushing. In addition it's harder to manage custom betsizings while multitabling.

Regards,
Asaban

The problem with raising 2/3 of your stack is that in order to then correctly fold to a shove you have to have less than 16.6% equity against opponents range which if this is the case I would ask myself why I was raising such a hand in the first place. I don't think you get any more FE than just shoving tbh.

I think that Stop+Go definitely has its merits against weak fields who will fold things like underpairs and 2 overcards on the flop without properly understanding the pot odds and what you are doing, but I think it is only useful vs weak passive donks.

Like Asaban I just prefer to push/fold, though between 15-10bb I will sometimes be minraising as a steal against unobservant nitty opponents with weak hands that I do not wish to push.

Originally posted by Asaban
For balancing purposes I generally play push or fold with less then 15BB and open minraise/decide with more then 15BB.

I don't think any other play has added benefits to it that are superior to just open pushing. In addition it's harder to manage custom betsizings while multitabling.

Regards,
Asaban

wow, 15BB? I only go into NAIAI mode at about <10eff BB. I find this is about normal for low stakes. I only shove with more BB if there are difficult players behind or I have a weaker hand and really don't want a call.

When it gets to blinds of 50/1000 most people have between 3-12BB left, and still there is minraise folding. Villain minraises to 2k, I shove 10BB he folds. Very common - as metza says he does it too. I was doing this, but didn't like my results. Shove is better IMO - and balanced as you say. My argument is that balance isn't necessary and exploitable unbalanced play can show better results vs. poor players.

If I'm always open shoving <15BB, then I'm one of the only ones doing it. I think it's missing out on a lot of value at low stakes, maybe it's better for higher stakes?

As for custom betsizing, it's not too difficult with multitabling, I use the wheel mouse to scroll the bet - get the deception of NAIAI, and maybe confuse some others - while I will never fold on the flop if called, or fold to 3bet pf.

Not sure what NAIAI means tbh.

Whatsoever: Be aware, that effective BB is not the same as BB. Effective BB's take SB as well as ante into account: 2/3*(antes+BB+SB)
BB's will only divide your stack by the actual BB.

Example:
Blinds 500/1000/100, 10 handed

You have 20.000 chips.

1 Effective BB: 2/3*(1000+1000+500) = 1666,67
Your stack: 20000/1666,67 = 12 effective BB's

1 BB: 1000
Your stack: 20000/1000 = 20BB

Therefore you even push with a few more chips then we do. We would still open raise with 15BB stacks while you are already open pushing. 15BB are ~9effBB.

Regards,
Asaban

I defined NAIAI in the original post, and it's in the title.

maybe I should have phrased the question better.

In spots where we are slightly too deep to shove (most everybody has 5-10eff BB at 500/1000 blinds for example... minraise isn't a good option, shoving is fine, but is a better option to nearly shove - as Colin and Katie espouse... or is there an even better option - a committing raise open 4-6x for example?

Oh well.

I thought the whole point of a NAIAI was to simply make it harder for people to work out how many bbs you are shoving and also harder to work out pot odds.

It's not about raising 5x with 10bbs to make it look suspicious and strong. It's about raising 8.75x with 10bbs to make the regs have to do a few more simple sums to work out how many bbs you have and their pot odds.

Edit: And to be clear I don't like the idea of your committing raise as bad players can flat and it puts you in some awkward situations.

I obviously read your first posting. It explains what NAIAI does, but not what it means. What does it stand for? I guess it's a short term for something?!

Personally I don't see any profit in leaving myself 1BB behind or anything in most cases. I will do so if I have <4BB left to maintain fold equity although I shouldn't have any. Especially players that are multitabling won't realize my small stack and therefore fold to my big open raise more likely then not.

With 10BB I don't see any point in opening 8,5BB. It might confuse some regulars and therefore they might fold more often. On the other hand they might as well come to the conclusion that my play is weaker then a normal push and call even wider. In the end it's not a play that will have a significant impact on your EV. Neither positive nor negative.

The committing raise that you suggest doesn't seem to be a good play to me. If my stack isn't small enough to open shove I will just open minraise as always (but with a tighter range obv). If it's small enough I will just push.

Opening 4BB with a stack of 12BB doesn't make sense, because other players might just flat call and play fit or fold postflop. They might even have a profitable spot because you will broke anyways.

In the example I mentioned (4BB open with 12BB stack) the BB would get great odds to call with a wide range. He only needs to win the hand in ~12,5% of the cases in order to make profit, because he knows that you won't fold very often postflop (if you fold at all).

Regards,
Asaban

As I've said I don't think this makes much sense usually, but I actually thought of a spot where it might be useful on the bubble, if say, you have stack of 15bb, there are three players to act, two players with 5bb or so and one has 15bb+, and you have a hand that you would shove 5bb effective but not 15bb, you can raise to 5bb or whatever and then fold if the bigstack shoves.

Or is this still bad to raise this much and fold?

With regards to 180's, my rule of thumb is with 12bb or less then I'm always going to be open shoving. The only exception to this would be if there were a bunch of unknown players behind and I might min raise some premiums to get them to flat or do something weird.

Raise folding stacks less than 15bb should be avoided if possible, especially given the fast moving structure. Don't get me wrong, I might so for a min raise if its the sweetest spot from LP with passive players behind, but we also have to consider the detriment to our stack and position in the tournament. Example:

Say you have a 12k stack at 400/800 (15bb). We min raise fold from button/co/hj leaving us with 10.3k (roughly). Becuase of the fast moving structure we can usually expect the blinds to be going up soon AND the bb is fast approaching. In 4 or 5 hands time, when the blinds go up and through us, we now have a near 8k stack at 500/1000 (8bb) and are very much in the danger zone.

I'm not saying that I don't like min raise folding with a 15bb stack, I would just be extremely careful about picking the spots I do it in.

And as far rasing for 70-90% of your stack, you can never fold after doing it!

We probably can't for after putting 20% of our stack in either (assuming we're not doing it with complete trash)

I think your over thinking . Its not that important. Min raising under 6 bb is the way to go regs wont look at your stack alot of the time and you will get more folds and evade light calls. And when fish call you from the bb you can pretty much profitably shove any flop.

Originally posted by Targetme
I think your over thinking . Its not that important. Min raising under 6 bb is the way to go regs wont look at your stack alot of the time and you will get more folds and evade light calls. And when fish call you from the bb you can pretty much profitably shove any flop.

^^this works

I think the "not all-in all-ins" is a growing trend amongst certain regs in micro stakes (dunno about higher stakes).

In my opinion,

Advantages:
- mass multitabling regs will usually look at your ~2bb-3bb PFR and make a decision based on the PFR disregarding your stack, sometimes creating a higher fold equity;
- overly nitty players will only play their top range because they know you're commited;
- you will always call a 3b since your commited because you'll be doing it with your nash shoving range, so you'll call 100% of the time odds-wise;
- even if you do it to observant regs their response will be mostly the same as if you went all-in.

Disadvantages:
- bad players will cold call you a lot in that spot and will go with any piece of the flop or draw, or sometimes donk (eg. you PFR w/ AQo, villain CC in BB and donks on 459tt), this will create trouble for you postflop since you're basically commited;
- stop-n-go: against some nitty/bad regs I've been somewhat successful in doing it when I know they can fold a hand while being commited.
- against good regs you should keep it balanced at all times, either you NAIAI or push with your entire range.

Overall I think it's a good play, but I don't make it my standard move. I try to do it adjusting to the opponents based on notes and stats.

EDIT: forgot to mention I only use "non-all-in all-ins" with less than 10bb, and mostly between 5-7bb.

Originally posted by Targetme
I think your over thinking . Its not that important. Min raising under 6 bb is the way to go regs wont look at your stack alot of the time and you will get more folds and evade light calls. And when fish call you from the bb you can pretty much profitably shove any flop.

I think this is fine as long as you plan to do this with your whole range?

This concept has been approached from a lot of different angles and is really nothing new in the MTT world imo.

There are plenty of advantages to do this, as a mate of mine called it the Kansas City Shuffle. Putting in a committing bet to look stronger or just perplex your table and get away with lighter ranges and no showdown. I personally have had a lot of success with it and I would find that you would too in MTTs, 180's might be tougher to get away with it though. Let me explain.

IMHO, the shuffle is used to attack people that are auto-folding or just one level thinkers in general. We get the advantage of looking stronger as nobody <10bbs should really be opening light. We also get the advantage of people snap folding their cards when they see anyone has opened. We can also assume that by inflating our range we can very likely fold out hands that may have called our jam but are now folding marginal rejam spots because of the open instead of the jam. Somewhat the same concept as opening light utg on wedge and short stack, but that's another conversation all together.

Downside is that people have to understand what is going on for this to work. If you have a fish filled table in say a $4.40 180 it's very possible that you could get flatted by even a 14bb stack after opening on 8bbs, let's be real we all know that stuff happens. In reality, it's not all bad because these kind of players tend to play fit or fold post and you can still win the pot a large majority of the time. Here is the key imo, do no give up on the move if you get flatted! Once you open shuffle pre you should 98% of the time be getting in on any flop otherwise we're just spewing. It also has the wtf factor, the people that aren't used to it are usually very put off by it, which again work for us.

Overall this move is very effective when used properly, I think it's kind of caught on lately in mid-high stakes so most regs are adjusting but it's still something I use.

I haven't had time to read the whole thread because I have tables up so sorry if this is misplaced. But I personally think it's ok to open light on 15bbs or less and even close to say 12bbs in turbos (7 maybe in hypers?) In today's game the best players are finding ways to put the most play into their stacks, what was once ok to do with 20bbs is now ok to do with 14bbs and so on. If your edge on the field is where you think it should be there really isn't a ton of difference between 13 and 15bbs , but being able to scoop pots with a wider range just by opening and jamming with shorter stacks is massive.