PS article Harrington Yellow Zone

Hi joeldowey

In these situations it is not a good idea to open raise very light. You will get many resteals and can't really use your edge postflop since your stacksize is too low. Therefore it's not a good idea to open raise with speculative hands.

At the same time these hands do perform quite well against resteal-callingranges. There are not many value hands that dominate you. Therefore these hands are perfect for resteals - you build up a big fold equity and at the same time you will perform quite well against the calling range. Therefore T9s is the better hand for resteals then A9o.

Hope I was able to clear things up.
If you have further questions feel free to ask.

Regards,
Asaban

Yes, all true. Still, if we get called and are pot-committed, then we would be happy if we could exchange that T for an A. Small pairs and especially suited connectors require big implied odds. In small stack situations practically all value in suited connectors lie in fold equity. This must be emphasized. On most flops we will have just a draw to a small pair. The fact that we might be drawing to 4.9 outs or whatever instead of 4,3 or whatever on average is generally overrated.

In cheap tournaments where people don't fold you should simply throw the smaller suited connetors in the muck when the stacks are less than X BB where X is certainly much bigger than 20.

EDIT: And his last famous word were "At least I had 6 clean outs"

thanks for clearing that up guys! much appreciated!

@Yohan: That's not right imo.

To clear things up:

I just entered a reasonable calling range against our yellow zone stack (which, according to Harrington is between 10 to 20M, which normally equivalent to 20-40BB) resteal:

99+,ATs+,KQs,AJo+

Since our stack is quite big (imo too big for a resteal allin, I prefer 15 to 25BB, which is equivalent to a M between 6 and 11) this range should be quite accurate. Maybe still a bit loose.

Let's have a look at the performance of our possible hands:

First the suited connector T9s:
MP2 67.08% 66.76% 0.32% 99+, ATs+, KQs, AJo+
MP3 32.92% 32.60% 0.32% T9s

We get 33% - not bad if you take the big FE into account.

Second we will have a look at A9o:
MP2 72.36% 70.50% 1.86% 99+, ATs+, KQs, AJo+
MP3 27.64% 25.78% 1.86% A9o

You might be surprised - but we get >5% less equity.

Summing it up:
Speculative hands like T9s are way better for resteals then mediocre Aces.

Regards,
Asaban

@Asaban

Yes, you do have a point. Still that calling range vs our 3-bet is a little bit too perfect for us to be real. Our opponent has folded exactly the hands that would be behind something like A9o, and he is nice enough not to reraise us all in.

If you change our suited connector to, say, 76s, and tweak down the stack sizes just a little bit I don't see many players having a calling range at all. They push or fold. Then committing 30% of our stack with suited connectors (or any other objectively weak hand) relies altogether on folding equity.

/Johan =

Well - the article does not recommend a 3bet. It recommends a push. Like I already mentioned our stack is a bit too big imo. Nevertheless the range is reasonable against a push from us. A 3bet without bringing all of our chips in the middle is not part of the discussion

Regards,
Asaban

I should't have opened my mouth in the first place. I read the whole thing out of context.

/Johan =

No problem - at least we had some interesting discussion that might have helped someone else to understand the basics of the M-concept

slightly over my head but i get the jist of what you are saying Yohan - lots of learning still to be done

cheers for the input

If you want further explanations feel free to ask