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October 6, 2010
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There is something that i have been thinking about for a while now, and to be honest, I still dont have an answer, and that is what is the appropriate stack size to be raise-folding.
I think this depends on many factors, including whether the tournament is online or live, the structure of the tournament, and the average stack.
My question relates to online poker. In a well structured deep stack tournament, with the average stack at say 30bb, i think the common wisdom is that under 25bb is the point at which raise-folding isn't great, and that generally people shouldnt do it. tell me if this is wrong or has changed, but i think that it is still the case.
My view, and i seem to be hearing this more and more, is that you could do it right down to possibly 15bb. If other people think you should never be raise-folding a 15bb stack, then their shoving ranges would be slightly tighter. which means two things. our equity when we call is quite a bit less than we expect (a reason to fold), and also, our steal will work more often because people's ranges are tighter (a reason to open more)
so basically we can exploit the fact that a lot of people think we should never raise-fold, and thus we can do it with a much wider range.
i think this especially important in turbo tournaments where 15bb might be an average, or even above average stack. I think you can get away with raise-folding a lot more, especially where your intention is to call a really short stack but fold to someone else who has you covered.
what do people think?
October 6, 2010
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I think it depends.
I'd say that the boarderline of raise-folding a stack should be at 20BBs, with 25BBs you still can put in a few raise-folds imo.
You are right, peoples shoving ranges are tighter if they see you open a 15BB stack – but if you do it too often they will notice and give you the pile w/ not the strongest hands.
I feel that in todays game you just have to be balanced (when there are a few regs/competent players at your table).
You can certainly raise-fold w/ a stack of 15BB if the situation seems to be right, although the bigdog for example doesn't recommend that in general- raise-folding w/ a stack of 20BB and less.
But if you just open (and reshove) strong valuehands you won't get action if your image is very tight – whereas you might get action if you've been reasonable active.
Yep OP, I agree completely. For me 20BB is my standard cutoff point, but at nitty tables and when bubbles are involved I'm incorporating raise/folding down to 15BBs.
But this is Ask the Pros. Step up to the plate pros and field this tough question please.
Every tourney is different. Image, stack your raising on. In shallow tourneys like most low and midstakes. People at the same time are also thinking that u raising with that stack size of say 17bbs, your never folding. So they give you more credit, and fold wider. It all depends on game flow, your image, and your position..Example say i have A5s utg, w 20bbs. If they antes are on, and people have not seen me raise folding and my image is tight. Im raising it, n folding to a shove..that usually means a absolute monster. Conversely, if i have the same stack size, and the ante havent kicked in. well this is now a fold. Not enough to gain, my image is bad, and i cant call off. So you cant be speculating at this point, and this a hand ive been min raising all tourney from any position other then the blinds..where im calling 2.5x or less..so it really all depends on many factors,,gl
edit: started own thread to avoid derail.
But I do think 16BB raise/folds are gaining acceptance. Especially from LP and against ABC opponents.
i was brought up on the old school hard-and-fast 20bb rule. but as fields get tougher i have seen good players r/f 16bb stacks. id say that is the absolute MINIMUM id r/f and even then only in some very sticky spots.
remember: doubling up aipf is pretty hard to do. when you're risking your entire stack preflop, youd rather double up from 24 bb to 48bb than from 16bb to 32bb. this seems like only a few r/f's but it is still a very consequential difference.
July 7, 2012
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At what point (BBs) would you switch from raise fold to open shove? – Actually I have started a new thread on this.
TPE Pro
August 25, 2012
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I'm hardly more qualified to talk than MovesLikeDarvin is, but having played a huge number of 180-man sitngos over the last year or two, raise-folding ranges are something I've spent a lot of time thinking about.
I honestly think there are some situations where raise-folding can be profitable down to around 11-12bb, particularly when coming up against very tight players in soft tournaments, or perhaps in turbos where a 12bb stack is much more playable than it is in a non-turbo where it might be only 1/4 of an average stack.
I don't know what other guys will say in response to this, but I do obviously think that it's important to have a raise-calling range in spots where we're raise-folding, as well. One of the useful things that raise-folding shorter stacks does, particularly in 180s where you come up against the same players frequently, is allow you to induce with a wider range, and create situations where people will shove their A2o for 13bb over your cutoff open with ATo because they know you're folding sometimes, whereas if you just had a shoving range there and nothing else then you'd eliminate your ability to get any action from that A2o in that spot.
Of course, it's also obvious that there are some spots which are more profitable to open-shove than to r/f or r/c, but that also depends on our reads on the players left to act. If they're randoms, it's all about profitability of the play, but if they're players we have history with, it might be advantageous to shove a strong hand for 16bb if he's seen us shove weak hands there before, etc.
TPE Management
March 17, 2010
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I've been raise folding 12bbs on merge and killing it lately. I play mostly the turbos at night and the stacks are so shallow that your raise has a lot of weight at that point, and everyone else is so short that even if you fold, 10bbs is a workable stack. Obviously this applies to these structures and may not work in deeper tourneys.
October 6, 2010
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RonFezBuddy said:
I've been raise folding 12bbs on merge and killing it lately. I play mostly the turbos at night and the stacks are so shallow that your raise has a lot of weight at that point, and everyone else is so short that even if you fold, 10bbs is a workable stack. Obviously this applies to these structures and may not work in deeper tourneys.
this is probably why i got started thinking about it in the first place, because i pretty much play exclusively turbos and shallow structure tournaments because i mostly play on weeknights
August 7, 2012
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I honestly feel like turbos are kind of a different animal just because everyone is so short stacked. Your raise has a lot more impact, you can get away r/f smaller stacks because of how significant the raise is to everyone else's stack throughout the tournament.
September 12, 2012
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as I about to play more turbo's this is a rather good question…because its hard to work with the 20bb stack rule in the turbo's i experience…
you just dont have that stack most of the time…so I do think in the turbo's it is dev lower then 20bb…
November 12, 2012
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I know it was extremely profitable for me to raise/fold even at a 12BB stack when I was playing 45man SNGs on Stars ($55 level), and it was a big source of $EV for me. That said, turbo SNGs are very different from MTTs because they are brief (meaning survival is paramount), and most people are very shortstacked throughout the majority of the tournament. There isn't as much value to having a 40BB stack when everyone else has 12BB anyway.
I think the 20BB range makes sense for MTTs for 2 reasons: (1) your profitability when at/above 40BB is a lot greater since other stacks will be at 40BB too (avg. stack size is a big factor), and (2) MTTs last a long time so you're not just trying to survive. It makes sense to take a spot that is, in the immediate short-term, marginal/more variance because it puts you in position to play more consistently and more profitably long-term for that given MTT. The net result then is that you are more profitable ($EV) overall for that given tournament even if the spot you took earlier was neutral or -EV because you're going from under average stack size to above average.
Obviously though it really depends on the situation. If people are playing back, avoid doing it, but if they're not 3betting at all then go for it. Gameflow is also super critical … you have to be able to guess when your opponents are going to give it respect and when they wont. That's something I picked up from playing SNGs a lot and it helps massively to have this skill at FTs.
A lot of “rules” people have in tournaments sort of stem from not wanting to get exploited. But in my opinion if you want to really push your edge to the max and exploit your opponents, you have to take exploitable lines … you just have to manage to get inside the head of your opponents and be able to reliably predict what they're going to do. It's not the easiest thing to do and its difficult to teach (hence all the “it depends”), but that's where you can really make a lot of money. That's why I only play like 4 tables at a time when I do… I want to be sure I'm observing new trends in the poker community so I can exploit them.
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