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Stone Bubble Question
Most of my posts lately have about stone bubbles. I guess I just get myself into pickles. But here is another spot and thinking about my approach.
We’re in a $66 ACR tournament, hand for hand on the bubble. Next person out gets nothing. Min cash is $110. To the hand. We’re second in chips at the table with 37bb. The LJ min opens from a 26bb stack. LJ has pretty normal stats. I have them tagged as a low-stakes winning player. It folds to us in the big blind. We look at our cards. We definitely have some hands that we would flat with and play postflop, but what is the worst hand that you would jam here?
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4 Replies
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To be able to give a more precise answer we would have to know how many are left in the tournament, the payout structure of the tournament, and the stack sizes of all the remaining players. If our opponent is ICM aware then he would know that it is suicide to go to battle with a stack that covers him. Let’s make some assumptions: Opponent’s current tournament equity is $150.00. If he doubles through you his tournament equity increases to $200.00. If he loses to you his tournament equity is $0.00. His Bubble Factor is 3 ($150.00/$50.00) which means he needs 3/(3+1) 75% equity to call an all-in from someone who has him covered. In other words, he needs to fold everything but Aces and maybe Kings. To me the question is not which hands to jam the question is how ICM aware is our opponent? Having said that I would go with a fairly strong range. He can hurt you almost as much as you can hurt him. I don’t want to rely on him knowing how extreme ICM is on the bubble.
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If helpful. First place is $7k. There are 73 left, 72 get paid. And there more at least 6 <5bb stacks.
Anyway, I jammed AQo and got snapped by AA (sad face). But I still like the play. In fact, for just the reasons you said—a player who is ICM aware is likely only calling off with QQ/KK+ there—I’m wondering if I should be doing this MORE. Ultimately, I think my current range for this kind of play is something like AJs+, AQo+, JJ+.
But given just how much pressure we can exert, the fact that we’re almost always going to make the money even if we lose, I’m wondering if I should be doing this even wider?
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Before I read the above spoiler I was thinking I would never jam in this spot, however I think it is a good opportunity to raise any two. This puts a lot of pressure back on our opponent who has to fold everything except very top of range since they have the stack at risk. Obviously we fold in this spot to the 4 bet jam.
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I completely agree with @PetVet. This is not a JAM spot with those stack sizes.
With 37 bb, why risk 26 bb in this pre-flop spot?
If the villain opens 3 bb, you could comfortably raise to 8 – 9 bb. My sizing is ideally between 1/4 – 1/3 of the opponents stack. If they 4-bet, I’m likely folding.
If you 3-bet:
– takes the initiative (flop c-bet coming!!!)
– applies pressure
– minimizes risk (9 bb)
If you jam:
– applies maximum pressure (only the nuts will call)
– maximizes risk (26 bb)
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