How to deal with a short stack pusher

AcidJoe

Stars SNG. I had a large chip lead and the short stack once we got heads up pushed every hand. During this time I was card dead. How do you deal with it. After his stack had grown to 3K I figured I had to stop it and call with something that I thought could bust him (62o 45o 83s didn't seem to fit). Finally i had some cards that I thought even if I lost might slow him down a bit. Is this a good move or do you wait for something better. I called with the intention of call his all in. Should I have just started pushing at him to slow him down? This was about the 10th hand in a row he pushed. My K's went down to him with his q 9 off when he hit the straight and that pretty much finished me. Even after this hand he kept pushing.

POKERSTARS GAME #5602137445: TOURNAMENT #28332975, $10+$1 HOLD'EM NO LIMIT - LEVEL VII (100/200) - 2006/07/18 - 17:57:20 (ET)
Table '28332975 1' 9-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 2: FinnFinn83 (3000 in chips)
Seat 5: Acidjoe (10500 in chips)
FinnFinn83: posts the ante 25
Acidjoe: posts the ante 25
Acidjoe: posts small blind 100
FinnFinn83: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Acidjoe [8h Th]
Acidjoe: calls 100
FinnFinn83: raises 2775 to 2975 and is all-in
Acidjoe: calls 2775
*** FLOP *** [Qd Td 9s]
*** TURN *** [Qd Td 9s] [5s]
*** RIVER *** [Qd Td 9s 5s] [6d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
FinnFinn83: shows [Ad 9d] (a flush, Ace high)
Acidjoe: shows [8h Th] (a pair of Tens)
FinnFinn83 collected 6000 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 6000 | Rake 0
Board [Qd Td 9s 5s 6d]
Seat 2: FinnFinn83 (big blind) showed [Ad 9d] and won (6000) with a flush, Ace high
Seat 5: Acidjoe (button) (small blind) showed [8h Th] and lost with a pair of Tens

ScoobyD

If he had a shorter stack (like half his size) or the blinds were larger, I wouldn't mind the call. But with blinds only at 100-200 it's going to take him a lot of pushes to get even with your 3:1 chip lead. Eventually you're bound to pick up something reasonable to call him with (an A, 2 paint, a pair, maybe even a decent K). I don't like giving the guy an easy double up to get close to even with T high. Given his stack size and the blinds, I think you can wait for something better than this...

pkrfce9

For a second there, I thought you were posting about me...

Patience, up to a point, is very important with this style of player. You really aren't in a huge rush. He is.

Try experimenting when you are the button. Does he raise every time you call? What if you make a small raise? How about a bigger raise? Within a few rounds, you should have a pretty good idea of how he generally responds. Avoid big confrontations with crap hands, unless he is a micro stack.

If you can, wait for a hand good enough for a call when you are BB. After a while you'll know how good your hand has to be. One guy I played, I estimated anything better than A7 or 66 would do. As soon as I got a hand like that, I pushed back and he showed something along the lines of Q8.

ScottyZ

Provided that the 100% move in assumption implied in the OP is correct, this exact situation is covered in No-Limit Holdem by Miller and Sklansky (page 209).

T8 (suited or not) is one of the hands that you can profitably call with if your assumption that your opponent is moving in with 100% of his hands is correct.

On the other hand, if your opponent is moving in with only 50% of his pre-flop hands, then T8s is not a worthy calling hand (NLHE pg. 209 again). Just because your opponent has been consistently moving all-in while on life support does not mean that he won't change gears after he builds a stack which he thinks is "big enough".

If the opponent would even fold as few as the worst 20% of his hands, you become a slight dog to his range (PokerStove). However, the money odds being a little better than 1:1 compensates you slightly even in this scenario. The opponent pushing with around 80% of his hands appears to be roughly the EV break-even point for this call.

Overall, I think it's a close decision, which (by definition) means that neither calling nor folding is a significant error here.1

ScottyZ

1Of course, calling $100 with the intention of folding after your opponent had established an extremely loose pre-flop move in range would be a serious blunder.

bdiddy69

I played a lot of tables with you today

ScottyZ

I've rethought this play. I would definitely fold here.

With the opponent moving in every hand as predictably as the OP suggests, picking up a hand that performs better against a random hand than T8s over the next 6 or 7 hands is a virtual certainty. Having even more patience would allow you to create an all-in hand with a much more significant overlay.

Does this contradict the M-S page 209 analysis? Certainly not. The call is (tournament chip) +EV as long as the opponent has a truly random hand. However, a more appealing monetary +EV situation will almost certainly come up over the next few hands assuming your opponent continues to push in with 100% of his hands.

Playing the T8s you have about a 52% chance to win the tournament immediately, and some chance of winning the tournament anyway if you lose the hand. However, you are almost certain to pick up a hand very soon which will give you a percentage chance of winning in the high 50's, without significantly affecting your chances to win the tournament (compared to losing the T8s hand instead) if you lose the hand you decide to play.

ScottyZ

AcidJoe

bdiddy69 wrote:

I played a lot of tables with you today

I thought that was you when I saw bdiddy from toronto on stars. LOL

bdiddy69

Took me a while to remember where I knew the name acid joe from, after a while i remembered and (for the most part) stayed out of your way. I was playing 12 tables but from what I saw you were having a decent session. GG

AcidJoe

I thought this was on the lower range of what I should be calling with.  I got to the point where my crap hands I didn't call to fold to his push.  I believe in hindsight I may have been better to have pushed this hand into him rather than call call.  Up to this point I hadn't pushed against him.   He was raising 100% of his hands at this point.

3 hands later I did catch KK which goes back to a few people's post that I would probably have caught a better hand in the next 10 hands or so.  Even tho it lost at that point I guess I would have been in a far better situation then.  

Thanks for the input, I'm still thinking about this one, but it was probably a coin toss as to whether to play this one or not.  

I just went back through poker tracker, and I guess while I thought he was pushing (it seemed that way), he actually didn't completely. He did fold two hands on the small blind and pushed 8 out of the previous ten. I think that now falls into the Scotty range of pushing 80%. I guess more patience should have prevailed.

Thanks again.

g2

Was he the button every hand?

When you had the button, if you pushed do you think he would have insta-called? So yes, I think you would have to show some aggression before he is going to slow down.

/g2

AcidJoe

No he wasn't the button every hand. If I called with a weak holding he pushed. I ran through a lot of very weak hands as I said before 6 2o 8 3o 23s 72o etc. I wasn't about to start raising with them (maybe I should have). I folded a bit when I had the button as I wasn't going to call and then fold to his push.

Maybe the solution was to push with some crap on the button and see his reaction. I personally now believed I should have pushed the T8s into him. He probably would have called with his A9s but it would have been the better play.

ScoobyD

When you had the button, if you pushed do you think he would have insta-called?

I'm all for aggression, but I don't think pushing in this spot is smart. Hero doesn't need to rush into a big confrontation that can get villain close to even in chips. He has a 3:1 chip lead, with blinds low enough that he can sit back and pick off the pusher with a better hand. Sure he can "try" to bully the pusher, but I'm not keen on trying this with T high. Sit back, limp in with your Ax, 88, KJ, etc, and gladly call when he pushes his 83s.

AcidJoe

I firmly believe my own lack of patience did me in. Now that I have the book the Scotty quoted (amazon super saver shipping and it still arrived in 2 days) I'll have to read through that section (and the entire book). I think I could have folded quite a few more times and then tried to pick him off. In retrospect I probably would have been better off raising or pushing that hand rather than playing how I did. Probably letting him steal even 10 more times wouldn't have hurt me that much until I got a real hand. If he then sucks out so be it (after all it is stars). Thanks everyone for your input.

SirWatts

The correct answer in this situation depends exactly on how big the blinds are. If the stacks were deep enough you would never call with less than AA (this isn't actually quite true apparently depending on how big a chiiplead you have but it's essentially correct). In this case the blinds are fairly large so I'd probably wait for any ace, a king with a half decent kicker (K7+ or K6+, probably any suited king), any pair except maybe 22 & 33, or 2 broadway cards. It's better to take a stand sooner than later when the amount he's stealing every hand is significant, but you still want the best of it when you decide to call.