$16 Per Hour SNG Blueprint – Part #2 Becoming A Bubble Ninja!
Mark’s Introduction To This Section While all the sections of the SNG Blueprint work together, this is the single most important when it comes to boosting your profits. With more than 65% of your potential ‘edge’ over opponents coming from the bubble, it makes sense that you should focus much of your attention here. I’m going to start this section by going into more detail on prize pool equity. Key here is that you understand that a $1 ‘prize pool equity’ edge at the bubble is a real $1 over time – we are not dealing with some abstract concept here, if you decline to make a shove which has a positive expectation you just cost yourself real money! Make sure you understand this, and make sure you download the free 30 day trial of SNG Wiz too, this tool will help you find your personal leaks and is a crucial component of the course.
Best of luck at the tables, Mark http://www.sitandgoplanet.com
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$16 / Hr SNG Blueprint – List Of Contents Chapter #1 – Why The Bubble Represents 65%+ Of Your Profit Potential Chapter #2 – ICM, Prize Pool Equity And Detail On Why You Need To Think Of This As Real Money Chapter #3 – ICM Examples In Common Situations Chapter #4 – SNG Wiz, How To Use It To Your Maximum Benefit Chapter #5 – Ranges Revisited, Shove And Call Ranges And How To Assess Your Opponents Chapter #6 – When ICM Does Not Work, Some Important Exceptions Chapter #7 – Recap Of Key Points + Areas To Focus On Over Next 7 Days
Extra #1 – Behind The ICM Math, Simple Example Of How This Is Calculated
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Chapter #1 – Why The Bubble Represents 65%+ Of Your Profit Potential After reading part #1 of this course you will be aware that our key objective for the early and middle stages is simply to get to the bubble with enough chips to at least make our opponents think before they call our all-in shoves. Playing this way works because we get to more bubbles being reasonably cautious – and the bubble is where the real money is! We take positive expectation situations along the way of course, what I want to drill into you here is a ‘Get Me To The Bubble’ mentality! We already went through some of the common bubble mistakes, in part #1, including playing too much ‘post flop’ poker when stacks are shallow, calling too light and failing to push all-in with the wide range of hands which can profit from opponent’s small calling ranges. These errors, along with failure to adapt to the stack sizes of the players, cost a lot of money. One of the key factors in teaching you to make $16 or more an hour is that you will take advantage of your opponents bubble mistakes almost every time you get to the bubble. Do this often enough and you have a steady source of income, regardless of the outcome of any particular set of games – if you manage to play a decent number simultaneously you will incrementally grow your bankroll, all thanks to your opponent’s bubble errors! To emphasize the reasons why the bubble is such a big proportion of your profit let us look at some of these mistakes and try and put a cash value on them. To do this we will start with a simplified ‘average winnings before and after the hand’ in a similar way to part #1. As we move forward we will revisit this in terms of a more advanced mathematical model – The Independent Chip Model. Example Of An Expensive Bubble Error – Calling Too Light Too light at the bubble can actually mean a surprisingly small range of hands. I know most players would snap call with a pair of jacks (for example) when facing a shove, this could easily be a big mistake. To keep things easy let us go one wider and imagine player A sees a shove ahead and decides to call with any pair 88+, Any Ace bigger than Ace-Ten and king-queen suited, this is 8.3% percent of hands. Player B is actually fairly conservative and pushes all in with any pair, any ace with a 5 or better kicker and King-Jack or better (14.6% of hands). All players have 3000 chips, equally share the current total prize pool equity of $100 equally, at $25 each – we will ignore the blinds to keep things simple.
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We know (again from part #1 of this course) that doubling the number of chips in this situation only increases overall average winnings (equity) by 50% - and that players C and D who are not in the hand will see their average win increase by $6 each time, just for watching the outcome of the flip! So, how much does it cost when A calls with too wide a range? Here is the rub, if we take those lowervalue calling hands which have 50% winning chances against what B is pushing with then the call costs $12. Yes, even if A has a (slightly) better hand this time, they have risked $25 to win $13 on a 50/50 chance. To put it into concrete terms, even if player A develops x-ray eyes and sees that player B is pushing King-Jack, he should still fold Ace-Queen and pairs below jacks here every time! Now, this is a real $12 (on average) given away, that’s essentially split between the players not involved in the hand. Player B will not be happy to see his equity being gambled with, but that is just how it goes. It should be clear that calling too light at the bubble will cost money, real money! Calling Too Light #2 – An Example To Get You Thinking! Here is another example of making a bubble call with will cost you money over time, real currency. I have included it here for a good reason, for most people learning the details of prize pool equity for the first time it is a little bit of an eye-opener. Of course, my example is artificially constructed to highlight my point. However similar situations will come up in real games and you will need to understand the logic correctly to make the right play. In the picture below we see an all-in shove from the first player to act, and we see the big blind holding Ace-King suited – a premium hand. This is a screen shot from the SNG Wizard, a calculator we introduce shortly – I’ll explain the numbers later in this part of the course.
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This output shows a player 1 st to act pushing all-in with 14.6% of his hands, that is any pair 66 or better, Ace-Five suited or better and Ace-Ten off suit+, along with many high card combinations from Queen-Nine suited and Queen-Ten off suit upwards. Next we see 2 folds, and then the fact that the player in the big blind here – with blinds at 200 / 100 and 3750 chips – holds Ace-King suited. Now, it is the column of numbers in the middle of this picture which tell us the key information. We need to compare the average equity gained by playing (in this case calling) and the average equity for folding. These are EqP% and EqF% and show that the equity for folding here is actually higher than for calling. On average a player who folds this spot will win 66 cents per game more than one who plays – so the advice is to fold. Remember, we do not ‘play to win’ or ‘play to cash’ we make a series of decisions which result in a highest average prize pool equity. In this case your prize pool equity from folding is highest – so you fold. If nothing else I wanted this example to demonstrate the power of understanding the mathematical approach to bubble decisions. This is simple to learn and is a major step towards the goal of reaching $16 per hour, every hour! Expensive Bubble Errors #2: Folding When You Should Be Shoving! This is slightly harder to quantify without going into the ICM Math (I will get to that very shortly), I’ll go for it though. Since once you understand the importance of the bubble in concrete terms you should be far more motivated to learn the concepts in the rest of this section of the course – since you’ll understand the potential for profit! So, lets say that we have our equal 3000 chip stacks once again, and that 2 players fold with a pot of 550 chips in the middle (300 / 150 blinds + 25 Antes). Player B folds, giving the pot to player A – in poker speak ‘giving him a walk’. This will often be an expensive mistake because of the limited range of hands A would call with. Even if we take the ‘too light’ range of 10% this means that B could have taken the 550 chips 90% of the time. Those times A called then he might still win 30% with any-2 cards – depending on the hand this could be even more. I am going to estimate that this mistake (not shoving all-in!) cost B an average of $1.50c in prize pool equity. That is to say that B will increase his average win in this game by $1.50, on average over 1000’s of attempts, if he takes this opportunity to shove rather than passes it up. That is a lot of money when you reconcile your account at the end of the month!
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A Calculator Which Does The Math Part For You – 30 Days Free! By learning the basic ‘math’ of bubble play and getting yourself a special calculator (30 day trial is available for this) then you will be the player who is capitalizing on these type of errors and not the one making them – this is one of the key components of the $16 per hour SNG formula and I recommend you download it now and familiarize yourself with the interface while you go through the rest of the course. Alternatively, you can first read our SNG Wiz Review at SNG Planet.
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Chapter #2 – Introducing The ‘Independent Chip Model’ (ICM) Up until now I have been referring to ‘prize pool equity’ in a general sense, the idea was to get you familiar with the concept of what you will win over 1000’s of tries before we took the next step. Understanding and using the Independent Chip Model while you play is that next step, this chapter will introduce it and we will then give you some examples of how this knowledge will turn you into a bubble ninja!! Key to understanding ICM is that the value of each individual chip changes over time when the prize pool is structured in anything but a ‘winner-takes’ all format. A simple way of understanding this is to think of our 50% / 30% / 20% payout from a standard SNG and then give one of the players 9997 of the 10,000 chips in play at the bubble – with one chip each to the other three players. In this situation we fully expect that the player with the big chip-stack will win, taking the 50% first prize (this is $50, so each chip is thus worth just under half a cent). What about the others? Since there is another $50 that must be awarded, all else being equal over 1000s of tries, each will win $50/3 = $16.67c, the ‘value’ of their single chip is huge compared to the value of each chip of the big stack – yet at the start of this game they all had 1000 chips for their $10 entry fee – making them ‘worth’ 1c each over the long run. Sure, this is an extreme example, what it does is to demonstrate that the relationship between your equity in the prize pool and the size of your chip stack is not the same thing. Key Point: The Chips You Win In A SNG Tournament Are Worth Less, Per Chip, Than The Ones You Already Hold. Making ‘good’ decisions based on ICM involves assessing the situation, stack sizes and possible hand ranges of your opponents – and then plugging them into an ‘ICM Calculator’ such as SNG Wiz. Doing this while you play will not be feasible (or legal at most poker sites!), what winning players do is to review their sessions by testing out situations while away from the tables. What you end up with is whether a certain play would have a positive expected value in terms of dollars of prize pool equity, or a negative one. This is a key term and one which we will be abbreviating as ‘+$ev’ ( positive dollar expected value) or ‘-$ev’ (negative dollar expected value) from now on. You might also see ‘Cev’ mentioned on forums and blogs – this stands for ‘Chip expected value’ and only
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refers to the change in the number of chips you hold before and after making a play without accounting for the average value of those chips. Here is an example to start you off, you are at the bubble and hold a pair of Jacks, here are the stack sizes and average equity in the prize pool for each player based on ICM calculations. Player 1: 4000 Chips – Prize Pool Equity Before Hand = 28.42% Player 2: 1750 Chips – Prize Pool Equity Before Hand = 15.75% Player 3: 5000 Chips – Prize Pool Equity Before Hand = 31.75% Player 4: 3000 Chips – Prize Pool Equity Before Hand = 24.06% Blinds are 300 / 150 with no ante, and players 1 and 2 fold and player 3 pushes all-in, we now need to make a decision that will increase our prize pool equity. No nonsense about ‘playing to win or ‘playing to cash’, this is simply a math problem concerning what action increases our average win rate the most over 1000’s of tries – that is ‘how do we play to maximize prize pool equity?’. Before we go any further we have to take a guess about what kind of hand Player 3 might have pushed all-in with. This player is aggressive, but does not appear to understand bubble strategy that well. We estimate any pair, Ace-Seven or better, King-Ten / Queen-Jack or better (which is 19.2% of all possible hands). After plugging these into an ICM calculator you will get the range of hands it is profitable to call with and those you should fold. If you plug these numbers into SNG Wiz using the standard 50% / 30% / 20% structure, you will find that calling with QQ+ is profitable here, though if you had JJ or Ace-Queen you should fold. Let me repeat this – you fold Jacks here. You fold them because, on average your prize pool equity is bigger after the hand when you fold them than when you call with them. It does not matter that your jacks are probably the ‘best hand’ based on the range of hands your opponent might play, it cost you real money to call with them. This might be a surprise to many of you – in fact I am happy if it is, since this is a major step on understanding how you can plug leaks and enjoy some of the huge profits available from online SNG tournaments.
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Let Us Think About What Your Opponents Are Doing ‘Mathematically’ Your opponents will be folding, calling and shoving with ranges of hands which ‘seem right’, but are in fact losing them money almost every time. Meanwhile you will be plugging common situations into an ICM calculator, learning the results and taking advantage of those bubble errors again and again. Let me share an insight with you here – once you learn the math, you will be pushing all-in confidently with hands which previously appeared to be easy ‘folds’, you will also be folding hands which you would have snap called with before. Each time you do this you will be maximizing your long-term expectation. By maximizing your expectation while other players gift you money by making mistakes you will build your bankroll over time, it really is that simple! Let us recap using the Independent Chip Model to your advantage first. This is a mathematical formula which models the changing value of chips based on how the prizes are distributed. SNG Wiz then takes the changing values of chips, compares these with the winning chances of specific hands against possible ranges of hands – and gives you clear advice which you will using in a learn-improve-learnimprove cycle playing SNG tournaments. Key to this relationship is that, when the prize money is close, chips you lose are worth more than additional chips you might win. While it is possible to calculate ICM by hand I do not recommend it, instead get hold of a calculator (SNG Wiz is my favorite and the one that the remainder of this course will be based on). Once you learn the basics you will clearly see opportunities which you missed before while playing – it will be a revelation! I’ll add a chapter at the end of this book to show how the calculations behind ICM work for those readers who are interested. Next we will look at some common bubble situations and show how learning to use an ICM calculator will help.
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Chapter #3 – ICM Examples In Common Situations There are 3 key variables which affect the outcome of an ICM Calculation for a given prize pool structure, these are: Blind Sizes Compared To Stack Sizes, Hand Ranges And The Different Stack Sizes of Players at the table. With a huge number of possible situations we need to break things down a little here. The most common examples include the existence of one or more short stacks at the table, one extra-large stack and 3 medium ones or situations where one or more players do not understand the bubble at all and are playing ‘crazy’ (from a math perspective) poker. At the end of each of these examples I will make some suggestions of which variables to change when you get hold of SNG Wiz. How to maximize your benefit during the 30 day free trial of this tool will be covered in the next chapter. I will explain the common bubble situations which each of the diagrams below is showing. For the first one I will also go into the details of how to read the SNG Wiz screenshot to get a better insight into what is happening. Example 1: A Big Stack And 3 Mid-Sized Stacks A very common situation is shown below, one player has a big pile of chips and 3 others are comfortable with mid-sized stacks – waiting to see who will bust out first. Dynamics here often allow the big stack to ‘bully’ the table, pushing with a wide range of hands. In the example below the hand is folded to the big stack in the small blind, who pushes all-in.
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Knowing this player is conservative (not a bubble expert!) you assess he would make this push with: Pairs 66+, Ace-Nine offsuit+ or Ace-Four Suited+, Any 2 picture cards suited or unsuited and some other suited high cards such as Ten-Nine+ And King-Eight+. This works out to be approximately 20.6% of all possible hand combinations. Now, since you know this guy could be pushing ten-nine here, Ace-Queen seems an easy call, right? Well – the math will tell us the answer to that. If we look at the list of figures in the middle of the diagram, we see that EqP% = 19.87 and EqF% = 21.42, both of these numbers represent prize pool equity, the first is for your average prize pool equity after calling in this spot, the second for folding. The difference is huge, it is -1.55%, if this were a $10 game, with a prize pool of $100, then making this call costs you $1.55c in long term profits. Again, it does not matter that your hand is better than most of the big stack’s range – the only thing that matters is your long-term winnings by taking each action. SNG Wiz advises a fold here and also suggests you require Jacks or better to call. As you begin to go through your own hand histories you will see a pattern at the bubble – the unpaired hands fare far worse than the high pairs, even if you think of them as ‘equal’ in terms of strength. One more caveat, I started this part of the Blueprint with examples where you should fold hands that might seem like easy calls. This is for the reason that the majority of errors at the SNG Bubble involve calling ‘too light’. If an opponent knows you will only call with premium hands then they can widen their shoving range – often to any-two cards. You will need a defense against this, and will thus have to call wider in certain situations. For the moment we will continue with the expensive mistakes. Part #4 of this course will look at the important ‘he knows, she knows, he knows’ aspects of bubble ranges – we will build incrementally! Example 2: Big Stacks And Small Stacks When there are two large stacks and two small stacks at the table it is important from an equity perspective that you do not call an all-in from the other big stack ‘light’. If you consider the ‘average wins’ then the big stacks have a lot of equity to risk, and if they go to war a lot of this will be given away to the two small stacks – you need to account for this factor in your calling ranges. The example below illustrates this point. Even if you know that your big stacked opponent is pushing exactly jack-ten you should still only call with pairs 10 and above or ace-king – there is just too much equity at risk to go with any more hands.
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Exercise: The next chapter involves using SNG Wiz on your own hands, motivated readers might like to make the first small stack push all-in in this scenario and assess the calling ranges for the remaining players. Before you do this, try to assess what they might be and why! Example 3: Extra High Blinds If everyone survives a while, the blinds in SNGs can easily creep right up. Having bigger blinds in play forces the action in many ways, since posting will reduce both your prize pool equity and your ability to get opponents to fold their hands. In a lower level game you will need to adapt your pushing ranges a little based on the fact that most opponents will be desperate to call you to avoid blinding away. Balancing this should be your drive to accumulate more chips – there is no bigger crime in a SNG tournament than losing the ability to get your opponents to fold. Extra-High blinds do make your calling ranges looser, though while you still have the ability to get people to fold then you should not loosen too much! In the example I adjusted one of the example hands to show what the pushing ranges were from the small blind. As you will see in the picture this is a massive 71% of hands! Of course calling ranges also get lighter when there is so much equity already in the pot from the blinds, in this example to a huge 36%.
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Key here is to illustrate the point that both push all-in and calling ranges get looser when the blinds are large. I recommend you look at some situations where this has happened in your own games and assess the pushing and calling ranges. This will give you a profitable edge the next time you are in a high-blind situation. Example 4: The Effect Of A Micro Stack Here is an interesting thought experiment, how do you think a micro-stack at the table should affect the ranges you call all-in pushes from the other players with? If you thought that you should call much tighter then this would be correct. In terms of average winnings the micro-stack has a very low number. Your fight with another big stack would increase this to a minimum of $20 (for 3rd), this equity comes from the players who go to war with their hands – regardless of who wins. Below is an example of how tightly you should play when a micro-stack will soon be blinded away. As you can see SNG Wiz recommends pushing any-2 cards from the small blind here. Even if the player in the big blind somehow knew that the small blind was pushing 2-3 suited, he can still only call with 23%
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of hands! Try inputting a conservative range for the small blind here – you will quickly see that the big blind can call with top 2% only!
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Chapter #4 – SNG Wiz And How To Use It To The Max! Right, if you have got this far without downloading the excellent SNG Wizard then now is the time to do so, simply click the logo below to go to the Wiz website then follow the download instructions. You will get a 100% functional 30 day free trial, and I genuinely believe that once you see the difference it makes to your profits you will feel that the purchase price for the license is a huge bargain once the trial is up! There are several ways which this tool will improve your play. Starting with an automatic analysis of your hand histories. You will need to follow the instructions at the site to save text versions of your games (there are slight variations depending on which poker site and which computer OS you use, though this is very easy), and then import them into the Wizard. Each all-in situation is then highlighted with a symbol, which immediately shows you which to focus on. Once you spot a ‘bad call’ (for example) you can click and see the calculations behind it – you can then adjust stack sizes, ranges and blinds to see how and when this same call would have been profitable. I cannot emphasize enough how much this will help your game, you will immediately move from understanding the bubble from a theoretical perspective to being able to use that knowledge to sharpen your own game. You will be amazed how fast you become familiar with common stack / blind situations and can focus your attention on the more important areas of assigning good ‘hand ranges’ to your opponents.
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Next, and probably the most important is to take individual hands / situations and adjust the stack sizes / blinds and hand ranges manually. This gives you an insight into how changes in the situation change the most profitable course of action. For example, you might plug in the stacks and blinds, and find that you can call with Jacks+ Ace-Queen Suited+ in a particular scenario, then add a mini-stack to the table and see how this changes your profitable calling range. Just doing this for 15 or 20 minutes each day using real hands as a starting base - and remembering the key adjustments - will give you a huge profitable edge at the tables.
One aspect of using SNG Wiz that you need to be aware of is that giving accurate hand ranges to your opponents is key to getting accurate end results. The next chapter deals with this tricky subject.
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Chapter #5 – Ranges Revisited, Shove And Call Ranges And How To Assess Your Opponents We first mentioned opponent hand ranges for opponents in Part #1 of the course – and will continue refining this vitally important area right up until Part #4! For this section I will take different types of opponent and give you insights as to what they are willing to push all-in or call an all-in with. Once you know the type of things to look for when playing, and combine this with the sort of hands you see at the bubble, you will be in a powerful position to boost your profits. First up, this part of the course contains insights into ICM and prize pool equity models. Some of your opponents will know about this, while others will not. There are ways of working out who is who, though first I’d like to ask a question that should get you thinking about the hand ranges of opponents. How are the ‘hand ranges’ for the following actions affected by whether a particular opponent understands prize pool equity (ICM) math? A) The range of hands which a player would call an all-in with? And: B) The range of hands which a player would push all-in with at the bubble. See if your answers agree with mine! A) A player who understands prize pool equity will know that they need up to 2-to-1 on their chips to make many profitable calls at the bubble with even stacks. Their calling range will be very tight, depending on circumstances to <5% of hands only, this range will expand and contract depending on how they assess your pushing all-in range. A Player who does not understand the equity equations only needs to convince themselves that their hand is a favorite when matched against your pushing range. This means they will be calling a lot wider, including with hands that an experienced SNG Player would fold without even considering any other action. Holdings such as Ace-Eight, King Ten or a small pair are all calling hands for these players. B) Understanding prize pool equity has a large effect on pushing ranges too. Those who know that you can not profitably call with many hands are liable to push a huge range (any-2 cards in many situations that the math supports this). Players who do not understand equity models will generally push much smaller ranges – you will profit from their ‘tight button folds’ in many situations. So, those who understand ICM push wider and call tighter (within mathematically ‘good’ boundaries), those who do not push tighter and call wider. We’ll take this one step further in Part #4 of the
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Blueprint - and look at how your image affects people’s ranges – for example if they think you understand ICM, how does it change how they behave when you are in the big blind? First, how can you tell whether someone understands what is happening? This is more of an art than a science – however there are some ways of doing this: -
Multi-tabling? Players who play more than 4 tables at once usually have a grasp of the SNG Math, not always, but the more tables you see someone playing the more likely it is that they are playing the ‘numbers game’ of exploiting bubble mistakes using prize pool equity thinking.
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Winning Players With Big Samples: A player might be a winner over 100 or even 300 SNGs without understanding the math due to natural variance. It is highly unlikely that someone with 1000’s of games at a positive ROI could do so without studying the numbers. There are many stat checking services which will help you with this.
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Nit to Push-Fold Style: Just like you will learn from this course, once the profitability of the bubble is realized, players will often adapt their game just to ensure that they get there with enough chips to get opponents to fold. The resulting style is super-tight early, stealing blinds from position and extremely rarely calling in the mid-game and then a sudden reversion to pushing all-in! If you see a player follow this pattern more than once then you can be fairly sure that they know the prize pool math and adjust accordingly.
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Chat Tells: We recommend in part 4 of this course that you never get involved in table chat. Not all players agree, in fact there are players who do understand the math (at least in theory) who tell you that they do, they will often berate an opponent for making a call which spilled their equity (as well as the callers) to the rest of the players, ‘You can’t call with Ace-Ten there you Fish’ kind of thing. Conversely, you will see players who get stressed that people are pushing all-in and no longer ‘playing poker’ when the blinds are big, these players are telling you they do not understand pot-odds, let alone the more advanced ICM math. Do not respond, make a note of these players and try to play them as often as possible!
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Early Game Style: In the same way the tight early style often gives you a clue, the hands played early in a game are often similar to the hands you will see used to call all-ins at the bubble. If a player calls a raise with King-Jack off suit or calls a raise with Queen-Ten early you can be pretty sure that they will call with these hands later – however ugly in terms of long-term winnings!
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Your Buy-In Level / Site: This last point should be used with some caution, though is still useful enough to include in our list. Some sites are better suited to ‘Grinders’ than others, the obvious examples being the bigger US-Friendly sites at the mid-levels and up. Once you get to the $22+
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levels and above you should work on the assumption that 2/3rds of your opponents will have an understanding of bubble math (though the extent of this knowledge may vary). At smaller sites and those with more recreational players the proportion will be lower, though the $20 level is usually profitable enough for 40%+ to understand the math. If you are at an ‘easy’ site (for example Titan Poker) and at the $10 level or below you can expect only 2 or 3 people who know the numbers, and even they may or may not be disciplined enough to follow it accurately! So, these are some of the factors which affect the pushing and calling ranges of your opponents. How about we try and come up with some default ranges for certain player types in a typical bubble scenario – and then show you how changing the situation or blind to stack ratios affects the ranges you can successfully use. Turning Theory Into Hand Examples – Bubble Situations Here is a typical situation, you are dealt a ‘strong’ hand at the bubble while you are the big blind, and face an all in from the button. In the first situation we assume a player who we have assessed as understanding the prize-equity math, in the second situation we have someone who has demonstrated clearly that they do not: In each case we use 3750 chip stacks and blinds of 300 / 150. Scenario #1: Bubble Savvy Player: This player knows that you can only call with a small percentage of hands, say top 5-6% if he shoves, so that 85% to 90% of the time both the small blind and you will fold. Since he will win a certain number of times when called we can give this player a huge pushing range of Any Pair, Any Ace, King or Queen, Any Jack with a kicker of 8+ and any suited connector 5-6 or higher, this is the top 53% of hands. Scenario #2: Non-Bubble Savvy Player: This player does not understand that you can not easily call. He will expect to be called fairly wide, though we do not know whether he consciously considers this! He will thus be pushing only with a range of hands he expects to have a reasonable chance in a showdown, and could be raising ‘small’ instead with the top 2% of hands to induce action further defining his range. For now we will stick to pushes with the entire range - which I would suggest as, pairs 66+, Ace-8 unsuited, or Ace-five suited plus and King-Queen offsuit+, a mere 13.4% of possible hands. In addition to making small raises with aces, kings, queens and ace-king – this type of player will often try limping with suited cards or the smallest pairs. Against this narrow a range of hands our calls are very limited indeed – JJ+ with a mere 1.8% of hands have positive expectation calls.
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Another Example – From The Perspective Of A Caller What about the hands you can push? Let us have a look at the calling ranges for the same two players. We will keep everything equal as far as the blinds and stacks are concerned, just make you the button with a savvy and non-savvy player in the big blind each time – what will they call with. Scenario #1: Bubble Savvy Player: Key here is whether this player has assessed you as someone who understands the bubble or not! Assuming you are an unknown, with 12 blinds he is not in any desperate state, this player is likely to be calling a shove with only the tightest range of hands. I would suggest 99+, Ace-Queen off suit+ here… that is just over 3% of hands. Note that this range increases if he thinks you are pushing wide (that you understand the dynamic), and decreases if he thinks you are tight yourself. Exercise: If a bubble savvy player on the button thinks with 12BB stacks thinks that both players in the blinds will only call with 3% of hands, what is the range that this player can profitably shove? (Hint: Adapt a hand from SNG Wiz to get the answer and you will be well on your way to $16 per hour!) Scenario #2: Non-Bubble Savvy Player: This player only needs to think he beats your range to call. If he believes you have been pushing all-in a lot then he may call you amazingly ‘light’ in this situation. I’d put this calling range as high as 20% depending on the individual, that’s any pair, any ace, king-nine suited +, Ten-Nine suited+. Ranges – When Someone Makes A Horrible Call: Whatever level of SNG you play, an opponent will sometimes make a ‘horror call’ in terms of prize pool equity math, spew your equity all over the table and end up beating you and will often rub salt into the wounds by letting you know in the chat how ‘bad’ your all-in push was!! It does not matter how tempting it is to correct them, just say ‘nice hand’ (or nothing at all) and move on graciously. You should then note the tournament Id and come back later to review it. What you are looking for is slightly different this time, you are looking for clues that might have told you this player would later be calling ‘light’ at the bubble. Instead of blaming the individual you need to work out how to spot them in future, and then use the ICM tools to adjust your own ranges to exploit their bad play to the largest extent possible. We will return to the subject of ranges in the final part of this course – the part that brings everything together with a ton of great tips to improve your profits! Until then, start thinking in terms of ranges when you play – even when you have folded, you will be surprised how fast patterns emerge that can be profitably used again and again.
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Chapter #6 – When ICM Does Not Work + A Note For Those Who Refuse To Use It! ICM and prize pool equity math is the single biggest factor in transforming your approach to profiting from SNGs. It is not, however, a magic bullet which fits with every scenario perfectly. Before we move on, I wanted to clarify some situations where ICM should not be used at face value. One of the SNG experts who reviewed the original draft correctly pointed out that, at least in theory, ICM can actually be used for most of these scenarios from a purely mathematical perspective. While I agree with this point, the list below contains many situations where your common sense and the situation need to be the prevailing factors in your bubble decisions. One of the biggest factors is that ICM can not account for that moment when you lose the ability to get any of your opponents to fold! After this short list I will give you my standard answer to the doubters too. 1) ICM does not properly account for micro stacks, especially when they are sitting out and will not play the hand or have less than 1 blind left. Here is an imaginary situation, the blinds are 500 / 250 and you have 800 chips in the big blind, stacks are 500, 6500, 4500 and 1500 (you!), the 500 chip stack folds and the 10,000 stack pushes… what are you calling with here? You know folding will guarantee you 3rd place (the all-in guy will be auto-folded to any raise). ICM may well give you a strange answer here, in reality anything but aces would be a crazy call from a long-term profitability perspective! 2) Extremely High Blinds Compared To Stacks: When all of the players get very short compared to the blinds the numbers break down too. This is a rare situation, my advice is to shove any 2 long before you get to 3 blinds or under! 3) Blind Increases: The fact that the blinds will rise significantly next hand puts even more pressure on the short stacks. ICM only accounts for the current situation. 4) Crazy Opponents! The more willing your opponents are to get all-in against each other the better. One of the rare situations where I would pass up an +$ev edge at the bubble is where simply folding will give me a bigger edge – simply due to opponents who are all-in most hands spewing equity my way! Though to be honest I would normally just take advantage by pushing a mathematically correct range of hands against their loose calling ranges. 5) Loss Of Fold Equity: This one is hard to quantify as it is often opponent and stack sizes specific. Having enough chips to at least make an opponent consider folding is a must. ICM can be adapted to a the wider ranges of those who have blinded themselves down, what is can not do is quantify that point in the game where multiple opponents may call and check-down just because it is cheap to do
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so. Learn to backtrack from this point and see it coming, it may be better to shove any-2 while you can still get people to fold than to simply lose your clout by blinding away. 6) Where The Stacks Are Seated: Getting advanced now (we will cover this point in section #4)… the concept is which stacks are in the blinds when you have the button can affect how easy it is for you to steal chips. Imagine one huge stack and one very small stack compared to 2 medium stacks and you will start to see the picture. Yes ICM will work out the ranges for each hand, what it will not do is predict that you will have relatively few stealing opportunities with the big stack next to compared to those times when this player is across the table. Of course, adjusting ranges correctly will help you get the play right once you find yourself in this situation. Even If You Do Not Intend To Use ICM, You Need To Understand It. You will often hear statements along the lines of “I don’t believe in ICM” or “I don’t need ICM Math – I’m a talented poker player”. I’ll be honest, this is usually from individuals with little experience who are enjoying some massive positive variance at the start of their career. My response to them is simple. Fine, if you do not wish to learn the ranges or the math then that is your call and good luck to you. However, ICM will be affecting the behavior of up to half of your opponents at the table in any one game. Therefore, taking the time to understand what is motivating their plays and moves will give you an insight into their thought process – potentially allowing you to outplay them at the tables. The short version is “why would you not want to understand how your opponents are thinking?” Personally, I believe that knowing ICM, being able to put people on ranges and being able to adjust to those who do and do not understand what is going on is enough to earn $16 (or maybe a lot more) per hour from the tables!
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Chapter #7 – Recap Of Key Points + Areas To Focus On Over Next 7 Days Quite a lot of information in a short section of the course – time now for a quick summary and some areas to focus on to ensure that you incorporate these changes into your strategy before we move on to the next area. The key is to start using SNG Wiz, to save some real hands (you can cut and paste the hand histories or save them to a designated folder on your hard drive at many sites – or simply follow the SNG Wiz FAQ) and work through a variety bubble hands with different stack sizes and blinds. You will quickly see a pattern emerge – and I am almost certain that most readers will find they have been calling too light and pushing too tight! I would also like you to add one more table towards the end of the next period, the next part of the course will focus on multi-tabling and it is important to get you used to making multiple decisions and watching many opponents at the same time. If you were already on 2 then aiming for 3 tables will give you a big boost towards your goal. For now you should stay at the lower ($5+50c levels) and finish clearing your bonus, we will be moving up soon – for now it is important that you focus on making ‘good decisions’ without having to consider the amount of cash involved. Most important of all over the coming week is to get the prize pool equity logic straight in your mind. ‘Playing to win’ or ‘playing to cash’ are both deeply flawed thinking in 1-table SNG tournaments. We play to maximize our long-term expectation as measured by prize pool equity. The only time we would deviate from this is when there is an extreme short-stack or (perhaps) when the rest of the table is so crazy that you have a bigger positive expectation by folding than you do from calling. One more exercise – imagine equal 3000 chip stacks and 300 / 150 blinds, the big stack pushes all in with top 75% of hands, a medium stack calls from the small blind. Answer this to yourself: What hand range does the medium stack need to make this call profitable? What hands could you profitably call them both with here? Once you can answer these questions more-or-less correctly without hesitation you will be ready to earn $16 per hour. All we need to do is add volume and add a couple of insights and moves to your poker armory. This is exactly what sections #3 (Turn Up The Volume) and #4 (Profit Booster) of the blueprint will do! In the meantime, good luck at the tables, Mark
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Extra #1 – Behind The ICM Math, Simple Example Of How This Is Calculated Note: After writing the ‘long version’ of this I decided to edit down to a short summary, this should give you a high-level overview of how prize pool equity is calculated which is sufficient for use in SNGs! When we talk about average winnings over time and prize pool equity the high level logic should by now be clear. Since the most you can win is 50% of the prize pool then the value of each individual chip goes down as you accumulate more of them. A question which comes up often is ‘how is prize pool equity calculated?’, this refers to the exact situation of stacks to chips before a hand. You need to know the distribution of the prizes and the stacks for this – after which it is simply an iterative process. I’ll explain it here using a round 10,000 chips and no blinds with a $100 prize pool, to keep the numbers simple. Remember, we are ignoring skill differences and any other factors here – this is simply a calculation. Stacks: - Player A: 4500 – 45% of chips in play - Player B: 3000 – 30% - Player C: 1750 – 17.5% - Player D: 750 – 7.5% Now, we start with each player getting 1st place proportionally to their stack size: Player A will get 1st 45% of the time, that is 45% of $50 for 1 st place or $22.50c in equity for this. We actually do this for all of the players, giving them equity for 1 st place as a fraction of the number of times they reach this spot. Now, if player A gets 1st then someone gets 2nd, right? Now, the percentage of remaining chips is the key here. With 3000, 1750 and 750 we have a total of 5500 chips, of which player 2 has 3000 – this is 55%, so those times player A gets 1st, player B will get 2nd ($30) 55% of the time – so we add $16.5 for player B on top of the $15 we already had for getting 1st place 30% of the time… What we need to do is carry on this calculation for each player in each place. For example those times we assign player D to first place with $3.75 prize equity, we still need to work out the chances of each player getting 2nd, 3rd and 4th place. Quite laborious, but eventually you for each player you have the average equity for each spot based on their current chip stack. This is your average prize pool equity.
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