I have seen many new players come and go and have had the privilege of trying to pass on some of my knowledge from time to time. The thing I like to teach primarily to new players is how to think (a systematic process to evaluate and adapt to specific situations). Poker is an evolving game and those who do not continue to grow and mould there game to fit the current meta-game end up failing or not succeeding as much as they intend to.
Recently my room-mate Ashton Cartwright has been working with some new players on tournaments and sitngo strategy, he has focused on teaching them correct shoving ranges using Jennifear charts- a chart which provides unexploitable shoving ranges under 20 big blinds(bbs) and chip accumulation. While I do agree that this is a good guideline for a new player to have as most sitngoes and online tournaments are played with short stacks under 20bbs it does not explain why you should not just shove all your chips in the middle when you have AA (the reason is you lose value/ you make less chips then you could by making other plays). It does not make a player aware of how certain plays look and how to induce or seem super strong with a weak hand.
I’m going to talk about unexploitable shoving ranges, an unexploitable range is a range of hands with which you can put all your chips in the middle and an opponent playing perfectly cannot counteract with a better then break-even result, this sounds great in theory so why is it not the best in practice?
The simple answer is exploitable shoving ranges can have a much higher yield, an unexploitable shoving range assumes your opponent is playing 100% mathematically correct which they never do. When your opponent makes errors you should look to take advantage of these errors and this will lead you to making plays which are not unexploitable, until an opponent takes advantage of you making a mathematical mistake by no longer being unexploitable the exploitable play you are using will be the most effective and most correct line of play to take.
From day 1 I want a player to think am I taking the best line (the best line is the positive/winning overall play) so that as they improve they get better with the tools to adapt, it is still completely necessary for them to understand unexploitable play so they have a guideline and know how to fall back in to line when it becomes necessary, i.e. they are being exploited.
Playing the chart compared to playing your hands, an explanation for a game under 20bbs. Using the jennifear chart the player is given a limited spectrum, where there are two options- shove or fold. In my opinion the game under 20bbs has evolved well past two options, im going to break this down into stack sizes; 20-15bbs, 15-12bb, 12-9bbs, 9bbs and under. Remember position/antes player tendencies etc are very reliant to the way certain amounts of big blinds play in specific spots, the jennifear charts help to show how your range widens as less players have to act after you as the average best hand strength of two opponents will be a lot less then the average best hand strength of 8 players.
Between 20-15bbs
Very few hands shove well, the reason for this is we represent a very thin range when we shove and this range is not usually super strong, it is in fact a mid range of semi strong hands. When we have strong, top hands like AA-JJ-AK-AQ-KQs-AJs (top 5%) it is common to open a small amount (like 2.1bbs) so that a player behind us can potentially pick up a hand not as good as ours (usually top 15% a mix of strong and semi-strong) and decide to shove, we can call positively with this range. If we were just to shove all hands that are positive to do so with we do disguise our best hands but we will only get called by the strongest of our opponents hands, basically the flip of what I just explained (instead of our range being stronger then our opponents shoving range, our shoving range is now weaker then our opponents calling range), we do make some of this up in stealing blinds and antes but it is not the best overall way.
This means with the top of our range we are inducing players to shove and we are showing strength by small raising. If a play that we make seems strong, then we should abuse it, to abuse our strong image we should also open sometimes with worse hands (like suited connectors), when we do this our intent is not to call of an opponents all in shove, but to steal the blinds or win the hand post-flop by either flopping a good hand or representing a good hand (usually when we have between 20-15 bbs we can take some risks in opening to try get back to a more comfortable stack size).
So our range for shoving 20/15bbs generally is hands not good enough to induce with but too good to fold, semi strong hands like KQo-KJs-JTs-TT-55 which have reasonable equity when called, the problem is we sometimes face up our play when we move all in, when your opponent knows what you are doing they can make a perfect response. That said sometimes an unexploitable shove with certain hands in certain positions can be the best option and best play, it does force your opponent to have a super strong hand or fold.
Re-shoving/ 3bet shoving (when an opponent raises and you decide to go all in for more then the raise), with 20-15bbs many opportunities will arise where an aggressive opponent opens from late position (hijack, cut-off or button) and we have a pretty good hand but cannot call profitably (Some hands like AT, KQ etc can call profitably in position). Hands with good equity like medium pocket pairs, suited connectors or strong hands that will be difficult to play post-flop are best suited for this job. We can shove pretty often in these spots as our opponent will have a hard time calling off our raise unless they have a very strong hand (which if they are aggressive should not be very often), in which case we have pretty good equity against them. Usually this play when successful and our opponent folds yields 5bb stack increase which is huge. Of note with a bigger stack then this these 3 bet all in plays are usually far less effective as they make you less chips as a percentage of your stack and lose you more chips when you are wrong and they do have a strong hand.
Between 15-12bbs
Your game should tighten up, you can open and induce with the top 5% (there is a program called Pokerstove which is good for showing hand percentage information) still but you will generally get a lot of respect (more then with 20-15bbs), you should limit your openings with average hands unless the spot is ideal (good position, tight players in blinds etc). However you can now begin to open shove more effectively as you win a larger percentage of your stack each time you get through (around 10%).
Sometimes with this stack size it is good to stay out of trouble and look for a good spot to re-shove, your goals at 15-12bbs should be similar to 20-15bbs but involves less risk taking to conserve a stack which can shove and re-shove effectively.
Between 12-9bbs
You should play a pretty tight game, look for good spots to shove (re-shoving will probably no longer work so only do this for value with premium hands). You can still open to induce but you will now be signalling very strongly that you have a top hand, at lower buyin games I would small raise to induce, at higher limits I would be more inclined to shove with all hands I wanted to play (this is a case of an exploitable play in a lower limit game being better then an unexploitable play that is better in a higher limit game).
9bbs and under
You have very few options, when I see players small raise with hands when they have this kind of stack size I usually find that they are weak and trying to create more fold equity for their hand. You could potentially look to do this with the strongest of hands but I think just shoving with all good hands at this point is pretty good. With blinds and antes usually winning an uncontested pot will increase your stack size by over 20% which is massive.
feel free to leave questions and comments
peace aaron
