I don't go All-Yin
Here's an excerpt from one of Simon Trumper's recent diary entries (which you can find here)
"everyone passed to me and in the small blind I found ATs , with $10,800 out there. With the BB having $35,000 it was pointless making a standard raise to 12,000 as if he moved in I was calling. So I moved all in"
Simon ! Just because you would call a reraise, it doesn't follow that moving all your chips in is the best play ! Making the standard raise may have the following advantages :
- Your opponent might just call giving you the opportunity to outplay him on the flop
- A smaller raise may tempt him into calling with a worse hand
- Then again, a smaller raise may actually look scarier and may cause him to fold a better hand
- He might try to bluff reraise with nothing at all
To be fair, it may not too ! Your opponent might outplay you on the flop, or bluff reraise and make you pass. But there are things to think about here and I do think Simon's logic is off. It's a bit like the (more obviously incorrect) argument "I'm going to call on the river anyway, so I might as well bet". Simon has told me he reads this occasionally so I'd be interested to hear a response !
Here's another one, from Brad Daugherty in the mostly very good "Championship Satellite Strategy". Brad talks about raising half his stack with AQ only for Amir Vahedi * to come over the top with AJ. Brad calls but loses the hand. He now reasons that it would have been better to go all in and discourage AJ from playing. I think this is just plain wrong (and so did Mason Malmuth in his review of the book BTW). In this situation you should be delighted to get a shortish stack all in as a 5-2 favourite. Survival concerns nowhere near outweigh the 70% chance of doubling up. Certainly if anyone's got better than AQ they aren't passing whatever you do. Why not try to get some action off a worse hand (although don't make a girly Internet raise and let everyone in :-)).
Above I was talking about having a good run in Sit and Goes. Apart from my luck :-), I think one reason for this is when I am in the zone of about 12-16 small blinds, instead of going all in I have raised to about 6 [small blinds] and kept the rest back for the flop. I was going to analyze this in detail, but instead I'll just say that I think the pros of this play definitely outweigh the cons, provided you only fold on the flop if you're really absolutely positively sure that you are beaten and have no outs !
Nuts to the analysis anyway, it just works better :-). Try it and see ! Over-betting the pot in No-Limit is not generally a good idea if you're a better player than the field. And if you're a worse player than the field, what the hell are you doing in the game ?
* It could be that Daugherty is just taking the opportunity to have a pop at Vahedi who is not the most respected player at the top level. Stranger things have happened in the poker book world :-)
"everyone passed to me and in the small blind I found ATs , with $10,800 out there. With the BB having $35,000 it was pointless making a standard raise to 12,000 as if he moved in I was calling. So I moved all in"
Simon ! Just because you would call a reraise, it doesn't follow that moving all your chips in is the best play ! Making the standard raise may have the following advantages :
- Your opponent might just call giving you the opportunity to outplay him on the flop
- A smaller raise may tempt him into calling with a worse hand
- Then again, a smaller raise may actually look scarier and may cause him to fold a better hand
- He might try to bluff reraise with nothing at all
To be fair, it may not too ! Your opponent might outplay you on the flop, or bluff reraise and make you pass. But there are things to think about here and I do think Simon's logic is off. It's a bit like the (more obviously incorrect) argument "I'm going to call on the river anyway, so I might as well bet". Simon has told me he reads this occasionally so I'd be interested to hear a response !
Here's another one, from Brad Daugherty in the mostly very good "Championship Satellite Strategy". Brad talks about raising half his stack with AQ only for Amir Vahedi * to come over the top with AJ. Brad calls but loses the hand. He now reasons that it would have been better to go all in and discourage AJ from playing. I think this is just plain wrong (and so did Mason Malmuth in his review of the book BTW). In this situation you should be delighted to get a shortish stack all in as a 5-2 favourite. Survival concerns nowhere near outweigh the 70% chance of doubling up. Certainly if anyone's got better than AQ they aren't passing whatever you do. Why not try to get some action off a worse hand (although don't make a girly Internet raise and let everyone in :-)).
Above I was talking about having a good run in Sit and Goes. Apart from my luck :-), I think one reason for this is when I am in the zone of about 12-16 small blinds, instead of going all in I have raised to about 6 [small blinds] and kept the rest back for the flop. I was going to analyze this in detail, but instead I'll just say that I think the pros of this play definitely outweigh the cons, provided you only fold on the flop if you're really absolutely positively sure that you are beaten and have no outs !
Nuts to the analysis anyway, it just works better :-). Try it and see ! Over-betting the pot in No-Limit is not generally a good idea if you're a better player than the field. And if you're a worse player than the field, what the hell are you doing in the game ?
* It could be that Daugherty is just taking the opportunity to have a pop at Vahedi who is not the most respected player at the top level. Stranger things have happened in the poker book world :-)
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