Bencb789: Which MTT Spots Players Misplay Without Knowing

Playing Aggressively Against Big Stacks

Bencb789 took an example of this situation from the final table of the $5K WSOP Online event on GGPoker.

There Ben re-shoved K♦️J♥️ with a 13 bb stack from the SB against Evgenii Akimov’s min raise with 78 bb stack from UTG2.

This spot wasn’t chosen accidentally: viewers roasted Ben for his decision, calling it a pure punt and even a “trash shove”. Bencb789 decided to respond and show them why this shove was actually good, despite it looking bad at first glance and even from a GTO perspective:

Obviously, in GTO this is not a rejam. If we look at what another gun is supposed to open, we see that clearly here in GTO King Jack offsuit is just a pure fold.

Bencb789 continued his explanation:

However, if we alter the range because obviously I make an exploitative play here we see that UTG2 in GTO is supposed to be raising 28.5%. And especially in big tournaments that’s quite tight considering that he is the big stack covering everyone behind with a bunch of short stacks. So most big stacks, most good regs are opening a lot wider here: 87s, Q5s, K9o — probably most of the offsuited Aces, which I also think are pretty reasonable to open since most players are way too tight on these final tables.

This knowledge can be applied to $10, $50 or even $100 buy-in tournaments since they also have a lot of “scared” money exploited by regulars who open much wider than GTO says. To understand this concept better, Rolle suggested watching UTG2 range for call against his reshove:

As you can see, for this spot GTO originally offers for UTG2 call the reshove with a lot of hands, including an A8s and A7s. The last two Bencb789 doubted since he’s just reshoving 13 bb, so he expects to be seen as pretty strong.

And when Ben reran this spot against adjusted open range, GTO gave him a new exploitative reshoving range:

You can see KJo is a clear reshove. We can see 3-betting. We can also be quite out of line here if UTG is not adjusting now with his new wider opening range because now he is suddenly going to have more off suited Aces, Q5s, etc.

Rolle also pointed out that his opponent on UTG2 “technically” is supposed to be 4-bet shoving wider to not get exploited:

That’s why a lot of these small 3-bets against big stacks work really well and you get these results which very often are quite profitable. I would just be very careful against good opponents because they can adjust very well. But we see here the mechanics of this rejam — it’s a profitable rejam with new assumptions based on my experience.

Bencb789 shared that he sees a lot of players being way too tight and scared because the big stack is opening and he’s never folding. But this situation can actually be reversed to their profit:

This is where you can spice it up. And if they open too wide, you need to reshove wider or you’re losing the blinds too often. You need to force them to play reasonable ranges, so you get more first-in spots. You’re going to be the one losing if you’re not adjusting well against those aggressive big stacks.

Playing Passively in Multiways on Deep Stages

As an example of this situation, Bencb789 chose the spot from the GGMillion$ High Rollers event on GGPoker.

Sami Kelopuro with a 24 bb stack min raised on the MP, Rui Ferreira called with a 32 bb stack on the HJ, and Ben Rolle folded with Q♦️J♦️ and a 20 bb stack on the BU.

Rolle chose this spot as a good illustration of the decision-making process in multiway spots near money bubble, ITM and more advanced stages of the tournaments:

I see a lot of you guys flatting a lot of hands on button, cut off, hijack — which is totally fine when you have very passive and very bad opponents. But I also want to prepare you and open your eyes that there are certain hands that I truly believe that you think are no-brainer cards.

So, with QJs on the button, raiser and caller before him Bencb789 intuitively felt that this hand isn’t right for flatting or VPIP-ing at all. So he goes to GTO solver and checked his range for this spot just to see how tight it is:

The solver instantly showed that Rolle needs to fold QJs 89% of the time, jams it 9.5% of the time and 3-bets it only 0.98% of the time:

We’re basically never playing QJs. We’re just supposed to be shoving this a lot. And honestly I do believe that, especially in those more crucial stages, a lot of players aren’t even opening as wide as in GTO. We see an A5o, we see a Q9s, K7s — obviously that would help defending or reshoving QJs, QTs, etc. So if I would rerun this and make this range tighter — I would obviously get KTs to fold, probably all suited Aces to fold too. And we probably play a very tight range of like 99+, AQ+, AJs+, maybe KQs because that’s how most players approach these spots around the money bubble.

Playing Surrounded by Short Stacks on the Bubble

The third example of crucial misplayed spots Bencb789 chose from $109 Hotter Hyper on PokerStars.

In this spot, on the bubble “Emilohlsson” shoved a 15.5 bb stack from the HJ while Rolle got A♦️Q♥️ with a 10 bb stack on the BU.

Bencb789 describes this spot as “absolute bonkers” reasoning:

AQ on the bubble and I bet a lot of you guys would just snap fold. We have 3 bb, 4bb, 5 bb shorties. We, I think, top-3, top-4, top-5 in chips and the chip leader is shoving. This was a turbo tournament, these fast formats are generally quite popular so it’s important to understand these short stack situations.

First of all, we need to see what the HJ is supposed to open push here.

As you can see, the HJ jam range here is around 60% taking into account all short stacks at this table:

So, we are in the stone bubble on the small blind. My first instinct was to fold but then I remembered that we call against the chip leader as one of the biggest stacks that allows us to call wider. No ICM understands that against this very tight range we set ourselves up to potentially win the tournament.

If you’re one of these shorter stacks, you are actually calling as tight or as wide as we do with 15 bb or even tighter because ICM understands that now as a short stack the upside of doubling up is a lot less valuable. But we as a bigger stack risk busting out the same but the upsides are bigger. If we double up — we are chip leading, we are going to have a massive stack. So that allows us to do profitable gamble on the bubble.

If you now look on the range that solver has to your calls, you will see an almost 11% even with A9o.

If it looks too wide for you, be attentive to what Bencb789 says here:

I know a lot of you guys think: “But I want to fold my way in the money. Isn’t we shouldn’t? We just secured the first pay jump!”. No, you’re deliberately leaving money on the table. Me making those calls will make me more money than if you just try to secure that one pay jump, all right?

That’s very important and you need to be okay with potentially busting on the money bubble but the upsides are bigger. It’s worth taking the risk, it’s profitable, it’s plusy — and this is what matters.

As a conclusion of this topic Rolle reminds us that you need to make profitable decisions during the game, instead of being scared of busting or afraid of looking stupid because of your play:

You need to be better prepared to understand when to be calling wide on the money bubble, what are the factors — what is our stack, what is our opponent ‘s stack, how do the other stacks look like, etc.