MTT:Being stronger/defending the big blind at later levels

[Graham C]

Trying to work on my mtt game and I think give in a bit easily on my blinds so here's one.

What do you need at least to call the shove here?

PokerStars Game #20198435770: Tournament #106408045, $50+$5 Hold'em No Limit - Level VI (100/200) - 2008/09/06 16:24:58 ET
Table '106408045 31' 9-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 1: zico46 (1300 in chips)
Seat 2: NanciBR (10785 in chips)
Seat 3: Gibb Stutz (4299 in chips)
Seat 4: xMercury69x (1586 in chips)
Seat 5: Svend sværd (10779 in chips)
Seat 6: karlsmose (9614 in chips)
Seat 7: X-Men XXL (4020 in chips)
Seat 8: hackiz (2444 in chips)
Seat 9: Graham0573 (3760 in chips)
hackiz: posts small blind 100
Graham0573: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Graham0573 [X X]
zico46: folds
NanciBR: folds
Gibb Stutz: folds
xMercury69x: folds
Svend sværd: folds
karlsmose: folds
X-Men XXL: folds
hackiz: raises 2244 to 2444 and is all-in
Graham0573:??

[Graham C]

My thinking here was that he's got muck.  Any decent hand should just get a normal raise, any average hand would call and only a terrible hand would shove.

[TightEnd]

history with opponent? type of opponent?

[Graham C]

He's called and ended up folding a few but I'm not too sure about him, he's just there not standing out either way.

[TightEnd]

AJ off up

A9 suited up

77 up

but ask someone with balls!

[Graham C]

lol

I made the call with KJ which I thought was pretty brave, but if I lost I was still in, if I won I'm back to average chips.  He had 5's and thankfully the K came.   

I'm out now though.

[TightEnd]

My thinking here was that he's got muck.  Any decent hand should just get a normal raise, any average hand would call and only a terrible hand would shove.

so, heads up, this read was wrong then Graham?

[Graham C]

Yeah I guess so, although it's only 5's but I didn't take in to account a small pair.

I've a long way to go.  I play too tight generally and scrape into the money so I try to open up and I make bad calls.  One day.

[PocketLady]

My thinking here was that he's got muck.  Any decent hand should just get a normal raise, any average hand would call and only a terrible hand would shove.

With 12x BB?  It's not such a ridiculous move in my opinion.  I'm not shoving with an absolute monster here, but I am shoving with any pair up to 77/88, and an ace, but maybe not AK/AQ.  I would be calling here with A10 or better, but even then not always, would depend a lot on his play so far. 

Personally I HATE to call for a substantial portion of my tournament chips unless I'm pretty sure I'm better than 50/50.  It's far better to be the one making the moves rather than calling off half your stack, so a lot of the time I'll pass here with anything less than AQ, unless I have a reason to believe he's loose ie he's done it at other times etc, but that's just me.  If you had more chips it would be a whole different story, you could afford to gamble a bit more, but as it stands you are in pretty bad shape if you lose the pot so I'd wait for a better time to try and win a big pot.  Same goes if shortstacked, I'd probably call with something less just to try double up, but as you are you have enough chips to wait for a better spot to try and get a double up.

[Charlie44]

An important factor is what he thinks of your image:

A weak player is not thinking of your image - and likely to have relatively good cards before pushing.

If a good player sees you as a loose caller the same applies.

If your image is tight , a good player may well use fold equity and push with any 2 reasonable cards.

So I would be very much more inclined to call in the latter situation, perhaps with any pair, A8 or higher, KQ-KJ . Otherwise I may want 99 or higher, or AK -AJ.

[Royal Flush]

any average hand would call

Only an incredibly bad player would open limp in this spot

[Graham C]

gulp, says it all

Cheers for the replies, will make positive improvements

[Longy]

Really all depends on reads on sb. If sb is a comptent mtt player, they should be pushing atc here with antes in play, I would. Against this my calling range would be about top 30% of hands.

Of course most players push much tighter than that and we should adjust accordingly.

[T_Mar]

Agree with Longy here... the better the player, the wider range he will be shoving.. so you can open up your calling range aswell... somethign i have just started to do is use pokerstove to work out what i should be calling with in these situations, the trick is obv assigning as accuarate range as possible to the player shoving, but you will prob be surprised by how light you can profitably call these shoves..

when you are short yourself, your should prob tighten your calling range and try and find spots to either open shove yourself, or with your stack size in this example resteal over a standard raise if you suspect someone might be opening light