FT - from a massive chiplead to busto as 7th

Below I’m going to post these hands, I lost almost every hand post.

QJo

Q6s

65s

ATs

KJs

88

hand 1 fold pre

last hand shove or fold pre

I'll look through the others to see if I have more detail on any critiques. But it seems like some of these you are playgin closer to cEV than ICM.

Id appreciate further input. With 88 I was 20bb deep pre, GG hh shows Stacksizes as per river plus I shoved AQo or sth with 17bb the hand before and I didn’t want to shove two in a row and get labeled as maniac and called too lightly

You should study how ICM affects your play, including as a big stack. It seems to me, generally, you came in with the idea to "get more involved" without much plan for how to do so effectively, or much sense of when to do it. So you end up playing too many hands, stabbing small a lot randomly, and giving up. Your bluffs aren't sized in a way to get the hands you're targeting to fold, especially when you only fire one street and quit.

Hand 1 - an UTG/8 range off what I think is a little over 25BB (getting the HH text and converting them would be a lot easier to figure out) is going to be very tight. There is zero reason for you to get involved with this hand.

Hand 2 - preflop is fine. A small blind calling range here is going be significantly tighter than a BB defend range, though. If you bet the flop, you need to pick a size that's going to get ace high and king high to fold.

Hand 3 - probably fine.

Hand 4 - not much you can do here. Heads-up you could float with two overs and a double backdoor, but the donk four ways should never be a thing, and you don't know what's going to happen behind you, so folding is OK.

We skip from 40k BB to 70k BB and you lost about a million chips in the meantime. What happened there?

Hand 5 - You could reshove if you think SB is 3-betting light much. You've seen them play, so you'd know what is going on there. If not, folding is fine.

Hand 6 -

How is the opener going to call you light? If I'm reading this right, you cover him to start the hand? What's he gonna do, stack off with ATo here just because you jammed twice in a row? You want to jam here if you continue because you can get a ton of hands with good equity against you to fold-- villain's actual holding suggests some knowledge of opening ranges here, and they're gonna have a lot of suited broadways, suited Ax, suited Kx. You're almost always going to have overcards on the flop and going to be guessing if you flat. And flatting off 20BB is generally not a good idea in an ICM situation anyway, unless it's closing the action as a BB defend (or a legitimate trap with AA/KK). This is a shove or fold spot.

One last thing:

If $150 is that important to your bankroll, maybe just, like, work and save up some money so you can deposit enough to play a little higher. I don't know what your situation is or what would be feasible in that regard, but your hourly in $1s is going to be terrible even with a big edge. At least if you can move up to $3-5 buyins you have a chance of winning something decent enough to actually build your bankroll.

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This, glad you asked. I think it was the worst.

There's a line in Barry Greenstein's Ace on the River, which while being 20 years old still has some good broad advice about professionalism and some in-depth thinking on the game: "When it is correct to raise or fold, many players call as a compromise. It is better to take a course of action that can be right."

So what you decided is, in a spot where you thought big bet or check was correct, to compromise and bet small instead. It is better to take a course of action that can be right.

Also, are you thinking about your opponent's range here? What hands are you worried he is flatting the SB with (and not 3-betting) that would then check-raise you here?

Same concept. If you're worried about bigger pairs and think they're too much of his range, fold. What good does it do you to go to a flop against an overpair? If you think his range is wide enough that jamming is profitable, jam. Again, you called as a compromise.

As far as the work thing goes, well, that's beyond my pay grade-- but you may be better off building a bankroll at SnGs or something with lower variance than large-field MTTs.

So that's the second SB 3-bet I've seen from this guy. How often was he doing that? A4s is a much better candidate to bluff-shove than to flat here. And KJs may be as well if this guy is 3-betting too often.

That’s the point - GG does not offer any, ACR is dead as it goes to them. When trying to connect to PS (website, not the client), there is a gov blockade with “you’re a criminal” warning. Sure I’d play sngs, I “feel” them, I’ve played 3k $2,5/$8 on PS once with 45% angle profits graph, but now is GG and GG only

I was afraid plus I get your point but there weren’t many, he could have some (or I was paranoid on ft after losing the lead) Isn’t KJs better to 4bs than A4s?

“ Also, are you thinking about your opponent's range here? What hands are you worried he is flatting the SB with (and not 3-betting) that would then check-raise you here?” mid aces maybe, or another fd

Or is it that A4s sucks postflop? What about flatting a 3bet with KJs and 4bet shoving A4s? I fell like going too funky with both might be more of a cEV than ICM like you previously mentioned

Eh, not really? I mean, they're both fine, I guess. A4s is a common bluff because the Ax blocks AA/AK and the suited wheel hands give you some of the best equity when you're up against a big pair. KJs is better against, like, TT/AQ specifically.

I dunno what's best in either case and it depends on how light you think he's reraising. I definitely think shoving A4s is better than flatting it, though. (And I'm not sure why you opened 2.5x this time, either.)

Actually, I ran it, and A4s is slightly better against a range of TT+/AK than KJs is. If that range tightens to JJ+/AK, A4s is significantly better. (And that's his value range; we're assuming he's got some bluffs, which is why we do it in the first place.)

You need to be thinking about the whole hand down the line. Any check-raise the SB makes is going to inflate the pot to the possibility of having to stack off later in the hand. There are very few hands he should be willing to do that with here, especially since his best hands for stacking off on this board should have 3-bet preflop. (He really shouldn't have many calls here; when he does, it's mostly hands like the one he had.) Medium pairs shouldn't be comfortable getting in 40BB at a final table on this flop. (EDIT TO ADD: He's second in chips at the table; he should be playing this spot very passively and conservatively postflop.)

If you really think he'd check-raise Ax or another flush draw here, then just 3-bet jam the flop. He can't call off with those hands. And again-- what other flush draws? There can't be many. You aren't thinking of your opponent's range and what it makes sense for him to have and what lines make sense for him to take; you're focusing on what hands you're worried about to the exclusion of almost everything else, even when it doesn't make sense to worry about those hands.

Hi OP

Wind back your volume for a bit and dial up the study.

Get Dara O’Kearneys icm book if you haven’t already. Give it more than a skim read.

Get the pro version of GTO wiz, spend the first fortnight in Google or AI asking GTOWiz how do I…, and then punch your above HH into the solvers and see the optimal icm lines as large stack for yourself. Compare to Dara’s insights.

The interesting point of discussion here seems to be whether we should make any exploit adjustments for small medium stacks on a micro FT that don’t understand or g a f about icm - and if so what those adjustments should be. I don’t see any issue with your opens at a glance. The question is whether you’re applying the correct lines post as FT CL.

got it. I’m 2,5xing when stealing from late positions and 2xing when opening with premiums or other playable SCs when I want to get called. PS I’m going to start using A2s-A5s along with my whole stack more often pre. I underestimated them. I honestly thought a6s-a7s is the bottom line where in fact they perform worse

I will, thank you