So Much Preflop Shoving w 40-100bbs

Just play a strong enough range that you're not over folding to aggression, and get your strong hands in against the weaker shoving ranges. Easy game.

I've seen this twice recently (in the last year) in live games as well.

At Foxwoods a guy was open shoving for whatever his stack was. This was both early in the tournament and mid tournament. It turned out he told me he doesn't like playing AK post flop so he just shoves every time with AK preflop even when he is first to act. The first time he did it I folded TT because I had no idea what was going on and I thought he could be doing it with JJ. Once he told me, I never had a PP when he did it again. Or I likely would have called just to double up at 54% of the time.

Recently in a live $500 tournament I saw a guy shove with like 40 blinds preflop. This was day 2 and he was likely the big stack at the table. Nobody called. My thought was that it was likely a hand like AJ/AQ/AK/JJ.

In 2023 in a tournament in Prague I was HU and the other guy jammed with 33 blinds and I looked down and saw AQ and insta called. He had JTo. And I held.

In 2023 in an EPT tournament on Day 2 with about 27 players left an Asian guy to my right jammed in the SB for about 30 blinds. I thought I was going to fold because we had played together for about 5 hours at my original day 2 table and he was on my left and I told him when we were moved to the final 3 tables that he was the least wild Asian player I had ever played with. That he was super incredible. But I looked down at AKo and again insta called. He also had JTo and I held. Which was fortunate because I had like 5000 more chips than he had.

I have been watching Triton tournaments recently and what I am seeing at some final tables is that when there is a massive chip leader and one or two very short stacks, the massive chip leader is jamming a lot even when there are players with 30 to 40 blinds still to go. The thinking is that due to ICM they won't ever call unless they have AA or KK or maybe QQ. AK has even been folded because of ICM. AQ seems to be an auto fold.

The only time that I think it is rational to jam over 30 blinds is in the BB when there have been a bunch of limpers and I have Ax so I block an AA limp. I have done it a few times and for the most part everyone folds. However once even though I had an A the original limper did have AA...

I think part of it is that online MTT populations nowadays are way more aggressive preflop than they used to be, especially compared to pre-Black Friday poker.

A lot of players are applying maximum pressure with reshoves because they know people still tend to overfold in certain spots, especially in mid stakes fields where many players don’t want to risk tournament life marginally.

That said, some sites definitely seem to have more chaotic population tendencies than others. On certain networks you’ll see way more random 40-50bb punts and hyper-volatile dynamics compared to tougher reg-heavy environments.

I’d probably focus on identifying which spots are population overbluffs versus value-heavy punts and adjust exploitatively from there rather than trying to fight every spot theoretically.

Out of curiosity, are you mainly only playing on WPT Gold right now or do you also have experience on other sites/networks? And what region are you playing from?

Player pool dynamics can vary massively depending on the site nowadays, especially in MTTs. Some environments are way more punt-heavy and high variance than others.

Depending on your location and what kind of games/stakes you’re looking for, there might honestly be some other good options out there as well.

That's probably not ideal.

My ClubWPT Gold experience is that a lot of this wild open shoving is by, well, bad players. Sometimes they'll have ranges of big aces and medium-to-big pairs, sometimes they'll shove some suited broadway type hands in there too, and sometimes they'll just have a totally wild / random range.

However, if you're playing as high as $500s online and that is happening early on in the tournament, there are some GTO chip-EV spots where you'll see a selection of large overbet shoves preflop. Not often, but it happens.

Given my experience on the site, though, I think there are just a lot of players who don't know what they're doing. (I've even used the overbet shove against some such players who are playing way too wide and calling too light.) So I would just call when you have a strong hand, doesn't need to be the nuts.

(And, also, you gotta be more prepared to re-enter in situations like this.)

+1 u should consider ur reentry strategy here. u should see each reentry as entering a new tournament. there are of course boundaries in terms of format, blind level and variance. if u dont mind the variance u can reenter until the very last second of late reg. in general i would advise not to reenter under 40bb if u mind the variance for non pko. For Pko's its a bit trickier. Can explain u in a dm if u like.

In terms of pure hourly rate and ROI max late registering is the best thing you can do*. You'll bust quickly a lot, but you'll often find 40-50% of the field gone and you not needing to outlast a lot of people to cash. And while it's tougher to get there from such a short stack, you really don't lose as much opportunity as you think, given there's long enough to go in the tournament that having a big stack is far from any guarantee of winning anything.

(* - except in PKOs, or regular bounty tournaments if you play those, because the bounties are such a significant part of the prize pool that gets increasingly removed from play as the tournament goes on.)

Open shoving and 3! shoving 40+ x BB is generally a bad play, and generally done by players afraid to play their hand postflop. If they are doing it with JJ+/AK, they are losing value. If with marginal hands, they run into big hands enough for it to be a losing play. A winning player should not play that way, losing his postflop advantage.

There was a strategy by Sklansky for a daughter of the casino owner who had $10K to blow in the WSOP ME to play push/fold to avoid losing more by postflop mistakes.

Just call when you think you are ahead of their range, adjusted for the tournament situation.