The excerpt below comes from Guy Downs' article posted on (sorry Red) pokerpages.com and is part of an article on Sit-n-Go strategies. I post it here in the hope of generating a meaningful discussion. I'll just post here and then add my thoughts in a seperate post beneath...

================================================== ===
"Mistake #1) Re-raising all-in before the flop when you're short stacked.

You see this mistake made time and time again-both by novices in the small online games, and even by tournament pros on T.V. who ought to know better. Now there are times when you would reraise all in pre-flop with a good hand; for instance, if you thought your raise would get the pot heads-up with the original raiser, you'd probably want to do it. But in a typical hand the original raise is substantial enough to get virtually everyone to fold, and since your short stacked it's unlikely that the little extra your adding to the price to see the flop will be enough to persuade someone to fold who was originally thinking of calling.

The problem with re-raising all-in pre flop is this: By doing so, you're not giving yourself a chance to fold out a hand which a) missed the flop, but b) still has outs to your hand. Let's look at an example.

Say you have 1000 in chips in front of you, and the blinds are 50-100. Your playing five handed, and except for one very small stack everyone else has about $2000 in front of them. You're in the big blind with As Jd. Everyone folds to the button, who has about $2000 in front of him. The small blind folds, and the action is on you. What should you do?

First, notice that by re-raising all in, your opponent is getting proper odds to call with any hand that doesn't contain an ace with a lower kicker. Every other hand he could have is worth a call in this spot, since he's never worse than a 2-1 dog to your hand. Further, note that your opponent could have just about anything here. Hands like T8s, J9o, even 65s-none of these hands can be eliminated from contention. Now if you re-raise all in, you'll be getting the best of it. However, by doing so you'll be unable to to anything to keep your opponent from seeing the turn and the river; thus, if he does have a hand like T9s, and the flop comes K75, you'll have to sit back helplessly and pray that a nine or a ten doesn't drop-something that's going to happen about 25% of the time.

But what if you just call pre-flop? Now, with that same flop, you can bet your remaining $500. This amounts to the same thing as going all-in pre-flop, only now you can get your opponent to fold some of those hands that he would call with if he could see your hand. In other words, you're now playing your hand in a way that allows your opponent to make a mistake. When you go all-in pre-flop, he's correct to call. So what good does that do you? But if you wait to the flop, you can often make him play his hand incorrectly.

Obviously if you flop a pair you check, since your opponent will bet your hand for you 95% of the time. But if you miss you can get your money in on the flop, and hopefully persuade your opponent to fold a hand that he should call with.

If you need to re-raise to get the pot heads-up, then do so. Also, if you think your re-raise will be big enough to get your opponent to fold, then you should do so. Otherwise, however, you're betting off waiting for the flop to push all-in."
================================================== ===

__________________
:cool:

To be successful in business, surround yourself with professionals. To be successful in poker, surround yourself with idiots.

Thinking back to a recent thread on JJ which I found myself in the minority on, I'm going to guess the above commentary will generate a great deal of dissent on this board.

I'm especially intrigued by the example of calling a raise to $500 with AJ so that you can fold and preserve your remaining $500 (with blinds at 50/100 and you destined to post the small blind on the next hand) if the flop misses you. To me, this violates the math of the game.

If my all-in raise inspires my opponent to put 1/2 the money into a pot where he's only going to win once in every three times, isn't that a good thing? I realize its a sit-n-go rather than a cash game so there's payout structure considerations to take into account here...1/3 of the time I'm eliminated and lose my buy-in here, but I'm not guaranteed to outlast 2 other people even if I win the hand and double up (assuming a standard SNG payout structure that gives money to the top 3 places). On the flipside though, I have a much better chance of outlasting two other people if I win this hand than if I fold and try to play on with only $500 in front of me in cases where I miss the flop.

To me this is slightly different from the JJ discussion of approx. 2 weeks ago -- there you bet big and were called by the big stack, which put you on an island when the flop came. Here you're raised by the bigger stack and are left with a fold/raise/call decision before the flop lands -- if you think you have the best hand here, why wouldn't you raise all-in? If you don't think you have the best hand, what the hell are you doing calling with half your stack in the first place??

__________________
:cool:

To be successful in business, surround yourself with professionals. To be successful in poker, surround yourself with idiots.

Stupid

"In other words, you're now playing your hand in a way that allows your opponent to make a mistake."

You're allowing yourself to make the mistake of pushing on a flop like that... that's stabbing in the dark after giving your opponent a chance to pair up

It sucks.

You have no way of reading a flop to see if your opponent hit the flop or not, you are going to put all your chips perhaps drawing almost dead. There is no way of telling if he is bluffing you or not if he bets first, and in this case you are out of position. Two big cards are almost 50/50 to an underpair if you see all 5 cards, but drop to 70/30 or so if you just see the flop.

Also, I haven't played many tourney's where peopble will bet 5xBB with 65s or T9s

In-fact, getting a short stack partially involved then pushing no matter what hits is a common tactic and you are setting up for that.

Excellent point beav -- that ran through my mind as I read through the article the first time but I forgot it again when I was typing up my two cents on the subject after posting the excerpt.

__________________
:cool:

To be successful in business, surround yourself with professionals. To be successful in poker, surround yourself with idiots.

His example really sucks, because he keeps talking about reraising, but I do not see where the raise was.

Yeah...I kinda read between the lines that the button raised because he talks about you having 1,000 TC initially and then, with the BB at 100, is suddenly talking about what to do with your remaining 500 TC if you call.

But nowhere does it state explicitly that the button raises to 500.

Between that and the frequent misuse of "your" for "you're" I'm thinking there might be hope for me finding a proofreading job, and it seriously undermines the author's credibility in my eyes. (although, in his defense, I didn't think part 1 of the series was that horrid and mistake #2 from this article was ok as well.) I just did a major doubletake when reading the above paragraphs...went back and re-read them to see if maybe I'd missed something...and then high-tailed it over here to get feedback to see if I was missing something in my thought process (because you guys are great at pointing out shortcomings in my thought process in not-so-subtle methods...)

__________________
:cool:

To be successful in business, surround yourself with professionals. To be successful in poker, surround yourself with idiots.

this theory does have a place but if you feel you are best you should be pushing preflop since your opponent will be committing more chips when you are the favorite.

Why would you want him to fold KT when you have AJ and both miss or you hit and he misses? your losing a lot of chips in this spot.

__________________
For poker news, strategy, and more, check out my daily column at Examiner.com

Because he might beat you 25% of the time if you miss the flop, DONT YOU READ!!

It seems to me that the player in the BB is in a situation where he has to decide if he wants to commit all his chips to this hand. If he is not prepared to see this hand to the river with the rest of his stack, then he must fold. Given the blinds, I don't think that he can get away from this hand once he puts half of his stack in the pot. In my view, he leaves himself crippled if he abandons the hand on the flop. Even if he catches a better hand than AJ over the 2 orbits that he will have left, his chips stack will be so small that (1) he has almost no chance of getting everyone to fold to his all in when he makes that move, and (2) he stands a much higher likelihood of seeing a multiway flop, thereby reducing his chance of beating the field on the hand that he chooses (or is forced by the blinds) to play.

Thus, I don't agree with the article to the extent that the author is suggesting simply a call in order to the leave the player in the BB with options after the flop. I don't see playing with 500 chips and blinds at 50/100 as much of an option.

However, I think that the second point of the article has some merit. At least before the flop, the raiser is probably prepared to call an all-in from the BB. Given the amount of the bet vs. the size of the BB's stack, the raiser must realize that he is putting the BB in an all-in or fold situation. Thus, before the flop comes, the raiser has likely concluded that he is willing to risk half of his stack if the BB puts him in that situation.

The raiser's thinking may change, though, on the flop. If he completely misses the flop and a bunch of danger come (e.g., several overcards, three suited cards unlike any he holds, etc.), then he may very well opt to abandon his hand and save the 1/3 of his remaining stack that it would take to call the BB after the flop.

Thus, I think it is reasonable for the BB to consider moving all his chips into the pots in two installments -- half before the flop, and half after the flop -- because it may create a situation where the raiser releases a hand he might otherwise keep until all 7 cards are dealt. If you are the player in the BB, then splitting your bet in two has a chance of giving you an additional way to win the pot than simply winning a race.