Strategy: Pivot Points III - A Massive Secret Revealed

I thought a lot about whether I should even write this blog but based on the number of students who I have told this to, I think that there is very little to gain by protecting this secret. As far as I know this is proprietary information. I have never seen it discussed anywhere. However, in my mind, this is the best way for a beginner to learn Sit and Go's when it comes to certain aspects of the game.

After a beginning SNG student learns to play tight they typically struggle with things like shoving, calling all-ins, and restealing. Take calling a 10 or 5BB all in raise as we have discussed in the previous two articles. Mainly a beginners thought process is something like the following...

"OK so this guy is shoving on my BB again. WTF. I think I should call him wide. But I really have no idea what his range is, and even if I did, I can't use wizard in-game so I am totally unsure what to do."

As a student of SNG's we learn that range is everything when it comes to making SNG decisions. In fact the two calling pivots that we have discussed so far are based on set shoving frequencies. The 10BB range we assume that the villain is shoving 25% of their range and the 5BB range we assume that villain is shoving 35% of their range. So what is the secret you ask?

The secret is that by creating good pivots ahead of time we can avoid making range based decisions all together while actually playing. We have already evaluated the range ahead of time, and now choosing a range and the proper course of action is unnecessary. All we need to know is what pivot is the proper one based on the situation, and that takes very little information.

Notice that in the previous articles we assume a basic shoving range based on a typical "Normal Bad" villain. By carefully crafting our pivot point we can take our villains range out of the decision making process completely. The entire decision is made based on readily available information.

The thing is that figuring out a villains exact calling range is very difficult and would be a time consuming process. We can never know their exact range and it turns out that the decisions we make are going to have some level of error just based on the fact that poker is a game of incomplete information. Therefore, basing our decision on an average opponent when there is not any information to the contrary is actually not that bad. The benefits to this process however are significant.

One benefit is that we can make very efficient decisions. The information we need is just the effective stack, our hand and the pivot range. Any other information that we have to improve our decision is just gravy. This creates the foundation for our game which when all else fails, we can fall back on. Another benefit is that we will be able to make decisions very fast, allowing us to make more decisions per minute and increasing the number of tables we can play. Finally, since our decisions will be relatively static, we can then test our pivots using Holdem Manager to see if they are profitable. Because our decisions will not vary much we can quickly evaluate whether our pivot is indeed profitable or needs to be adjusted further without waiting many thousands of hands for the results to converge.

So in a nutshell, a well crafted pivot takes into account player ranges, but almost never forces the player in game to make range based decisions. Frankly, range based decisions are very difficult, and unseasoned players tend to over adjust anyways (as discussed in the last article). Making a range based decision and deciding how much to adjust is a very advanced skill which requires many hours of looking at pivots and SNG wizard to see how things change based on ranges. It is an art that will distract a beginner student from making good decisions more often than it helps them. However, creating and using good pivots can be a key in getting a beginning student rapidly making good decisions and creating a bulletproof foundation for their SNG game.

Good Luck at the tables!
Greg