ICM Survival Guide: How To Play OOP vs. a Covering Stack at the Final Table

All positions with their stacks are also shown in the chart below:

The principles we derive from these examples will apply to other scenarios where you are OOP against a covering stack, but it’s important to note that this is an especially dramatic scenario. The CO here faces an enormous risk premium of 18.1%, which is a function of having more chips than so many of the remaining players. If the Hero’s stack were shorter or if fewer players remained, the risk premium would not be so high. The same considerations would apply to postflop play, but they would not apply as dramatically.

The CO in this scenario opens 26.1% of hands, with an emphasis on Ace-x and King-x. High card blockers are always important when raising under ICM pressure, but they are especially valuable with a covering stack behind you. As we will see, getting action from the big stack on the BTN will be very bad for CO!

For comparison’s sake, a CO with a slightly above average stack of 27bb opens 30.5% of hands when they cover the BTN:

So, the risk of getting called or 3-bet by the covering stack on the BTN ought to be baked into CO’s opening strategy.

Flatting is an important part of BTN’s response to this open. They call more than they 3-bet! Their calling range is strong but capped, with an emphasis on Broadway cards, pocket pairs, suited Ace-x (and, to a lesser extent, King-x), and suited connectors. They call with some rather weak suited connectors, which is a clue that they will over-realize equity when playing postflop, thanks to their position and the CO’s risk premium.

The Flops

We cannot run reports on ICM simulations, but we can investigate a variety of flop textures to get a sense of the incentives and underlying range dynamics on each of them. What patterns do you notice?

The first thing that jumps out at me is that it is almost always a mistake for CO to bet. In the rare instances where they do bet, they bet small.

This makes sense, given CO’s strong incentive not to play a big pot against BTN. With a risk premium of ~18%, CO will have to check and fold many marginal hands, and very few hands are so strong that they want to put money in the pot.

CO’s primary concern must be with protecting the tournament equity in their stack rather than with protecting their equity in the pot or growing a pot they are favored to win.

Thus, they almost always prefer checking and calling to betting and raising, even when they have a hand that is too strong to fold.

Another trend is that Ace-high flops are noticeably better for CO than other flops. This makes sense, as we have already noted that CO’s opening range is heavy on Ace-x and King-x. There are none shown here, but King-high flops tend to be somewhat good for CO as well, though not as markedly so. This is partly because CO opens less King-x but also because BTN flats more of it, whereas BTN has a lot of incentive to raise when they have an Ace blocker.

Disconnected and rainbow boards are also good for CO. This is partly because BTN has more suited and connected hands in their flatting range but also because more dynamic boards generally favor the in position (IP) player. Dynamic boards make it dangerous to grow the pot from OOP because even when your hand is strong on the current street, you can’t be sure it will remain strong on later streets.

When Should I Bet?

Wrong question!

OK, not wrong exactly, but it’s too soon to focus on that. When you see a pattern like, “CO almost always checks, except in a couple of rare cases,” it’s tempting to immediately look into those rare cases. But that violates an important principle of poker study:

Learn the rule before you learn the exception.

Your takeaway from the chart with the flop samples should be that, when a covering stack flats you IP and your risk premium is high, you should almost certainly start with a check on the flop. Even if you blindly followed that rule without exception, you’d rarely make a mistake.

Why So Much Checking?

That’s a better question to start with. We’ve said already that this is a function of CO’s risk premium and positional disadvantage, which combine to make growing the pot an unappealing prospect with all but their strongest hands (and sometimes not even then).

To ensure we understand what’s going on here, let’s look at the most counterintuitive case: the A♠T♥T♦ flop. Despite flopping more than 60% of the equity, CO basically never bets.

To see why, let’s look at CO’s response to a 4x pot shove from BTN. Even though this is not a play BTN ever makes at equilibrium, the solver’s unexploitable response provides a sense of which hands in CO’s range are strong enough to stack off.

CO is indifferent to folding AK, which suggests that it is profitable to stack off only with trips or better. In addition to being a small part of CO’s range, trips block BTN from having the hands with which they would be excited to stack off. With only two Tens remaining in the deck, holding one of them cuts in half the likelihood of your opponent holding one, which means your bets get a lot of folds. Ordinarily, you are happy to get folds when playing with a high risk premium, but these hands are so strong that any hand BTN folds has virtually no chance of drawing out anyway.

Checking has the virtue of inducing bluffs, which Ten-x does not block. And because CO is checking so many hands that will eventually fold if BTN keeps the pressure up, there’s a lot of incentive for BTN to bluff.

On more static, high card boards, CO has fewer weak hands, and those weak hands have less equity. So, there is less to gain from attacking them and more to risk in terms of running into strong hands.

CO has some raises because BTN’s small bet is more linear and includes more draws and top pair of their own. CO has some incentive to raise into these hands to prevent them from checking back the turn. As with betting the flop, however, you may well be better off playing a pure call strategy than looking for these rare exceptions.

QJ9 is also a fairly static flop. The flopped nuts is tough to draw out on, and only two overcards can fall. So, CO’s response on this board looks similar, with a modest raising range built around their flopped straights:

Responding to a Bet on a Dynamic Flop

Dynamic flops change the risk calculus for raising. CO folds more often on T86 than on ATT, but when they don’t fold, they’re more interested in raising. Specifically, they are more interested in jamming, which both denies equity and eliminates the liability of playing OOP on future streets.

CO’s jams are not their strongest hands. Rather, they are strong but vulnerable, mostly AT, JJ, and QQ, plus some strong draws:

Changing the 6♥ to a 5♥ makes the board more dynamic, eliminating the risk of flopped straights and introducing more draws. This incentivizes CO to jam roughly the same hands but also to have some smaller raises with even stronger hands:

Despite the lack of straight and flush draws, 722r is also an extremely dynamic flop, as most turn cards will give both players some top pair while also reducing the value of hands that were already paired on the flop.

Facing a large bet on this flop, CO plays almost exclusively a raise-or-fold strategy. Their small calling range is well protected, with 77 being the hand that calls at the highest frequency!

Conclusion

When you open a pot, getting called by a player with position on you is usually one of the worst possible outcomes, second only to getting 3-bet. It’s an even worse outcome when that player covers you in a high risk premium spot, such as at a final table.

You should start mourning this pot before the flop is dealt.

Unless you get a lucky flop, you probably aren’t going to win it. Your top priority should be protecting your remaining chips, not fighting tooth and nail for the pot.

If they do bet, then you should seriously consider raising your strongest hands, as slow-playing is risky. In a different context, the risk might be worth it for the potential reward of winning a big(ger) pot, but the calculus changes at a final table. Securing a pot you’re currently winning is generally more important than getting more chips into that pot, even if you are a big favorite.

Final tables put a premium on avoiding risk, with tight and aggressive play being the safest strategy there is. Tight (checking and folding) keeps you out of trouble. Aggressive (raising when you aren’t going to fold) maximizes your chances of winning the pot should you deem it worth contesting. Only under the most favorable of circumstances should you consider doing otherwise.