At first glance, I thought this shove was very reasonable but not mandatory. ICMizer has some interesting stuff to say about this scenario.

The Nash equilibrium has Hero shoving 26% of hands, which seems crazy to me. 22,A2s,A8+,A5,K6s,KT,Q8s,QT,J8s,JTo,T8s,98s are all recommended shoves. If we only consider chipEV Nash equilibrium has us shoving 33%.

I’ve been experimenting with Future Game Simulation, which gives us slightly different answers. I can’t pretend to know FGS well, but it adjusts our strategy in an attempt to account for what is likely to happen in future hands after all possible outcomes of this hand. In situations with lots of short-stacks it will often result in a tighter strategy if other shortstacks will be forced to pay the blinds before we will.

FGS for 1-3 hands advocates dropping K6s from our range, and by 6 hands it drops K7s,J9s,98s and A5o. 22 went from +0.03% EV to +0.01%, and A3s went from +0.07% to +0.04%. Not huge changes but worth considering.

Despite the Nash solution resulting in a very wide shoving range, it depends on assuming a style from the other players that I rarely see. Is BTN pushing 86% if you fold, and is SB pushing 85% if it folds to him? Probably not, and most of the other ranges are similarly unrealistic in a real world situation, especially at the micros.

In adjusting the ranges to what I suspect is closer to reality, our shoving recommendations become much tighter. This is mainly due to assuming that BTN calls hero wider than Nash (A7o is significantly wider), as well as widening the call and overcall ranges for the blinds slightly.

Assuming BTN calls hero with 23% of hands, SB calls with 7.8% and BB calls with 10%, ICMizer only wants to shove 11% of hands.  It now suggests 55,A7s,A9,KQs as profitable shoves. If these ranges are correct A3s becomes a -0.08% EV shove, which is somewhat disastrous. If I’m not mistaken, that means that shoving A3s costs you $63.20 in EV compared to folding.

When running FGS for 6 hands A7s and 55 are no longer profitable shoves, and A3s now becomes a -0.11% EV shove. 

It is important to realize that these results are somewhat artificial, as it is very hard (if not impossible) to accurately assign calling ranges to 3 unknown players (let alone figuring out how they play when hero folds). However, I think the results for the modified ranges are much closer to reality than the equilibrium ranges. You can probably go a little bit wider than the 11% range profitably, however, you could reasonably adopt an even tighter strategy if the pay-jumps are significant to you. If you expect some of the other shortstacks are likely to get all-in wider than they should, it may be reasonable to shove as tight as 7.5%, meaning 77,ATs,AJ.

TLDR: The main determining factor on whether you can shove A3s profitably is how wide the BTN calls you. If BTN calls <14.5% of hands, A3s is ICM profitable unless one of the blinds is calling ridiculously wide. However, as soon as BTN’s calling range extends past 16% it is a losing shove even if the blinds are only calling you with JJ+,AK (3% of hands).

In my experience, most players at the micros with the kind of chip stack that BTN is sitting on are going to be getting in there for 12bb a lot wider than they likely should. For that reason, A3s is probably best hitting the muck. I think a shoving range of 66,A8s,A9,KQs is roughly where you want to be here.

Very happy to help! I busted my first 5 or 6 big final tables in 7th or worse. I’ve felt the pain of making a ‘standard’ shove, and then realizing too late that I probably shouldn’t have, far too many times to count. This Sunday I shoved 22bb from the BB with 77 against a CO open 9-handed on my biggest FT in over a month. There were three shorter stacks at the table… it didn’t go well, lol. Best of luck in your future deep runs 

The Riceman said
My messing around with FGS really only made very minor adjustments to my ranges. I thought it just considered the movement of the blinds around the table. 

I think I worded my explanation poorly. If I’m not mistaken the standard ICMizer ouput takes all possible outcomes of the current hand into consideration, but only as it relates to the situation that exists at the immediate end of this hand. By all possible outcomes I don’t mean small raises and/or postflop play, but all possible combos of shoves/calls and X or Y player winning once the chips go in. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Assuming that’s the case, then accounting for future hands is, as you say, basically a matter of predicting the movement of the blinds and their effect on ICM in future hands.

Either way, I have also found that FGS has only small effects on recommended ranges but, over enough final tables, small changes can have a huge effect on your bottom line.

The Riceman said
I’m always getting this in here. ICM is a consideration, sure, but you are trying to win the thing right? Not just ladder up a few places.

It depends on your priorities as a player, and I definitely respect the approach of maximizing chance to win outright. As a pro player I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t afford that luxury, and I tend to base my decisions around maximizing my $EV return. That being said, ICM is not a perfect solution to final table strategy. It has no way of accounting for skill edges, and I’m pretty sure we can all agree that playing a 25bb stack affords us a lot more profitable options than playing a 12bb stack, which ICM does not consider.

My own approach to shoving on final tables is to usually go a little wider than my best estimation of what ICM would suggest.

It’s also worth considering that the ranges I assigned the remaining players are completely arbitrary, and tighter ranges would make A3s profitable. The range of the blinds is somewhat irrelevant. ICM vs them is much closer to chipEV, as winning against them guarantees a payjump. Doubling through the deepstack BUT increases our $EV significantly less, so their calling range is critical to our calculations. With a hand like A3s each additional hand that BUT calls with lowers your $EV because you are never a huge favorite against any reasonable holding. If K3 and worse 3s start entering villain’s range that changes, but otherwise you are a ~55:45 favorite or a ~65:35 dog against most hands.

Even when considering the value of doubling up in terms of future play, I think we are burning $ by getting in as a 55:45 favorite against the bigstack when there are 4 stacks at roughly our size, so our hand’s value is basically a steal with a strong blocker that retains decent equity when called.

The Riceman said
Just because you lose a pot, even in a critical spot, doesn’t necessarily mean you were wrong in the play. That 77 shove, depending on villain stats, sounds more than reasonable to me vs. most everyone. You don’t want to waste the equity of your strong hand by folding, and calling is pretty lame, just hoping to see a board of 664r or whatever.  

I completely agree that being results orientated is a losing way to think. The 77 is a close example, and one that illustrates ICM’s effect pretty well. ChipEV wise its winning almost 2bb to shove against the CO range I’m assuming, and it would be criminal to fold here in almost any situation.

I actually had 24.5 bb in this hand, which obviously changes things a bit. I can post the hand history if you like so that you can run your own analysis, but for brevity’s sake I’ll just tell you my ICMizer results.

In this spot, considering table stack sizes and that CO has me well covered, ICMizer wants to shove AJs,AQ,99 and nothing else. AJ is losing 0.01% and has great blockers, so I’d likely be shoving it, but even 88 and ATs are rated at -0.05% and probably borderline at best to shove. 77 comes in at a whopping -0.12% ICM EV, and I can’t think any strategy considerations would make that a long term profitable shove.

This is assuming the CO raises 26% of hands and calls off with only 11%, which means we are winning heaps from fold equity alone. Open range will often be tighter (he was relatively tight and BUT had almost twice his chips), and enough players are calling off with ~half (if not more) of their raising range to make these range assumptions optimistic. 77 may actually be in even worse shape against CO’s actual ranges.

EDIT: As to what’s going on with forum, I’m new here so can’t really say, but it may be more dead than usual due to players prepping for WCOOP. I certainly would have been more active if my favorite time of the year wasn’t right around the corner.