Hi everyone!
Been searching google for the subject, got links to other forums and this one as well but didn't find the answer to the question.
It's better be shown with the example. Let us take the very first level of HU HT SNGs on PStars as their rake is the highest among all stakes for this type of tournaments at this site, it is 4%. So we have the very first hand with 500 in chips (25 ES) and the opponent goes all-in. If we don't have rake we could probably call him with 50% equity but if we do it with 4% rake for say 100 times in a row at this very situation we end up losing. So we need to adjust our ranges for our hands to have 52%+ equity vs the opponent's. Is this logic flawless?
Let's take it a bit deeper. Say we're 250 in chips (1000 chips to gather to win the tournament) and our opponent goes all-in again (12.5 ES). We can't say for sure we need exactly 52% to be break even as the tournament is not over after we win. It is taking more time for us to win passing the opportunity playing another tournament thus affecting our hourly winrate... And not only this.
We can wait for better opportunities being 25bb deep passing some marginal (taking rake into account) +EV situations for better ones throughout the game. The logic behind this is that we don't want to risk the whole tournament before we are really forced to do so, we want to convert our small edges into chips without investing all the chips. When we're 12bb deep we don't have that many opportunities as with 25bb, we can't easily convert small edges (minraising, cbetting etc.) without risking the whole stack so we probably want to lower our requirements for all-in equity even with 4% rake.
In this thread people suggest to set edge in SNG Wizard to 0, maybe slightly in plus, like 0.1. What does it mean in terms of the original question? It means that if SNG Wizard suggest to call all-in with 50% (ok, maybe 50.1% or 50.2%) equity being 25bb deep (playing of course tournament with 4% rake) then hero should take the opportunity. They say all the calculating errors when putting the opponent on certain range, seeing more plus EV opportunities ahead and so on - all these factors compensate each other and we can neglect the edge. It seems wrong to me but maybe it is right.
Any thoughts are highly appreciated and welcome!
Another good thread on the topic can be easily found with search query "HUSNG Theory - Rake, tournament equity and hourly rate" (can't post links to external forums here). I think I'm getting what the author wants to say but I'd like to see ideas of other people as well.
