Tournament: 99 in BB after raise

Hitman Actual

Blinds 400/800. Villain in MP raises to 2400, leaving ~8.5K behind.

Folded to you in BB, with no-one left to act. You hold 99, and have ~10K.

Fold, call, or push?

Villain is a decent player and the game is in a relatively tight phase. His raising range I put at 88-AA, AT-AK, KQ, although I get the feeling from him that he's upped gears in the last ten minutes or so.

Probably an obvious answer, but I'm still in that post-tourney haze after having a disasterous 2nd last table, losing three all-ins in a row when ahead (the hand above was much earlier).

RoundTower

If that is his range then you should fold.

But if the game is in a "relatively tight phase", a good player's range here is huge, and you can choose to push or call instead.

ArmaniJeanss

Is 10K (12BB) relatively short stacked in relation to the whole game? If so , I'm pushing.
Theres more ways he can have unpaired hands than paired hands in the range you've given, so stick em in.

ocallagh

i might use the old stop n' go..

Ste05

IMO this is a very interesting situation.

If you look at his raising range as you outlined above against your holding it's as follows:
equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 46.8316 % 46.22% 00.61% { 9h9s }
Hand 2: 53.1684 % 52.56% 00.61% { 88+, ATs+, KQs, ATo+, KQo }

However after this you need to look at the range of hands that he will call this re-raise, I would say it would be QQ+ and AK, therefore if you push and are called it will look as follows:

Hand 1: 35.7753 % 35.58% 00.19% { 9h9s }
Hand 2: 64.2247 % 64.03% 00.19% { QQ+, AKs, AKo }

Then you have to look at the folding equity you will have. Take it that there are 1,326 possible holdings Pre-Flop. Then if we take it that there are 121 hands making up the Villains raising range (9.2% of hands according to PokerStove results above), and of those 121 hands, the Villain will call the push with 34 of these hands (2.6% of hands according to the Pokerstove results above) therefore the villain will call only 28% of the time (34/121*100%) meaning that 72% of the time the Villain will fold, of the other 28% of the time we'll be a 35:65 dog.

OK, so now moving those results onto the hand in question.

If we push we can say that:
72% of the time he will fold and we'll increase our stack by 2,800 (not including our BB
28% of the time he will call, and of this 28% when we are called we are called, we will win the hand 35% of the time (35% of 28% = 9.8% of the time we push) and double up (10000 + 10000 + 400) leaving us with a stack of 20400 and lose 65% of the time (65% of 28% = 18.2% of the times we push) leaving us with a stack of 0.

So if we use these figures to calculate the EV of a push I think the table below shows the answer

Action of Villain:.....Probability:.......Our Ending Stack:......Expectation:

FOLD....................72%...............12,800......................9,216
Call and we win......9.80%.............21,300.....................2,087.4
Call and we lose.....18.20%...........0..............................0

..........................100%..............................................11,303.4

Or we fold and end with a stack of 9,200

Therefore, assuming my range of hands that he will call the re-raise All-In is correct this is a +EV push.

However, if people want to get creative with the hand then that's fine, but IMO a push here is +EV.

Any thoughts on these calculations, or point out any mistakes I've made.

RoundTower

Villain is getting almost 2-1 and should probably be calling with a wider range than you give. If you add even TT,JJ,AQs to the mix it will change your results dramatically.

I wouldn't be surprised if pushing is better than folding, but no way is folding a 2k mistake.

Hitman Actual

Ste05 wrote:

However after this you need to look at the range of hands that he will call this re-raise, I would say it would be QQ+ and AK,

Interesting, this is similar to the thinking that went on in my head at the time. I thought I'd get TT and JJ to fold, which is good, but I also though that AT-AQ would fold, which is not so good. Opponent was solid/tight, so I was fairly sure that QQ+ and AK were the only hands he'd call with.

But it was middle-stage tourney time (about 40 left out of 80), which was affecting my thinking. A lot of good players come to life at this stage as things start to tighten up, and try to build a decent stack for the later stages. I hadn't seen this player raise in about two hours, but this was now his third raise in the last ten hands or so. The problem was, I wasn't sure if he was just hitting hands, or if he actually was raising with a larger range than above, as I'd never seen him show down a hand.

sikes

ul lenny,

think i was at the table for this hand, was it against the guy with the NY cap? if its this hand, then there was very little chance he was going to fold a pair I guess he range was prob 77+ and two face cards and A8+s A10o, he was a bit of a mainiac and liked to ride his luck. it was unfortunate in this case. He did a bit of an oscar performance, and kept mumbling 25 to himself and talked about having to go for a beer as a reason for making some strange calls.

the ny cap guy hadnt slowed down at all when i went out and had about 70% of chips in play 3 handed.

(if i have got confused with hands etc i apologise)

Hitman Actual

sikes wrote:

ul lenny,

think i was at the table for this hand, was it against the guy with the NY cap? if its this hand, then there was very little chance he was going to fold a pair I guess he range was prob 77+ and two face cards and A8+s A10o, he was a bit of a mainiac and liked to ride his luck. it was unfortunate in this case. He did a bit of an oscar performance, and kept mumbling 25 to himself and talked about having to go for a beer as a reason for making some strange calls.

the ny cap guy hadnt slowed down at all when i went out and had about 70% of chips in play 3 handed.

(if i have got confused with hands etc i apologise)

Different hand. That was Player X against baseball cap guy. Bad, bad player. Called Player X's all-in on the flop with AT, when obviously a mile behind (flop K45, Player X obviously had a pair, or Kx). Said he knew Player X had a pair. Hits his ten on the river. Cue abuse.

How'd you finish up in the game, sikes?

sikes

ah so thats player X! yeah was a crazy hand, i have a real bad memory! something i gotta work on. thought i saw 1010 vs 99 somewhere late on nevermind, im sure it will come back to me! what did u have in the end?

went out in 4th, was a luckbox before the break and was just over average stack, didnt do too much, when down to 14 or so, i decided it was do or die, and the table was uber tight so i pushed with anything only had 10-15bbs. i am taking down about 50% of the blinds uncontested then the one time im looked up i have rockets.

final table was difficult to get going, didnt see much. took down the blinds and our guy in the cap made of crazy plays again, called all in on a raggy flop with ak against a PP. after the hand he said it wasnt a bad flop for ak!! needless to say he caught a k

down to four and ~50k, all in from shorty for 24k utg, I have a9o, on the button and i call, he has k8, k on the flop, then i am bb and he is sb, k 10 8 flop, he checks i push with k2 and he calls with j10, a j on the turn.

nevermind, would love to have got headsup with the fella. what really annoyed me about him was when he knocked someone out, he would stare into the distance, not looking at the player and put his hand out to the right to shake his hand. ah what a knob! he did that twice that i saw.

sorry this didnt mean to be a report as such.

ollyk1

lenny_leonard wrote:

Interesting, this is similar to the thinking that went on in my head at the time. I thought I'd get TT and JJ to fold, which is good, but I also though that AT-AQ would fold, which is not so good. Opponent was solid/tight, so I was fairly sure that QQ+ and AK were the only hands he'd call with.

But it was middle-stage tourney time (about 40 left out of 80), which was affecting my thinking. A lot of good players come to life at this stage as things start to tighten up, and try to build a decent stack for the later stages. I hadn't seen this player raise in about two hours, but this was now his third raise in the last ten hands or so. The problem was, I wasn't sure if he was just hitting hands, or if he actually was raising with a larger range than above, as I'd never seen him show down a hand.

I don't think TT/JJ folds as often as you think Lenny. I saw a lot of "interesting" calls last night from guys who had sat quietly folding for an hour or two to make me say you definitely can't say 100% of the time TT or JJ folds.

Personally I'm a fan of stop and going this hand like ocallagh said depending on the flop and the player reaction.

Hitman Actual

Point noted, Olly, and spot on! I pushed, he went into the tank and eventually called with TT. I got lucky and spiked a 9, but the result is irrelevant.

Stop and go is not bad, but the problem is if I dont push on the flop for whatever reason, then I'm down to 8K with blinds soon to go up to 500/1000. Dont like that.

As Roundtower says, this is normally a fold against a tight player, but the reason I pushed was because I thought he was after upping his game, and his range could be wider. With nines I was happy for him to fold and I'd take down a 3K+ pot pre-flop. Anyway, lately I'm looking for double-up spots in middle stages of tourneys a lot more, so I dont mind a call too much (assuming I'm ahead!).

One final question: Assuming MP takes me to be a tight player (and I was playing really tight due to having mad Bob directly to my left ) isn't calling with tens for all your money a bit brave? Anyone else here do it?

RoundTower

I think JJ would be a bad fold here given the action and the pot size. TT is closer.

lenny_leonard wrote:

I also though that AT-AQ would fold, which is not so good.

This is very bad thinking, you really want AT-AQ to fold here. In hold'em two overcards are typically about 50% to win against a smaller pair. In fact pushing with 99 is only a good choice if your opponent folds a lot of these hands.

Hitman Actual

RoundTower wrote:

This is very bad thinking, you really want AT-AQ to fold here. In hold'em two overcards are typically about 50% to win against a smaller pair. In fact pushing with 99 is only a good choice if your opponent folds a lot of these hands.

Why is it such bad thinking? 99 is a 55% favourite against overcards, so it's a hell of a lot better than a coinflip. And in this situation, I haven't much more than 10BBs and it's far from the money, so I'd be happy to take a 55% chance to double up. Also, this is a Fitz 20min-blinds game, so I dont have much time to wait for a better chance. You have to double up sometime, and often more than once. Should I wait until I knew I was a 60% favourite?

RoundTower

lenny_leonard wrote:

Why is it such bad thinking? 99 is a 55% favourite against overcards, so it's a hell of a lot better than a coinflip. And in this situation, I haven't much more than 10BBs and it's far from the money, so I'd be happy to take a 55% chance to double up. Also, this is a Fitz 20min-blinds game, so I dont have much time to wait for a better chance. You have to double up sometime, and often more than once. Should I wait until I knew I was a 60% favourite?

No, it's OK if you get called by AQ, but it's even better for you when AQ folds (because he is making a mistake by folding). You win 3600 chips for free, instead of having a 5% edge on a 20,000 pot (an average profit of about 1800 chips).