WSOP exit hand

LuckyLloyd

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robinlacey

LuckyLloyd wrote:

Sorry Robin. I was responding to the point made by a different poster in which he compared a 6x pot raise in this situation to calling a shove of 1800 chips at the 100 / 200 blind level. I am just making the point that it is not the same thing as at this stage of the tournament the average stack to blind ratio would have dropped significantly from 100 - 110 BBs to somewhere in the 55 - 65 BB range.

So a 6x the pot shove at this stage of the game is more significant.

That said, I think any good player is unlikely to call shoves for 6 times the pot with Queen high - unless they literally are certain that they are against ATC.

oh ok,i see what you mean.

on a side note,i think people in this thread are underestimating how often people will call all ins-maybe not in this situation,but i will frequently call all ins with K and sometimes Q high against someone who i think is pushing any two.

maybe i'm just a calling station,but i'm fairly sure that i'm making a profit off doing this,the games are so agressive these days and almost everyone knows the situations where they should be pushing any two,so if someone pushes for like 8 BBs from the button or small blind and i'm the big blind i'd need a read that they aren't pushing any two to fold say K9 or QJ.

ocallagh

LuckyLloyd wrote:

I'm not a cash donkey Niall. But with 16BBs and miles away from the money, I don't think your tournament life has so much value that you would avoid trying to squeeze every last bit of value from every play you make.

I agree 99% of the time I don't take my tournamnent life into the equation, but when two courses of action are so close (EV wise) I would prefer to take the one that is better for my tournament life. It definitely has a value

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

a147pro

I remember this coming up before some blogger had advocated open pushing with AK on the button. The stacks were bigger I think about 80,000 but the blinds were also, 2000/4000 I think. Anyway I got slaughtered for saying the advice wasn't that bad, mainly for the reasons Lloyd addressed in the last line of his first post.

I'm thinking about his again and all the arguments are based on which allows you to get your money in ahead the most times. But is there not an argument that the only sure way to win is to avoid showdowns? I remember playing the Merrion 100 years ago, having freerolled in. It was the Monday after a big game and Clonie Gowen was there. She struck me, for obvious reasons, but also cos she didn't show down one hand all night (at least not while I was there).

As I argued the last time if you push you avoid getting into 60/40 situations like KJ or coinflips. It cannot be that the theory of poker is always to take these situations. In any tournie, least not the WSOP you will have to take them so many times that you'll be a huge dog to come through - which is stating the obvious, you need to be seriously lucky to win any tournie.

Just a thought as per the first principles?!?

RoundTower

I had a long repl written out but the stupid hotel room TV lost it.

In short you need to balance your play: if you generally raise small with strong hands and push all in with weaker hands in this spot, you are too predictable. So in this situation I prefer to push or fold.

pumpkinpints

I think an interesting distiction must be made between maximising long term value and short term value. i think this is a concept which is surely underthought at times and people generally stick to strategies such as cash game which look at the short terms runs, as in a cash game (exclding metagame) each hand is basically played in isolation and it is imperative that we extract the most value from each play so our long term ev rises.
In a tournament however it is important that you secure the ablilty to make a profit i.e. to have a certain amount of chips, chips are the tools of your trade and is important to keep a certain level of them in order to successfully manipulate situations later in the game.
Where i think this comes into play is in these push/raise situations. If we raise and we predict that a player comes over the top 30% of the time with a worse hand and we are happy to take a 60-40 race for all of our chips, then in isolation this is good because long term it will be profitable. I am certainly not arguing that getting it in with the best hand is not +ev. What i am saying is if we continually take these races, say for example 5 of them then we are .6*.6*.6*.6*.6= 2.7% to win them all.
So what i suggest is often a better idea is to instead limit the likilhood that we are called by shoving so that we are called much less frequently. albeit from likely further being (in the case of AT at least).
Take a random sample of 10 hands for example.
We do the "optimal" play by raising and calling off our stack, and take five 60-40`s and five 50-50`s.
In this situation we`l have to run extremely well to have survived the day.
In another scenario we take 10 hands five ( shoving shoule reduce the hands we`re called by, by about 1/2) hands we win 1/6 of our stack uncontested and 4 of which we are 40-60 and 1 we are 70-30.
In this case it is much more likely that we will have survived, albeit theoretically with fewer chips.
What i am getting at now, is that if we presume we are an expert player with an edge on the rest of the field we will be able to find spots post flop, with our turn and river plays that should be able to compensate us for the lost equity in preflop situations, by virtue of the fact that we are more likely to have survived.

I would like it if sikes or Lenny would run some quick ev calculations and find out the liklihood we`ve survived and b) the apparent loss in equity by choosing my route.

Hitman Actual

pumpkinpints wrote:

I think an interesting distiction must be made between maximising long term value and short term value. i think this is a concept which is surely underthought at times and people generally stick to strategies such as cash game which look at the short terms runs, as in a cash game (exclding metagame) each hand is basically played in isolation and it is imperative that we extract the most value from each play so our long term ev rises.
In a tournament however it is important that you secure the ablilty to make a profit i.e. to have a certain amount of chips, chips are the tools of your trade and is important to keep a certain level of them in order to successfully manipulate situations later in the game.
Where i think this comes into play is in these push/raise situations. If we raise and we predict that a player comes over the top 30% of the time with a worse hand and we are happy to take a 60-40 race for all of our chips, then in isolation this is good because long term it will be profitable. I am certainly not arguing that getting it in with the best hand is not +ev. What i am saying is if we continually take these races, say for example 5 of them then we are .6*.6*.6*.6*.6= 2.7% to win them all.
So what i suggest is often a better idea is to instead limit the likilhood that we are called by shoving so that we are called much less frequently. albeit from likely further being (in the case of AT at least).
Take a random sample of 10 hands for example.
We do the "optimal" play by raising and calling off our stack, and take five 60-40`s and five 50-50`s.
In this situation we`l have to run extremely well to have survived the day.
In another scenario we take 10 hands five ( shoving shoule reduce the hands we`re called by, by about 1/2) hands we win 1/6 of our stack uncontested and 4 of which we are 40-60 and 1 we are 70-30.
In this case it is much more likely that we will have survived, albeit theoretically with fewer chips.
What i am getting at now, is that if we presume we are an expert player with an edge on the rest of the field we will be able to find spots post flop, with our turn and river plays that should be able to compensate us for the lost equity in preflop situations, by virtue of the fact that we are more likely to have survived.

I would like it if sikes or Lenny would run some quick ev calculations and find out the liklihood we`ve survived and b) the apparent loss in equity by choosing my route.

One thing: are you always getting your chips in against a stack that can knock you out, for the purpose of your argument? Or does it matter?

Edit: I think your argument is similar to what ocallagh is getting at, which is interesting.

pumpkinpints

pumpkinpints wrote:

We do the "optimal" play by raising and calling off our stack, and take five 60-40`s and five 50-50`s.
In this situation we`l have to run extremely well to have survived the day.
In another scenario we take 10 hands five ( shoving shoule reduce the hands we`re called by, by about 1/2) hands we win 1/6 of our stack uncontested and 4 of which we are 40-60 and 1 we are 70-30.

Say we have 10,000 chips. its 1500 a round.
(60%)(10,000)(5)+(50%)(5)(10,000)=(30,000)+(25,000)=55000 chips.
(5)(1500)+(60%)(4)(10,000)+(30%)(10,000)=(7500)+(24,000)+(3,000)=34,500 chips.

Odds of surviving are
Scenario 1 - (4.6656%)(1.5625%)= .0729% 1 in 1371 times
Scenario 2 - (7.776%)(.7)= 5.4432% 1 in 18.3 times.
Difference of c75 times more likely to survive.

If we put that into the calculations of chips above would you prefer 55,000 chips 1 in 1371 times or 34,500 1 in 18 times?



I may have made some mistakes and it is probably more accurate to use the compund interest formula types of models this was just a quick thing done to show a point.

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

pumpkinpints

LuckyLloyd wrote:

Cliffnotes:
1 - You can't afford to pass up edges in most tournament situations;
2 - Waiting for fabled "better spots" is incorrect most of the time irrespective of how much better you feel you are over the average player in a given tournament field;
3 - The concept of "tournament life" is generally redundant assuming a standard payout structureand not being on a pay bubble;
4 - Not drilling the above into your brain will cost you money in tournaments over the long haul;

I have numbered yoru posts instead of quoting htem for easier replying.
1) i think it has already been proven or at least the idea has been brought up that the difference in EV in this spot between raising and shoving are not all that much different. The major difference is that we get looked up lighter/more often when we raise and we risk going out (not something in itself to be worried about) or we win a large % fo our stack uncontested. If we steal the blinds/antes 3 times without being looked up we would have the 3/4 of the stack that we would have had if we raised and called, but without much of the risk imo.
2) By better spots i mean that if we can constantly steal the blinds (not taking into accoutn our change in image from doing so) then we can slowly build our stack without much of the perceived risk, we also have a better chance of getting ALL of our chips in when we have a good hand. I also mean that it is certainly a "better spot" to have 150% of the chips you once had and be in the tournament than to risk goin for 200% and be out half the time.
3) Obviously the is correct in most senses of the word and you should never be afraid to get our chips in, this is the poing you are missing, a player playing my strategy will still frequently get their chips in they just avoid having to contest for them once they are in if that makes sense? i dont think anywhere in my posts i said you should sit back and wait for AA, i still think you should be push happy when hovering so dangerously low, i just feel its better to shove and reduce the chance of contest, that to take up an extra small % in ev and increasing much fo the risk thats associated with it.
4) This is a needless comment,meh.

MrPillowTalk

I think I fold pre flop, heres my thinking on it.

At this point in the tournament with that stack size Im looking to come over the top of opening raises. Of course I will open pots in position but I want to be opening for a normal raise with a hand Im happy to call all in with Im not sure given Kens range hes shown down that we are getting reraised by a range we are ahead of, especially when playing into two bigger stacks who are aggresive, if they are mindlessly aggresive then go ahead and get it in but if they exhibit enough ability to realise that AT would be at the very bottom of his range here I dont see Ken getting raised by many hands he beats. If someone had opened to 7k Id happily shove over the top with the AT.

Its very marginal either way.

BigCityBanker

^^^ Nice1 Eoin. Im with you.

sikes

MrPT, by picking up the blinds and antes, we have a stack for another orbit to resteal. I think thats pretty important, though I do agree with your thinking and the best way to accumulate chips with our stack is a resteal.

MrPillowTalk

I dont hate a open raise and fold, or just a shove either, its very marginal and folding imo is probably best as I think we can find a spot with a better expectation.

If we had 10 - 13 BBs then you have to play, I just dont think we are wuite there yet.

Also I really dont think everyones taking into account that Ken hasnt been splashing around so I dont see how people are so against raising and folding, I just prefer to fold because after the fold you really are needing to get busy and quickly.

a147pro

LuckyLloyd wrote:

You deliberately want to sacrifice a possible increase of expectation in trade of an increased certainty of survival. While it may not appear to be such a huge mistake in this specific example - such a line of thought will prove to be a massive mistake over time and significantly reduce your tournament expectation over time:

Cliffnotes:

- You can't afford to pass up edges in most tournament situations;
- The concept of "tournament life" is generally redundant assuming a standard payout structureand not being on a pay bubble;
;

Lloyd this is all sound, but to apply this rationale as strictly as you are arguing presumably means you allow people to draw and won't protect your hand on a drawing board. Given that you will be ahead of all draws (save O/E straight + flush) you should presumably bet the maximum you think the other guy will call. This may be profitable in some circumstances, for instance if you have enough chips to fold once he hits it etc., but I think many tournament players would think it madness to do this all the time as a rule, which seems to be what youre advocating above.

Is there any room in your approach for discouraging someone drawing by betting big and if there is how can you reconcile that with saying its wrong to push so as to avoid getting in only as a marginal favourite? Leaving aside the specific hand here.

LuckyLloyd

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a147pro

LuckyLloyd wrote:

I'm not sure I understand your point - unless your point is that we should bet the pot or over bet the pot in cases where we reckon someone is drawing against our made hand for fear of being eliminated - and be happy to "win a small pot than lose a big one". If that is what you are on about then I would strongly disagree for obvious reasons.

Hmmm. This is my point. I've always gone on the principle that I want to bet to discourage someone outdrawing me, not just that I want to build the pot. Perhaps if I have enough chips I should aim to build the pot rather than just knock them off. I will consider this further...

RoundTower

lol donkaments.

a147pro

RoundTower wrote:

lol donkaments.

.

(Though I'm talking about a situation where there's already a lot of chips in the pot pre-flop and you're trying to take it down while ahead.)

cardshark202

I think folding is very bad, and I don't think its close. If you're not sure about open raising, you can be very sure about open shoving.

nicnicnic

its a clear shove for me

Hectorjelly

Id like someone to explain why they think open shoving is better than open raising in this situation, because no-one has yet

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

mrflash

well i gave an explanation, but it was considered wrong by the original poster, so i hope that we agreed to disagree.

califano

This hand doesnt merit as much discussion as its getting. There has been better questions by lesser known players getting much fewer responses. Its good to have a good old discussion but im sure if a lesser known posted this hand it would have got maybe 5 replies.

ocallagh

rounders123 wrote:

This hand doesnt merit as much discussion as its getting. There has been better questions by lesser known players getting much fewer responses. Its good to have a good old discussion but im sure if a lesser known posted this hand it would have got maybe got 5 replies.

I disagree. I think the discussion is merited. Fair enough the fact KP posted it might have given it an initial spark... but I think that is fair enough as KP would post (slightly:p ) higher content than a randomer would. I think the reason it has gone on so long since then is the fact that absolutely nobody agrees with each other. I don't know the last time this happened. When this rare situation presents itself I think the best posts crop up. Sikes, HJ, RT, Robin, Lenny, LuckyLloyd and MrPt have all posted very relevant arguments. I still don't know what the best course of action is.

robinlacey

LuckyLloyd wrote:

It may seem that I am deliberately trolling you with the below, but believe me - I am not.


The above is very wrong. This point has been debated many, many times in a variety of places. No tournament player can afford to pass up edges. And you cannot worry about the maths of surviving numerous 60 / 40 situations. The cards have no memory and you must get it in with the best of it when the opportunity presents itself. It is vital to play each hand on it's own merits and attempt to extract the maximum EV from most tournament situations (long understood exceptions being on satellite or pay bubbles where $EV may outweigh cEV).

Your tournament survival is not important. And the idea that if we are a good player we "will find a better spot" or can "use our skill on turns and rivers" is utterly redundant when we have a 16 BB stack!!

I am frankly tired of this debate re - appearing numerous times on this and other forums. The nature of tournament poker is that the variance is huge - it is neccesary to embrace that variance and get your chips in good as often as possible. Any notion that you can play tight and magically find spots where your money keeps going in better than 70 / 30 is just terribly incorrect. You need to take flips and slight edges - and you need to run good. Particularly in an event like the WSOP ME where the field has 6500 runners.

Particularly now more than ever, players with the above mentallity are raped and pillaged by top tournament players. If there are guys worrying about their tournament life it becomes soooo important to be 3 betting and 4 bet shoving with an ever wider range - getting money over the line and maximising FE.

Now, obviously in the present situation - you want to push because you want to maximise the chances of taking the pot uncontested without having to showdown. You deliberately want to sacrifice a possible increase of expectation in trade of an increased certainty of survival. While it may not appear to be such a huge mistake in this specific example - such a line of thought will prove to be a massive mistake over time and significantly reduce your tournament expectation over time: as there are other scenarios where such ideas would lead you to make massive mistakes. And it certaintly won't have you stealing and re - stealing with a high enough frequency as a tournament moves on to the later stages.


Roundtower wants to shove because he reckons that we need to protect our range in this spot and not let ourselves be exploitable and ultimately get looked up light when we don't neccesarily want to be. While this is the same conclusion as you are reaching in terms of how we are to act in this situation - the thought process behind is very different.

And the tought process behind our decisions seems to be the most important thing in my mind - as end results don't really matter.


Cliffnotes:

- You can't afford to pass up edges in most tournament situations;
- Waiting for fabled "better spots" is incorrect most of the time irrespective of how much better you feel you are over the average player in a given tournament field;
- The concept of "tournament life" is generally redundant assuming a standard payout structureand not being on a pay bubble;
- Not drilling the above into your brain will cost you money in tournaments over the long haul;

this is a good post and should possibly be stickied.

there was a very good thread on twoplustwo a few years ago that was basically the one that "settled" this whole issue,people like raymer and paul phillips made excellent posts outlining the above points. i suppose the reason the argument still exists is because people have emotional attatchments to the idea of a tournament life,or basically don't want to admit to themselves that tournaments are primarily about gambling,much much more so than cash games,and that the skilled players are the ones who realise this-this is where their edge comes from.

there was a great post from paul phillips in response to someone who said "but paul,as a great player,do you not think that you will be able to find a better spot that a coinflip to gather chips"

his response was basically,and i'm obivously paraphrasing here, "i am a great player because i know enough to take a coinflip where i can get one,so no i'm not going to be looking for a better spot"

one point that should be made,however,is that on that thread (or maybe another one around the same time) the very good posters seemed to think that once you were down to the last 10% or so of the field,things changed somewhat-i remember it was a little unclear or at least debatable,but basically people seemed to think that once 90% of the field or so were gone the idea of tournament life started to have some validity again.

not that it was of paramount importance,just that it was a factor.to be honest i don't remember the exact reasons for this,someone did some maths and everyone seemed happy to take their word for it so i was too.

the part of what lloyd was saying that i think people have the most trouble with,or are least aware of,is the part about how much varience there is in tournaments,and how people should learn to "embrace" this rather than try to lessen it.when you see these players like sorel mizzi,who i played with in vienna and online a bit,and zeejustin and all these younger players hacking it up,they are splashing around as much as they can to try to get a stack,and they are playing as many tournaments as they can to try and deal with the varience. i suspect that for every one of them that succeeds there are another five who are nearly as good or as good who will fail,not for want of skill but merely because the varience is that insane.this is becoming more so by the minute as people realise this more and games get more agressive.

this is why i think its crazy to play tournaments for a living,the varience in cash games is bad enough but in tournaments its off the scale,and i think people are deluding themselves if they think they can overcome this,either by "waiting for better spots" or by just playing loads of tournaments,unless they literally play hundreds a week online,against very small fields of very bad players.and if you are going to bother doing that why not just play cash which is more profitable,lower varience and more of a laugh anyway?

(edited to further extol the virtues of cash games)

robinlacey

MrPillowTalk wrote:

I think I fold pre flop, heres my thinking on it.

At this point in the tournament with that stack size Im looking to come over the top of opening raises. Of course I will open pots in position but I want to be opening for a normal raise with a hand Im happy to call all in with Im not sure given Kens range hes shown down that we are getting reraised by a range we are ahead of, especially when playing into two bigger stacks who are aggresive, if they are mindlessly aggresive then go ahead and get it in but if they exhibit enough ability to realise that AT would be at the very bottom of his range here I dont see Ken getting raised by many hands he beats. If someone had opened to 7k Id happily shove over the top with the AT.

Its very marginal either way.

i see what you are saying in that i would prefer to be restealing at this stage too,but sikes has shown that pushing here is a +ev spot,so even if you're not sure about the idea of bet/calling why would you not just push?

i don't see how you could pass up a +ev spot here.

robinlacey

a147pro wrote:

Lloyd this is all sound, but to apply this rationale as strictly as you are arguing presumably means you allow people to draw and won't protect your hand on a drawing board. Given that you will be ahead of all draws (save O/E straight + flush) you should presumably bet the maximum you think the other guy will call. This may be profitable in some circumstances, for instance if you have enough chips to fold once he hits it etc., but I think many tournament players would think it madness to do this all the time as a rule, which seems to be what youre advocating above.

Is there any room in your approach for discouraging someone drawing by betting big and if there is how can you reconcile that with saying its wrong to push so as to avoid getting in only as a marginal favourite? Leaving aside the specific hand here.

to be honest i'm not quite sure what you are getting at here,but as a general observation i often think that players who know the basics of tight ABC poker often overemphasize protecting their hand when they should be more worried about either getting to a showdown or extracting value.