MTT hand

Hectorjelly

You are in a large multitable tournament a long long way from the money. Blinds are 200 400, and you have 14k. Villain has more. You have a slightly above average chip stack. The villain of this hand only got to this table a few mins ago and you dont have any read on him yet. You get JTs in the cutoff and make it 1200 to go. The button makes it 2400. You call. The flop is 9 9 2 with two hearts. You check. The button then moves in putting you all in, (note that this is a big overbet.) Call or Fold?

NickyOD

Hectorjelly wrote:

You are in a large multitable tournament a long long way from the money. Blinds are 200 400, and you have 14k. Villain has more. You have a slightly above average chip stack. The villain of this hand only got to this table a few mins ago and you dont have any read on him yet. You get JTs in the cutoff and make it 1200 to go. The button makes it 2400. You call. The flop is 9 9 2 with two hearts. You check. The button then moves in putting you all in, (note that this is a big overbet.) Call or Fold?

lol. was this another "fuktard" incident hector?

Dave

I'd put him on A big pocket pair here, or possibly A9 or something, and his bet is trying to push you off a flush draw. But then I can never call these things right.

Bp!

J10 spades? either way im foldin this hand even an A rag is miles ahead

Juan Pablo

Easy fold if that suited JT isn't hearts. You are behind powerhouse hands such as Q3s and 72os. Is there even any point chasing a flush draw if they are hearts this early into a MTT? I think not.

AmarilloFats

Jaysus. He could have a pp like 66 - 88. He could have AK or AQ with the Ah.
AA and KK are possible...I fold here but Against this WIDE range of holdings your JTs is not too bad....I could see good players, who have there eyes on winning the tourney not getting ITM, calling here. But I fold.

cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
Jh Th 502 50.71 485 48.99 3 0.30 0.509
8s 8c 485 48.99 502 50.71 3 0.30 0.491

cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
Jh Th 490 49.49 491 49.60 9 0.91 0.499
Kd Ah 491 49.60 490 49.49 9 0.91 0.501

cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
Jh Th 325 32.83 665 67.17 0 0.00 0.328
As Ad 665 67.17 325 32.83 0 0.00 0.672

Lafortezza

Call, he has A9 but you hit two running tens for the bigger house.

Einstein

Not much experience speaking here, but I'd fold that hand.

shaydy

Hectorjelly wrote:

You are in a large multitable tournament a long long way from the money. Blinds are 200 400, and you have 14k. Villain has more. You have a slightly above average chip stack. The villain of this hand only got to this table a few mins ago and you dont have any read on him yet. You get JTs in the cutoff and make it 1200 to go. The button makes it 2400. You call. The flop is 9 9 2 with two hearts. You check. The button then moves in putting you all in, (note that this is a big overbet.) Call or Fold?

Fold, I'd put him on a small pocket pair here, 4-8's

Hectorjelly

Bp! wrote:

J10 spades? either way im foldin this hand even an A rag is miles ahead

You are wrong

Hectorjelly

shaydy wrote:

Fold, I'd put him on a small pocket pair here, 4-8's

Your a favorite over a small pair and there is already a considerable amount in the pot, and you think its a fold?

BigDragon

Hooks

roryc

queens or Ace King hearts

mewso

I think the point is that you have no idea what he has. You know nothing about him. With so little information I'm folding to what I have to assume is a better hand. So far from the money my stack is still 11600 which is enough to work with at these blind levels.
Also I think posters should be penalised for dragging these posts on too long Come on HJ fill in the blanks.

Hectorjelly

Ok first of all this is a hand that Paul Phillips played recently, you can here his account of it here:

http://extempore.livejournal.com/102173.html

And theres a two plus two discussion on the hand here:

http://myturl.com/001Ff


Basically the preflop reminraise and the flop move in suggests thats its very unlikely that you are up against a big pocket pair. The only hands you are in trouble against are AA KK or AK of hearts, all of which are very unlikely. Its a + EV call against almost any other cards, and the fact that its far from the money means that survival isnt that important. Phillips has a great quote here:

"I can fold and have 10K or call and have 26K 50% of the time and 0 50% of the time. For me to fold I have to believe that my tournament equity with 26K in chips is less than double my equity with 10K in chips.

I dunno about anyone else's chip->equity functions but mine more than doubles from 10K to 26K."


I think this hand is a perfect example to destroy the "tournament life" myths that people believe.

NickyOD

Hectorjelly wrote:

Basically the preflop reminraise and the flop move in suggests thats its very unlikely that you are up against a big pocket pair.

I think that's nonsense. From my experience its much more likely to be a big pair with a min reraise, but then if the read is coorect then so is the call. personally I think he got lucky with his read here.

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

I think that's nonsense. From my experience its much more likely to be a big pair with a min reraise, but then if the read is coorect then so is the call. personally I think he got lucky with his read here.

This is your experience from playing 2k WSOP events is it? The move in on the flop means thats its very unlikely to be AA or KK, they would just bet normally and hope for some action.

NickyOD

Hectorjelly wrote:

This is your experience from playing 2k WSOP events is it? The move in on the flop means thats its very unlikely to be AA or KK, they would just bet normally and hope for some action.

Well you never said it was the WSOP. And with no read on the player you can't rule anything out. What about the Phillips post on Hellmuth's AA getting cracked by 9T on a similar flop?

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

Well you never said it was the WSOP. And with no read on the player you can't rule anything out. What about the Phillips post on Hellmuth's AA getting cracked by 9T on a similar flop?

When you responded I assumed you had read the linked threads and were disagreeing with Pauls read, which obviously included the fact that it was at a WSOP event. The other hand has nothing to do with this one except similar flops.

NickyOD

Hectorjelly wrote:

When you responded I assumed you had read the linked threads and were disagreeing with Pauls read, which obviously included the fact that it was at a WSOP event. The other hand has nothing to do with this one except similar flops.

My point is that you can never rule out specific hands against bad players, expecially if you have no real read on them. Bad players overbet with the nuts all the time. AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK and even A9 were all possible here in my view.

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

My point is that you can never rule out specific hands against bad players, expecially if you have no real read on them. Bad players overbet with the nuts all the time. AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK and even A9 were all possible here in my view.

I think your really clutching at straws here. His preflop minraise means AK/AQ/pair then his all in on the flop means AK and AQ are the most likely hands. AA or KK most of the time bet normally so as to get value from underpairs. There is no chance he has A9, none at all. Are you saying you would consider laying down KK in this spot fearing A9/AA?- If your not going to be able to read a hand this played this transparently you would find it very hard to be successfull at this type of event.

NickyOD

Hectorjelly wrote:

I think your really clutching at straws here. His preflop minraise means AK/AQ/pair then his all in on the flop means AK and AQ are the most likely hands. AA or KK most of the time bet normally so as to get value from underpairs. There is no chance he has A9, none at all. Are you saying you would consider laying down KK in this spot fearing A9/AA?- If your not going to be able to read a hand this played this transparently you would find it very hard to be successfull at this type of event.

It's nonsense to say that a player you have no read on will only min raise with a specific group of hands. This hand isn't transparant at all. A bad player would often plays an overpair EXACTLY the same way.

If this was an internet tournament I doubt he would make the same call, with no way of spotting any physical weakness.

Of course I woudln't lay down an overpair but it is also nonsense to say that players don't overbet monsters. I see it all the time. See this thread

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

If this was an internet tournament I doubt he would make the same call, with no way of spotting any physical weakness.

The read is all about the betting pattern, nothing to do with being at the table and seeing the guys eyes twitch or whatever. Of course there is a chance that they guy has a monster, but when all the evidence points to it being AK/AQ then most of the time it will be AK/AQ. AK and AQ are much more common that AA or KK and the fact that most of the time an overpair bets normally rather than going all in means you will very rarely see AA or KK.

I never said players dont overbet monsters, but the reason that overbetting works is that it doesnt happen that often.

NickyOD

I think regardlerss of the way the hand played out it was a pretty wreckless play and he busted out. I would certainly agree that you should always look for oportunities to get your chips in early and get the chips to get you deep in the tourney but this one was a coinflip at best. The fact that he had th epot odds doens't really justify the call. Why get it all in on a coinflip when you'll be slapped in the face by 4-1s all day.

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

I think regardlerss of the way the hand played out it was a pretty wreckless play and he busted out. I would certainly agree that you should always look for oportunities to get your chips in early and get the chips to get you deep in the tourney but this one was a coinflip at best. The fact that he had th epot odds doens't really justify the call. Why get it all in on a coinflip when you'll be slapped in the face by 4-1s all day.

Im having trouble believing you wrote this last line, do you really think that you can be successfull in medium buyin tourneys by waiting until you get aces or kings and getting some idiot all in preflop who has sevens? If your opponents were really really bad and the blinds were tiny then you might have an argument, but neither of these are true.

You get it all in on a coinflip because its a coinflip where you win 26k if you win but only lose 10k if you lose. And you probably have a slight edge over his most likely hands.

Id advise reading through the 2+2 thread, not 1 regular poster thought that this was anything but a routine call.

NickyOD

Hectorjelly wrote:

Im having trouble believing you wrote this last line, do you really think that you can be successfull in medium buyin tourneys by waiting until you get aces or kings and getting some idiot all in preflop who has sevens? .

That's pretty condescending. I'm only giving my opinion. You're not talking to losing player here.

Hectorjelly wrote:

If your opponents were really really bad and the blinds were tiny then you might have an argument, but neither of these are true..

He can fold and have 30BBs left!!! With this structure there is tonnes of play left.

Hectorjelly wrote:

You get it all in on a coinflip because its a coinflip where you win 26k if you win but only lose 10k if you lose. And you probably have a slight edge over his most likely hands. .

The only hand in the the possible range he listed he had an edge over were AK (with no heart) and pairs 77 or lower.

Hectorjelly wrote:

Id advise reading through the 2+2 thread, not 1 regular poster thought that this was anything but a routine call.

INow that just isn't true.

"if you're a superior player than the field then that superiority should translate to creating better situations than 50-50 (at best) to get all your money in."

or this quote

Agreed.. This call is absolutely hideous.. People condoning it because "Hey It's Paul Phillips, I must be the right play" are complete morons.

"I don't know what Paul was thinking but his head wasn't in the right place on this hand.. A player of his ability risking his entire tournament on a 50-50 coin toss.. When he's capable of outplaying half the field.. Big Time Donk Call!! BIG TIME!!

Horrible, Horrible Call! "

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

That's pretty condescending. I'm only giving my opinion. You're not talking to losing player here.

It was a rididulous assertion

NickyOD wrote:

He can fold and have over 50BBs left!!! With this structure there is tonnes of play left.

Yeah this isnt a case of being desperate. Its a case of sensible gambling.

NickyOD wrote:

The only hand in the the possible range he listed he had an edge over were AK (with no heart) and pairs 77 or lower.

JTs is ahead of any Ak or AQ (unless they are both hearts) even if the AQ/K has 1 heart.

NickyOD wrote:

INow that just isn't true.
"if you're a superior player than the field then that superiority should translate to creating better situations than 50-50 (at best) to get all your money in."

Or not folding a coinflip when getting better than 1.5 to 1 when you are very far from the money.

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

or this quote

Agreed.. This call is absolutely hideous.. People condoning it because "Hey It's Paul Phillips, I must be the right play" are complete morons.

"I don't know what Paul was thinking but his head wasn't in the right place on this hand.. A player of his ability risking his entire tournament on a 50-50 coin toss.. When he's capable of outplaying half the field.. Big Time Donk Call!! BIG TIME!!

Horrible, Horrible Call! "

You got to be kidding me, why did you post that? Loads of idiots crawled out of the wordwork to mutter things like tournament life and so on and they got their asses handed to them on the thread. This is a much better quote:


"You're an idiot. If you don't understand why every decent player that posted in this thread is on one side and you are on the other, lurk more."

NickyOD

Hectorjelly wrote:

You got to be kidding me, why did you post that? Loads of idiots crawled out of the wordwork to mutter things like tournament life and so on and they got their asses handed to them on the thread. This is a much better quote:


"You're an idiot. If you don't understand why every decent player that posted in this thread is on one side and you are on the other, lurk more."

because you're making me out to be an idiot for disagreeing with you, and I am not alone with my opinion If this was such a cut and dried decision, which it certainly isn't, why bother asking for people's opinion in the first place.

If you believe it is correct for a player who is better than the vast majority of the field to check call for all his chips on a 50/50 at best!! then so be it but I think its just wreckless. If he had pushed first like he should have then it would have been a different story.

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

because you're making me out to be an idiot for disagreeing with you, and I am not alone with my opinion If this was such a cut and dried decision, which it certainly isn't, why bother asking for people's opinion in the first place.

If you believe it is correct for a player who is better than the vast majority of the field to check call for all his chips on a 50/50 at best!! then so be it but I think its just wreckless. If he had pushed first like he should have then it would have been a different story.

Im not making you out to be an idiot, I just have disagreed with almost everything youve said. The question is cut and dried to a certain extent, its a maths question and one that is solved. However its caused a lot of controversey, and highlights a lot of common misconceptions.

Its a 50 50 where you get back more than 1:1. Think about it, if you were getting 10:1 , ie if you had your 2k stack and could somehow end up with a 12k stack if you won, then you would always take the coinflip. There would be no question about whether its a call or not. If you were getting 1:1 then you probably wouldnt take it. So somewhere between those two extremes lies a point at which it makes sense to take the coinflip. You cant just say well its a 50 50 so you should fold, you need to look at the whole situation.

NickyOD

Here's the quote from Pauls blog:

"It's not that often I can check-call all-in holding Jack-high late in a tournament against a big overbet and be glad I did it."

While mathematically the opponent gave him a decent price for a call, tactically its poor play in a tournament when you still have some play left.
If this guy flipped up AQ, and I busted in a race scenario, I'm not going to leave the table thinking how I made a great mathetimatical call. Since I'll be sent to the rail more than half the time I'm probably going to be pissed off that I didnt pass here, and play the board against him in a hand where I can get him to overplay huge underdog on the flop, instead of where he's 50/50.

Paul talked about two larger stacks at his table being in the hands of "incompetent" players. If thats the case, he left skill at the door, and decided to race in a pot he thought he was priced into.

If he was against an opponent who he correctly read as being in a race against, AND his table had two big stacks in COMPETANT hands, then his play is fairly sound. But the last thing I want to do with a couple of poor players with stacks at my table is to call off all my chips in a race or worse scenario. I will save that until I believe I have no play left.

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

While mathematically the opponent gave him a decent price for a call, tactically its poor play in a tournament when you still have some play left.

There no question about that. Your always better off getting your chips in first to give you the tactical advantage of not having to make your hand. However his opponent made the unusual move of just moving in, so that point is academic. Im sure if the hand was replayed paul would just moved in on the flop, but he was expecting a normal less than pot sized bet which he can move over the top of.

NickyOD wrote:

If this guy flipped up AQ, and I busted in a race scenario, I'm not going to leave the table thinking how I made a great mathetimatical call. Since I'll be sent to the rail more than half the time I'm probably going to be pissed off that I didnt pass here, and play the board against him in a hand where I can get him to overplay huge underdog on the flop, instead of where he's 50/50.

Again your making two mistakes. First of all would you rather play a 70/30 for all your money getting 1:1 or a 50/50 for 2:1? Becuase in the long run a player will be more successfull taking the 50 50 shots. The fact that it was 50 50 on its own is almost meaningless, you need to look at the whole situation.

Secondly I think you overestimate how easy it is to accumulate chips in an event like this, where you only start with 2k chips.

NickyOD wrote:

Paul talked about two larger stacks at his table being in the hands of "incompetent" players. If thats the case, he left skill at the door, and decided to race in a pot he thought he was priced into.

As many people have already said His skill lies in not folding a 50/50 when getting 1.5 to 1. You still seem to not got past the fact that its a 50 50.

NickyOD wrote:

If he was against an opponent who he correctly read as being in a race against, AND his table had two big stacks in COMPETANT hands, then his play is fairly sound. But the last thing I want to do with a couple of poor players with stacks at my table is to call off all my chips in a race or worse scenario. I will save that until I believe I have no play left.

Considering there are big stacks at the table played by bad players, it actually would make sense to gamble it up a little bit so that you have enough chips to play them properly, if he wins this hand he can be much more effective against the big stacks.

NickyOD

lol. Trying to get survivors and accumulators to agree on anything is harder than freeing Iraq.

zonemelt

NickyOD wrote:

My point is that you can never rule out specific hands against bad players, expecially if you have no real read on them. Bad players overbet with the nuts all the time. AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK and even A9 were all possible here in my view.

This is the third reply to suggest A9. It's a crap hand and you definitely can't put someone on it for sure when reraised preflop, whether the flop gives them trips or not.

NickyOD

zonemelt wrote:

This is the third reply to suggest A9. It's a crap hand and you definitely can't put someone on it for sure when reraised preflop, whether the flop gives them trips or not.

Many players even at large buy in events raise and reraise with absolutely anything, and to put a specific group of hands on a player you have absolutely no read on is just wrong.

If he does put him on AQ and realise this player is a baboon willing to piss away his chips with anything then he's likely to get his chips in a better situation than calling when he's behind.

Anyway we can just modify that range until we convince ourselves that our wreckless call was justifiable

That way we can get on several poker forums on the internet and say "My math says I am right - you are a total ****tard if you disagree with math. I am proud that I made a play I can prove is +EV. Am I the only one that knows how to play poker? Why is everyone else so stupid?"

Seems like a great way around results-oriented thinking.

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

Many players even at large buy in events raise and reraise with absolutely anything, and to put a specific group of hands on a player you have absolutely no read on is just wrong.

Thats not true at all, are you saying that when you get raised by a player you dont know you just put them on a blank hand and hope to flop the nuts?
Thats absolutley crazy. Every day I play against players Ive never played before and I can usualy read them quite well, because most people play generally the same way. The preflop min raise then massive overbet all in is such an obvious AQ/AK move. Of course from time to time you get it wrong but if you dont trust your reads they are worthless. In a stt here against an unknown player I would call here with a pair of threes.

NickyOD wrote:

If he does put him on AQ and realise this player is a baboon willing to piss away his chips with anything then he's likely to get his chips in a better situation than calling when he's behind.

Theres no evidence to suggest this player is that bad. In a way he played this hand quite well as he didnt give Paul a chance to check raise him on the flop, forcing Paul to call for all his chips if he wants to play on. So I think its silly to assume that you can just fold this wait for him to overplay a hand.

NickyOD wrote:

Anyway we can just modify that range until we convince ourselves that our wreckless call was justifiable

Why dont you come up with a range of hands for his opponent and then work out the EV of the call, then see if you think pauls probable edge over the rest of the players means that he can happily fold this. Or you can just keep repeating that is was a wreckless call over and over again, without attempting to actually formulate a reasnable argument. He thought his opponent had AK/Q, and he had AQ; I dont see what you think the big deal about his read is.

NickyOD wrote:

That way we can get on several poker forums on the internet and say "My math says I am right - you are a total ****tard if you disagree with math. I am proud that I made a play I can prove is +EV. Am I the only one that knows how to play poker? Why is everyone else so stupid?"

Seems like a great way around results-oriented thinking.

I dont see why your taking it so personally, but people who advocate a fold here do usually labour under several misunderstandings about tournament poker. When they are quite rude about it as quite a few posters on the 2+2 thread are then they have been told in no uncertain terms what the general consensus of them is.

Hectorjelly

zonemelt wrote:

This is the third reply to suggest A9. It's a crap hand and you definitely can't put someone on it for sure when reraised preflop, whether the flop gives them trips or not.

And even if they did have A9 preflop, how many people would then go all in on just about the best flop they could ever imagine.

NickyOD

Hectorjelly wrote:

Why dont you come up with a range of hands for his opponent and then work out the EV of the call, then see if you think pauls probable edge over the rest of the players means that he can happily fold this. Or you can just keep repeating that is was a wreckless call over and over again, without attempting to actually formulate a reasnable argument. He thought his opponent had AK/Q, and he had AQ; I dont see what you think the big deal about his read is.
.

I did.

with 88, TT-AA and AK/AQ it comes to 44-45%. Even with the chips in the pot that's not enough for me to risk my tournament life on. I think if anyone think they can't find a better situation than this at a table with incompetent players, then they are not looking very hard.

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

I did.

with 88, TT-AA and AK/AQ it comes to 44-45%. Even with the chips in the pot that's not enough for me to risk my tournament life on. I think if anyone think they can't find a better situation than this at a table with incompetent players, then they are not looking very hard.

Noone said it was a table of imcompetant player. As I mentioned if every one at the table was really bad then you could pass here and just wait for an overpair situation, but thats not the case.

Do you agree that at some stage if you increase the amount in the pot that its an automatic call? Following on from that what type of edge do you think Paul has over the other players, and what type of equity does that mean he can pass up? Based on that how many chips would need to be in the pot before you made the call? Do you believe that in these circumstances the value of the chips is linear?

Lastly if you were 100% sure you were up against AK here would you pass anyway?

NickyOD

Hectorjelly wrote:

Noone said it was a table of imcompetant player.?

Paul mentioned in his own blog that the tall stacks were in the hands of incompetent players.

Hectorjelly wrote:

As I mentioned if every one at the table was really bad then you could pass here and just wait for an overpair situation, but thats not the case.? Do you agree that at some stage if you increase the amount in the pot that its an automatic call? Following on from that what type of edge do you think Paul has over the other players, and what type of equity does that mean he can pass up?

I'm defintely not saying to wait for an overpair situation. Math players tend to rely upon math only, and forget about a lot of skill saying there is too much luck in poker but you must have an underlying strategic reason why risking your stack is acceptable at this point. If this were a tournament where everyone at the table is equal then micro-edges are the name of the game. I can't say for sure how dificult it would be for Paul to accumualte chips after folding becuase I wasn't there. The blinds might have been about to go up. He may have HAD to to take race at this point but even if he did he shouldn't be happy about it. I would be pretty disappointed to find myself in this marginal situation if I'm surrounded by inferior players. It's a great cash game scenario. It's a great tournament scenario hand when the blinds are high. But to simply go for it because he got a good price is leaving out a lot of other information that should have been considered.

Hectorjelly wrote:

Lastly if you were 100% sure you were up against AK here would you pass anyway?

Like I said I would need to have an underlying strategic reason for taking a a race at this point. If this is a tough table then I most likely would have called, but his comments suggest it wasn't.

"My table included two big stacks in the hands of fairly exploitable players"

He does go on to say he wanted to put together enough chips to hurt the tall stacks. Whether or not its right to take a race early in order to do that is something you and I will probably never agree on, but if you find yourself constantly having to move all-in in a tournament in race conditions without elevating, then there's a whole lot of your game that is missing. Let's face it, if the weaker players are able to consistently make you take race or worse situations for all of your chips, then you must re-evaluate who the weaker player really is.

Hectorjelly

Taking a race getting 1:1 - bad play
Taking a race getting 1.5:1 - good play

ecksor

My take on this is that while the EV might justify the call, if you take it in the context of the tournament then it would seem that even if you're getting something like 3:2 in your favour (or whatever), then the odds are actually against you going far in the tournament as you will busted in an all-in call of that nature two times out of five and you only need to get busted one time out of five to get knocked out. Then again, the odds are against you going far anyway (all else being equal), so perhaps you justify this on the basis that you have to get your early position somehow?

Obviously if you don't take some of the chances when they're in your favour then you're never going to get the chips, but risking all of your chips too often seems reckless. I'm not a good poker player but this point is something I find interesting so I'd be interested in various people's take on it.

NickyOD

Paul only ever plays to win. He doesn't play like most of the other top pros and if he feels he has any kind of mathematical edge he'll take it and that's fine. Whenever he has a significant overlay on a coinflip situation he'll take it. Paul will ALWAYS take that edge. I'm just saying there are a lot of other factors you need to consider when taking those edges for all your chips.

Culchie

This thread has hurt my head.

Hectorjelly

NickyOD wrote:

Paul only ever plays to win. He doesn't play like most of the other top pros and if he feels he has any kind of mathematical edge he'll take it and that's fine. Whenever he has a significant overlay on a coinflip situation he'll take it. Paul will ALWAYS take that edge. I'm just saying there are a lot of other factors you need to consider when taking those edges for all your chips.

This maybe a shock but I dont agree with this. Also there is a common misconception that pros make big fold when they are getting great pot odds; hellmouth probably does but not anyone else. Off the top of my head Negrauea calling his stack off with a straight draw, Raymer calling half his stack off with 89o against Annie Duke, Scott Fishman calling all in with AK at the WSOP when he thought he was up against Doyles QQ etc etc.

Happy Camper

The argument that "it's a bad idea to commit your tournament life to a draw or a race, because unlike in a cash game, where you can always reach into your pocket and get more money, you'd be knocked out of the tournament if you lost" is ridiculous because you can ALWAYS (unless you've just gone broke) buy into another tournament.

A good poker player is a player with +EV from playing. +EV comes from getting your chips into +EV situations (and out of -EV situations), whether you're favourite to win or not.

Mike BV.

NickyOD

You know I wish I could agree with you guys I really do, but with the amount of times I've blown up in tournaments over the last week by getting involved in marginal +EV situations has been so frequent that I disagree even more.
Also, if our opponent knows we have this kind of gamble in us, he could exploit it. How's he like the hand if our opponent shows us a 9 or a pair of ducks? A little reverse psychology to send us to the rail? If we were shorter or at a tougher table I absolutely agree with the call. As it stands, I think I will wait for a better spot.

The situation raises two nagging issues.

1. At what point should an experienced player be willing to race with a loose player?
This would be a mute point the higher the blinds are to his stack, and the greater the overall skill level of his table.

2. Was the pot laying the odds to call
Should Paul have really been able to calculate that the pot was laying him a good price, or was that more results oriented based upon the actual holding, and not how the hand action played out.

MY answer to no 2 is this

20% of the time the opponent is on AK/AQ hearts....PP has 21% equity

40% 0f the time it's an overpair (scared)....PP has about 34% equity

40% of the time it's a bad hand like AQo and PP has 50% equity

Happy Camper

NickyOD wrote:

You know I wish I could agree with you guys I really do, but with the amount of times I've blown up in tournaments over the last week by getting involved in marginal +EV situations has been so frequent that I disagree even more.

Are you saying that you're disagreeing with the play, because recently, you've "gambled correctly" but have been getting unlucky (the frequency with which you've lost these gambles were above average)?

I don't think such results are at all relevant to the discussion (nor should you try to conclude the "correct play" from them).

Mike BV.

NickyOD

Happy Camper wrote:

Are you saying that you're disagreeing with the play, because recently, you've "gambled correctly" but have been getting unlucky (the frequency with which you've lost these gambles were above average)?

I don't think such results are at all relevant to the discussion (nor should you try to conclude the "correct play" from them).

Mike BV.

As I said earlier

If I'm at a table full of inferior players, I'm less inclined to pat myself on the back for getting myself into a slightly better EV position than I thought I was in, and a hell of a lot of time figuring out where I could and should have outplayed the worse players.

ecksor

Happy Camper wrote:

Are you saying that you're disagreeing with the play, because recently, you've "gambled correctly" but have been getting unlucky (the frequency with which you've lost these gambles were above average)?

Can you elaborate on the maths of this a bit more please? At some point there has to reach a point where making too many +EV all in calls will result in -EV overall because you'll blow up too often to get into the money. What is the optimum?

Hectorjelly

ecksor wrote:

Can you elaborate on the maths of this a bit more please? At some point there has to reach a point where making too many +EV all in calls will result in -EV overall because you'll blow up too often to get into the money. What is the optimum?

If I give you an apple, then give you another apple, and another and another and another and so on, assuming you dont eat any or otherwise dispose of them, at what stage will you begin to have a negative amounnt of apples?