blonde poker forum

Hi

Rarely post on here (mainly use blonde to rail friends in DTD events) and even rarer to post in this area but I'm really interested in people's views on this hand.

Tournament - APAT English Championship 2 day event. 15k starting. 45 min levels. Good Slow Structure. £75 buy-in. c£3k up top with an added value seat.

We are approaching the end of level 13 which is also the final level of day 1. Around 45 remain from 170 ish runners. NB Making Day 2 is not relevant in my thinking although the blind increase is.

I have been moved to this table c. 45 minutes ago. I know about half the table and would generalise that they are solid / tight. I have been the most active player although not maniacal.

The villain has not been at the table long. His only action has been to 3-bet my open to 15k from a 45k stack repping super-strength. I folded (I didn't have much).

I have opened & folded to shoves twice in addition to the example above so the table knows they can do it to me. In fact on the very previous hand it had folded round to my button at 1/2 and I opened with J3 as the SB is super-tight and the BB has just joined the table and hasn't put a chip in yet. BB shoves so I snap fold.

So the very next hand blinds are 1k/2k 300a
I have 83k & villain has 64k
Blinds will go to 1500 / 3k in 5 minutes

I open from the C/O to 5.5k with  Ahrt 9d, Button & SB Fold. After quite a while the BB shoves his 64k. I generally make quick decisions but on this occassion I tanked. Obviously there are hands which crush me & hands I am racing. But I am also putting A8 & below firmly in his range along with KJ etc.

It's effectively for my tournament life (I had him covered by 8BBs). My rationale is that I genuinely believe I am ahead and I want to win this tournament. If I fold I will have 25BBs in 5 minutes. If I call & I'm right, I have 130k which will put me in the Top 5.

I eventually make the call and the villain sheepishly shows  Th Jh Obviously he gets there otherwise I probably don't post this but I spoke to a few people as the night went on and would like to pose a few questions. Instantly at the table some of the players said 'great call'. Most I spoke to afterwards said they would fold and I get this, I totally get it, I nearly folded myself.

It's a 'correct' call as I'm ahead but I guess another question is 'Do you want to play for 12 hours then get it in when you are likely to be 60/40 or do you wait for a better spot'? I even asked a few players after whether they call if his cards a face up and most say no, not all but most, but don't you have to get it in 60/40 win a race etc at some stage?

So my questions are:

Would you call or Fold?
Where do you place the Call on a Scale of Hero to Donkey?
Would you call if you could see his cards?
Does the call make sense statistically?
Is the call good or bad tournament strategy?

Hopefully no tl:dr but I did read Tighty's template asking for as much info as possible

Welcome to the PHA :)

firstly, im definitely making it less pre, like 4.4k, no need to make it much bigger than 2x at this stage imo.
I am also snap folding to the reshove. let's assume he is reshoving 88+, A9s+, KTs,+, QJs+, A9o +, Kto+ (which is a generous range imo), then you are only 39.411%.
obvs a9o > jt, but this isn't how we should be thinking. you need to be assigning a range to this player, and against a reasonable range, you are doing pretty badly.

A 42bb stack, and even a 28bb stack are definitely playable, there is no need to take this much risk. tourneys are all about applying pressure and chipping up with as few showdowns as possible. i personally hate the call with a9o, and wouldn't call even if i could see his hand. 

i see what you are trying to say about a statistically correct call, but in tournaments, making a chip -ev play is often a tournament +ev play. fold and wait for a better spot.

Snap fold

Just fold. Raise a bit smaller pre. Pretty much should have a plan when you open though.

from a theory perspective tho if hands were in fact face up then it's a snapity snap call. These are the edges.

Think it's an easy fold if you don't know his hand. If you knew you were 60/40 It's an easy call ESP given the dead money in the middle. A9off v j10s is in fact 52/48 though. If you could see his hand it's prob a sigh call given dead money in the middle.

Icm wise, its a fold even if you can see his hand no?

Probably a fold in live poker but its not an easy fold.  Online vs aggro regs I'm very happy calling off A9 but its +EV because we're going to be winning/flipping a lot and sometimes we will have them crushed, but its an opportunity to knock out a good player (who we're never gonna have a big edge over) and have a huge stack.  

If you think you have a decent edge on the field then theres no need to take a high variance flip, but at the same time you have to look at your table image now as players will shove lighter on you knowing your going to fold a bunch.

Open smaller and its tougher for people to shove, its hard to shove 60k if you opened to 4.2, if you get 3bet by said seemingly aggro player then you can shove.  Its harder to get away from a pot when you've invested so much in it and think theres a good chance your winning so invest as small as possible to win as much as possible.

Also don't think about how many bigs your playing just remember what the effective stacks are.

Lastly if your getting shoved on loads then don't open an obvious position when players have reshoving stacks unless your going to call.

Ul anyway gl in future comps!!

Why?

the whole thing about busting 48% of the time and doubling up 52% of the time. you know? like when you tell us to fold AK 3handed to a blind allin?!

Thanks for the responses, I appreciate it.

Reflecting on your comments and many conversations I've had over the weekend, it seems that I am only thinking on one level in this spot regarding the eventual call. I will try to learn and improve my tournament play.

And yes, I accept that pre should be more like 2.2x

Another question, what can I call with in this spot?

Presume AJ is an easy call? so does that mean AT is also?
What about pairs? 88+ ?

oh like on a final table you mean?

yeh, but icm still exists when 2/3/4tables left right?

Doesn't it still apply in level one? E.g. you raise to 300 at 50/100, guy puts you all in for 15k and shows AK, you don't call with 22 do you?

Right well im no expert but ICM calculations can only be done when you are actually in the money so assume they are only relevent when you are in the money/on the bubble.  They are designed for sit and go's and later stages of MTTs.  A decision you make not to stick it in on a 50/50 in say level one of a tournament is not an ICM decision its about preserving your tournament life because you think better spots will arise later in the tournament (this is not what ICM is - ICM is making decisions based on the fact that chip equity does not directly correlate to $ equity).
The point about calling it off when you are 52/48 is there is already dead money in there - and i cant be bothered to do the calculation but effectively your getting about 60/40 on your call (i would guess).  60/40 is a pretty big edge (IMO) in a tournament when you're likely to playing a circa 25bb stack and theres actually not a great deal of play.

An extreme example is you would take a 70/30 edge in the WSOP main event with 800 players left in.  However if you are 3 handed on the final table one guy has 10mill, you have 10mill and the other guy has 10k i trust you can see that it would not be in your interests to take a 70/30 versus the other big stack when you can just fold until the short stack gets knocked out.  This is basically what ICM is referring to.

Have you read this Alex? http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=46848.0

Great ICM stuff in there.

All things considered in op not sure I would be opening this hand at all

To me they are sort of the same thing though - maybe I'm being thick, but we're folding 22 for our tournament life in level one because we our chip equity doesn't directly correlate to the $ equity. I.e. It costs £100 to enter, our cEV doesn't double to £200 when we double up, however it does = 0 when we bust.

Why can you not make ICM calculations when you're not in the money? You're chips always have a monetary value regardless of how many people left.

You're completely right imo. Even if you aren't in the money or near the money, if you have an edge then there can be a huge amount of value in just preserving your tournament life in super marginally +cEV spots and even spots that are +ICMEV can become folds if you have an edge and can likely find better spots

Yeh but maybe Keith's saying that's not strictly the same as ICM

Yeah, but I meant that it still affects the decisions you make in the same way that ICM does and can be thought of in the same way even if it can't be modelled mathematically in the same way that ICM can (and even modelling that correctly becomes sketchy when you have more than a few players or there are big edges either way). Maybe this whole discussion is purely semantic

icm is a fairly strict mathematical model based around payouts and chips in play. Guessing an edge and hypothesising that there will be a future, more +ev spot to exercise said edge is not scientific.

Purely ICM based answers are often wrong because of the 'preserve tourny life' stuff so they are not really the same. ICM doesnt care who any of the players are or if anyone has a skill edge.

Your saying I should fold  Ahrt 9d in the C/O in an unopened pot in this situation?

Can you explain why? I'm assuming you wouldn't always fold that hand it the c/o and that there are plenty of situations when you wouild open with it?

Don't bother asking him to explain it. Whatever reason he comes up with will be wrong.

Folding A9 in the cut off is a ridiculous suggestion.

As for the hand itself it's a pretty trivial fold given these stacks. If oppo turns his hands face up it's a call but hardly a happy one.

Calling range for me here would be 99+, AQ+

Raise pre should also be much less as has already been stated.

The difference is pretty much what thefallen said.  An ICM decision/calculation will be directly affected by the payout structure i.e. if its top heavy or not etc etc but when youre sat there with 22 pondering a call all in at level 1 after youre opponent has exposed ak, you don't fold because of the payout structure you fold cos you want to hang around in the tournament a bit longer and you think you have an edge which you can exploit at a later point. 
Youre right in that the same principles apply throughout a tournament i.e. doubling up isnt as good as going bust is bad but to just bandy around the term ICM for any decision where preserving your chip stack is important is wrong.  Anyway thats my last post on the subject - im getting out before a real expert comes along and tells me im talking rubbish.

OK cheers Keith.

No more bandying about from me! /:-|

My 2 cents on this

I think you are negating your own skill edge over this field. Generally the APAT field plays too tight at this stage of a tournament so I would suggest unless you have definite reason to think otherwise you should give this 3bet shove a lot of respect. I can't see a reason to think otherwise based on what we have seen so far. The fact you have had to fold to a few raises makes not a lot of difference here, people still just sit and wait for a hand to "catch you" with. This is the stage of an APAT where you should be trying to pick up cheap pots especially with your stack, min raises do the job most of the time, you will get the odd person who thinks they are priced in but they will usually just fold to a cbet. So just make lot's of little raises and fold when there is resistance generally, obviously there are players in the fields that you need to be a bit more clever about but you know them as well.

When he re-shoves on you I can't see what he can have that you are miles ahead of which is why you fold. Personally I would fold if he showed me his hand, although reading through the thread it looks like that might be a bit of a mistake. My callling range is TT+ and AQ+ as these hands dominate quite a bit of his re-shoving range (and I don't love TT or AQ here). As it is when you call what you got is just about the best case scenario, however to be honest I think it is a bad call.

I don't mind 3-bet shoving A9 at all against the right players but hate calling all-in with it when you are more than capable of getting back the chips you lose from your small raise with interest over the next few orbit's. Even if you see his hand, no need to take what is a massive flip and more often than not the situation will be a whole lot worse in this situation.

In the last 20 hands or so you've been bashed up a bit having faced big 3bets on several occasions damaging your stack. You are seen as the most active player at the table. Add to this it’s the last hour so people will be looking for good gambling spots. A9 isn’t turning some massive profit for you in this specific spot. Seems rocking up a little is good advice for you. Sorry if this is wrong thou. 

I see mantis although to be fair one bit of info I did miss was that my stack had increased in the last 2 orbits having picked up a couple of decent sized pots which more than compensated for those three raise-folds.

On reflection I think I am always opening (although for less) and folding here and I'm going to read up on ICM too.

ty