Daily Hand Quiz

Raising standard is pretty bad here, as you basically put yourself in a tight spot with a hand that’s rarely dominating anything the BB will shove with. If you had a hand like AT or even KT, I’d like the raise a lot better, as you would likely induce weaker to shove.

Folding can never be that terrible in this spot, but is probably passing up value. Calling is pretty low-risk, but you’ll be playing OOP and allowing a lot weaker hands to get you out of the pot on most flops.

Shoving is probably ev, but not by much. You’re risking 12BBs to win 2.5BBs. Versus a tight opponent, it’s fine, as you’ll fold out some better hands like super weak aces and weaker Ks. Versus a savvy opponent who is calling you wide, it’s probably a lot closer to neutral.

You have the chips to spare and it’s safe to assume opponents you don’t know are less likely to be calling correctly on average. The ship is fine here.

What actually happened: The BB called with A8 and hit their ace to win the pot.

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Excellent analysis from the staff.

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You’ve got a commanding chip lead and you’re out of position against a player you don’t know. I don’t see any reason to get involved here.

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I voted all-in, but might also call and fold to a raise, or be happy to have a cheap shot a flop with a half-decent hand and some dead money in the pot. Of course, we are out of position, but any hand that dominates us would almost certainly raise before flop so we can assume that we are ahead if we hit (save for the unfortunate cases of 2pair for opponent).

Besides hitting a pair, I would also probably move all-in with straight or flush draws if the flops has such for me, and there were no raises before flop.

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I might add, that if we limp and see the flop, the only tricky spot is if we hit either Q or J, but there is also a K, as Kx is about the only hand which is ahead of us pre-flop but might not raise.

I would move it in anyway, tho.

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I think it is a call-fold. You are so far ahead there is no need to be aggressive, but your hand is too good to throw away. Unless the flop hits me pretty hard I am throwing it away.

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Ship it holla! We are heads up with a great hand for it, in a pot with antes against a stack that can’t hurt us but has enough M to fold a good number of hands that are ahead of us. Be the table captain and apply maximum pressure.

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raise-fold. most hands he’ll have wont be worthy of risking his tourney life on, knowing we can easily call without worrying about our stack. therefore, i doubt he ships without a solid hand (22+, KJ+, A8+), and he likely folds a fair amount of hands that could have out-flopped us if we flat called preflop.

he’ll be looking for better spots to be the aggressor, not shoving against a raise from the one guy at the table who can call without blinking, so If he shoves, we’re beat, drop it. if he flat calls, we c-bet any highball flop, and unless he hit it pretty squarely, hes folding.

all the odds at each stage of this play are in our favor. if it doesnt work, we’re not hurt too bad, and use this play to get paid off in a bigger pot next time when we actually have a hand against an opponent with a significant stack.

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I think CityBorn has solid logic. I’d raise-call as well.

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Sorry, meant raise-fold.

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I voted push. If you raise you should raise to at least 4x the BB to compensate for being out of position. That’s 1/3 of the big blind’s stack and you’d be pretty much pot committed at that point making it a mistake to fold. So just shove outright.

Let’s crunch some numbers to verify. What’s the EV of shoving?

Against a loose caller (top 50%) it is a coin flip if you are called. With the 50% chance of folding shoving is clear.

Against a tighter calling range (top 25%, i.e. A-x, any pair, any broadway) you will be called 25% of the time and be a 60-40 dog. 75% of the time he folds and you win $620, and 25% of the time he calls and you lose .40*$3949 – .60*$3189 = -$334. Your overall EV is +$382 making this a clear winner.

Against a tight caller (top 10%) you will win outright 90% of the time and otherwise be a 2-1 dog. If called, you will lose .31*$3949 – .69*$3189 = -$976. Your EV in that case is +$460.

It doesn’t matter what your opponent’s calling range is; shoving is always profitable.

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Actually, just figuring out that shoving is profitable doesn’t mean it’s the best play. To make that judgment we need to compare the EV of shoving against the EV of folding or raising/folding.

Folding gives us an EV of $0, so that’s a clear loser.

Raising nets us $620 if the villain folds. If we fold to a raise we lose $840, assuming we raise to 4x the BB. For the sake of argument, let’s assume the villain will either re-raise or fold. Using _CityBorn_’s re-raising range we will be re-raised 15% of the time. That would give us an overall EV of +$401. For comparison, here are the EVs of other re-raising percentages:

05% … +$547
10% … +$474
15% … +$401
25% … +$255
40% … +$36
50% … -$110
ATC … -$840

The looser/more aggressive our opponent is the less profitable it is to raise/fold. If the villain raises 100% of the time then we will lose our $840 raise guaranteed. Shoving, on the other hand, is more complicated. Here are the numbers for shoving, dependent on the villain’s calling percentage:

05% … +$533
10% … +$463
15% … +$402
20% … +$400
25% … +$377
40% … +$394
70% … +$584
ATC … +$900

First, if you shove the villain fares best if they call with 25% of their hands. Any other calling range gives us a higher expected value. Second, shoving is always a profitable play whereas raising/folding depends on our opponents re-raising range. The tighter they are, the better.

Again for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the villain’s re-raising range and shove-calling range are the same. That is, they will stack off the same percentage of the time either way. In reality they’ll probably have a slightly wider re-raising range since they’ll have fold equity on their side, but no matter.

If we compare the two moves that way, then the break even point for us comes at 15%. If the villain will stack off less than 15% of the time then it is better to raise/fold than to shove. Conversely, if they are looser than that we should shove as shoving is more profitable.

All told, raising and folding to a re-raise is easily exploitable by the villain raising any two cards. Shoving is not exploitable. No matter how tight or how loose the villain is, we profit.

With that in mind, shoving seems to be the preferable play unless you have the villain pegged for a total fish that (1) will often call your raise instead of re-raising, and (2) you can outplay post-flop, out of position. If you think you have such an advantage then you might opt to raise/fold. Otherwise, ship it!

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Very nice analysis John. I think this illustrates a very important concept in poker. There are some things that are solid and determinable, like EV of various scenarios, and odds given particular holdings….but ultimately what makes for good play is something not so mathematical….its having a sense of what your opponent is going to do, and how to set them up to do what you want them to do in the future. If you base your response on the idea that we dont know anything about our opponent, and he could do anything, then the safest overall play is shove according to your mathematical calculations. My experience in situations like this is that the short stack wont want to push here without a strong hand, risking his tourney life against a huge stack that could easily call. Given my predicted range and reaction, our EV scenarios are even, but my play nets me a consistency of action that can be used in the future against the entire table. I dont think this is a minor point. Keeping my raises 3x in advantageous situations will allow me to apply pressure without becoming vulnerable to the “bad luck” of running into a big hand for a large amount of chips, and add to my ability to capitalize if an opponent (with a much bigger stack) makes a mistake when I hold a premium hand. The shove lets a shortstack off the hook with mediocre hands for the minor loss of a big blind (or we get caught as a huge dog), not gaining us any psychological ground with other players. The shortstack will think “OK, wait till I have a hand and he tries that again” and no one else will be concerned because they know we wouldnt shove like that against a significant stack. Ive got my eye on this pot first, but all those other stacks next.

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Good points. Also I was overstating the case to say that raising/folding is exploitable by the villain coming over the top of us. That would be ignoring the fact that we will make this same raise with other hands, some of which we will be glad to call an all-in with.

By the way, another way to look at this is as a heads-up confrontation with effective stacks around 10BB. In heads-up once the small stack shrinks to 7-10BB push/fold strategy becomes optimal.

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I think it’s a tossup between shoving and raise-folding.

I know it’s +EV, if you look at this specific hand only, and since it’s so early in the tournament, I would say push, cause the other player likely won’t be in the tournament long enough if he’s loose enough to call.

Anyway, I often will raise-fold here against decent players. They likely will not re-raise all in with any two, so a lot of the time you do get some fold equity out of it. It fully depends on the player. Either way, if it’s folded to me and at later stages of tournaments, I always raise-fold the SB, and hope the BB is paying attention. It doesn’t matter what cards I have, I do it.

This creates the other player to go on tilt a lot of the time. They are giving us an any two card range, but fold enough to make it close to equal. They push back wider than they normally would, so you can call later wider than you normally would. This is especially good after the bubble has popped.

Often I will be dealt AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ or some other strong hand in this situation and I will raise the exact same amount as I did before. I then call the push from the almost any two carder that keeps pushing back at me, and I knock him out of the tournament or double up.

So, future events will prove to be worth it for raise-folding a lot of the time. You may take a slight loss at first, but you are setting up a future trap to double up. You also aren’t risking all of your chips this way, which is something I wanted to talk about.

Sure, it’s +EV to push in this situation, but according to ICM, your current chips are worth more than chips you can gain. In this situation, I would say it’s probably not worth it to push. Keep your valuable chips and wait until the end of the tournament to get into these spots. Again, with raise-folding, you aren’t risking as much and you find out good information about the other player and also convincing another player that you are a donk.

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