Daily Hand Quiz

Fold.

So presumably our smart opponent knows he can shove with a very wide range and we can only call with a very tight range.

Just because we recognise this doesn’t change anything.

He’s smart enough to shove and we should be smart enough not to make the hero call with A4s.

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FOLD… DUHHH,,, even if you have a better hand than your opponent,, would you risk it? that would be stupid… ur opponent must have a premium hand,,, otherwise his a moron. theres no reason to call with such a weak hand. wait for something better such as JJ+++ Then, maybe call. free money at pokerstrateg y.ccom/u2YAUB

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“ur opponent must have a premium hand,,, otherwise his a moron”

your absurd analysis/advice as a pretext to spam advertisement for another poker site isn’t very clever either.

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moeymonet Reply:
July 27th, 2009 at 4:16 am

“So presumably our smart opponent knows he can shove with a very wide range and we can only call with a very tight range.”

smart opponent???, sorry that i dont agree with you and called him a moron,, you two must be close… I said he isnt very smart since he doesnt have a wide range to shove,,, the blinds arent that high, and he has enough chips to keep playing,., shoving is simply not getting chips,, esp since there were no previous raises to steal,.

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Anonymous Reply:
July 27th, 2009 at 9:29 am

“I said he isnt very smart since he doesnt have a wide range to shove,,, the blinds arent that high, and he has enough chips to keep playing”

Sorry, wha’? M of 6.2 and he’s in SB and was folded to. Of course he has a _huge_ range. Smart play in the past only increases his range.

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nnamongeymoany Reply:
July 27th, 2009 at 2:40 pm

he hassss chippsssss!!! which tightens his range,,,, u dont flip a coin with ALL ur cash everytime this situation comes up,.

nnamongeymoany Reply:
July 27th, 2009 at 2:40 pm

he hassss chippsssss!!! which tightens his range,,,, u dont flip a coin with ALL ur cash everytime this situation comes up,. and u def, shouldnt use any hand

Voted fold. Have to respect the image and play of the v. A4s may actually be be ahead, but not enough to call in this spot.

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I don’t care what pair he has, he isn’t beating aces, so we have to consider the possibility of our making a pair, which is 38.46% by my math. Plus we have our straight draw, which I take to be 10.35%. Together, that’s a tantalizing 48.81% draw. (Apologies if my math is wrong.)

Of course, he might pull a set or better, but really, what is his range here? I’m thinking with the others that it’s pretty wide, and 48% straight-up odds against a wide range to me says that this could go either way.

The kicker for me is that we are the two short stacks, and I am inclined to have a showdown now, while I still have a tiny advantage, as opposed to letting him dictate terms to me later.

I voted call, but I wish I could have voted “toss-up”. I don’t think it’s nearly as cut-and-dry as everyone has made it out to be.

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John Kugelman Reply:
July 27th, 2009 at 7:09 am

Um, that’s not how the math works at all. A4d is a 2 to 1 dog against a pocket pair 55-KK. You can’t just add up the chances of making a pair of aces or a straight/flush, you also have to subtract the chances of the PP improving to a set/boat or 4-card straight or flush.

Likewise, A4d is a 2 to 1 dog against any better ace. I recommend you plug these hands into PokerStove to see exactly what your equity is against different hand ranges. You don’t have to guess when the computer will do the math for you.

PokerStove says A4d has 44% equity against an optimistically wide range of . We need at least 46% equity to call this, making this a fold. Actually we need more than 46% given ICM considerations: near or in the money of a tournament it hurts more to bust out than it helps to double up, so you have to be tighter than strict pot odds dictate.

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John Kugelman Reply:
July 27th, 2009 at 7:11 am

Oops: PokerStove says A4d has 44% equity against an optimistically wide range of “any ace, any broadway”.

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With such table image, it’s clear fold to me. If he was shoving in same situation for the last couple of hands, a call can be considered although if he was raising with any ace with a better kicker, you’re in pretty bad shape. If he was going all-in with any pocket pair higher than threes, you’re about 35% to win the hand. Most probably, he’s making this move with a card lower than ace and a kicker better than 4, and your odds are about 3:2, which I don’t think worth the risk, considering there is three players with shorter stacks and you have at least three or four rounds to make a move before your stack gets dwindled. Even then, it will not be easy for most of your opponents to call it. So, folding and waiting for a better spot where you can go all-in instead of calling an all-in seems to be the best option.

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It is pretty cut and dry fold.

It is a very basic blind battle situation with those stacks where it is correct to ship with a wide range and call with a narrow one, and just as black fair correctly pointed out – our being aware of opponent’s range being wide open doesn’t change a thing. We still fold.

The reason for this is very simple – because of the payout structure the value of tournament chips in play diverges from their nominal value – and this simple reason leads to somewhat more sophisticated implications. Among which is the somewhat counterintuitive notion that a stack of 500 chips is worth more than half a stack of 1000 chips. If you don’t understand that you really shouldn’t be playing tournaments to begin with.

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Snap fold and never look back. Shove KJo next hand to get them back. Or shove 67s. Or QT.

Calling A4s is a mega-donkey play due to ICM considerations. I’m not calling A9s here… AT starts to be tempting, but still a fold.

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even if youre ahead, its 60/40 for most of your chips. and youre probably not ahead. no need to make this call. shove light, call tight. basic poker.

im not making this call in the spot unless its obvious that my opponent is shoving any two, or all but the worst hands.

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Call

The first thing we need to assess is our opponent’s range. Part of me wishes that instead of weak ace facing all-in it was titled, what is a smart winning regular’s range with in a $150 Buy-in with 6M that is shoving from the small blind on a TAG sitting on 8M in the BB. I think he has fold equity and desperately needs chips that you have. Him being smart widens his range, and being a winning regular implies a knowledge of M. While some would jam here with any hand, I think he’s definately shoving with any broadway, any pair, any ace, and some winning regs would shove with less than the above, all kings, middle conntectors, then any two cards.

I’ll give him 100% for the Aces, broadway, pocket pairs and good kings, .8 mod for middle kings, .4 mod for bad kings, .7 mod for Q9 .6 for Q8, .4 for Q7 to Q5, .3 mod for bad queens Q4 to Q2, .4 mod for middle connectors down to 87 except .6 for J9, .5 for J8, .4 for middle jacks, and 20% for the rest (to account for any two cards) except for the bottom of the barrel I give 13% (subjective) for 92,93,94, 82,83,72,73,74,63,62, 52,43,42,23. This is taking into account the difference in personality’s/choices that regular winners would take as I think many are willing to gamble very wide here.

With that calculation we come up as 57.1% versus villain’s range. Given that I calculated using always villain’s cards offsuit, we need to subtract .7% points to make it accurate as 1 out of 4 times cards would have been suited and that advantage is 4% but diamonds and pocket pairs would do him no good. Revised roughly for suitedness our advatange is 56.4%. Our break even percentage when accounting for the pot is 45.2%. So in cash game this is a not-so-clear call from an intuitive standpoint, but a clear call from a mathematical standpoint. Since we are in a tournament instead of a cash game instead of a tournament, the question is do we want to gamble for most of our tournament life here with a slight edge?

Since we are in shallow ITM, I wish I had the average stack size stat available. Using the table stacks as a heuristic for the tournament chip average, it looks like we are well below the chip average of 82k with 49k. At 8M we are not desperate by any means, but we aren’t comfy either and 1 blinds increase we are in trouble. We could use a double up and a big stack on our left isn’t exactly comforting for our stealing prospects. What the hell, I’m game.

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Groundhog day Reply:
May 11th, 2012 at 4:42 am

Strong points but in your cash game scenario is shove range is not as wide for the same reasons that our calling range is not as narrow.

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@nnamongeymoany

“he hassss chippsssss!!! which tightens his range,,,, u dont flip a coin with ALL ur cash everytime this situation comes up,.”

He has less than 20 big blinds left… not forgeting the ante, he doesn’t really have much in his stack… table average is about 80k…

i don’t think his range is too tight…

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“Smart, winning regulars” will raise a wide range in this spot. While we could be way behind a better Ace or pocket pair I also believe there is a wide range where we are ahead. We would have to know our heads up history in previous hands the past 3-4 orbits to made this decision. It isn’t a snap fold anymore than it is a snap call. Given some of the ridiculous arguments above (not all of them) for folding I lean towards calling just to balance the scales.

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Easy Fold. This is not about the image or something. We shove to steal and not calling a shove, rely on fold equity to keep stay in the tournament and pick a good spot to double up.

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Are you all serious???

All of your comments must have been made in 2009 or so.

You are <20 BB and it's a +EV, and he will shove looooots of hands.

since it's still far from FT and big ICM considerations, the equity you gain is so much important that +EV and +$EV is almost the same here.

So, instant fist pump call.

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with some more specific information, there are definitely situations where you can justify calling. this is the sort of spot where some people think its a standard snap-fold, while others might think its a standard call. like thailer I don’t think its either. If for example you KNOW he’s shoving ATC or close to ATC, you are going to be well ahead of his range, you will still have some fold equity if you lose, you are already ITM so it depends quite a lot on the payout structure… you can also take into account concepts like ‘edge’ – as a ‘smart winning reg’ you can assume he has a skill edge over the remaining field in the tournament, assuming he wins at this stake, the question is how do you rate your edge? There is an argument for being more willing to gamble for stacks when you don’t consider yourself to have considerable skill edge over your opponents, and I’d certainly be more inclined to risk when we’re already ITM. Not saying I call this everytime tho

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