Daily Hand Quiz

T Reply:
October 11th, 2010 at 8:27 am

Shove pre.

Our M is a bit over 6. The four remaining players have no reason to call us with anything besides AJs+, AQ+, 99+ (and this is probably generous).
BB can call with slightly worse.

With our regular raise however, we probably just wanted one call at most, but ended up creating a great spot for BB to 3-bet rather light. Our read is sadly insufficient here because “a little quiet” doesn’t tell us whether he’s a scared nit who’ll let the blinds eat him, or a tight thinking player who knows you are folding a lot of your range here.

I reckon we can make this call if we include any Ax, Kx, any pair, and say 76s+ in BB’s range.
For example, drawing live against 22-TT would not be terrible considering the gain if we spike a K or J (eliminating a player and increasing our M greatly).

So yeah, this is a situation where your EV pretty much depends on the skill of your opponent. We cannot make this call if we suspect that our v’s shortstacking strategy does not go beyond praying for a heads-up pot with a premium hand.

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Pirate21 Reply:
October 11th, 2010 at 5:42 pm

Even if the math worked (which is debatable), that would require ignoring the value of having chips left this close to the money. It’s just not worth it with a hand that’s behind almost everything we can put V on.
I agree with those that see this as an fold/open-shove hand.

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b1aze Reply:
October 12th, 2010 at 6:41 am

That would be a find assumption if this were a normal tournament with a very top heavy pay scale, however its a satellite, and coming in first in chips or 226th doesn’t matter. I am much more inclined to try to steal chips in this sort of situation and fold to marginal calls, as there is no real advantage to being chipleader. All you need to do is make it to the money and you get the most $ev you possibly can.

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don Reply:
October 12th, 2010 at 3:38 am

“Worse” than 2:1 or “approximately 2:1″ Not much difference here. Being close to 2:1 is sufficient to call in view of the lessened valure of the chips we’re left with if we fold. The reason for the lessened value: “it takes a long time to lose 34 people out of only 260, even though it seems so close. This bubble isn’t going to happen for a while.”

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don Reply:
October 12th, 2010 at 3:51 am

How much “worse than 2:1″? Well, $67058/36058 = 1.86:1. Adjusting for the diminished value of chips left after fold, this is close enough.

So if it’s a mathematically hair-splitting “worse than” our work is not done. Which way do we adjust?

The important factor, in the General’s words, is: “it takes a long time to lose 34 people out of only 260, even though it seems so close. This bubble isn’t going to happen for a while.”

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Pirate21 Reply:
October 12th, 2010 at 6:28 am

We’re still left with almost 13 BBs. It’s not a lot, but I’m convinced I can get it in better than this with 13 BBs left (though, not by making a smallish raise with a mediocre hand next time). Unless I’m hopelessly short stacked, I never want to make a call for most of my stack with a hand that’s almost always behind.

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catcher Reply:
October 12th, 2010 at 10:55 am

There are antes and this means that our effective M is about 5 after folding this hand.

general johnson jameson Reply:
October 11th, 2010 at 11:47 am

careful though… after this hand we are now the short stack at the table, by a huge margin. And it takes a long time to lose 34 people out of only 260, even though it seems so close. This bubble isn’t going to happen for a while, and perhaps making moves while we still have a stack that can do some damage is better. for sure we can pick a better hand to do that, not to mention raising/folding here is awful. fold it, or shove first.

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b1aze Reply:
October 12th, 2010 at 6:45 am

Is it really spewy though? This is never a bad situation to try to pick up blinds with the meh-sized stack that we have, maybe it would have been a bit better if we noticed that BB was super short and would be shoving with just about anything. I personally see no real “spew” in it, as we took a chance to pick up ~12k by investing the same. Folding is fine imo and is the right play.

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Pirate21 Reply:
October 12th, 2010 at 8:56 am

I think the spewy part is creating a spot where we’re asking for BB to shove and we know we can’t call.
Look at it from BB’s perspective (regardless of his hand) – there’s around $24K chips in the middle and he needs to call $7K to see a flop – V should NEVER fold in that spot.
So, what did we want here? It was unrealistic to think we were going to get a PF fold. Did we want to play post flop with KJo and hope we hit (or V didn’t)? That makes our initial bet decidedly -EV because we only gave ourself one way to win this hand.
If we’re going to play the hand, we might as well shove it. If we fold out V even 25% of the time, it becomes a +EV play.
Otherwise…fold it pre.

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