Foucault said:

…That means the actual cEV here (I think I finally have it right this time) is 36,610. I think that's still enough to make shoving correct, even on the bubble…

Really?  I know I don't have nearly the edge-over-field you do in that or any situation (and I don't know if you're ignoring edge as a consideration given that you're responding to someone else's question), but between possible edge, bubble ICM, the description of history between hero&villain, and the (admittedly small) image benefit I might gain by giving a walk or even (*GASP*) limping, I think I wouldn't take this spot for +0.6BB in straight cEV.  Of course I couldn't do all the math in-game, but my gut says something like Q8s+ makes me happier given those conditions.  Plugging it into Slice, that only gives an extra 2.5%-ish equity, but that shifts cEV to -153730 + 114050 + 90450 = 50770, which feels comfier.

[/Total Nerd Digression] If stacks are a bit deeper, there's a quantum jump in equity vs a “standard” calling range between Q9s and QTs that becomes relevant – that is to say there are small jumps between Q4-5-6-7-8-9s and then a bigger jump to QTs, and surprisingly a smaller jump to QJs.  I think people overvalue the difference between QJs and QTs for the sake of shoving, when the bigger difference comes between Q9s and QTs.  Also QT is the quintessential hand for putting Phil Helmuth on tilt with. [/End Nerd]

pberger1 said:

Day 2 of the recent 2 mil at Borgata. I've been playing very solid throughout this event. 

my stack: $800k villain: $875k

blinds: $30k/$60k/5

[snip]

 We are very close to the money, but I am looking for spots. Most of the other players have tightened up looking to mincash

[snip]

I came back to this thread because I've had a similar early-Day-2-bubble situation recently and I've played a couple of the Borgata $2M events in the past. Andrew brought the idea of multiples of starting stack size into his calculations and I was trying to make sense of that.  I have to say I'm confused by pberger1's numbers, and I think this may have to do with the resulting math confusion.  I presume you played in the September Borgata Poker Open Event 1, with a $2M guarantee.  I'm pretty sure these events have 20K starting stacks – average stack at the start of Day 2 was 180K and they were close to the bubble, so 20K makes sense (not 30K as Andrew was working with).  But Day 2 started with blinds at 2K-4K, and didn't get to 30K-60K until several hours after the bubble burst.  I wondered if the numbers in the OP might be off by a factor of 10, but actually Day 2 started at 4K-8K and the bubble burst at that level.  Also the chip leader at the start of Day 2 had 700K chips.

So pberger1, what's up? It's hard to imagine blinds of 30k-60k before the bubble of any major tournament with less than 50K starting stacks. 

OK so a couple of responses: 1st, I don’t think you’re making the argument that expenses/travel should have a big impact on how you play a hand … but it *really* shouldn’t. I mean, OK, if you fly from Zanzibar because it’s your lifelong dream to play the WSOP main event then it’s OK to pass on a slightly +EV spot for your tournament life, and certainly the costs of travel and lodging etc should be a major factor (much more than a lot of players account for) in your decision whether to play a tournament or series, but … once you’re there, that money is gone, sunk cost, etc, and especially if you’re renting a place to play a month-long series, you should be trying to make every decision in the most +$EV manner possible, taking every possible factor into account, including cEV, imageEV, ICM, and maybe even a little attention to psychEV – is it going to make you grumpy/tilty and play worse tomorrow if you jam Q4s and get snapped off by 55 or whatever so that you bubble and play bad the next day?

2nd, the off-by-order-of-magnitude-blinds issue is relevant maybe only in that Andrew/Foucault was trying to napkin some ICM calculation based on starting-stack value, thereby leading him initially to a crazy-high EV estimate for the Q4s shove.

3rd, I’m not sure but I think maybe you’re misusing the verb “to bink” when you say “played several other events, and binked em all”. Unless you made deep cashes (like, top-3 finishes) in all the events, in which case this thread should be in the brags forum, maybe you mean “whiffed em all”?

4th, and here I’m stepping into controversial territory, I don’t agree that “Q4ss easy push, and very +EV”. It might (probably?) be +cEV, but I think there are a bunch of factors weighing against it:

(A) ICM considerations certainly weigh against putting your stack at risk – whether that’s enough to overcome the cEV of the shove I don’t know, but it certainly works against.

(B) the villain/BB does *not* sound like the ideal target (“involved in many hands calling shoves”).

(C) maybe there are better ways to play the hand than shoving – and this is opponent-dependent and I wasn’t there so all of these thoughts may be full of crap, but how about raise-folding? how about limp-shoving? Obviously if you limp and he shoves you have to fold, but frankly if I’m deciding between shoving and limping with Q4s, and I limp, and my opponent shoves, I fist-pump-sigh-of-relief-dodged-a-bullet-fold. And if I limp and he raises 3x and I grow a pair and shove, doesn’t that look way stronger than a 15BB open-shove from the SB?

(D) I usually roll my eyes and think “donk!” when someone says “naah, I’m gonna wait for a better spot”, but … maybe wait for a better spot. You subscribe to TPE, you think about the game, you post in the forums … you probably know a thing or two about how to play the bubble, how to employ leverage, how to sense fear in your opponents, maybe even how to exploit the shifting dynamics as you approach the final table, etc. This strikes me as a spot that doesn’t draw on any of those skills – you’re shoving with a mediocre hand and hoping that your opponent doesn’t wake up with a hand strong enough to call you (and your opponent sounds at least capable of considering a tough call).

Those are my thoughts. I don’t claim to be super confident of them, and I certainly don’t think shoving Q4s in that spot is terrible. I just think it’s not easy or obvious, and I probably don’t do it myself against the villain as described.

-huge

Foucault said:

P-aire 146 said:

I understand the math and all, but I fold this. Sure, none of us want a mini cash. the money is in the top 10-15, but I'll take a mini cash over not cashing when I fire 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 BULLETS. Esp, at a tourney like this when it's not filled with superstars. Lots of rec players, semi pros and supa stars. Including myself in the Donk Category. Not sure what you did (unless I missed it), but say you jam and he has ANYthing that beats you. You take the walk of shame (which I have done a bench at Borgacha).

Oh and I'm not jamming Q4ss online either. Just me, lol.

For what it's worth. I've played in Lots of Borgata events and cashed in 8 out of 12 last events 1. So I kinda know a bit about this event, lol.

Please re-read Huge's excellent post above. The number of bullets you fired should not affect how you play the tournament. Of course you don't want to bust, but you can't use that as an excuse to pass up profitable spots. Failing to accumulate chips is the best way to get yourself busted, it just delays it by a few hands.

That's not to say this is a profitable jam. Dividing the stakes by 10 makes ICM a much bigger consideration and probably shifts this to a fold. Chips won with Q4s are worth just as much chips won with AA, and if you turn your nose up at them, you are going to win a lot fewer chips than the player who plays every hand for its maximum value.

One might reasonably argue that I am replying to and quoting this week-old thread just to reinforce the fact that FOUCAULT SAID MY POST WAS EXCELLENT … but that's merely a pleasant side-benefit of pointing out another point that this brings up.

We can all probably theoretically agree that worrying about the “walk of shame” or how many bullets have been fired or how much we spent on lodging or airfare should not impact our strategic considerations of how to play a poker hand, and we can all probably confess to having frequently or infrequently worried too much about factors like that and missed some profitable shoves or calls as a result – I'm certainly not immune.  I think we all know that we need to put solid work into learning this stuff in order to make proper decisions in tricky non-intuitive spots when ICM is a factor etc.  OK, great.  But I think a hidden corollary here that people don't think about as much is that it's super important to at least try to figure out who else at the table is worrying too much about that walk of shame etc.  If you're faced with a decision to shove or fold a trashy hand, or to call or fold with a marginal hand facing a shove, sometimes knowing how scared the other players are (scared of busting, scared of getting shot down to a stack size they don't know how to play, scared of admitting they just lost 4 buyins, scared of being exposed as someone who will risk a bunch of chips on a weak hand, etc) is more important than memorizing all the push/fold charts in Kill Everyone.  If I know that the older woman on my left is terrified of bubbling, I'll happily jam 18BB from the SB with 62o, whereas I might fold K5 in the same spot against the online dweeb who's been mouthing off about Nash equilibrium for the last 45 minutes.

My instinct that Q4s was a fold in OP's spot was based not so much on my (merely adequate) knowledge of pushbot charts, but on the fact that the player in the BB did not sound like a good target to force into a tight fold on the bubble.  So many recreational players are way too tight in making big preflop calls, especially nearing the bubble or the end-of-night or a final table, that it might be better to pass up a mildly +EV shove spot from the SB with a marginal hand if there will likely be much more profitable spots to shove when (A) tighter/weaker players are in the blinds and (B) the tougher player on your left is faced with an uglier decision because there are players left to act behind him.  Obviously this has to be weighed against the added probability that someone will wake up with a hand that even the scaredest nit will be forced to tank-call with (ie KK), but I think it's something that a lot of decent-to-good players don't give enough thought to.

(Now I'm curious to do some scribbling/math on whether it's justifiable to think it might be better to fold a marginal hand in the SB against a BB who will make a good tough call vs holding the same hand in, say, the cutoff with the same villain on the button and two very tight scared players in the blinds who will fold way too many good hands – or, put another way, how weak-tight do the blinds have to be to make up for the fact that there are three times as many players who might wake up with QQ+?)