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(6 votes) 
August 21, 2015
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So I made this insane fold…
But I have to explain why, and see if anyone can defend my play here.
This is from “the hotter $55” last sunday. The thing is, I have a small bankroll. Have been grinding it up to about $700 and this weekend I went for some stabs, and satelited into the tournament for $11.
This hand is happening at final 2 tables. I am 2nd in chips and the guy shoving is 3rd. So my thinking is, every player busting before me is a HUGE payout for me. And if i just fold I can quite easily make the final table.
The other player has been pretty agg, and I am surely flipping at worst here. But that’s the thing. Even if he has 22, I don’t want to double or bust at this point. I raised hoping to see a flop, and I talked myself into folding when he shoves. Great play by him I guess.
Anyway, I went all the way cashing over $18k, so I’m quite happy about the fold now, but I can’t stop thinking about it. If I played this tourney today with $18k bankroll I would surely call…
Does this make sense, or is the fold always wrong?
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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Good example of why you shouldn’t play tournaments you aren’t bankrolled for, even if you satellite into them. If you aren’t going to feel comfortable calling a shove, then just open shove yourself and put the ICM pressure on him.
August 21, 2015
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Are you saying that ICM-wise this is always wrong? If I had 300k stack I would call/shove here, even considering bankroll. I felt that being 2nd in chips and it being a turbo, doubling isn’t worth the risk of busting this close to the big payouts.
I agree open shoving is the better play here, although it feels a bit big.
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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It’s entirely possible that shoving is better than raise-calling, but raise-calling is better than raise-folding. You aren’t risking the last of your chips, and you will dominate a lot of Villain’s shoving range. The risk isn’t as huge as you’re making it out to be
Yes, this is more than you’d usually open shove, but then again you wouldn’t usually raise-fold AK either. ICM can lead to some weird spots. That’s why you shouldn’t try to make decisions based on arbitrary rules about how much you can open shove pre, but rather consider your options with an open mind and then choose the one with the highest expected value.
August 21, 2015
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Ok. Thank you Andrew. I’m glad I posted this hand here, even though it made me look like an idiot, so I won’t ever do it again 🙂
June 11, 2012
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hey,
i completely agree with what andrew said. and i am pretty sure jamming is the most +$EV play here
TPE Pro
August 25, 2012
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Count me in for ‘don’t play tournaments you’re not rolled for’. This is an example of a spot where the money clouded your thinking to the point where you made a mistake. I agree with the previous posters regarding shove > raise/call >>>>>> raise/fold.
December 21, 2015
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hey, great that your trying to run your roll up man and good luck to that! i think its a big mistake to raise fold here with ak, it is to strong of a hand if your not going to raise call off u should be folding for icm reasons like u stated but overall im always ripping this hand in his face forsure and being that u are running up ur roll and want the payjumps i think its a bad play here u should just rip or fold ! good luck !
August 21, 2015
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Thanks for the input guys.
I feel embarrased about this hand now. In retrospect it’s hard to regret the fold since i won the tournament, but I do regret not shoving. My thinking was that we were big enough to see a flop being 2nd and 3rd in chips, and that he wouldn’t shove and risk his tournament life at this point. Guess I was wrong..
December 21, 2015
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hey man ive been thinking about this tbh i dont think this is a big mistake at all u have a huge point about icm consideration and you do not have to raise call off here knowing that u will be flipping alot because he knows about all the short stacks on the table so i think his range is pretty strong here but it always depends what the payjumps are u have to use icm calculator for that ..
January 20, 2014
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Don’t be embarrassed about posting this hand. That’s why we post. So that we can hear from other players and learn, so we get better.
I’m surprised that this is more profitable to open shove 23bb effective than it is to raise call it off. I would raise call it off every time in this spot without a second thought, and before this post I would have never even thought of just open shoving this. Has anyone actually run the math on this or are we just guessing? Where is Jacob when we need him ….
August 21, 2015
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Thanks for the support 😉
I do not have the skills to run the math on this. If anyone can do it I would be very grateful.
May 20, 2015
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Was surprised by the suggestion that shoving was better than raise calling so ran it in HoldemResources Calculator. Allowing for a strategy of opening to 50k or open jamming HRC has raise calling making us 0.64 BB, whilst open shoving makes us 0.43 BB. Even if we make the icm spot extreme and make it so that next to bust does not get paid we should still be raise calling AK.
“because he knows about all the short stacks on the table so i think his range is pretty strong here”
HRC has sb shoving 17.6%. Villain is a winning reg and should be shoving wide here, its a pretty standard spot to shove with a wide range deep in a tournament. He will likely be shoving any Ax, which we obviously have crushed.
To add to what others have said about playing in tournies you are not rolled for it’s worth noting that villain in the hand could also know you are shot taking and widen his range based on that belief. In Charlie Carrel and Ben Heath’s youtube Sunday Million review they explain that Ben had looked up players and noted those that had ‘low’ average by ins. He adjusted by 3 bet and 4 bet shoving wider against these players as making the final table would be so important to them that they are likely to fold wider. This led to him making many plays exactly like the one sb has made in this hand.
TPE Pro
August 25, 2012
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kmid said
Was surprised by the suggestion that shoving was better than raise calling so ran it in HoldemResources Calculator. Allowing for a strategy of opening to 50k or open jamming HRC has raise calling making us 0.64 BB, whilst open shoving makes us 0.43 BB. Even if we make the icm spot extreme and make it so that next to bust does not get paid we should still be raise calling AK.
If you’re running the spot correctly in HRC you shouldn’t be getting results that come out in BBs. It should be telling you results in $EV. ICM $EV is expressed in terms of % of the prizepool, so if you ran the correctly and simply interpreted the numbers wrong, then you might be right that raise-calling is better than open-shoving and the results are simply 0.64% vs 0.43%. However, if you didn’t run the calculation correctly and the results you received were indeed expressed in BBs, then they’re not relevant, because I think everyone would be in agreement that raise-calling is better than raise-folding here in terms of cEV.
It’s also worth noting that there’s a weird phenomenon that occurs with ICM where our failure to anticipate our opponents’ mistakes can actually turn our good plays into mistakes. We would need to see the specific numbers from your calculations to identify whether there were any factors that could be changed from the Nash ICM version of the calculation – for example, I imagine the Nash calculation has the SB flat-calling a reasonable % of hands versus an open, and they may not be doing that in reality.
You also may not have included flat-calling in the calculation at all – while this is something many people do as a way to get around the fact that HRC assumes an R of 100 (i.e. 100% equity realisation) for all players in the hand (or because they don’t have PCs capable of running advanced calculations), it actually leads to even more skewed results than it would otherwise. For example, here our open-raising % on the button is likely to be extremely wide as a result of the fact that the BB is only allowed to 3-bet or fold (as is the SB) – this is likely to mean that our opponents’ 3-betting and shoving ranges get wider, and therefore that we profit more from raise-calling AKo.
August 21, 2015
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I’m in the SB here, and the shove comes from the BB.
May 20, 2015
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Have made adjustments to the model as both theginger45 and 7king pointed out a few errors. I’ve now allowed for flat calling and have correctly put hero in the SB and villain in the BB. To my surprise HRC actually does have us shoving AKo. Am just getting used to HRC and thought this would be a nice spot to study up on, thanks for the pointers theginger45. Seems like as previously said shoving>raise calling>raise folding.
Hi,
I just joined TPE (Xmas gift from the wife. At least that is what I told her after I joined while letting her know how much I loved the gift
). I’m a huge fan of the podcast. This is my first post. I am hear to get better.
I came across this thread last week and couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’m curious. How would stack depth affect your thinking here. What if, instead of being around double the table avg at ~28BB, Hero and Villain are both 2x deeper. Would you risk a dominating stack to go up against the other large stack hoping for a flip at best?
Back to the actual hand: (Using the general “you” here…) How far down your range would you have to go before this becomes an easy fold? AJs and TT perhaps? Would you call with AQo or JJ?
I’m also curious: Would being closer to the final table bubble, knowing you are about to go back to 9-handed play, affect the decision?
Personally, I feel like calling in this exact situation is best considering the play is 7-handed and will only get shorter, and we don’t know for how long as stacks are fairly even. I also think, with the largest stack at ~28BB and 4 stacks around 12-14BB, that things are going to get wild. I would expect to have to win a race or two before seeing the final table. I’m not expecting to see much post-flop play. So, while I wouldn’t shove-open AKo here, passing up a call feels too tight.
I also like flatting here sometimes to suck someone in to action, and, if it gets to a showdown, for the psychological value (win or lose); Later I might get to flat something speculative or get a wider call raising with a strong hand from SB. I suppose like most things this is read-dependent…aggro, tight, or if history with a talented villain needs a shake-up? I also can’t see villain shoving to a call with the top part of his range. It would seem a waste. Maybe easier to call-call? Would a raise vs a shove be worth dissecting for information? A shove might seem polarizing in the moment, but maybe that is wrong-thinking? Any thoughts on this alternate play?
I hope I didn’t jam too much in to one post. Thanks in advance for sharing any thoughts this brings up!
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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Hi Special, welcome to the site. I really want to encourage you to move away from the sort of vague, feel-based analysis you’re making now and towards something more mathematically rigorous.
You don’t have to guess about how likely you are to need to win a race to make the final table, etc – ICM analysis is designed to quantify that.
I also don’t see any discussion of equity or pot odds in your post. The closest when you come is when you refer to “hoping for a flip at best”, but I don’t see where you’re getting that from. Wouldn’t you expect Villain to shove some hands Hero dominates, such as AQ/AJ/KQ?
You say you wouldn’t shove here, but why not? Some people earlier in this thread have explained, with some mathematical justification, why that may be the best play. If you disagree with them, you should explain why. I think once you better understand the ICM considerations here and the argument for shoving, you’ll be equipped to answer some of your other questions for yourself.
TPE Pro
August 25, 2012
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kmid said
Have made adjustments to the model as both theginger45 and 7king pointed out a few errors. I’ve now allowed for flat calling and have correctly put hero in the SB and villain in the BB. To my surprise HRC actually does have us shoving AKo. Am just getting used to HRC and thought this would be a nice spot to study up on, thanks for the pointers theginger45. Seems like as previously said shoving>raise calling>raise folding.
No problem, I apologise for misreading the hand and thinking the shove was coming from the SB.
You’ll find that a lot of spots change in HRC when you allow flat-calling – the fact that people get to realize 100% of their equity when doing so means things alter pretty dramatically. Of course they won’t realise 100% of their equity in real play, but sometimes even giving them the chance to realise any equity at all instead of forcing them to 3-bet or fold can be enough.
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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In this case BB will be flatting IP and might well realize >100% of his equity.
TPE Pro
August 25, 2012
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Yeah, I should have clarified that. It gets even more complex when we have to start deciding on our own flatting ranges based on an estimation that we’ll capture 70% of our equity with some less playable hands, 100% with some middling ones, 130% with some of our more nice-looking QJs type hands, and then like 200% or more on the occasions when we flop a monster and can be extremely confident that villain is going to put too many chips in with very weak hands. I feel like the next evolution of HRC should be a program that can specify an ‘R’ number for different types of hands, and run calculations accordingly.
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