Thanks to everyone who commented on the latest What’s Your Play? If you haven’t already, please take a look at the original post and think about what you’d do before you read my thoughts and the results.
With Hero’s commanding chip lead and the fact that Villain is in 2nd/3rd place with more than twice as many chips as some of the short stacks, this looks like a good spot to play the bully… and that’s precisely why it isn’t. Not too many of you were fooled by this, so good for you!
As I was watching this hand, I thought to myself, “Oh BB has got a huge hand here.” Sure enough, Hero shoved his T8s and lost to AKo, which honestly was about the weakest hand I expected to see from Villain.
The distribution of chips, with so many concentrated in the hands of one player and the rest distributed relatively evenly among the other eight makes this similar to a satellite bubble. The correct strategy for the shorter stacks is avoid risking elimination until others have been eliminated. Even doubling up will leave any one of those guys in a distant second (or worse), so he has a lot more to lose by busting than he has to gain by doubling.
The chipleader can exploit this by bullying these shorter stacks, and a situationally aware short stack will realize this and avoid putting himself in spots in which he can easily be bullied off of a substantial number of chips. The fact that Villain in this hand is practically begging Hero to shove on him suggests that he is very strong indeed. I would go so far as to say that even AK is not good enough to induce a re-shove and Villain would be better off just 3-betting all-in rather than putting himself in a spot where he ends up racing against T8s for his tournament life.
Quite a few of you picked up on this, which is great. I think we can rule out shoving as an option. If Villain continues to 3-bet, Hero can always shove on him in the future, but right now there is too much reason to think he is strong.
That leaves calling or folding. Against a very strong range of {TT+,AKs,AKo}, T8s is a 3:1 underdog. Even a small re-raise does not give him a good price to see the flop. Arguable Hero’s position and chip lead give him room to outplay Villain postflop, but really with relatively short stacks it is hard to “outplay” an opponent with an extremely strong range. Generally the best way to outplay him is to fold and let him win only a small pot with his big hand. There isn’t enough money behind to bank on the implied odds of outflopping an overpair, nor can Hero expect much fold equity when he semi-bluffs with his draws. I think Villian needs to fold here.
The real life Hero moved all-in and lost the pot. He went on to finish 2nd to the player who was UTG in this hand. I believe that the chips he lost in this pot had a lot to do with his inability to close it out despite what began as a commanding chip lead.
Thanks to everyone who participated! Hopefully a few of you will have a chance to put this information to work for you at a WCOOP final table. See you there!
Andrew
My instinct was to fold here too. But your reference to the 3:1 all-in pre-flop odds got me thinking. What’s wrong with this reasoning:
With 2.55 million in the pot, 6.57 million left in Villain’s stack, and 950k to call, Hero is getting about 9.6:1 to call to flop well enough to stack off. Let’s assume (a) Hero folds on the flop if he doesn’t have the odds to stack off and (b) Villain’s stack-off range consists of his pocket pairs (later we can do some handwaving with respect to his AK hands and flops with overcards to his pocket pairs). On the flop, there would be 3.5 million in the pot and 6.57 million left in Villain’s stack, so Hero would need 40%+ equity on the flop against Villain’s stack-off range. According to this graph:
http://www.propokertools.com/simulations/graph_hvr?g=he&h1=T8s&h2=TT%2CJJ%2CQQ%2CKK%2CAA&s=classic
Hero will have 40%+ equity against Villain’s stack-off range on 12% of all flops. So Hero needs 7.3:1 pre-flop to call to see a flop. Since he’s getting 9.6:1, it’s looking like he should call!
Now we can handwave with respect to what Villain will do with AK, what he will do with underpairs to the flop, and whether position and tournament standing will have any effect on the hand. I don’t have the time to work this all out, but my guess is that the net effect of these fudge factors is that Villain will fold in some situations, which can only be good for us, no?
I’m not smart enough to argue with your math, but intuitively this seems wrong to me. It sounds like you’re saying Hero will flop good enough equity to get all in on the flop 12% of the time, which is not too much worse than his odds of flopping a set with a pocket pair. I’m sure that Hero’s average equity with a flopped set would be much higher than the average of the equities on the flops you’d have Hero get in on, and yet this would be a pretty borderline spot to set-mine IMO. So it’s hard to see how calling and deciding with a suited gapper could be better than set mining with a small pair.
Aren’t you talking about Hero paying 1M chips for a 12% chance of flopping well enough to get the money in as, on average, a small favorite in a 13K pot?
Yeah your math assumes that you have 100% equity on those 12% of flops, the 7.3:1 number needs to be adjusted based on the fact that you don’t.
I dont think that folding is best option here.
There is no question here that villain range is strong in this spot…
But your arguments for “hero not having enough implied odds” don’t hold here, b/c this is MTT and cev is not = $ev.
ICM plays huge factor here b/c this MTT is very top heavy, so with ~ 2x pot sized bet ef. stacks left behind Hero can put villain in very, very tough spot post flop on ton of flops.
+ Taking into consideration that Hero can knock out/crippling most competent player at the table and #2 stack is huge factor for hero NOT to fold here preflop
I believe ICM actually dictates the opposite in this situation. The larger the stack, the less imperative it is for that stack to gain chips. While it is easiest to bully other stacks as the big stack, the big stack has the least to gain ICM-wise from an increase in chips. I believe in this case, ICM dictates that a perhaps slightly -ev play is correct. Even if pre-flop odds are good enough to call from an ev perspective, from an ICM perspective marginal situations such as this one should be avoided.
Villain is only going to have 2x pot in his stack after the flop. I don’t envision too many scenarios where Hero can make him fold a good hand, and given how strong his range is, he’ll often have good hands. Also see dsho’s comment about cEV.
exactly 2x pot size bet, so is he going to pot cbet-> not very often imo most likely he will bet something like 40%-60% pot, or even sometimes he will just check on flop, so hero have a lot of fold eq imo if he shove over villain Cbet.
I’m not talking about odds call here pre, I do agree that ICM advice is for hero to take -cev play cos he wont gain any thing from increasing his stack cos effective stacks stay the same, but the thing here is that wining or loosing 7m doesnt change much in hero perspective(he will still be 2:1 vs #2stack with position) but eliminating tough opponent will increase his chances to win whole thing.
So cos villain range is strong (happy to get it in pre flop) imo best play is to gamble and call and then shove over villains Cbet/or if villain check take a stab at the pot.
look at this this way, if we agree that villain range is something like TT+,AK:
if flop came Axx (it will be hard for villain to call with any PP)
if flop came like 765 it will be hard for villain to call with AK
if flop came came Qxx it will be hard for villain to call it of with TT-JJ/AK
of course we can always nit it up and wait for better spot.
exactly 2x pot size bet, so is he going to pot cbet-> not very often imo most likely he will bet something like 40%-60% pot, or even sometimes he will just check on flop, so hero have a lot of fold eq imo if he shove over villain Cbet.
I’m not talking about odds call here pre, I do agree that ICM advice is for hero to take -cev play cos he wont gain any thing from increasing his stack cos effective stacks stay the same, but the thing here is that wining or loosing 7m doesnt change much in hero perspective(he will still be 2:1 vs #2stack with position) but eliminating tough opponent will increase his chances to win whole thing.
So cos villain range is strong (happy to get it in pre flop) imo best play is to gamble and call and then shove over villains Cbet/or if villain check take a stab at the pot.
look at this this way, if we agree that villain range is something like TT+,AK:
-if flop came Axx (it will be hard for villain to call with any PP)
-if flop came like 765 it will be hard for villain to call with AK
-if flop came came Qxx it will be hard for villain to call it of with TT-JJ/AK
of course we can always nit it up and wait for better spot.
Great minds think alike 🙂