Moving chips through opponents (Tournaments only)

Situation:

Player A is 2 seats to your right. Tough opponent
Player B is 1 seat to your right. Weak opponent pays too much for draws.
You have a solid chip lead.
Player B has been paying the wrong price to draw against player A, so chips have been moving from player B to player A all day.

Player A is avoiding you, but trapping player B more than his share.

Instead of folding, can we explore calling with nothing, to give player b the correct draw price. The idea is we move chips from tougher opponents to weaker ones with specific flaws. Then, We can take these chips almost at will later.

Anyone have any experience with taking such a line? Hand for Hand it is horrible EV, but I think we can make a case for the strategy in very specific circumstances?

Thoughts?

-Bill

Welcome back Bill.

Not trying to hijack a good discussion - carry on....

Oooo that's interesting.

I think that possibly it's not so much about can we call with nothing at all, but can we widen our calling range to some pretty speculative hands when we consider this as a factor?

We probably need some equity in the current hand of our own to make it worthwhile, but I would condone and have been in pots which have been artificially juiced due to the presence of a weak player, the theory being that you lose small pots and win big ones. I've not considered the bonus of removing chips from the strong player though.

Other nice factor is that for metagame reasons, it's never a bad thing to spew a few chips to the weak guy and establish a betting pattern that can later on provide the setup for the big pot.

Random thoughts, will come back later

I'm starting a list of qualifiers for this, please feel free to add, dispute or revise.

1.) Must have position on both players.
2.) Must not commit more than 2% of your chips on the play.
3.) Must have significant bluff value against weaker opponent on later hands.
4.) Probably works best within 20 minutes of blinds going up. This devalues the chips used to make the play.
5.) Must build image to get folds behind you, to isolate weak player.

I'm also trying to build a scenario for this play or analysis. Please feel free to submit scenarios, so we can analyze effect.

Good point Irexes. The metagame play actually adds a little value as well, I had not even considered that yet.

I'm going to start a thread in the lounge to say hello to everyone again.
It is great to see you all!

-Bill

Holy crap, Bill's back! Good to see you posting again.

Very interesting concept but I think it applies much better in a vacuum than in actual play. With online play for example, you will find very few online tournaments with a structure slow and/or deep enough that you could commit <%2 of your stack with this play.

Most tournaments start with 1,500 chips and 10/20 blinds, and the blinds increase fast enough that you (and player B and player A) couldn't build a stack anywhere near quick enough to have room for this play.

The play also banks on you being seated at the same table in the same position with these players for quite a while. In most online tournaments today, even if you somehow stayed at the same table instead of being moved and managed to make the final table, you probably still wouldn't have had sufficient time to get in enough hands for the chips to flow properly.

Theory is always fun though and this is something I've never thought of before. Interested to hear other peoples' thoughts.

Agree that unlikely online to find a structure to suit <2% scenario, but then in some ways the nature of online tournaments and short structures is that it forces you to make plays and manufacture openings.

Perhaps this is better seen as one of a number of possible reasons to widen your range in the situation described.

Take this set up

Say 30bb deep effective (online)

Villain 1 raises 3bb
Villain 2 calls
Folds to you on button with 57s, KT or similar.

There's no doubt that calling is -EV in chips but just possibly there's value based on the likelihood that you are either going to lose 3bb or be in a big pot post flop due to either flopping or drawing to a monster. Losing 3bb will have a negative impact on your chance of cash that is less than the potential positive impact of a double up or big pot. (The monsters are few and far between and you need to be able to laydown the marginal connections with the flop as appropriate.)

Of course all probably dubious on it's own. However add in the potential for a juiced pot with a sandwiched loose chaser. The metagame benefits of playing hands outside your normal range (if they go to showdown) and the metagame dialogue that you construct with the loose chaser (and the other guy) in every pot you play. Throw in the information you get from the hand, the possibility of helping chips move clockwise round the table to the weaker player and maybe it starts to make sense.

Not convinced of the strength of the chip move rationale as the sole reason but as part of a balanced strategy, not overused, it's an interesting thought.

Definitely got me thinking. I tend to agree with Irexes, I like it more if we're doing it with a hand that allows us to either lose a small pot or win a big one. Sure we're setting things up so that we can take the weak player's chips later on, but I figure so much the better if we do it with a hand that gives us at least a chance of taking them right now too. Like Chuck says, they won't be at our table forever.

Something like a suited gapper or a low connector would probably be my weapon of choice.

The other reason I'm thinking we need a hand with at least some potential to do this is that I'm not sure we're going to have much real effect on Player B's drawing price postflop.

We might be juicing the pot preflop and giving him a better price to hang around with T8o etc, but postflop surely we need to get out unless we hit? We do that, and Player A will go right back to charging B the wrong price again. The chips will once again be flowing away from us and into the hands of the tough player. Something like this:

Player A (40BB) open raises to 3BB
Player B (30BB) calls
Hero (35BB) calls from the button with 9s7s
Blinds fold, 10.5BB in the pot

Flop: KdTc3d

Player A bets 7BB
Player B calls

At this stage, B is getting the wrong price (unless my math is wrong) to call with either QJ or a diamond draw, and long term the money is still flowing back to Player A. He'll be getting the right price if we call, but I don't see how we can do that.

One thing we have achieved is we've forced Players A and B to play a slightly bigger pot. With stack sizes as they are though I don't think it makes too much of a difference.

Maybe it works better in a limped pot, where there'll likely be other players (the blinds, at the very least) who can do our postflop odds-correction for us?

One other thought, does this have to be restricted to tournaments?

My cash game inexperience is probably showing here, but it occurs that you're probably more likely to find the right circumstances for this (deep stacks and a stable lineup) in a cash game rather than a tournament.

You haven't specified tourney or ring, but in either case I don't like it.

Even widening your starting hands selection a little will, in the long run, muck with anyone's game.

If this is ring, and you tend to see this same fish night after night, then it may be different, but in a tourney, like has been said, you aren't gonna be seeing many situations where you action is below 2%.

Thread title says tournaments only

How about a smallish 3-bet to isolate instead? I really think the logic in the OP is flawed, but maybe I don't understand it.

Basically you're saying theory-wise that B plays bad by calling without odds. To make up for that mistake, we're going to make a BIGGER mistake by calling with trash to make B's call correct. But remember, because our call makes B's call correct, where does he get the additional odds? From us of course? We are basically handing him equity by putting our dead chips in the pot without a hand. Player A still has the advantage and although B's play is correct because we've donated dead chips to the pot, player A will still take more than B will, because A still has the better hand.

For example let's assign equities:

HU between A and B: 65-35 = ~2:1

but say A bets such that B only gets 1.5:1 on his call. So if we call behind suddenly it's as if he got 2.5:1 on his call so it is a good call. Pretend we have 0% equity. A still has 65% to win, B still has 35% to win, but now pot went from 2x to 3x. We have donated x which comes out to us giving player A .65x and player B .35x. Player A still gets more chips, ie this is a horrible move imo unless I'm missing something.

Interesting discussion. I was in a SNG today when a player got very lucky and tripled up early. After that, I could see by his play that he was very weak and there were areas I could exploit if we were heads up.
I had to hope that he would stick around long enough for us to get to that point. I tried to think of ways I could "help" him but he had such a huge chip lead that I really didn't need to.

Hmm. I actually play something very close to this style on a regular basis.

With position, and two or three players in the pot before me, I`ll call with a wide range of hands. Not because of the complex logic in Bill`s OP, but purely and simply because of the lure of the big pot I am going to win, should I hit the flop hard.

I prefer this play when I have 50-ish BBs, rather than the 30 Rex mentions. I get worried about putting in as much as 10% of my stack, knowing that I am going to be folding on the flop more often than not.

Also, I like the call much better when holding 57s than KTo. The latter is too easily dominated by opponents holding AK, AT, KQ, KJ etc. With 57, if I hit a straight or two pair, I am confident that I have the best hand and that it is pretty well disguised and will get paid.

I spent the weekend playing the deepstacks around town.

Venetian and caesars have deepstack tournies that have good structure and are basically not too expensive.

I looked for places to explore this idea. It is my feeling that if coupled with value elsewhere this play has it's place.

Here was one notable situation.

A strong player to my right was floating the open raises from a player to his right, and taking down flops. The weaker player was raising strong hands and not following through enough. I had gained a good stack, so I made a small reraise preflop. Not enough for the strong player to fold. Now the strong player could not make the flop play that was working for him, because with me behind, you could not make his flop play. So essentially I was protecting the weak player.
The added value of course was that I was also isolating the weak player myself. Which would be good, except I was holding nothing. It still adds value.

After this happened twice, I bled chips of my own, and the strong player to the weak one. The strong player stopped attacking the weak player.

Not bad. This is worth exploring although the value is minimal.

-Bill