Phil Gordon makes a bad call during the MiniFTOPS #1?

I noticed Phil Gordon was playing in this so I decided to rail him for a bit. He spoke a few times and the print was in red so I assume it was the real Phil G.

then this hand came up. I guess once the cards are flipped he had just about the right pot odds to call according to pokerstove but for almost a third of his chips I think this is a fold. Anyone think this is a good call?

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terrible call lol so what happened?

must of donk most of his chips away it seems?

Yeah it's a bad call. Are you sure that it wasn't a misclick? But what i noticed was the guy that's all in has THE BEST NAME EVER!!! LOL LOL LOL

It wasn't a big risk to his stack and he had two live cards.

It's not a bad call.

if it was a tournamnet i would say that he was short stacked and just trying to get lucky and knock that guy out. if it was a cash game i really dont know what he is doing calling there.

He had to call 1023 to win 1823. So his pot odds were (1823/1023)=1.78 to 1 Using the break even point formula bep=1/(Pot odds+1) we get 1/(1.78+1)=.359. Meaning Phil needs to win 35.9% of the time to justify the call. Seeing as 104 wins against a5 37.5% of the time, Phil made a correct call according to the math.

The shover is short at 5bb, Phil is already in for 1bb, so it's only a 4bb call. Phil being at 15bb before the deal knows he has to chip up soon and is nearing the push/fold himself, especially considering the ante. But if he loses, he still has 10bb behind which is still something to work with. Plus as noted he did have the price to call. All of those things considered, I think he made a good risk:reward call there, although I'm not entirely confident I could have done it.

If your looking at this from a mathematical point of view, Gordon actually needs 2:1 pot odds or better to actually make the call.

Ok...so what happened???

It seems like a borderline call. I wouldn't call it a really bad call..

I think the call is fine. He could call or fold and it would make little difference in the long run, but it is definitely not a bad call.

I'm assuming this is a tour: The guy who pushed, is pretty much dead stacked with a 2CSI, and Phil isn't doing to great with a 6CSI, the call is so close- Id say call. Think about it this way, say he folds and pushes in a couple of hands, will a person call 2300 but fold to 3300, probably not, with the stacks at the table. Now if he wins he'll have $5200, Big stack will have more trouble calling his pushes when its a third to fourth of their stack. Plus his blind is less likely to be attacked after they see him defend it with a hand such as T4s, which is really helpfull when blinds are high and even more so with presences of antes. Id say call.

In this hand A5s beat the T4s 61.95% of the time, lost to it 37.53%, and tied it .52% of the time.

That's the end result.

Terrible call just fold and wait for a better spot imo, I don't agree with the whole odds mathmatical formula and how people follow suit with it, i mean if thats the case even if he called 2-7os here it wouldn't be bad here either cause oh they're live cards.

stupid.

I didnt post the results cause I didnt think it was relevant to the question.

the board missed them both and he went on to lose the hand.

I wasnt trying to trash the guy I love Phil Gordon. His little green book was the first poker book I read. I never called it a REALLY bad call. Just asked if anyone else thought this should be a fold.

Like I said in the OP, when the cards flipped he had just about the odds to call but barely and to me this was best case scenario for him. And for nearly a third of his remaining stack I would think it is a pretty decent hit to his stack.

So basically if we say the call is good we are saying that the difference between 14+BB vs <10BB (fold vs. call/loss) is less damaging than 14+BB vs. 21.7BB (fold vs. call/win) is helpful?

now obviously the call/win scenario gains more than the call/loss scenario loses but considering best case scenario puts you at around a 2-1 dog it still seems kind of marginal to me.

However, if Leatherass says its ok to call then I will have to take his word for it and re-evaluate my thinking about these situations.

I don't think anyone's saying it's a good call. Just not a horrible one.

Oh I definitely didnt say it was horrible. In fact the title is actually a question. The reason I put bad call in the title was to gain interest in the thread. Seems to have worked. lol

Definately,

I like discussing these situations.

Phil knew the guy had a marginal hand that his ten four suited plays okay against. I think this is more of a gamble than a calculated call.

Phil was below his starting stack at this point. I probably would have folded but depending on what I have seen from the villian, I might have called too.

I definately don't think this was a bad call in any way though.

I like this thread.

At the risk of a thread derail, I must comment on this because it gave me pause for thought.

I wonder how much time I spend on EV neutral decisions while studying. It seems that the hands I agonize the most over are ones that are really close. I think this statement has made me realize that spending a lot of time on really close decisions(which by definition are pretty much EV neutral right?) is a waste. I should be spending my time trying to decrease situations where I am at a disadvantage and increase situations where I have the advantage duh!


Now with that being said, We should recognize fairly quickly when we have a huge advantage/disadvantage so making the right close decision is probably important but I think recognizing when a play is EV neutral is important as well so we dont agonize over those.

I, like many others, will say that it wasn't a horrible call. In fact, given the chip stacks, the fact Gordon is in the big blind and the all-in isn't a huge amount (despite the fact it's around a third of Gordon's stack, but he's pretty short himself) then I may even say it was a decent call.

If someone would tell me Phil Gordon calls all in with T4 suited,
I would never believe it !!!

Decent or not, that was gambling...

so most of you are saying he made the good call because of the mats, because 104 wins against A5 this % of the time. but did any of you think that the other guys could have had anything else? i understand the guy has 5 big blinds but still, most of his range is way above A5, phil got lucky the guy only had A5, he could have had JJ or 99, or AA why not, situations where phil is way behind.

so therefor my thinking is this: unless you are sure he has A5 (which you will never know unless he tells you) therefor just barely justifying a really borderline call, you should fold this.

plus i can't really understand people that justify that because phil himself is shortstacked he made a good call, is his spot shouldn't you wait for good spots? position position position, steal some blinds, shove any 2 good cards in late position. i think that is what himself is preaching.

personally i believe he made a miss click or just wanted to gamble, or simply didn't care much about the MTT.

1st - nobody said it was a good call.

2nd - Phil's the one with the reads on this player.

3rd - How do you know that most of his range is way above A5?

he was there to host it, not play. he probably had better things to do anyway.

alot of the full tilt pros dont take these low buyins tourns seriously anyway. kinda hard to when they play way higher.

Nice thread. There is something about this hand that sort of defines the differences between ring and tourney play. Though I am not sure just what it is. Having something to do with my general (tourney) survival vs hard math prejudice perhaps?

Would he make the call in a ring game? The math is the same (I assume).

Without reads, which only Phil could provide, I for one would not make that call, even if his ten were the Kx suited. Now had he acted first....whole different story....

The hand Phil call with is one I have always folded as It is a lower percentage hand. I don`t care that It`s suited as that edge is only what..3% more to the flop to help you. I hate coin flips as it is and certainly would have picked a better spot/cards to make a call of that kind.I THINK HIS DECISION WAS FAULTY.

If this is your thought process, I'd respectfully suggest you actually learn a bit more about the math involved and how it applies to poker. I'm not suggesting that math is all that matters -- far from it -- but in absence of other specific info to the contrary on a given hand, the math is the ONLY thing that is consistent and will never let you down over the long run.

And suggesting that 72o has the same equity as T4s demonstrates a lack of understanding of equity, as well. Against A5s, T4s is about a 37/62 dog, versus 72o being a 32/67 dog. But more to your attempted point, T4s is a 2:1 favorite over 72o, so I'm not sure where you get your alleged equities from.

I wouldn't wanna risk a third of my stack on 10-4, .. 10-9? 10-8? 10-7 at the very widest? yeah sure perhaps but 10-4.? I'd rather put my chips in to where I have more possibilites to knock someone out rather than just relying on to hit my 10 or some miracle flush flop.

There are times I'd call 10-4 but not in that spot theres no need to imo.

Well again, there are a lot of considerations going into a decision like that, and nobody here is saying it's a standard call, ship it, woo woo woo. We're just saying under the circumstances this doesn't look like such a terrible call.

Plus, the fact that Phil Gordon did it, and Leatherass just posted here to confirm it's not a terrible call, further validates the opinion. IMO.

+1

Not a good or a bad call...

I'm a nit, so I def wouldn't make that call even for 1/10 of my stack much less almost 1/3 of it.

I make the call for 5bb's + overlay

while it's true that this is not an awful call in the long run, I would also warn people not to over-adjust because of this spot. That is, just because we happened in this one situation to have about 35% equity in this spot when the cards were face up and the cEV ended up working out to a marginally +EV call, that doesn't mean we should go nuts every time we get 52s and make the call when a player shoves from early position. zerosum79 said something in one of his videos on SNG's which applies equally well here, which is that often times players, both good and bad, will see something on a forum or in a discussion and take that advice and apply it to the wrong situations. I think this could potentially be one of those situations for this forum, so again, I just want to urge people to not over-adjust and start calling super wide for 1/3 of their stack, even if a pro made the move and another pro suggested the move is okay.

Let's not forget the extra walks he may get if T4s takes down the pot. So yes this is pretty much neutral EV as far as equity but might even have a more value when he's n the blinds again.