Calling with KK on bubble play

I have a question. I had about 4000 chips, my opponent also had 4500 chips, and my other 2 opponents had 1300 chips or so. One of the short stacks went all in, big stack reraised all in, hoping to kick me off, I have KK. I ended up calling and winning the whole tournament but people say it was donk call because it's better to step aside and glide into itm. Does anyone have advice for this? This was single table sng with 4 people including myself. top 3 gets paid and we were down to 4 people. some say, i should step aside and let them fight. my friend told me "f--k them, take down the whole pot with KK, if you have no balls to call just because you're afraid of Aces, then u don't deserve to be a poker player" I don't know which advice is correct. Please list down your advice. Thank you.

I never say there is one correct answer in anything poker...but I wouldn't have folded the Kings. I wouldn't call playing your Kings a donk move.

If you have nothing in the pot. I fold here. It would depend on what I had committed before I call the re-raise and risk my stack. If the short stack had won and the big stack beat you. You are out on the bubble and that would suck. Easy fold in my humble opinion.

Lefty

Its not a donk move, people are just talk trash at tables. I may not have called, but in no way can you call it a donk move. Really the only hand preflop that is a killer would be AA. Plus with 2 other people giving action they may both have had aces, lowering the chance one would come on the flop.

Actually i take it back, i totally wouldve called it.

Just out of curiosity what were the other hands, ?

exactly theres not really one correct answer but me myself i would hav prolly folded and sat back but thats just one opinion not to say its right or right just my way of playing that specific hand

Def not a donk move. I think people just like to hear themselves throw around keywords while at these tables.

For crying out loud. What is donk about calling with KK.

I am nit so I most likely would have folded this

pokerlovesme said:

I have a question. I had about 4000 chips, my opponent also had 4500 chips, and my other 2 opponents had 1300 chips or so. One of the short stacks went all in, big stack reraised all in, hoping to kick me off, I have KK. I ended up calling and winning the whole tournament but people say it was donk call because it's better to step aside and glide into itm. Does anyone have advice for this? This was single table sng with 4 people including myself. top 3 gets paid and we were down to 4 people. some say, i should step aside and let them fight. my friend told me "f--k them, take down the whole pot with KK, if you have no balls to call just because you're afraid of Aces, then u don't deserve to be a poker player" I don't know which advice is correct. Please list down your advice. Thank you.

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I'd need to see all the stack sizes and everything to run the calculations, but if you were on the bubble with a comfortable stack and the other guy had you covered, calling with KK was most likely a mistake. Calling with Aces is probably even be a mistake there.

The decision here is entirely dependent on payout structure imo. If it's a satty where 1st = one above the bubble it's a fold. If it's an mtt with a steep structure it's likely a call. If it's somewhere in between it all depends where.

I was going to say exactly what zachvac said. How important to you is the 3rd place money? Is first place money way more? Think about those two things.

Apparently I read this wrong. I was under the impression it was a satellite for some reason.

I think the correct play is fold.
Think about it: If you had AA and just 1 (yeah 1!) chip, there are 4 players you're in 4º and 3 players are awarded, and the chip leader push all in and both another players call. How much is the real value of your chip? It has the value of the 3º place prize. If the odds of winning its less than 100% you dont have any reasons to put yout chips in risk. Your primary objective is stay ITM.

It's a hard fold, but one I've done before. You want to be in the money, is the main thing. Then you can open up your play. IMO it's too risky of a call to go out on the bubble.

To quote Herm Edwards, "YOU PLAY TO WIN THE GAME!" I make the call every time. Just "gliding" into the money may be ok, but the payout structure in these sit and gos generally favors 1st place over 3rd by a factor of 2.5. The call probably gets you the win... that means to maximize your profit in the long run, you have to make the call.

They had AQ and KJ suited. I called because I told myself, "f--k these guys. i think i can knock these fools down and then have dominant chiplead over 2nd place and finish him off." My friend told me, it's a right play. BUt at the same time, I somewhat agree with some people here who says that if I don't have anything invested in the pot and I can risk bubbling out, it's better to fold. For me, when I have KK or AA, I get aggressive and imply in my mind, "BRING IT ON BIATCH, I'll knock yo ass out" BUt of course, getting emotional like this is stupid play in poker. But I just wanted to ask for advices since poker requires making right decisions instead of basing on cards and emotions.

ok I just saw the OP actually includes that it's a single-table sng with chip stacks. Maybe a sng player can correct me but I'm pretty sure that's actually a fold. It has nothing to do with thinking the other guy has AA and as dsv said it would be a mistake with AA as well. I'm actually curious so I'm gonna run some ICM calculations, I'll assume Stars structure of 4.5x for 1st, 2.7x for 2nd, and 1.8x for 3rd:

Current equity is 29.3%

If we fold:
- if small stack wins: equity = 28.5%
- if big stack wins: equity = 31.7%

if we call:
- we lose: equity = 0
- we win: equity = 41.9%

This actually misses the part where the big stack wins the entire pot and our equity is actually 20%, the percentage of the pot 3rd gets. The big stack typically has a stronger range than the short stack in pushing, so we should probably give him let's say 65% to win, so in the we lose colum we should probably get 65% of 20% which comes out to 13%.

Let's use same equities for the first part. If we fold our ICM is 65%*31.7% + 35%*28.5% = 30.58%

If we call let's say we have 80% to win

I just ran pokerstove and gave the shortstack top 50% of hands and bigger stack top 15% of hands. Completely arbitrary but I think it's a decent approximation. We have about 61.5% against this range. Wow I'm good. Just because I already had it stoved in I decided to take out our KK and see how top 50% did against top 15%. It's almost exactly 65-35 (but it's dropping as I type this so it could be a bit off).

Anyway... when we call 61.5% of the time we have 41.9% equity and 38.5% of the time we have 13% equity.

30.77% equity.

So the answer is to call in this spot if all my assumptions are right (which they probably aren't). It's close though. I'm pretty sure if we have QQ in this spot it's a fold. Also if we have AA it's not that much clearer of a call although obviously it's still a call since KK is a call. The important part is we're not worried about being beat preflop, we're worried about being beat postflop and winning a pot not giving us enough equity in the tournament to make up for the times we lose and have no equity. Also I think if it were final 5 not final 4 this would also be closer to a fold because then if we lost the hand to the big stack we would have 0% equity.

But yeah, this is why I laugh when people summarize decisions with "play to win" or "you've gotta money first then win", because decisions in tournament poker are so much more complicated than simple mottos, although the first motto can never go too far wrong in MTTs where there's such an extremely steep structure and the second one is true in sattys.

Just curious, the person who called you a donk....was he the other guy that was all in?

This is really interesting. I would have assumed it was a fold just because of ICM but it looks closer. I think a lot of it relies on ranges and that conversely relies on the blinds. The blinds are really important here as Zach's ranges, especially for the shortie, might be wrong depending on the level. With another short stack I am not sure he is shoving 50% of his range.

I would have let it go. Your first priority is to get ITM. If the large stack won it was no big deal in chip terms because he was only going to increase his stack by around a third. If he puts the low stack out you are safely ITM and then you can play poker to win. Okay so you won it and you won overall but you could have gone out for nothing.

This is actually a good question. There's alot of discussion over this stuff in forums. Usual thinking was/is to make it into the money and the amount your equity increases in comparison to how much it decreases if you were to lose the hand is a good reason for folding the hand (btw, FWIW,.. it's not only AA that could/will beat you here... could be anything). Not sure what the actual equity calculations are

Now there is also alot of parties who these days are saying, it's more important to shoot for first and to make +EV plays on the bubble without regards to there being two smaller stacks & two bigger stacks,.. in the long run it will pay off to for example, 'make the call' here. (checking thru sng results, a 1st does wonders for ROI in comparison to a couple of 3rd's).
Hard to say if one is 'right' and the other 'wrong'. There are differing opinions on the subject these days though. I had pulled a good article on this subject just the other day.. but of course can't find it on my puter right now, lol.
to sum it up.. there are arguments for both.. call &/or fold

What are the stakes in this tourney? I think that all arguements are good... personally I like to get my money in there with a strong hand,
All You Can Eat Baby!

What is your objective in the SnG?

Is it to win it or is it to make the money.

If its just to make the money, Fold..
If its to win it... All in baby,.


Simples

I think you made the right play, there is only one hand that can beat you which is AA and there is only a slim chance the big stack has it. It is very hard to fold kings and it ended up working for you. GOOD CALL

interesting question...

some may argue to fold so u guaranteed to get in the money. I can agree with that only because the scenario may arise when your KK is facing AK-AQ, and A-anything from each of the other two players. And when the A hits the flop...both players stay in and u get knocked out.

YOU PLAY TO WIN THE GAME! In this situation you have to go for the jugular. Nice Aggressive call and you were rewarded by getting the victory. Besides, if the big stack wins, you still make the money. If this was a big MTT where the money was of significant size, I would say A lay down is possibly the right play, but not in a single tble sng. bol

Call

I would definately call in that spot because all you really have to do is beat one of the short stacks and then your in the money no matter what so i would take the chance

Even if you three lose to the big stack, you would get second place because you had the second most chips before everyone was allin

Even if you lost to one of the small stacks, you would be in the money Top 3 and still get most your chips back