Play to win? Not me.

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The_Pup

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Very often on this forum a poster will make the statement that they 'play to win.' This usually comes after half a dozen posters have discussed something like the merits of calling/folding a shortstack with AQo on the bubble.

I do find this sort of comment mildly irritating and would like to bang on about it for a few minutes. The PTW comment is usually followed by a recommendation to shove your stack - I have get to read a post that says 'you are playing to win, so fold.' As far as I know there is only one way to win a tournament and that is to win the final hand with the bigger (or biggest) stack. It doesn't matter a jot whether we get the biggest stack on the penultimate hand or one two hours previously.

It stands to reason that we would prefer to finish in first place, but it doesn't always make sense to risk everything to achieve this. What does make sense is to to play to make the best $ decision based on the situation we find ourselves in. Here's an extreme example to illustrate my point: we are on the bubble in a 100 player tourney with one chip and KK, blinds are 100/200 and two players with exactly the same stacks are all in. If we fold we are almost guaranteed a prize, if we call and win how much more likely are we to win the tourney or even get a higher than min cash with our 3 chips? A PTW comment here seems rather meaningless to me. From this rather absurd situation we can imagine a bigger stack and different cards until we reach a point at which the decision becomes more marginal; it is usually these marginal (or what people think are marginal) hands that people raise here.

When we are considering a more realistic situation we should still be making decisions based on what is the best $ play. For example, suppose we are considering calling a bet on the river and we 'know' we will win 60% of the time. Surely the sensible decision is to consider whether the chips won are worth enough more than those lost (in the long run) to make it a good $ decision. Again, the PTW comment is meaningless here too. (There are other important factors such as table image to consider too, but for now I want to keep this to the maths.)

The best way I know of making the right decision in these situation is by using ICM. This will tell us whether our call with a 60% chance of winning will give us a stack that is of more $ value than the fold. If you still think that since we are ahead with a probability 60% we should call then compare these two situations: hero and villain both have 5000 chips and the pot is 600; villain minbets 20 chips and we reckon we are ahead 60% - easy call. Same situation but villain goes all in - which wins us most $, call or fold, in the long term?

I think PTW is just one of those lazy phrases that appears on the surface to contain insight but in reality is just saving the speaker the effort of doing the maths. PTW means nothing to me and offers no justification for any particular action. I don't play to win (unless there is some extra value in winning a tourney eg pride) but I play for the best $ value given the position I am in. The question I ask myself during a tourney is not 'How can I win it?' but 'How can I get most money?' These aren't the same.

If you've got this far thanks for reading my rant - I feel a whole lot better for getting it off my chest.
 
NCfoldem

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I too get annoyed when someone says " They play to win."
Without being specific, I can tell you that one of the things I have learned since joining CC is that playing your best poker and playing your best money winning poker is not the same. Most people here at CC and everywhere online look to play their best money winning poker - that is treating poker like a science. Playing your best poker without considering profit or loss is treating poker more like an art. Blending the two, recognizing that poker is both a science AND an art, always made the most sense to me.
 
D_russo88

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I play for fun. If i was capable of winning then i would play to win but I am a horrible poker player and can't get lucky with most of my draws.
 
Leo 50

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I think that if you are not playing to win, you are short changing yourself.
Now that being said I can agree with you that sometimes you need to fold and let someone else go out.Especially in those bubble situations

If you are out of the tourney you can't win.

The example you gave with the KK and one chip is somewhat extreme but I can see where you are going with it.

The 60% chance of winning could be a little more realistic but it also depends are what kind of read you have on the other players.

Nothing in poker is 100% we all know that. Ever have your Aces cracked?

The 'basic' philosophy of playing to win is still(IMHO) a good one.

:cool:
 
timboslice4

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Hi im a new member, but ive been playing poker for many years and have read many books. You should play a tournament to win for sure, but above all to survive. When i play i usually play conservative if i am risking my life if i have a lot of chips i'll play "to win" or more aggressively calling a lot more with hands that i think i have my opponent beat when they push with a relativly small stack, but it isn't the best hand.
 
Poker Orifice

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we fold the 'KK' and the two players who are allin both show AQ for a chop, lol.
Joking aside.... decent post. Many players play tournaments similiarly to the way they'd play a cash game, not taking into consideration that as the tourney progresses, often case chips won don't have as much value compared to chips lost (in other words... you're chances of winning don't increase by as much in comparison to your chances of not winning... if you lose the hand... .ICM-based stuff).
 
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Piranha 131

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My first goal is to make the money, so i base my decisions off of will this help me make the money. Once i'm in the money I will go for the win.
 
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engman

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I think you are better of taking a risk early so that you put yourself in a position to win big. Rather take a risk with a draw or something like early on than waiting longer for the premium hand while you bleed out and put yourself in position to barely make the bubble and win a small prize.
 
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My first goal is to make the money, so i base my decisions off of will this help me make the money. Once i'm in the money I will go for the win.

Sorry to pick on you Piranha, but what does 'go for the win' mean?
 
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Piranha 131

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Going for the win would be building your chip stack and taking chances to try and finish 1st in the tournament. Before I'm in the money but close to the bubble I play very tight and just try to outlast people. My strategy in tournaments is the begining of tournament I play slightly aggressive, middle i play tight. Late I play very aggressive.
 
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I'm pretty sure the "play to win" mentality comes from a SNG grinder type of perspective where they're multi-tabling SNG's several times a day and in the long run placing first or close a few times is more beneficial than getting low cashes several times.

If you don't play many SNG's and you're evaluating each one individually or you're in a large MTT, the same thinking process might not really apply to you.

(I could also just be making that up)
 
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Going for the win would be building your chip stack and taking chances to try and finish 1st in the tournament. Before I'm in the money but close to the bubble I play very tight and just try to outlast people. My strategy in tournaments is the begining of tournament I play slightly aggressive, middle i play tight. Late I play very aggressive.

So I guess we are talking about taking a chance to increase our stack by calling with A9s and expecting to see 88+ with the idea that we'll hope to catch an A/9/flush and double up. (DO correct me if I am misrepresenting you here, Piranha.) Roughly half the time we will double and the other half we'll lose; but the trouble with this play is that the double chipstack will very often not be worth double the cash, or, to put it another way, it doesn't increase our chance of winning the tourney as much as we might think because as Orifice says, chips won are not as valuable as chips lost.

Let's imagine that according to ICM a given stack is worth $10 and that if we double our stack it is worth $16. By pushing it in on what our best guess says is a 50/50 chance we are obviously playing a losing strategy. Would you pay $10 to flip a coin and win $16?

I am not advocating a passive style or saying aggression is wrong with a marginal hand as there is a whole lot more to poker than the maths. I do think, however, that saying that we are 'playing to win' becomes meaningless if what our actions are doing are reducing our expected return in $.

To finish, here's a hand that I played in a $10 MTT tonight. Early in tourney I get QQ and reraise to 300, 1/10 my stack. When it comes back round to me two players are all in and have me covered. I fold. Although I folded the best hand (AKo and JJ) I am happy enough. More than half the time I will lose that hand and be out - the other half I win and have a stack of 9K. Whilst that 9K would be very nice indeed and preferable to the 2700 I ended up with it wasn't worth enough. I was confident I could get my stack up to that level in much less risky ways - which I did. Presumably, a PTW player would love to get their chips in in that spot. For the record, I would have lost to a J straight.
 
lektrikguy

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To finish, here's a hand that I played in a $10 MTT tonight. Early in tourney I get QQ and reraise to 300, 1/10 my stack. When it comes back round to me two players are all in and have me covered. I fold. Although I folded the best hand (AKo and JJ) I am happy enough. More than half the time I will lose that hand and be out - the other half I win and have a stack of 9K. Whilst that 9K would be very nice indeed and preferable to the 2700 I ended up with it wasn't worth enough. I was confident I could get my stack up to that level in much less risky ways - which I did. Presumably, a PTW player would love to get their chips in in that spot. For the record, I would have lost to a J straight.

To me that is playing to win. It does not mean play to win EVERY POT, but to survive. Mistaking "playing to win" with "blind aggression" is a mistake. The more guys you outlast the more you make. It would be great to get a winning hand every time, but the fact is sometimes you do have to lay down that QQ to a raise. Eventually you have the opportunity(hopefully) to KO a guy or 2 with a monster, but most of the time you build your stack slowly, which means you lose less when you do have to lay it down.
 
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I'm pretty sure that the people saying "play to win!" are referring to situations where the stack is getting smaller compared to the blinds and antes. Let's say the blinds are 200/400 with 50 ante in 9 handed tables and your stack is 3500k. You look at the tournament info and you see you're close to the money, you predict that if you survive 3 rounds, you're ITM. In this example, let's assume the blinds aren't going up in the next 3 rounds.

How do you play in this situation? You can either play to get ITM, or play to win. If you play to get ITM, you'll play super-tight (like Piranha said) and achieve your goal but not much more. When you'll have the minimum prize in your pocket and are finally ready to take chances, your stack will be insignificant and only with a lot of luck you'd be able to come back.
If you play to win, your goal is to accumulate chips quickly and, if possible, to double up. Any pair, any ace, anything 2 cards above 10 and suited connectors are good enough to open all-in (for some, it's A2C in this situation really). There's no time to wait for real premium hands, we want to win and we'll be blinded out soon. Most of the times, you'll just pick up the blinds and antes, which is a great result. When you get called, you'll either get knocked out or double up and, though not yet comfortable, have more of a chance to go far.

So, which option makes you win the most tournament prize money on the long run? IMO, it's clearly the second one.


The example with KK and a stack of 1 chip is an extreme case. You're already dead, you might as well fold everything and even waste as much time as possible (use your timebank as too) hoping to get ITM before the BB reaches you.
 
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I play to get the chance to yell at the computer screen when some donk calls with A rag to my KK just ITM and goes runner runner for a strght and knocks me out on the bottom of the money. (but hey, they were playing to win right?)

Just a thought, I understand what you're saying and agree with you, but aren't you mixing up a ring game thought process to explain how you make desicions in trny situations. I vaguely undstand ICM, I like to keep things pretty simple.( mostly play MTT) maybe that's why I don't make deep runs very often?

would understanding ICM better help me in later stages with border line situations?
 
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playing to win

Every game I play, I play it to the best of my ability. If I know all the rulesand am serious about playing, I try to win. In poker tournaments, you should try to win it all also. But, you must first get into the money, and once there, then you should strive to win the tournament and the money prize or seat. Play to win always, get to the money bubble, and then take first place and the prize.......sendittoken......:eek:
 
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To me that is playing to win. It does not mean play to win EVERY POT, but to survive. Mistaking "playing to win" with "blind aggression" is a mistake. The more guys you outlast the more you make. It would be great to get a winning hand every time, but the fact is sometimes you do have to lay down that QQ to a raise. Eventually you have the opportunity(hopefully) to KO a guy or 2 with a monster, but most of the time you build your stack slowly, which means you lose less when you do have to lay it down.

YES, YES, YES. That is precisely what I mean - just put a bit more succinctly than I could manage.

When I sit down to a tournament I have one intention only - to stay there as long as I possibly can. With the QQ hand I made the decision that folding it gave me my best chance of lasting longer. I am happy for someone to argue that calling is a better play for some ICM or psychological reason, but what irks me is someone coming in and saying 'Hey man, you got the best hand - play to win, not just cash', as if that somehow justifies a play that will lose money in the long run.
 
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The_Pup

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I play to get the chance to yell at the computer screen when some donk calls with A rag to my KK just ITM and goes runner runner for a strght and knocks me out on the bottom of the money. (but hey, they were playing to win right?)

Just a thought, I understand what you're saying and agree with you, but aren't you mixing up a ring game thought process to explain how you make desicions in trny situations. I vaguely undstand ICM, I like to keep things pretty simple.( mostly play MTT) maybe that's why I don't make deep runs very often?

would understanding ICM better help me in later stages with border line situations?

Good comments, Crow. Understanding ICM will definitely help in tourneys of all sorts. I'd go so far as to say it is essential to have reasonable success. It isn't the be all and end all as poker is more than just a maths exercise but it will make those decisions more profitable. It is usually not practical to do the ICM maths in the middle of a game but if you can get to grips with the principles of ICM and run a few simulations of typical game situations you will have a better chance of making a mathematically correct decision.

Here's a brief word on why ICM matters. Suppose we are in a cash game and have only a draw on the flop and the villain shoves. We can easily calculate the odds of our draw card coming and see if the money we need to put in is less in proportion to the pot than the chance of the card coming ie pot odds. In a tourney though each chip we win when we make our hand is not worth as much in $ as each one we lose when we don't, so simple pot odds is not so reliable in tournament play. ICM will put a $ value on our stack if we call and win and one if we call and lose. We simply multiply these by the chance of winning and if we win more by winning than we would lose by losing we call, otherwise we fold. For example, suppose ICM values our stack if we fold at $10; if we call a bet and lose our stack may be valued at $8 but if we win it may have a value of $18. So if we reckon we are 70/30 dog in the hand the call makes sense because we are getting the odds

This is obviously not something to do on the hoof (unless you are some kind of maths genius) which is why we need to work out typical scenarios in advance.
 
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"good players get more aggressive on or near the bubble because they know people will fold most hands to get ITM"
thats what the books say
seems to me maths dont matter much in these situations
its what player type are you
are you folding good hands to get itm
or are you aggressive to chip up
 
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Pokertron3000

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YES, YES, YES. That is precisely what I mean - just put a bit more succinctly than I could manage.

When I sit down to a tournament I have one intention only - to stay there as long as I possibly can. With the QQ hand I made the decision that folding it gave me my best chance of lasting longer. I am happy for someone to argue that calling is a better play for some ICM or psychological reason, but what irks me is someone coming in and saying 'Hey man, you got the best hand - play to win, not just cash', as if that somehow justifies a play that will lose money in the long run.

Well the difference can also be playing to win or playing to move up the money ladder, I know in the past when out of my comfort zone (read roll lol) I have tightened up knowing if I hold on 30 or so players the money jumps up a decent amount. Playing to win in my eyes means taking a few risks where you wouldnt in say a smaller sng where its easier to achieve 1st or a good score if you play multi table sngs 2nd or 3rd can be great. When some "fish" wins a sunday million or some such tourney its funny seeing all the people berating or looking up their OPR and saying ZOMG they are a donk luckbox etc . Now no doubt they probally are but they make moves that someone schooled in poker would see an a -ev move but bags them chips.

This is not to say that you should donk it up all the time but at some point in a large mtt your gonna be all-in against a better hand and need some luck or your skills at building a stack so you can take that hit. I think the difference with the mtt pros who win more than others is they while playing smart do play to win. I have read some people schedules for the day mtting and they will play a silly amount is it good for them to take some risks to build a stack?
 
salim271

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Wat? thur were 2 manee wurds in O P.

I pleh 2 winz.

Uh but seriously, its not as much about winning as playing to win as much money as I possibly can. Forget first, as soon as it seems profitable im the one on the table screaming DEAL! DEAL! In a tourney im doing whatever it takes to win the most money possible... so if that means folding, I fold. If that means shoving I'm gonna shove. If it means tight play at the bubble I'll play tight, if I'm on a tight table I'm abusing the bubble all day.
 
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