The Tournament Quiz

(Modnote: The answers to the below quiz have been posted HERE so there's no need to post your answers unless you are doing so to illustrate a point. There's plenty of good discussion in the thread though, so the whole thing is well worth a read. ~DM)



It seems to me like most players on this message board play tournaments as their preferred game. This is all well & good, except that most of the members here who contribute sound advice play cash games as their primary game. Not saying there are no good tourney players here, just that we could use some more quality tournament content.

I, a self-professed horrible tournament player, am going to attempt to remedy this problem. However, since I know little to nothing about tournaments, this quiz is actually about math & logic, just in a tournament setting.

So, without further ado, here is a quiz that is designed to test your tournament decision making skills:


Question #1:

The following scenario occurs in heads up play in a SnG.

$100 SnG, Blinds 250/500, No antes, Payouts: 1st, $450; 2nd, $270

Hero is BB with 8775 chips
Villain is SB with 4725 chips

Pre Flop: (750 chips) Hero is BB with Xx Xx
Villain goes all-in for 4475, Hero ???? (4225 to call)

Assume that villain doesn't have any glaring leaks, and is solid. We're getting pot odds of 1.24:1 or 45%. We know our opponent shoves any pair, any ace, and KQ in this spot. Which hands can we call villain's shove with?

A. 33
B. 88
C. 76o
D. A9o


Question #2:


The following scenario occurs on the bubble of a SnG.

$100 SnG, Blinds 100/200, No antes, Payouts: 1st, $450; 2nd, $270; 3rd, $180

Folder is UTG with 3600 chips
Hero is BTN with 800 chips
Folder 2 is SB with 4000 chips
Villain 2 is BB with 5100 chips

Pre Flop: (300 chips) Hero is BB with J♣ J♥
UTG folds, Hero goes all in for 800, SB folds, BB flips over A♦ 6♦ and asks you if you want a call. He assures you he will do whatever you say, and the floor man says that whatever you tell him to do is binding. You reply with:

A. I have you dominated, call!
B. I am a scared little girl, please fold.



Question #3:

The following scenario occurs during the rebuy period of a MTT.

$100 MTT, Blinds 10/20, No antes, Top Heavy Payout Structure

Everyone has equal (1500) chip stacks

Pre Flop: (30 chips) Hero is BB with Xx Xx
UTG Raises to 1500 with A♣ 9♦. Folds to you in the BB.

Given your magical read on UTG, what hands can you call this shove with?

A. 2♣ 2♦
B. 2♥ 7♠
C. T♣ T♠
D. Q♥ T♠



Question #4:

The following scenario occurs on the bubble of a SnG.

$100 SnG, Blinds 100/200, No antes, Payouts: 1st, $450; 2nd, $270; 3rd, $180

Folder is UTG with 3500 chips
Villain 1 is BTN with 4000 chips
Folder 2 is SB with 3500 chips
Hero is BB with 2500 chips

Pre Flop: (300 chips) Hero is BB with Q♦ J♦
UTG folds, Villain raises to 500, SB folds, Hero goes all in for 2500

If villain calls with a range of AT+, KJ+, and 66+, how often does villain have to fold for this move to be better than folding ourselves?

A. 74%
B. 63%
C. 55%
D. 32%



I'll give out the answers, and the solutions in a few days.

Oh fun! I don't know if I will be right or not but I will play.

Question #1 - I will say B but won't be surprised if it is all 4.
Question #2 - B
Question #3 - I want to say C - but it is a re-buy which I don't play much of and I suspect the answer could include A and D.
Question #4 - I would only be guessing here so might try to give it some thought and come back to it.

I know this sounds Nitty, But 3 of your questions refer to sngs rather than Mtts.There is a difference on how you answer them or play them.I am not a sng player so i would let someone like dakota answer them.Question 3 I call with 10s

I will play too.
1. I am torn between B and D, but I am going with B.
2. I say A call
3. C
4. I would say A because their range is good cards so I would need them to fold alot to my QJ. ( I could be reading the question wrong)

Using only gut instincts, I came up with the following:

1. All of the above
2. A
3. A and C
4. C

I cheated and ran them through PokerStove, so I'll just comment without answers.

1) I would have gotten 3 options right and 1 totally wrong.

2) I woulda been wrong.

3) 3 right and 1 surprisingly wrong. **But should the rebuy factor into our decision at all?

4) This is the part of my game that I really need to work on - making reads a more precise part of figuring implied odds. But my total blind guess would have been correct in this case.

Helpful thread. Props C9.

1.A C D

2.A

3.AC,D if you dont mind rebuying

4.B- horrible spot to shove imo


Snow

1. ACD
2. B
3. AC
4. D

Not that I have any idea - but still I'll give it a shot:

I: B,D
II: B
III: A if you don't mind flipping and rebuying , +C
IV: B if I got the question correctly - ugly shove by hero imo

Oooh I like quizzes...good idea c9h13no3!

1. B
2. Personally I wouldn't say anything & stare straight ahead but for the sake of the quiz -- A
3. C
4. Personally I wouldn't be shoving but for the sake of the quiz I will guess -- B

1) B and D

2) A

3) A, C and D

4) B

1. A,B, and D
2. A - f I want to risk it but B - if I am on the button (you called him both the BB and the button in the question)and get a new hand for free next
3. C maybe but you are out of position
4. Very bad shove IMO and C or D

I agree with lab man. 3 questions are for SNG, not mtt. I think it changes depending on where you're at in the trny. But I wanna play too.
#1. B for sure and MAYBE A. (little pairs would be more of a gut feeling)
#2. need to dble up in that spot. A for sure
#3.How many buy ins do you want to spend?
A and C minimum. add D if you're really trying to get a big stack early
#4 just guessing, but I think A or B I like about 68% how's that?

1.) B

2.) A

3.) A and C

4.) D

#1=D, Were ahead of most pairs and above many aces.
#2=A, were 61v38 take it.
#3=C (but personally will always fold this)
#4=B I beleive, with the range u describe thats his equity, our equity is 36.



I cheated on the last one and ran it throught pokerstove

I would like to add that anyone who says we should be folding the QJdd hand is insane IMO. It is definitely not a bad shove.

1. B and D. 3s are dominated by any of his cards pairing including his rag on the A. 76o aren't worth the time of day in this scenario. A9 has a high enough kicker to be over half of his A rag. 88 are also in high enough range to cover lower kickers on A. Of course we are dominated by any of his higher cards hitting but it's the lower kickers in his A rag that we are looking at.

2. A Don't know the exact numbers but it's good enough for the call here.

3. D Definitely Q 10 here. Hand has the most chances to improve to a winning hand here.

4. C Little bit better than 50% IMO

Not a tournament player... just interested in all round poker logic, here are my answers:

1:
I read the SAGE system once and can't be bothered looking it up, but I think A, B and D are all good here. I think the SAGE system is good enough to follow blindly almost every time (which should be read as every time, I only throw almost in there because it's poker and nothing is 100%).

2:
A, there's no question. The only person who wants him to fold here really is a scared little girl. Give him AK and I think the answer is still the same. Double me up or send me home/in search of another SNG.

3: 22, TT, QT.
Not sure on how many rebuys you should make for every tournament win, but I think 43% equity is enough to make the call. 27 at 31% is too low for me though. It's different here if we have 3k each and the rebuy would give me only 1.5k, then I'm only calling with TT.

4:
2.5k to win 800 or be at best a coinflip and at worst 20-30% for 5.3k. This problem is made a lot worse by putting your tournament life on the line, I'm going with D based on what earns the most chips, but would only make the shove with B because I'd be trying to find a better spot to put my tournament life on the line and there's the added bonus of making it into the money to add incentive to not busting out in such a marginal spot.
This is by far the most difficult question for me, I think that there's a lot here that takes an experianced tournament player to answer correctly. How lightly are you prepared to put your tournament life on the line to accumulate enough chips to be dangerous. How many chips do you need to be dangerous? Is it late enough that you should be willing to take big risks to accumulate those chips (you've got a fair amount of chips relative to the blinds, but I expect in SNGs proximity to heads up would play a a big role in decision making here). Out of all of that, I answer D.

Will revisit this over the weekend, once finals are finished...

crow27 said:

be more of a gut feeling

Click to expand...

Gotcha! See, that's the thing with all of these questions. I have no "gut feeling" because I rarely play tournaments (and when I do play tournaments, they tend to be games other than NLHE). All of these questions have a mathematical answer.

And secondly, SnG's *are* tournaments. They're just smaller, and easier to model mathematically. However, the concepts in both are the same (chips have diminishing utility, ect.).

So here are the answers, and hopefully a decent explanation. Kinda surprised this thread got this many responses.

Question #1:

The correct answer is A, B, and D. Its just a matter of pot odds. When there are only two players left in the tournament, chip have exactly their value. Therefore, no ICM modeling is needed to calculate the value of your chips, and you can use simple pot odds to make your decision. Therefore, since we know villain's shoving range, we can calculate which hands we can call with using pokerstove:

Villain's Shoving Range:{ 22+, A2s+, KQs, A2o+, KQo }

46.2% { 33 } which is greater than 45%, its a call.
59.1% { 88 } pocket 8's are a fist pump call with 59% equity.
35.8% { 76o } not surprisingly, the low rags are a fold.
47.9% { A9o } and A9o is also an obvious call.


Question #2:

The answer to question #2 is B, we want villain to fold. Here's why:

Preflop, there are 300 chips in the pot, that if villain folds, we get risk free. And if villain calls, then we have a ~60% chance of winning 900 chips. However, in tournament situations, especially near the bubble, chips have what's called diminishing utility. The second 1000 chips you have isn't worth as much as the first 1000, and the third 1000 is worth even less. Even if you have 99.9999% of the chips in a tournament, you can still only win 50% of the tournament prize pool (or whatever first place pays).

ICM takes this into account, and using an ICM calculator, we can model our tournament equity given our chip count & our opponent's chip counts:

If villain folds, we will have 1100 chips, and our equity will be 10.8%.
If villain calls, we have a 68% chance of having 1700 chips, and 15.3% equity.
The other 32% of the time, we will have 0% equity, because we're out.

So we just do the math to see which value is greater:

0.68*0.153 = 0.104 or 10.4%, which is less than 10.8%. So therefore, on average, villain folding will show a greater profit than him calling.


Question #3:

Rebuy tournaments are really interesting in that during the rebuy period it often becomes correct to put money in as a slight underdog. When you lose all your chips in a normal tournament, you cannot win them back. However, in a rebuy, those chips stay on the table, and you often get a chance to win them back over the next hour or two of play.

Also, having more chips at your table makes it more likely for you to have more chips than other players in the tournament. Consider the following two table tournament. At table 1, no one rebuys. At table two, each person makes 3 buy ins total. At the end of the rebuy period, the two tables have the following total chip counts:

Table 1 - 13500
Table 2 - 40500

Obviously, players at table 2 have an advantage, and once the tables are combined, the players at the final table from table 2 will likely be bigger stacked.

Therefore, it becomes correct during the rebuy period to put your money in as a slight underdog, especially if you feel the player you are against is very poor, because a slight underdog is offset by the ability to win those chips back & to get more chips at your table.

Therefore, we should call with hands A, C, and D. However, getting money in as a 2:1 dog with 27o is almost never correct, and is certainly incorrect in the rebuy period. Hand D (QTo) is only a ~43% underdog to A9. The others are actual favorites.


Question #4:

The answer to this question is B, 63%. If we had no cards at all, and villain folded 74% of the time, we would show a profit. However, its surprising how little the 38.6% equity QJs has matters to this analysis. But once again, the diminishing utility of tournament chips near the bubble of a tournament almost always makes avoiding showdown the correct play.

This is yet another math problem using the ICM calculator.

If we fold, our tournament equity is 19.3%. So the average equity yielded by shoving must be greater than 19.3%.

If we shove, and villain folds, we have 23.7% equity.
If we shove, and villain calls, on average, we will have 12.5% equity (38.6% of the time we will have 32.4% equity, the rest we will be out).

Therefore we can create the following equation, and solve for F, which is fold percentage:

0.193 = F*0.237 + (1-F)*0.125

F = ~60.7%

(Apparently I did the math wrong the first time, when I got 63%. But still pretty close.)

Either way, the important thing to note here is how important fold equity is around the bubble of a SnG. Blind stealing & accumulating chips without seeing showdowns is superbly important. And the trick is, many good SnG & tournament players know this, and so they will fold far more than the range I listed above. However, if villain does call with the AT+, KJ+, 66+ range, then getting 61% folds is very unlikely to happen.

Conversely, in a cash game, we would calculate this with actual pot odds:

2300 = F*3100 + (1-F)*(5100*0.386), and F = 29%. Crazy how much things change in a tournament!

Hope its been helpful.

Ahh, I misunderstood question two. Of course you want him to fold. Especially if you can build your chip count fast and cheap. But with JJ I also wouldn't be averse to a call.

So for question 4 55% for me is not too great a difference than 60%. I call that one a tie.

bubbasbestbabe said:

So for question 4 55% for me is not too great a difference than 60%. I call that one a tie.

Click to expand...

Yeah, no one thinks like this at a table. You should just have a ballpark idea of how often they have to fold to make the move profitable. And in a tourney, with those blind levels, you need them to fold a lot.

Without trying to go against what op is saying here,I would say that there is a premium on chip accumalation in tournaments, that isnt taken into account in some ICM models.

On question 2:You want JJ called by Ace little because you need those extra chips.You win Tournaments by getting chips and busting people imo.
The way you win most of the time is to be the big stack,thus you need all the chips possible.I want him to call 100% of the time here.Also he is never folding if he is any good at all.

The problem with #4 imo is that you are going to get slaughtered in tourneys reraisng with qj on the bubble when you have virtually no fold equity.The Ms of the players involved almost mandate a call by the origal raiser thus making it a horrible play imo.

Just 1 tourney donkeys thoughts!

Thanks for the test ,I enjoyed the Challange! :icon_bigs


Snow :icon_sant

Snowmobiler said:

You win Tournaments by getting chips and busting people imo.

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Sure, but the risk of acquiring those extra chips isn't worth the chance of busting. You cannot win the tournament when you win, but when you lose your all in you're done. The potential gain is small, but the potential loss is big. Winning 38% of your stack with no risk is preferable to winning 100% of your stack with significant risk. Sure its very counter-intuitive, but that's why there's significant edges in tournaments. People don't understand tournament concepts, and therefore they don't understand how to optimize their play accordingly.

Snowmobiler said:

he problem with #4 imo is that you are going to get slaughtered in tourneys reraisng with qj on the bubble when you have virtually no fold equity.

Click to expand...

I'm not advocating this raise. If anything, the data supports not raising, as you need villain to fold over half the time. Its pretty obvious you didn't read the answers to the quiz...

c9h13no3 said:

Sure, but the risk of acquiring those extra chips isn't worth the chance of busting. You cannot win the tournament when you win, but when you lose your all in you're done. The potential gain is small, but the potential loss is big. Winning 38% of your stack with no risk is preferable to winning 100% of your stack with significant risk. Or you could just suck less at numbers and understand what ICM is doing.


I'm not advocating this raise. If anything, the data supports not raising, as you need villain to fold over half the time. Its pretty obvious you didn't read the answers to the quiz...

Click to expand...

I did read the answers to the quiz and Im giving real world answers to how to win.If you think I dont understand then fine,but I would say to you, look at my results,I may have valid points.If you dont see them Im sorry!
ICM is not the only answer in tourneys.
You wont be the 1st cash game player or tourney player either,that I will disagree with on tourneys,im use to it. :icon_sant

I killed low stakes SNGs and Ive killed low stakes tourneys over a large sample size.


Snow