$3.5 NLHE MTT Turbo: take a flip 18p turbo

[greedisgood]

Hi,

I played an 18 player 3,5$ turbo sng on pokerstars today. With only 5 players left we're on the bubble and these are the pay-outs: 1st 22$, 2nd 17$, 3rd 11$ and 4th 5,50$.

I'll give some extra descriptions on the hand: the player on the button had a 22/24/3 (VPIP/PFR/3Bet ) record over 38hands. I've noticed him shoving light with his bigstack from late positions.

the guy on my left was new to me and shoved once from LP with no showdown so no further info on him.

situation : 5 left, 4 paid blinds 200/400
utg: 3,2K ( fold )
CO: 3K ( fold)
button 13,640 (shove)
sb(hero) 4,5k to act AJo
bb 2,5K

as the button was a loose opener I am quite sure I'm ahead of his range with AJo. But I think there's a catch in this situation and would love to hear your guys comments on this.

if I fold, the bb who is allready in the pot for 1/5th of his stack can call with a wider range and hopefully lose the flip, so I'm in the money. He needs a double up way more than me and this looked to me like a good opportunity for him to flip light.

If I fold, the bb calls and wins, I'm still a decent stack with 2 short stacks left.

If I fold and the bb folds it would make no changes in the positions except the lead of the bigstack which will be bigger.

If I call, and I win I'm same size stacked as the bigstack.

if I call, and lose I don't cash.

So what do you guys think about this situation? call or fold?

I'll post a BOOMlink to this hand as soon we've got some comments

greets

Greedisgood

 

[horizon12]

Easy call, shove range button very wider here I think you have around 45% equity and mostly will be ahead..

 

[matiusaa]

I would snap call if he is really shoving almost any2. You are favourite and you will be on the chip lead with him. Nothing else to say

 

[Marcwantstowin]

I would have called. Interesting though I was commenting on another thread earlier and over 75% of the comments were saying AJ suited was a bad call in a similar position.......................... Will be interesting to know how it went.

 

[greedisgood]

Thanks for the replies guys, and I do agree. I'll post the hand now :

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/12320672_01F985F94A

--------spoiler alert ------


as you can see I folded the hand and it has been a mistake I guess. but what happened is exactly what I wanted, fold so the bb can call and I'm in the money. If I call and win, there still are 5 players left but my chip advantage is much bigger. Then again this chip advantage isn't so necessary as the blinds will be higher in a minute and we got 2 very shallow stacks left which are desperate with their <5BB stacks. offcourse if I flip I make a better chance at placing first, if I fold I have a better chance to end in the money.

Finally, if I fold and shove the next hand I have the first in vigorish and my image was very tight. I'm expecting very tight ranges for my opponents to call. I can go totally berserk and shove like a madman and steal the blinds rather than flip for them?

Please share your insights It's a dilemma I've been fighting for a while. I know in the long run this will be a profitable call, but as we are on the bubble and with this exact dynamics I knew I mathematically had an edge to call, but then again my opponents don't think with Nash-indexes etc and therefore the Nash Index doesn't work I believe..

 

[horizon12]

Yes, you need call snap, button steal again short stack , him steal was very profitable....
Is it mttsng , so you not can miss very profitable situation, because blinds in turbo very fast increase and in distance this will be always profitable....

 

[Caissa]

Notwithstanding the actual outcome I would prefer to fold this hand Even if he is shoving light it seems like we have a lot more to lose than we do to gain.

If we fold we will have $11.53 equity in the pot.

If we call and win (and the BB calls as well) we will have $17.40 equity.

If we call and lose we will have 0% equity or $0

So we are risking $11.53 to win $17.40. We have to win this pot 66% of the time to be profitable. AJo has less that 64% equity against any two cards. Calling is -$EV.

 

[greedisgood]

Caissa,

I really like your comment, as this was my thought process but not so mathemathically explained, I'm learning about Nash etc and your answer helped me a lot !

 

[Ambur]

Notwithstanding the actual outcome I would prefer to fold this hand Even if he is shoving light it seems like we have a lot more to lose than we do to gain.

If we fold we will have $11.53 equity in the pot.

If we call and win (and the BB calls as well) we will have $17.40 equity.

If we call and lose we will have 0% equity or $0

So we are risking $11.53 to win $17.40. We have to win this pot 66% of the time to be profitable. AJo has less that 64% equity against any two cards. Calling is -$EV.

How did you calculate it?

 

[WiZZiM]

The keys here that make this a very likely good fold, even vs an ATC range from the button. I have played like 2 of these 18 mans, but they play very similarly to the 9man variety which i have played quite a few

Whenever we're in second place vsing the guy in clear first place. We pick up equity if we win sure, but it really isn't that much equity compared to the 0% if we lose, so basically put, it's a very high risk/moderate reward spot.

Caissa pretty much nailed this, but OP, your post above is very good logic on your behalf. The simple fact is we cannot cash or win the tournament (unless the BB overcalls) with this one hand, and since this is a SNG, not an MTT sng as stated above, the top spots don't mean much unless you are cashing a high frequency in spots like this. What we really want to be trying to do is to put our stack against another similar stack, to which there are plenty, so shoving wide in future hands or calling wider vs stacks that can directly lead us to cashing and making the money. So if the button folded this hand it's an easy ATC shove and we're very happy with the situation no matter what.

It's a spot where it looks like if you are after chips and getting first placing this is an easy call. But if you are looking at long term equity or real money then this is an easy fold. I can assure you that looking at this in a money driven focus will yield the overall most profit. The thing is, against his range, we're never much more than 55-60% so basically a little better than a flip vs the person we least want to get involved with.

Unpaired hands will always tend to do a lot worse when you have loose ranges, in fact it's better here if the button is much tighter as we have a premium hand and we're more likely to dominate a tighter range whereas we're merely a 55% favourite against even a hand like 23 (not exact by any means, get into poker stove and find out how it does vs differing ranges). Whereas a hand like TT or 99 has the chance to be a 80% favourite vs loose shoving ranges, so the times when we have 99 vs 56 or whatever whereas with AK (AK is the same hand as AJ in this spot) we only ever get to be 75% vs Ax type hands specifically to which the combos of such reduce since we have one. and Ax only makes up a small % of a 100% or loose range. Now if we know the button is somewhat tight and has a range which is comprised of a lot of Ax type hands, then calling is much better for us, however still a fold since the range vs range isn't the biggest determining factor in play here(stack size or amount of tournament equity is).

Before i babble on anymore, this isn't a profitable call in terms of money but it likely is a profitable call in terms of gaining chips. So really it's up to you, if you like making money and prefer cashing at a higher frequency with a shot at winning still. Or do you prefer to bust out more often but make up for it with a higher % of wins? The latter is really hard to do bc as we know, even if we double to 8k chips we can still bubble this tournament and doesn't guarantee that we will win this thing either. The key is to find a balance you are happy with, but if we are taking straight up profitablility on this call, then the facts/logic/math are all pointing to a very easy fold.

 

[WiZZiM]

Really well played here OP. And the cool thing about the BB overcalling is that we can make money and tournament equity by just folding

 

[Ambur]

Well I assume this is pretty close one! Every participator will invest 3,5$-(stars fee 0,34$)= 3,16$. And the button has pfr 24 which is pretty much ¼ hand he could jam there! Since he have the position and he has gained chip lead I assume his range is probably that wide even we do not have accurate sample (only 38 hands). And the BB range can be almost random 2 cards since he is OOP! I used pokercrunch to calculate equity which mean we have (if BB folds) 57,0% equity and button has 43% equity.
If BB also calls then we have equity 39,7%, Button equity 33,9% and BB 26,4%
EV (if BB folds) = (0,57*3,16)-(0,43*3,16)=$0,25 which is plus ev.
EV (if BB calls)= (0,397*3,18*2)-(0,339*3,18)-(0,264*3,18)=0,6$ if we win both the pot (since BB has less chips then both of us and he has only 6,25bb left).

Thing will get interesting when we calculate icm!
Payout structure (40%,30%,20%,10%)
Chip worth t3200=16,83$; t3000=16,09$; t13640=32,26$; t4500=20,75$ and t2500=14,05$
If BB folds and hero calls! Hero lose=t0; hero wins=4500+600+4500=t9600 and if we make new icm calculation assuming that hero won!
Chip worth: t3,2k=15,9$; t3k=15,22$; t9,1k=27,8$; t9,2k=27,8; t2,5k=13,21
Hero had icm before this move 20,75$ and now he has 27,8$ which mean hero has made 7,05$ which basically means that hero icm odds ( i dunno how to call it) are (20,75/27,8)*100=74,6%. And that means hero has to win that flip App. 75% of the time which is not good investment for long term but note that EV calculation shoves tiny profit!
I am trying to say you have to have some really good reads when u call this spot and good knowledge about dynamics of the game. But note that the blinds are going up and the good cards does not come so often. It is turbo version!

 

[Jacki Burkhart]

Notwithstanding the actual outcome I would prefer to fold this hand Even if he is shoving light it seems like we have a lot more to lose than we do to gain.

If we fold we will have $11.53 equity in the pot.

If we call and win (and the BB calls as well) we will have $17.40 equity.

If we call and lose we will have 0% equity or $0

So we are risking $11.53 to win $17.40. We have to win this pot 66% of the time to be profitable. AJo has less that 64% equity against any two cards. Calling is -$EV.

+1

this is an example where calling is +cEV and -$EV.

This is ICM in a nutshell and well explained by Caissa. Being ahead of their range is often not enough of a reason to call; especially on the bubble. What good is it to make a call that on average wins chips but loses money?

AJo facing a 100% shipping range is only 64% to win. And that picture only gets worse if he's shoving tighter than we think. 38 hands is not really a lot of info on a player so we risk quite a bit here for little gain. For instance if he is only shoving 50% of hands (still a huge range) then we only have 61% winning equity.

Plus, you have no fold equity. With hands like AJ fold equity makes them so much more powerful. Here I'd jam with AJo all day long but calling with it is a big leak.

 

[shomy21]

I would play like you, fold beacuse you can easy get into money and later you can risk. Ok to push the first but no need to call for gamble.