Do You Fold Marginal EV+ Hands in Tournaments?

[ventrolloquist]

Hey guys,

A) I was wondering if you use pot odds in tournament situations.

B) If you do, do you call in situations where you have just enough outs to have a minor +EV call? I would assume it's a bad idea (imagine you call an all-in and have only 3% +EV, is it unwise to call since despite the +EV you risk busting out?)

Or is it okay to call with marginal EV as long as you have enough outs to hit your hand a large percent of the time?


C) Is there some kind of formula for stack size vs opponent's bet size and how many outs you need to comfortably call in that situation? (because if you for example call an all-in for half your stack without only 5 outs or something, even if your call were hypothetically EV+ you'd more than likely bust out making that call twice given how small your % chance of hitting an out is)

 

[fundiver199]

In most tournament situations you need to consider ICM. ICM basically exist, when more than one place pay, because that mean, the value of chips goes down, as you accumulate more of them. In a 9 man SnG for instance the winner get 50%, so when the tournament is over, each chip is only worth half, what it was in the beginning.

ICM does indeed mean, that you do not want to call an all-in for all your chips, if its very close in chip EV. If its only for a small portion of your chips, its usually negligible though. There are programs like ICMizer, that can calculate the ICM value of chips and suggest calling ranges in different all in preflop scenarios.

 

[Alekxandrovi3]

In tournaments, you always want to win. For this, we need to play as efficiently as possible throughout the tournament. This is a fairly long distance. Play effectively at a distance only if you think before you do something. Even if you have 99 or 99.7 percent ev vseravno you can lose. However, if you call having a negative chances and dropping his hands with a positive ev you are not likely to win the tournament. And do not forget to bluff or you too will not be able to win tournaments.