14 replies to this topic

[RISEorFall]

10+1 NL 8k guaranteed tourney at Absolute Poker with a couple hundred people left. After getting a straight outdrawn by trips filling up I get down to less than one big blind. Double up on my BB (the next hand), then double up twice more with A7 and Q9s. I've built my stack up to about 900. Blinds are 50 & 100. I get 10-10 in MP. 1 limper to me, I make it 350 to go. Button calls, BB moves all in. Limper calls and is all in. I...??

[Vade]

Fold10-10 is at best a coinflip, way behind two people

[RISEorFall]

I'm better than a coinflip. Not by much, but with 2 all ins and a guy on the button calling (and maybe calling the all ins) some of their outs are gone. Plus I have huge odds and I need to get some more chips pretty fast to do anything in this tourney.

[TheIceman05]

RISEorFall said:

I'm better than a coinflip. Not by much, but with 2 all ins and a guy on the button calling (and maybe calling the all ins) some of their outs are gone. Plus I have huge odds and I need to get some more chips pretty fast to do anything in this tourney.

Fine, then call. Jeez, get off my back already. I was just saying...

[HtotheNootch]

Depending on your requirements (some argue 10x the BB, others 5 times the BB) why not either limp or move in?If you limp, you can try and take a cheap flop and/or reraise all-in/or fold with information.If you move in right away, you have fold equity plus a decent hand. At your stack, picking up the blinds is good.I hate that big a raise with your stack.

[peetzaman]

I normally push in this situation. You need to double up. You are pot committede anyway to a raise, or at least very close to it.

[Makata]

You're really not going to find a better situation without loads of luck.To win / place you're going to have to get pretty lucky at this point so might as well start now when you have a good chance.

[checkymcfold]

most of you guys are waaaaay too uppity with this 1010. toss it. you're looking at three overs at least or an overpair, and you've still got 5.5xbb. that's plenty to play with in a tournament that undoubtedly has lots of fishes still running around. it's enough to make your requisite steal a round to stay afloat until you get a better place to double up. here, you're looking at no better than 30% to double up, i'd say.of course, this can change if you have strong reads/classifications of the players involved, but generally, this is a toss situation.by the way, i like your raise here, despite what others say. it leaves you a lot of chips to push at a flop you're sure your opponent didn't hit strongly, and enough to play with if you see a flop like akq. the people that say pushing is necessary with a 10xbb stack are WRONG, straight up. the important thing is to retain a stack where a push can still be a successful steal, and 5x is plenty for this most of the time online. 10x should be played nearly normally preflop, but turns into a push/fold postflop in most cases.

[Swift_Psycho]

HtotheNootch said:

Depending on your requirements (some argue 10x the BB, others 5 times the BB) why not either limp or move in?If you limp, you can try and take a cheap flop and/or reraise all-in/or fold with information.If you move in right away, you have fold equity plus a decent hand.  At your stack, picking up the blinds is good.I hate that big a raise with your stack.

I agree that the raise the OP made was the worst option possible between calling, raising, or moving in. You shouldn't have been faced with this decision to begin with.

[Makata]

checkymcfold said:

toss it. you're looking at three overs at least or an overpair, and you've still got 5.5xbb. that's plenty to play with in a tournament that undoubtedly has lots of fishes still running around. it's enough to make your requisite steal a round to stay afloat until you get a better place to double up. here, you're looking at no better than 30% to double up, i'd say.

How is 5.5x bb enough of a stack? In a field of fish it's NOT enough to steal with. Fish will gladly call random TK, 66, etc to any raise, so what makes you think you'll be able to steal the blinds once an orbit unquestionably? Then of course you run the risk of actually raising into a good hand.In all likelihood, you aren't going to find a better hand or a better situation in the next 15 to 25 hands. It comes down to having to get lucky at this point, obviously. If he calls TT he needs to win. If he folds he either needs to steal alot of pots (lucky in a sense) or get a great hand with callers. Also 30% is pretty slim. I'd put bb on at best AK/AQ, and limper a pair lower than yours. Button could have something like AJo, ATs, QKs. With the assumption no one has a higher pp atm, which I think is a pretty accurate one, you're 32% to the field of AQs, QKh, AJo. In other words, ANY overcard is bad. If limper has a low pocket .. your odds stay roughly the same. If there's only 3 overs in the opps hands (ie AKc, QKh, QAs), you're up to 41%. Even against an OP multiway, you have 18%, which is about right for the odds (if it were a ring game).Furthermore, it isn't "doubling up." Even if the button folds, which increases your odds (usually), there's 900 + X + 350 + 350 already in the pot (X being between 100 and 900, didn't mention how much limper was all in for), with 550 left to call, to win at least 1600, possibly 2500. Considering you can't get that 350 back without winning, you might as well consider your stack size to be 550. Winning will at the bare minimum triple you up, possibly quintuple you up.But even if you can mathematically figure out it is unadvantageous to call, you still have to consider the fact you're in a tournament and losing on the bubble is like being busted out first. He has very little leverage at this point and simply has to take chances. Plus pretty soon the blinds would creep up (assuming 150 or 200 is the next bb), leaving you with not even 4 big blinds, possibly 3 (if it's 200), meaning you'd have to steal quite a few pots before the blind change or actually win a hand. And frankly I'd consider the likelihood of that happening to be far less than the 32% chance he has of winning this hand.But maybe it's just me.

[checkymcfold]

Makata said:

checkymcfold said:

toss it. you're looking at three overs at least or an overpair, and you've still got 5.5xbb. that's plenty to play with in a tournament that undoubtedly has lots of fishes still running around. it's enough to make your requisite steal a round to stay afloat until you get a better place to double up. here, you're looking at no better than 30% to double up, i'd say.

How is 5.5x bb enough of a stack? In a field of fish it's NOT enough to steal with. Fish will gladly call random TK, 66, etc to any raise, so what makes you think you'll be able to steal the blinds once an orbit unquestionably? Then of course you run the risk of actually raising into a good hand.In all likelihood, you aren't going to find a better hand or a better situation in the next 15 to 25 hands. It comes down to having to get lucky at this point, obviously. If he calls TT he needs to win. If he folds he either needs to steal alot of pots (lucky in a sense) or get a great hand with callers. Also 30% is pretty slim. I'd put bb on at best AK/AQ, and limper a pair lower than yours. Button could have something like AJo, ATs, QKs. With the assumption no one has a higher pp atm, which I think is a pretty accurate one, you're 32% to the field of AQs, QKh, AJo. In other words, ANY overcard is bad. If limper has a low pocket .. your odds stay roughly the same. If there's only 3 overs in the opps hands (ie AKc, QKh, QAs), you're up to 41%. Even against an OP multiway, you have 18%, which is about right for the odds (if it were a ring game).Furthermore, it isn't "doubling up." Even if the button folds, which increases your odds (usually), there's 900 + X + 350 + 350 already in the pot (X being between 100 and 900, didn't mention how much limper was all in for), with 550 left to call, to win at least 1600, possibly 2500. Considering you can't get that 350 back without winning, you might as well consider your stack size to be 550. Winning will at the bare minimum triple you up, possibly quintuple you up.But even if you can mathematically figure out it is unadvantageous to call, you still have to consider the fact you're in a tournament and losing on the bubble is like being busted out first. He has very little leverage at this point and simply has to take chances. Plus pretty soon the blinds would creep up (assuming 150 or 200 is the next bb), leaving you with not even 4 big blinds, possibly 3 (if it's 200), meaning you'd have to steal quite a few pots before the blind change or actually win a hand. And frankly I'd consider the likelihood of that happening to be far less than the 32% chance he has of winning this hand.But maybe it's just me.

first, i misread the OP and thought this was relatively late in the tournament--i didn't realize there were still hundreds of people left, in which case i'd probably make the call as well.but in a whole lot of situations, i'd still fold. this is where i admittedly go against the book, but with 20 grand in online tournament winnings in two months, i think i'm justified in doing so :-) (another 4 grand last night) .i'm not denying that the math is there to call if you're doing a chip count. however, i think that doing the math by counting chips in low buyin online tournaments is a horrible way of going about things. basically everyone's an idiot of some sort in these things, and you CAN wait for spots where you're dominating someone heads up, because you WILL get called by anyone with anything resembling a hand if you push into the right people. straight away in these things, you can tell who's supertight (and from these people, steal away with a 5x stack; they ain't calling with less than AQ or TT) and who's going to call any all in for less than 100% of their chips. exploit the easy and absolute classifications of players in these low buyin tournaments for your stack. don't push with less than an 80% shot to win, because you don't have to, even when your stack falls to 5xbb. i've won numerous tournaments in this price range just hanging around and hanging around with stack in the range of 5x-10xbb, stealing from the right people and doubling up with top pair or better into the calling stations. it's all that's necessary in these things--stay away from big pots until near the end.maybe it's just where i play (pokerroom), but patience and folding in these types of situations pays off a LOT more in the long run than does making pushes when you're not an 80% favorite, much less an underdog, even when the math says to do so. just last night, taking 2nd out of 600 in a 20k guaranteed, i didn't get a stack of over 10xbb until there were about 120 left after getting shortstacked in the beginning. so it goes. i didn't panic, made quite a few folds like the one in this situation along the way, and eventually hit a few flops and made sure all the money got in when i actually was a big favorite to win. it paid off, just like it almost always seems to do in my experience in online tournaments.remember: you're a hell of a lot better than 95% of the people that play these things. you should exploit this fact as best you can. while pushing with pot odds may be the best move against players that are of a similar skill level to you, sitting back and waiting for a better spot is much more profitable against a bunch of fish. a while back, i remember a post (by daniel, i think) about being at a table where he could consistently steal 2 blinds/round and developed a monster stack. the poster alluded to the fact that a call of ANY all in in this situation with that kind of lead would be idiocy with less than KK, considering the ease of stealing at this table. i see the conventional online tournament as something similar, but instead of steals being guaranteed every round, calls are guaranteed if you pay attention and push into the right people.

[RISEorFall]

Ok, I went with the all-in, here's why. I figured to have any shot at making the money with this many people left and the blinds going up fairly soon (well, adding $25 antes, blinds stay for a round, then go up 150-300), I'd have to make up a lot of ground. I just got moved to this table and had seen about 2 hands. My 10-10 here is probably a favorite against the random hands that would limp in or raise here. Even if they have overcards they're more than likely sharing overcards. I would be making more money in ring games than sitting and trying to survive/steal blinds here. So I went in, button called. BB had AK, limper had K9, and button had QJ. Board came 8J88Q. I was just mad button called 3 all ins with QJo. I wouldn't have minded losing to AK or a decent hand.

[Makata]

RISEorFall said:

So I went in, button called. BB had AK, limper had K9, and button had QJ. Board came 8J88Q. I was just mad button called 3 all ins with QJo. I wouldn't have minded losing to AK or a decent hand.

Given a range, I pretty much called those hands without even a read. At least for BB and button.BTW, button had to call at that point for the same reason you did, assuming he and BB weren't enormously stacked. 900+ from bb, lets say around 750 (guessing) from UTG, 900 from you, and already 350 invested for him, leaves 2900+ chips for 550+ to call, though his odds drop the more he and bb have chips. At about 6 to 1, if it isn't going to cost me my tournament life or leave me severely crippled, I'd probably call JQo in a relatively weak field too. UTG shows no strength, and your raise only shows a moderate amount. BB could have any 2 based off the situation, so I doubt I'm winning but I'd imagine at least 3 (in this case 6) clean outs with clean straight draws and potential flushes.

[RISEorFall]

No, BB had significantly more than me or the limper. I think limper called cause he was in the same boat as me, as he had about as many chips as I did. No the rest of the all-in was about 2000 or so more. Button had everyone covered, but not by much. A hundred or so. And you wouldn't think with 3 all ins that some of your outs are dominated by AQ, KQ, AJ or KJ? I think he got lucky as balls his outs were good.