I don't have time to play a ton of tournament volume, but I do think I'm +EV most of the time. However, I feel like I finish at the next to last table an inordinate amount of the time. I wonder if I might have problems with my late tournament strategy. Here's an example from tonight.

It's the Pokerstars Midnight $22, 740 players started and 90 places payed out. A little over $3k for first. There are 13 players left and I'm somewhere around 5th in chips with about 88k or so. Villain is MP and has me covered by less than 10k, he's been opening a lot of pots lately, but hasn't been called so I don't know what he's opening with. We're currently 6-handed and I'm on the button.

Blinds 2k/4k, 200 ante.

Villain is MP and raises to 12k, I call on the button with K Q

Flop (pot = 31k) Q 7 3
Villain checks, I bet 16k, he check/raises to 44k, I shove, he calls.

Does anyone play this hand differently and if so how. I'll reserve comment until after some people have responded.

You're at least 30% to win, either your flush is good (if you hit it) or your pair of Qs is. I don't think he's bluffing with air, but if you put him on a set or KK/AA, can you really fold a turn that doesn't help you with half your stack in the pot already?
I think a call would be terrible and a fold would be weak (but possible I guess, villain does look strong here imo). Without knowing any equity numbers I think you played that hand well. You can't be really comfortable with your stack with an effective M of 8, so this looks like an excellent opportunity to get a good shot at the final table.

You played it fine.

std, preflop and flop

you play to win the game

I play it the way you did against a small stack, but not against a stack that busts me.

First, I may very well fold it pre-flop unless I have reason to believe hes very loose. Im probably on a coinflip or a 3:2 dog against an Ace, maybe dominated. With a solid stack you need a good reason to go to war against a covering stack.

If I do call, then I would never bet the flop. Ive only got TPSK and a draw, and I want to give the draw a chance to come in. Assuming the turn missed, if he leads with anything 1/2 pot or more I fold it.

As played I fold to his check raise. Yes, youre playing to win. That doesnt make suicide any less painless.

i like you.

i think in this spot i'd much rather call p/f with a hand like 55 or 89s. this is definately the spot in a tournament where i'm trying my best not to get stacked off coming in light. i think it's a pretty easy fold pf.

cinci- i don't track my tourney stats but i'm pretty sure that when i get to the final 2 tables i have a high chance of making the final 5. my suggestion is opening a lot of pots against the blinds of the tightest players at the table with any two if i need chips. for me it's time to gamble. what most don't realize is that this type of gambling is way safer than the hand you played. chipping up w/o showdowns is what you want to be doing.

if i'm a leader i look to stack off middle stacks w/ mosters in position.

I dont mind the call preflop at all. Hes been raising alot of pots so we cant give him credit for a hand everytime. You have position which can hardly be over stated, its huge. Plus we are nearing the FT bubble which most people are afraid to bust. When he checks that flop theres nothing wrong with getting it all in here. He may even muck when you shove over the top on the flop with your three bet. If he has AQ we have 12 outs to beat him, if he has AA we have 14, KK we have 11, QQ or any other set youve got 9. Folding is not an option IMO.

Preflop, I could see folding this or making a call with position. It would depend on my read of the blinds (their stacks, aggressiveness etc.). Basically, I'd be worried about a push that would result in my fold after I've put 12K into the pot.

Postflop, I would have to bet that flop after a check by villain. With an M of 10 after your preflop call, I would be more aggressive especially with TPSK and second NFD as backup. Once villain reraises, I'm shoving like you did.

when he check raises what can we beat?

at this point i'm not looking to get my money in bad for my tournament life.

Pot odds are 1.8-1 since all our chips will go into the middle (we can't just call obviously). We have nine clean flush outs and the three kings are probably good too so assuming 4xouts, we would only need about 1.1-1 to push.

At this stage of the tourney, you need to win hands like these to take the top spots. We of course gave ourselves the odds to push by betting the flop but I don't like checking behind since the flop did hit us so well.

the more i think about it the more i think it's a flip. i still don't like the preflop call, but oh well. one of the things that would drastically affect my decision is the three stacks to my left. if 2/3 is big i'd be more inclined to believe that a shove is okay. if 2/3 are small to medium the shove is worse. in the latter scenario i get us back to 88k in 2 orbits, 3 at the most.

and although it's probably moot we have an entire orbit before the blinds so our M is techinically around 9.7 but i think it's slightly better than that from the metagame perspective.

At first, I thought your play was pretty good, but after thinking about it for a few minutes I decided I had an issue with your bet on the flop. When I first read the hand, and knowing my own play at this stage in a tournament I was thinking, yes, be aggressive with this potentially big hand and bet out after he checks to you. I'm sure with only 15 seconds to think I probably would have done the same.

Now though, I feel checking behind on the flop might be a better play for a few reasons. If you do have the best hand right now, there are very few possible scare cards that could come on the turn, (basically one of the 3 aces that isn't a diamond). Even if no diamond comes, or Ace you can confidently call a half the pot sized bet, and see all 5 streets without risking your stack. In addition you can use these two more streets to force your opponent to make decisions/actions and in turn gather more information that will allow you to determine the strength of his hand. Obviously you're hoping for the flush and don't want to put yourself in a situtation where you have to risk all your chips with TPSK.

I don't think folding preflop is a profitable move in this situation.

what about AJ?

What about it?

do you fold it here?

I fold AJ to the big stack also, but its a lot closer. AJ isnt dominated as easily as KQ, and given the propensity to play Aces, dominates more hands than KQ.

Read on villain is that he is loose. He has been opening a lot of pots. I think calling with position is the best play here.


I don't mind the idea of checking behind on the flop, but betting here is standard. Checking is probably better to gain more from hands we beat.


That is far too weak tight. If he checks the flop and then bets the turn he could have absolutely anything. Folding TPSK and the K high flush draw there would be very poor.



When he checkraises we are either ahead (he could have Adxd or even the same hand) or we have at least 8 outs (vs. AdAx) and anything up to 14 to win if we are behind. We have $60k left, the pot is $91k (potentially $123k if we assume he never folds when if we hit the turn) and we have to call $28k. We are getting 3.25/1 pot odds and 4.4/1 with implied odds to see the turn (although we wouldn't be able to fold if we missed then anyway, so we may as well shove now). If we shove here with no FE we are getting 2.05/1. We have more than 33% equity against his range. Hell, even against a range of just [ QQ,77,33,AQs ] we have correct odds.

Folding to the checkraise is bad.

All of your responses ignore the fact that you are up against a stack that knocks you out. If you dont avoid confrontations with dominating stacks late in a tourney when all you have is small +EV draws you are killing yourself.

how about a freaking update on what the other guy actually had. My guess is a set of queens.

I also agree to folding AJ and A10 in this spot.

I seriously disagree with this. Almost any +EV situation is worth taking, regardless of tournament life. Here we could even have the best hand. Change KdQd to AdQd and does your opinion change?

since it's context is in a vacuum and you qualified it with "almost" i won't be too harsh. however, you are fundamentally mistaking.

most should intuitively understand that tournament life is more important than things like pot odds. there's no recovery from gambler's ruin.

Yeah, I was talking in general terms. In any normal situation, cEV closely approximates $EV. In this situation we are playing shorthanded against a LAG villain. I don't fold top pair second kicker with a flush draw in that situation getting 2/1. You are passing up too much equity.


No. 'Tournament life' is significantly overvalued by most people. If you start being significantly risk averse in the late stages of a tournament your results will suffer. There have been many threads on this subject (usually calling allin on the first hand of the WSOP), and almost all of them come to the conclusion that noone is good enough to pass up a fairly small edge. Here we are dealing with high blinds and antes so the skill level is reduced further. I don't think anyone is good enough to make folding better than shoving here unless they know for certain they are against a set.

risk averse is not the same as avoiding those that can bust you with marginal holdings.

i suppose if you don't agree that cEV does not equal $EV we are not going to agree on the matter.

And I would argue that "playing to win" when you are already deep into the payout structure is overvalued. Stacks are deep enough here to pick up chips from small stacks, and from the big stacks when you have a much more significant edge.

I've been at work all day, and it was good to let the discussion run it's course anyway. Results tend to bias responses.

One interesting thing about this particular situation is that most of the stacks in the tourney were fairly tightly bunched. Nobody was badly shortstacked at this point and everyone seemed to be pretty close. In some ways, I think that in itself is an argument for playing this hand the way I did, because it allows us to accumulate chips. However, Copernicus is right that we may not want to go up against a stack that can bust us. I think, if I recall correctly, that the villain and I were pretty close in chips and I may not have even noticed that he had me covered until it was too late.

I look forward to trying to digest everything in this thread, it looks like it was a good discussion, I'm still not sure what the right play was though.

FWIW, villain had AhQh and I bricked out.

That's because he's always right.

My initial thought before reading responses was to fold PF. You could also raise or push to steal, I just don't like calling with K-high there even in position against the one guy who can bust you. KQ whiffs a lot of flops, and you can get away from it for free, so I think you should.


I also think checking might be the best play on the flop, but I wouldn't be looking to fold unless an ace fell. If he led out the flop I'd raise.

Risk aversion is the reluctance of a person to accept a bargain with an uncertain payoff rather than another bargain with a more certain but possibly lower expected payoff. (Wikipedia)
Here you are sacrificing positive equity on a higher variance (more uncertain) play to save your tournament life.

I agree that cEV does not equal $EV. It does approximate it though. Considering that in a large tournament, usually around 50% of the prizepool goes to the top three places (from Poker.com):



There is no significand 'jump' in prize money until you get from 4th to 3rd usually. That is far enough away that it is not worth passing up +cEV situations to move up the pay scale. In a top 3 paid sitngo cEV only begins to diverge from $EV in any significant way when you are down to about 5 places. Also, if you win this hand you will gain a lot of leverage as the chip leader. You should be able to steal blinds far more regularly and it will be easier to grind your way up further.

I think everyone is overrestimating how much of an edge it is possible to consistently get with an effective M of almost exactly 5 if you fold (60k left, 7200 paid per round = M of 8.3. 6/10 people at the table so Effective M = 8.3 x 0.6 = 5). If you win this hand your effective M will be over 15 and you are very comfortable. I really don't see how this is even close. Even more so if the blinds go up fairly soon.




I'm interested - what would be your move if we had AdQd here?

no idea why this hand generated so much discussion. the only real decision is preflop. 6-handed vs. a player who's been opening a lot of pots, i don't think you can muck KQs. the only decision is if you want to take a flop or attempt a re-steal. i think this decision is fairly close given your stack size.

after this flop, if you consider folding, umm....gl winning a tournament.

AQd we have to play preflop, and are probably taking all the way. There are only 7 hands we are behind to, QQ, 77, 33, and we have 11 outs against 6/7 of those and 9 against the other one, so we are about 42% to win when were behind. Assuming a similar amount of money went into the pot there is way too much tEV to walk away from, so we may as well repush against his raise.

FYP

We only have 9 outs against any set, and against QQ,77,33 we are 29.7%.

My thoughts are exactly the same as yours, but I hold the same to be true for KdQd. It's also not possible for him to have the Adxd if we hold the Ad.

I'm probably the only one to do this (and I'm not saying it because of the potential results)....but I check behind on the flop. I think that's the "aggressive" play heads up. You've flopped the world: top pair, flush draw.....you don't want to lose this guy.

BUT I also want to keep the pot small as I called a raise. If *I* was the raiser, I would of probably bet/re-raise here. But I check behind on a flop like this with the KdQd as our villian may have AA (or KK and QQ, but unlikely since you have one of each), AQ, or even a set of 7's.......... and I don't want to be check-raised out of my flush draw. I want to keep the pot small until I hit big, where my implied odds would shine through vs those hands (unless the 77 boats up at some point). Plus I'm playing it aggressive.....if he happen to have absolute garbage, I want him to see my check as weak and induce c-bets on prospective streets.

So check behind and see a freebie. If he bets out huge on a safe turn, I think you are assured you are beat 60%-70% of the time here, and you can lay down (unless you got some gamble with you). If he bets small on the turn, he's either bluffing with a hand like 99 or sometype of gutshot with a high card hand (which you obviously crush), I'd take the odds and try to improve on the end.

The way YOU played it, however, I think you did the right thing. Although you are only called by a hand that beats you, you still have a decent drawing hand as well as a hand that can improve with MORE than the flush vs AA, KK, or AQ.

Interesting feisty debate! I personally would have played the hand the exact same way as the OP. I did think BWToth made some valid points in his "upon further review" post (and I like his Dem donkey as well <g>). Still though, I think simo makes strong points, and overall I still get pulled back to the feeling that the original play was the right one.

Copernicus, I see what you mean about being cautious going up against the big stacks, but on the other side of the coin isn't that, to paraphrase the old saying about why people rob banks, "where the money is"? And with a hand like this, it's not as though there's any hand he can flip over where we say "oops, I'm dead", KWIM?

If you knock off a few small banks first you can buy some heavy artillery to try and invade Fort Knox.

Best flop plays in order:
1. Check behind
2. Open shove
3. Bet 16k

PS. I used to have the same problem. Quit trying to double up late in the tournament. Taking 20% of the pots uncontested is what wins tourneys.

THANK YOU!