By
steely
Someone smart (may have been Matt Matros) wrote an article about how you have to take very small edges – even coin flips with a pair – in a big field tournament like the WSOP main event. He went through a detailed, mathematical explanation of why that is, and it made a lot of sense.
On the other hand, a lot of great tournament players like Phil Hellmuth routinely make huge laydowns and try to play small pot poker. Hellmuth famously laid down K
J on a flop of Q10X
(note that he was almost exactly 50% vs. AA in that spot), getting stout odds on his call, early in a big tournament. Allen Cunningham allegedly only played 4 big pots before the final table of the WSOP this year: three times with sets and once with AA vs. KK, all-in preflop. So which approach is optimal?
I have no idea. That said, I am pretty sure that in the context of more modest field (compared to WSOP) MTTs like the ones we play online, many of which are jam-packed with horrendous players and gamblers, I think the Hellmuth-Cunningham approach has more merit than it has in an 8000-person field. One of the errors I make all the time and that I am trying to work on is: be willing to take the risk that you are ahead and make the laydown when you feel you are beaten. When you reach a certain point in tournament poker where you are not fearful, you have plenty of bankroll behind you, and you are playing to win (not to make the money by a nose), it’s harder to take this kind of inverted risk than it is to have the heart to shove in when you think you are ahead, or even to make your own big bluff. To put it another way: I have made some fantastic calls recently, but not nearly enough big laydowns. Rather than pat myself on the back and review the smart calls, I want to discuss some of the bad non-laydowns. One of the easiest ways to do this is to look at a couple of scenarios where I held AA versus a single opponent.
AA is Just One Pair
This one is highly debatable. I am in the Dise 100k and doing well. I like my table and feel great. I have A
A and I open raise for 1200 from middle position with 200-400 blinds. Only the small blind calls. He is fairly loose pre-flop but he is otherwise reasonable and solid. I have 11k behind and he has 12k. Flop comes out: J103. SB bets 800, I raise to 2500, he re-raises to 6000. Almost all of the top players I have asked said they would stay with the hand here, and I agree that this is a tough laydown. That said, given our read (loose pre-flop but solid post-flop), our stack (still comfortable if we fold) and the conditions (good table), I like a fold here. My reasoning is this: (1) I have shown strength twice and yet he is pot committing himself. (2) It’s a compact board that hits lots of hands, so of course he could have KQ, KJ, AJ, etc. But most players would proceed with some caution on any of those hands given the strength I have shown. Some players will reraise with AJ or KQ there, certainly, but you usually find out who those players are fairly quickly (and this guy did not fit the profile). (3) If he has J10, we are 73-27 dogs; if he has a set, it’s almost 90-10. The price sucks if we are behind.
Back in reality, I shoved and lost to J10, which is what I thought was his most likely holding. My reasoning/rationalization was along these lines: it’s probably something like 5% that he has a set, 45% that he has J10 and 50% that he has AJ or worse. When you combine the odds that we are ahead plus the chances that we suck out when we are behind, the price is actually quite good. This reasoning seems fine, but it is flawed. It’s flawed because it’s not really 50% that we are ahead – that’s wishful thinking given our read. What I am advocating is allowing yourself to push that percentage up to what you really feel it is – maybe 75% that he is ahead – and taking the risk (again using this counterintuitive concept of risk) that you are wrong and folded the best hand.
By the way, I like his lead bet on the flop a lot. With that board, you are very unlikely to be behind and also unlikely to get no reply – that is a perfect time to lead out with a strong hand like top two.
No, Seriously, AA Is Just a Pair
Here’s an easier example with AA: I raise 4x (stacks are deep, early on in Super) in the cutoff and only the BB calls. BB is the table chipleader. Note that I like a larger-than-normal raise with AA/KK/QQ in this spot – late position, big stack LAG in one of the blinds. Flop = 5 7 J
. Check-bet-call. Turn = 9. Now he check-raises me, something like 2x more than I bet.
How do you like my hand? Could I be ahead? Of course. Should I push the hand? No way! Should I fold? Well, I think I probably should, but let’s say calling is defensible here with the idea of “seeing what he does on the river” (I hate doing that, but ok). So I call. The river is a deuce and he bets the pot, representing half of my remaining stack. I think we have to fold here (even better -- on the turn). I am willing to be wrong here, let him buy one, and get him back in a better spot. [In reality, I paid him off and he showed 68. I stink!]
One of the clichés you read in the poker literature is that good players are willing to get bluffed sometimes. I don’t think I get bluffed enough – I know this because of the (far too frequent) times I call when I feel strongly that I am behind. What we should be willing to trade is 3 or 4 good laydowns for the occasional bad laydown (where we get actually do get bluffed).
I discussed this concept with a friend of mine who is a highly accomplished live MTT player and very successful no limit cash player. He said this concept that I’ve labeled “inverted risk” (the risk that you are foregoing pots by laying down a winner) has a related application on the “offensive side of the ball.” One of my friend’s goals in cash games is to induce the Big Mistake – that is, to get his opponent to call a huge bet when he is up against a huge hand. When the conditions are right, it is worth the [inverted] risk to try it. That is, it’s worth the risk that you will miss out on a small value bet to try and land the huge payoff, the Big Mistake.
Similarly, it’s worth a number of smaller mistakes (folding to semi-bluffs with AA, for example) to avoid that huge, stack-decimating Big Mistake call. As an example, if the flop is K72, you hold black aces and your opponent check raises you, it’s worth it to fold some number of times when your opponent has J10 (for example) if we can exchange that mistake for avoiding a call where the opponent has 77. Keep in mind that the “bluffer” with J10 will suck out about 40% of the time, believe it or not, while you will only beat 77 about 9% of the time with your AA. Those numbers blew my mind when I first saw them. Of course you should factor in everything you know about the player and not turn into a “shrinking violet”, but what I am hoping to point out is that some of us don’t fold enough. And we don’t fold enough because we don’t appreciate the risks involved in not folding in these spots.
On a final, unrelated note, congratulations to MarvinGarden, Haligon, Rizen and everyone else from P5s who scored at the WSOP. [My only WSOP cash was that I made like $400 playing pai gow]. Also I want to thank Haligon for getting us kicked out of Tryst for wearing flip flops. Well done, Josh.
Steely