All-in situation. What would you do?
Carl Perretta
with aces, you'll never get broke with aces. This, of course refers to not
automatically pushing all-in every time you look down to see AA before the
flop (or even after, just ask Umberto Brenes). But I got to thinking, it's
not always that easy.
The situation: You are in a no-limit tournament, one in front of the
button. On the VERY FIRST hand, second-to-act raises to 4X the big blind.
The player two seats later pushes all-in. Everyone folds to you, and you
look down at pocket aces. Losing the hand will eliminate you. What do you
do?
In a situation where you would survive against the other player, even if you
lost the hand, he decision is easy. Bu his one is stickier.
John Harkness
What the FUCK are you talking about.
This is what's called a no brainer.
John Harkness
Perry Friedman
Carl Perretta <cjper...@NOSPAMcomcast.net> wrote:
>Jim McManus, in his book, refers to T.J.Cloutier's advice that if you limp
>with aces, you'll never get broke with aces. This, of course refers to not
>automatically pushing all-in every time you look down to see AA before the
>flop (or even after, just ask Umberto Brenes). But I got to thinking, it's
>not always that easy.
The advice about limping with aces is one of the worst pieces of advice
I have ever seen in a book. If you fold aces every time, you will not
go broke with them either. However, limping with aces is actually much
more likely to cause you to go broke with them than raising with them.
Perry
JoeyT
will not). He wasnt saying that you wont, he is saying that if you limp
with them and nobody raises allowing you to reraise then you are in
trouble and should be super careful on the flop...
You either misunderstood it from the third party or they stated it wrong.
(or I am wrong)
_________________________________________________________________
Posted using RecPoker.com - http://www.recpoker.com
Sean
possible hoping a weaker hand will fold so they do not outdraw you.
"JoeyT" <anon...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:3f4fb6fc$0$10427$9a6e...@news.newshosting.com...
John Harkness
>i think many would agree that with AA you should get as much $$$ in as
>possible hoping a weaker hand will fold so they do not outdraw you.
>
No, you want the weaker hand to CALL you all in.
You want to get all in against someone who is an enormous dog to your
hand.
God, the way some people think.
John Harkness
Ken Lovering
advise......but since you're asking what we'd do.....
I'd call without thinking.
"Carl Perretta" <cjper...@NOSPAMcomcast.net> wrote in message
news:vu-cnVe7D_G...@comcast.com...
Peg Smith
<eags...@verizon.net> writes:
>i think many would agree that with AA you should get as much $$$ in as
>possible hoping a weaker hand will fold so they do not outdraw you.
I WANT a weaker hand to call me. I raise because I HOPE they'll put more money
in the pot.
Peg
Terrell Owens
called by suited connectors, because while you are still a big favorite,
they have plenty of outs to outdraw you.
You push all in with aces in hopes of getting called by another pocket
pair or Ax, preferrably unsuited.
** Posted via RGP ACCESS at http://www.LiveActionPoker.com
** $100 Deposit Bonus at http://www.FabulousPoker.com
John Harkness
>You only want certain hands to call you with aces. You dont want to be
>called by suited connectors, because while you are still a big favorite,
>they have plenty of outs to outdraw you.
>
>You push all in with aces in hopes of getting called by another pocket
>pair or Ax, preferrably unsuited.
>
Yawn.
There is NO two card combination against which AA is not a sizable
favorite heads up.
If I've got AA, I want all their money in the pot. suited connectors,
smaller pair, whatever. I'll take my chances.
John Harkness
Peg Smith
<TOw...@SF49ers.com> writes:
>You only want certain hands to call you with aces. You dont want to be
>called by suited connectors, because while you are still a big favorite,
>they have plenty of outs to outdraw you.
Can you back with up some numbers why you don't want an underdog to call you?
Peg
Ken Lovering
the time against 9 opponents....
So against 4 1/2 opponents going to the river......
62%?
So against 3 opponents going to the river.........93%?
doesn't sound right?!
http://www.worldzone.net/company/elpasochance/nf001020.html
Best regards,
Ken
(Who has never had his play televised)
"Peg Smith" <pegsm...@aol.comnojunk> wrote in message
news:20030829201700...@mb-m06.aol.com...
Eric Lindholm
of
> the time against 9 opponents....
> So against 4 1/2 opponents going to the river......
> 62%?
> So against 3 opponents going to the river.........93%?
> doesn't sound right?!
4 1/2 opponents?
YoungJedi
or maybe two other hands. Heads up, AA is a heavy favorite. Against four or
more hands, it is an underdog. It's that simple. You limp in with Aces and
you get what you deserve..
"Sean" <eags...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:eMO3b.968$NC2...@nwrdny01.gnilink.net...
Gary Carson
Eric Lindholm
which the player with AA isn't the favorite, or is even worse than average
among the hands at the table. For example:
Ad Ac 0.122
8c 7c 0.162
5d 4d 0.147
6d 6c 0.140
Jh Th 0.136
Ks Qs 0.102
Ah 3h 0.096
As 2s 0.095
(average 0.125)
So the question is, what is the minimum number of opponents for which it is
possible that AA (with only one player holding it) is not the best hand
going in? What is the minimum number for which it is possible that AA is
worse than average?
Paul Phillips
YoungJedi <kdudd...@cox.net> wrote:
>The reason you push all in or raise heavy with AA is to isolate against one
>or maybe two other hands. Heads up, AA is a heavy favorite. Against four or
>more hands, it is an underdog. It's that simple.
I hope everyone I play against thinks it's that simple.
By "underdog" I will presume you mean it becomes less than 50% likely
to win the pot? This is obviously not NECESSARILY true against four
opponents, or any number of opponents for that matter. AA has 96.5%
pot equity if the four opponents hold 22, 22, 33, and 33, and naturally
there are many shades of grey in between. I hope by underdog you don't
mean AA is less likely to win than one of the other hands, as that's
super-obviously false.
But whatever it is that you mean, you are failing to grasp the source of
profit in poker.
If you could take AA and put it up against any number of random hands,
what would the optimal number be? Let's see... we'll have each player put
100 in the pot for simplicity.
AA vs. 1 random hand: 85.2% x 200 = 170.4
AA vs. 2 random hands: 73.4% x 300 = 220.2
AA vs. 3 random hands: 63.9% x 400 = 255.6
AA vs. 4 random hands: 55.9% x 500 = 279.5
AA vs. 5 random hands: 49.2% x 600 = 295.2
AA vs. 6 random hands: 43.6% x 700 = 305.2
AA vs. 7 random hands: 38.8% x 800 = 310.4
AA vs. 8 random hands: 34.7% x 900 = 312.3
AA vs. 9 random hands: 31.1% x 1000 = 311.0
Now can you spot when adding a caller became bad for our bottom line?
That's right, not until the tenth caller. Up until that point every
additional caller was making us money. In real life these statitics are
often even more pronounced since the most likely hands to be putting
money in the pot after several other people have are pairs, and you
deeply dominate pairs with AA.
If your goal with AA is to maximize your chance of WINNING THE POT,
then you want as few callers as possible. Zero, preferably.
AA vs. 0 random hands: 100% x 100 = 100 (plus the blinds)
However, if your goal is to maximize the MONEY YOU WIN, then in almost
all practical circumstances you want as many callers as possible before
the flop. All of this of course ignores the difficulty of playing aces
after the flop, and that's important, but if you're all-in and you stop
rooting for people to call you with AA because a few already have, then
you have a doomed mindset for winning poker.
(There are also tournament situations where you will give up some
immediate chip EV to increase your chances of survival, but that too
is outside the scope of this point.)
>You limp in with Aces and you get what you deserve..
Perhaps so; but what do you deserve? Maybe what you deserve is more money.
People frequently put too much money in the pot with aces after the flop
when too little went in before the flop, and that's not wise. But there
can be no doubting this in the general case: if you hold AA you desire as
many callers as you can seduce into joining you.
--
Paul Phillips | A good messenger expects to get shot.
Caged Spirit | -- Larry Wall
Empiricist |
ha! spill, pupil |----------* http://www.improving.org/paulp/ *----------
Ken Lovering
More like 65% with 3 opponents?
Best regards,
Ken
"Gary Carson" <garyc...@alumni.northwestern.edu> wrote in message
news:3f4ffc95...@news.east.earthlink.net...
Ken Lovering
"Eric Lindholm" <som...@microsoft.com> wrote in message news:3HS3b.980
4 1/2 opponents?
didn't want to do the math for 4.or 5..............:-)
Best regards,
Ken
YoungJedi
their Aces cracked when they limped in and had 7 callers, I might be able to
hire someone to decipher this crap.
"Paul Phillips" <rgp...@improving.org> wrote in message
news:biovj1$8vp$1...@spoon.improving.org...
Augie Chiausa
"YoungJedi" <kdudd...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:1ZS3b.50099$0u4....@news1.central.cox.net...
> The reason you push all in or raise heavy with AA is to isolate against
one
> or maybe two other hands. Heads up, AA is a heavy favorite. Against four
or
> more hands, it is an underdog. It's that simple. You limp in with Aces and
> you get what you deserve..
I think this is an oversimplification. It depends more on your position,
the texture of your table, your stack size relative to others. Nothing
sucks more than having AA, making a 2X pot raise, and having everyone drop.
Should you ever limp, UTG, with aces? Yes, if you have a reasonable
probability of having it raised. If the table is playing weak tight, should
you make a 2x BB size raise?If someone limps in front of you, should you
raise all-in, if that person has a reasonable stack size, or do you do a pot
sized raise?
YoungJedi
not one particular hand. I'll build my stack by doubling up with AA heads
up; you can take you chances with AA limping in.
"YoungJedi" <kdudd...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:N6U3b.50569$0u4....@news1.central.cox.net...
YoungJedi
again, the expectation is that you will be raising heavily before the
flop--you are just waiting for it come around. It's the same point really.
"Augie Chiausa" <achi...@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
news:29U3b.3917$CC6...@nwrddc01.gnilink.net...
Paul Phillips
YoungJedi <kdudd...@cox.net> wrote:
>If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone bitching about getting
>their Aces cracked when they limped in and had 7 callers, I might be able to
>hire someone to decipher this crap.
Summarized:
YoungJedi: "I'm a freaking idiot."
PaulP: "Here's a very polite and complete explanation of where you
went wrong, for no apparent reason other than kindness."
YoungJedi: "STOP THAT, FUCKHEAD. I SAID I'M AN IDIOT AND I MEANT IT."
My apologies for briefly getting in the way of your ambition.
--
Paul Phillips | Among DEA agents, the notion of really winning the
Imperfectionist | drug war is so far out of the question that anyone
Empiricist | who even mentions it is considered some kind of nut.
up hill, pi pals! | -- former DEA agent Michael Levine
Dsklansky
Because it not independent. When aces beat nine opponnents it is probably
because an ace fell.
Terry
Unless you are some super player who KNOWS that they can throw this
hand and be certain of making it thru to the final table I would say
call.
Personally I am not a super player and if someone goes all in and I
have AA I will call regardless. AA makes you a big favourite against
all hands (bar another AA).
Limping with AA does not sound like good advice to me. You are a big
favourite before the flop but if alot of people stay in that can
change after the flop. Personally when I get AA I am thinking how can
I get one on one or one on two with a huge pot pre flop. Whatever you
do surely the aim has to be to make people put as much money in as
possible pre flop.
Ian Berry
are not as bad a thing as most people think, I believe you are simplifying
the situation.
a) In a raised pot with multiple callers, the chances are that there is at
least one more ace out there in the other hands. This halves your chances
of catching trips or a a boat, and therefore hurts your chances of taking
down the pot if it goes to the river. I'd rather be playing against the
hand i was dominating (Ax) and maybe one or two others rather than a field
of callers with two-pair draws and little chance of improving my aces.
b) A pre-flop raised pot obviously contains more money than a non-raised
one. Even though, in the situation you suggest, you will make $305 against
6 random callers, if you can pump the pot pre-flop for a raise, thus making
it 200 to go for each player and eliminating, say, 3 of the potential
callers, you are playing 3 players with with a 63.9% chance of taking the
pot if everyone stays until the river. But because of your pre-flop raise,
there is now 4x$200 (rather than 7x$100) in the pot.
In the unraised pot, you win $305
In the raised pot you win 63.9% x $600 = $383.4
This indeed is perhaps a conservative estimate because against 3 rather than
6 opponents there is a greater chance of the field all folding to you before
the flop, increasing your % chance of taking the pot compared to the one
with the larger field.
c) One of the biggest problems most low and middle limit players have is
being unable to put down a strong hand when it turns sour. The number of
times you'll see player with AA on these tables taking their hands to the
river facing re-raisers and strength on the board, only to lose to trips, a
straight or a flush, is quite amazing. Given the difficulty that most
players have in folding hands like AA when they're behind, it makes sense to
limit the size of opposing fields by raising them strongly early on to
prevent chances of having them cracked on later rounds of betting. You've
less chance of getting into one of those raising battles where your opponent
turns over a raggy two-pair and tilts you for a few hands.
d) If you are in early position it may be difficult to play AA optimally in
a multi-way pot. You're obviously going to raise post-flop almost
regardless of the flop, but it can be difficult to gauge the reaction of
multiple players, all of whom with position on you, compared to a couple of
opponents who have shown strength by calling a big raise pre-flop. It is
easier to play marginal hands optimally (which AA almost inevitably becomes
in an action hand unless an A hits on the board) against few players,
particularly if they have position on you. Check-raising AA against an open
field is more dangerous because of the threat of giving a free card to draws
or raising into a made two-pair or trips.
Anyway, I always raise or call-raise AA preflop in any position, in any
game, unless i think i can trap one of the blinds post-flop and the game is
tight. My ideal situation is making a raise large enough to eliminate a few
marginal hands and get plenty of money into the pot against hands like AJ
and big pairs, who are also more likely to give dominated action post-flop.
These are my reasons for doing so, when i gave it a little thought, and i
think this justifies doing so, particularly point B. I'd be interested to
hear what you think on these points, Paul, because I found your
justification for throttling down pre-flop on aces quite interesting.
Cheers,
Monk
"Paul Phillips" <rgp...@improving.org> wrote in message
news:biovj1$8vp$1...@spoon.improving.org...
NWBurbsCouple
Nope, it's not stickier. Call. Only under extremely rare circumstances (much
rarer than the AA scenarios usually posted here) -- such as a satellite that
pays 3 places with four players left and the other three all go all-in -- would
you even seriously consider not calling with AA.
YoungJedi
with all the sarcasm and digs. Carry on.
"Paul Phillips" <rgp...@improving.org> wrote in message
news:bip9r6$cm5$1...@spoon.improving.org...
govikings!!!
situation, you have to move all-in...but even DSklansky in his tourney
book strongly recommends against close calls early in the tourney. Of
course this probably will be heads-up or 3 people, so not too close a
call. Its still poker and still gambling, and if you are not willing
to move all in with aces against 1 or 2 people, you are in the wrong
game.
But you can put together a hypothetical situation where it would be
pretty stupid to move in with AA. What if you were BB and everyone at
the table moves in before you? Full table, all-in, you have AA in the
BB. First hand or early in the tourney...what do you do now? I would
say if you are not very good, call all in. But what if you are one of
the better players? Do you risk your entire tourney on one hand like
that? I wouldnt, I would fold and hope to get a chance to double up
at a more opportune time, and give up the chance of adding 9x to my
stack. Now if this was a call situation where you started with say 2x
chips of everyone at the table, then I would call all in for a chance
at all the chips on the table while only risking 50% of mine.
These only work in a tourney situation where when your broke, your
out. In any situation where you are not broke with all in, or it is
not a tourney, I think you have to be all in in every situation. (save
the satellite, or toruney -place in the money situation)
If lady luck is out there, I would be happy to get AA a few more
times, and I promise I will move all in, unless I am in a tourney in
the BB and....:-)
Spoody
"Carl Perretta" <cjper...@NOSPAMcomcast.net> wrote in message news:<vu-cnVe7D_G...@comcast.com>...
> Jim McManus, in his book, refers to T.J.Cloutier's advice that if you limp
> with aces, you'll never get broke with aces. This, of course refers to not
> automatically pushing all-in every time you look down to see AA before the
> flop (or even after, just ask Umberto Brenes). But I got to thinking, it's
> not always that easy.
>
> The situation: You are in a no-limit tournament, one in front of the
> button. On the VERY FIRST hand, second-to-act raises to 4X the big blind.
> The player two seats later pushes all-in. Everyone folds to you, and you
> look down at pocket aces. Losing the hand will eliminate you. What do you
> do?
>
> In a situation where you would survive against the other player, even if you
> lost the hand, he decision is easy. Bu his one is stickier.
Paul Phillips
govikings!!! <spo...@spoody.com> wrote:
>But you can put together a hypothetical situation where it would be
>pretty stupid to move in with AA.
You can, but you didn't.
>What if you were BB and everyone at
>the table moves in before you? Full table, all-in, you have AA in the
>BB. First hand or early in the tourney...what do you do now?
You beat them into the pot.
>I wouldnt, I would fold and hope to get a chance to double up
>at a more opportune time, and give up the chance of adding 9x to my
>stack.
You would HOPE to get such a chance. You were just seated at a table
with apparently the nine worst players in the world, and eight of them
are going broke THIS HAND, and you had the BEST POSSIBLE HAND, and
you folded it. Good luck getting a better opportunity.
You are also now co-tabled with an obviously completely fearless
maniac who has 9x your stack. Sounds like a good situation to find
an easy double-up... he'll probably be moving all in every hand from
now on and you'll get to keep folding 37o dreaming fondly of that
one hand where you had AA and FOLDED.
>These only work in a tourney situation where when your broke, your
>out.
There's other poker in the world. There are plenty of games downstairs
if you want to keep playing.
I live for the tournaments where I get all in with AA preflop the first
few hands, regardless of outcome. There's no more efficient use of time
than to increase the stack immediately as a big favorite or go out.
The more opponents the merrier.
If your goal is just to last a while in the tournament and get some
fun value out of it, then go ahead and fold AA. If goal is to win money,
you will never be correct in folding AA preflop on the first hand.
Nobody is so good they can pass that up. Nobody is even *close* to so
good that they can pass that up. Nobody.
--
Paul Phillips | If you're not standing on the ledge,
Moral Alien | you're taking up too much hope.
Empiricist |
up hill, pi pals! |----------* http://www.improving.org/paulp/ *----------
Gary Carson
>
>If your goal is just to last a while in the tournament and get some
>fun value out of it, then go ahead and fold AA. If goal is to win
money,
>you will never be correct in folding AA preflop on the first hand.
>Nobody is so good they can pass that up. Nobody is even *close* to
so
>good that they can pass that up. Nobody.
>
Being good means you don't pass it up. It's almost a defintion.
Paul Phillips
In article <biqa3h$9af$1...@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk>,
Ian Berry <i...@berry81.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>a) In a raised pot with multiple callers, the chances are that there is at
>least one more ace out there in the other hands. This halves your chances
>of catching trips or a a boat, and therefore hurts your chances of taking
>down the pot if it goes to the river.
Adding ANY callers will tend to hurt our chances of taking down the pot by
the river, not just hands with aces in them. The chance of taking down the
pot by the river is NOT IMPORTANT. All that matters is expectation.
Further, if you hold AA you should be strongly rooting for other big aces
to be out there calling you. I raise with AA and get called by QQ, AQ,
and AK. Did the other aces being out hurt me or help me? Would I rather
be heads up with QQ but leave the aces in the deck? Of course not!
AA vs. QQ: AA has 81.5% pot equity (.815 * 200 = 163)
AA vs. QQ, AK, and AQ: AA has 77.4% pot equity (.774 * 400 = 310)
Taking the other two aces out of the deck might have hurt our chances
of taking down the pot by the river, but that almost DOUBLED expectation!
In a game of small edges, if you can DOUBLE EXPECTATION when it's already
huge you should be on cloud ninety-nine.
AA wins unimproved often, even against many opponents. An extremely
common way to flop way ahead of many opponents is for a pair to flop that
doesn't make trips for anyone. Now your opponents have a LONG ways to
swim to beat aces up. Dead aces are just not a concern when you have AA.
You are too far ahead to be sweating how to improve.
>I'd be interested to
>hear what you think on these points, Paul, because I found your
>justification for throttling down pre-flop on aces quite interesting.
I didn't suggest throttling down on AA preflop. I said when you have AA
you want as many callers as you can get -- but I didn't say not to raise.
How to play AA before the flop is so game-condition dependent that an
analysis could fill many, many pages. There's practically a book in it.
My only point in this thread is that the idea that you WANT to play AA
against one or two callers is false. You WANT to play AA against as many
callers as you can get. But you want many other things as well, such as
to get as much money into the pot before the flop as possible; so
usually raising is indicated, and if you limp, limp-reraising is almost
always indicated if the opportunity arises (assuming one is cautious not
to ONLY limp-reraise with AA.)
In a nutshell: if you raise with AA UTG and everyone calls you and you
are silently cursing your luck even before the flop comes down, you have
a big leak in your mindset. You should be silently celebrating with
each additional caller. If your problem is that you cannot lay down AA
after the flop when it's beaten, then solve THAT problem, but stop being
afraid of trading winning percentage for expectation. It's a great trade
unless you are playing in a game too big for you. Don't do that.
--
Paul Phillips | Eschew mastication.
Protagonist |
Empiricist |
pal, i pill push |----------* http://www.improving.org/paulp/ *----------
YoungJedi
> (There are also tournament situations where you will give up some
> immediate chip EV to increase your chances of survival, but that too
> is outside the scope of this point.)
It isn't oustide the scope of this point--in fact, this is PRECISELY the
point. Tournament survival. The original post related to a NL tourney. I do
not want nine all-in callers in a tounament when I hold AA. Under your own ,
AA is a 31% shot against nine callers--an underdog. There is the simplicity.
That was my point. Am I missing something?
Mark Rafn
>I do believe in this
>situation, you have to move all-in...but even DSklansky in his tourney
>book strongly recommends against close calls early in the tourney.
Pocket aces preflop is not a close call.
>course this probably will be heads-up or 3 people, so not too close a
>call.
If you're in the BB, and all 9 opponents push in before you, it's STILL not a
close call.
>But you can put together a hypothetical situation where it would be
>pretty stupid to move in with AA.
Not early in a tourney without exposing some cards (like you KNOW
another player has the other aces).
There are cases you'd fold AA, but only if you're shortstacked late in the
tourney where the payoffs change a lot from busting one player and tripling
through won't actually get you much.
>What if you were BB and everyone at the table moves in before you? Full
>table, all-in, you have AA in the BB.
If you don't push in, you're giving away a whole lot of prize money equity.
>But what if you are one of the better players?
You're one of the better players BECAUSE you recognize opportunities. And
this is certainly one that any decent tourney player would take without a
second thought. Ok, maybe after a second thought, but no way would you
actually fold.
>Do you risk your entire tourney on one hand like that?
You're going to risk the entire tourney on a lot worse hands later. Rarely do
you have this big an overlay when you do it.
--
Mark Rafn da...@dagon.net <http://www.dagon.net/>
spoody
people how stupid they are on here.
70% chance of being bounced out of the tourney is not the kind of odds
most people would take. Ring game is completely different. But if, for
instance, you just put up $10K hard earned dollars and just sat down at
the WSOP (or any tourney for that matter) with $2.5M for winning. Only
someone who had no faith in their own skills would risk a 70% chance of
getting bounced out on the first day.
I have seen the data on full table numbers with AA and I totally agree
in a ring game that I think it is great when everyone calls or caps off
the pre flop raises. Those are great odds....BUT THIS IS A TOURNAMENT.
THE FIRST HAND. YOU LOSE YOU GO HOME. I think it was set up pretty
clearly but too many people get on their high horses and start berating
people here. Go ahead and call all in with AA after the whole table is
already in. 2 out of 3 times you get to go home a loser. Tell your
friends about your bad (not so bad) beat. Even if you win, so what.
You are up. In about 2 hours there will be 40 more people with more
chips than you. Probably because you went all in again with less than
50% chance of winning and got bounced out anyway (of the money
position).
just my 2 chips,
Spoods
** Posted via RGP ACCESS at http://www.LiveActionPoker.com
** $100 Deposit Bonus at http://www.FabulousPoker.com
Paul Phillips
YoungJedi <kdudd...@cox.net> wrote:
>It isn't oustide the scope of this point--in fact, this is PRECISELY the
>point. Tournament survival. The original post related to a NL tourney. I do
>not want nine all-in callers in a tounament when I hold AA. Under your own ,
>AA is a 31% shot against nine callers--an underdog. There is the simplicity.
>That was my point. Am I missing something?
Dramatically.
I don't know how to put it any more clearly though. Perhaps if you
hired someone to analyze "that crap" that I wrote for you in the first
place, things would become more clear.
Put it this way: if you don't know what expectation is, you are not in
a position to analyze anything relating to poker. And if you do (and you
can go find out right now if you like, we'll wait), then what you are
missing is that your tournament expectation with AA is almost invariably
higher by putting money into the pot than it is by folding, regardless
of the number of hands, which hand of the tournament it is, or anything
else that might be distracting you from noticing the huge edge AA holds.
The exceptions where you might fold are pathological corner cases that
exist almost completely for academic navel-gazing, and only apply when one
is very close to a dramatic leap in prize money status, such as in a super
satellite. The situations proposed in this thread are not even close.
31% of 10x your stack is a LOT OF CHIPS. Assuming a starting stack of
1000, you are suggesting throwing away *2100* chips just because you can't
handle the prospect of busting. This is insane.
It's not even close.
--
Paul Phillips | I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all the
Future Perfect | little children jump up and down and run around yelling
Empiricist | and screaming... They don't know I'm only using blanks.
pull his pi pal! | -- Emo Philips
Paul Phillips
spoody <spo...@spoody.com> wrote:
>Dude, You are not wrong. There are too many people who like to tell
>people how stupid they are on here.
"I'm very attached to my opinion and grateful that someone else in
this thread holds the same incorrect opinion, because it relieves me of
the obligation to do any thinking, now that I have safety in numbers."
You are not being told how stupid you are; you are being told that you
are wrong. There is no particular shame in being wrong; you don't become
stupid until you're unwilling to re-evaluate your opinion. I'm sorry to
say you're heading toward stupid.
>But if, for
>instance, you just put up $10K hard earned dollars and just sat down at
>the WSOP (or any tourney for that matter) with $2.5M for winning. Only
>someone who had no faith in their own skills would risk a 70% chance of
>getting bounced out on the first day.
And here we see why so many in the WSOP are dead money.
EVERY good player I know would call with AA in that hypothetical
scenario where everyone moves all-in in front of you; every single one,
with the granted possible exception of hellmuth -- but in the parallel
universe where it actually arose that way, I think even he would call.
IT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE.
>BUT THIS IS A TOURNAMENT. THE FIRST HAND. YOU LOSE YOU GO HOME.
No, you go downstairs and play in one of the hundreds of live games in
the casino.
But let's say poker has been outlawed worldwide and they're letting us
play one last tournament. After this one the penalty for playing poker
will be a horrible death, burned alive on a bonfire. Guess what? YOU
STILL CALL! And it's still not even close.
>Even if you win, so what.
Yeah, so what? I have 100K and everyone else in the tournament has 10K.
You're right, that's not much of an advantage. I should have folded.
>just my 2 chips,
If you can read everything I've posted in this thread (not to mention
numerous other analyses of this sort of thing that have been posted to
this group in rgp's long history) and still think you should fold, then
your tournament expectation is a tiny fraction of what it could be, at
best. Why don't you go ask a good player about this? Obviously I suck,
but you must know some good player somewhere.
You can use this as a litmus test, because nobody who is any good will
suggest you can even consider folding AA there. There is just no way.
I repeat my mantra from this thread one final time: It's not even close.
--
Paul Phillips | Entropy requires no maintenance.
Vivid |
Empiricist |
i pull his palp! |----------* http://www.improving.org/paulp/ *----------
YoungJedi
all-in'ers (i.e., a 31% chance of NOT busting out of a NL tournament)?
That;s exactly what it looks like to me. Fine, I'll be the stupid one still
sitting at the table and you can be the smart one complaining about your bad
beat. I've had enough of your ivory tower BS--it doesn't make sense in the
context of this discussion.
"Paul Phillips" <rgp...@improving.org> wrote in message
news:bircjt$56p$1...@spoon.improving.org...
Paul Phillips
In article <3f51350a$0$62082$7586...@news.frii.net>,
spoody <spo...@spoody.com> wrote:
>Probably because you went all in again with less than
>50% chance of winning and got bounced out anyway (of the money
>position).
Ah, the mystical attachment to 50%.
Let's say you will magically be offered a series of heads-up 54/46
matchups, such as QQ vs. AKs, and you get the good end of the stick
each time. Three times you can double up your entire stack with
the best of it -- even MORE than a 50% chance!
46% of the time you are busted after the first.
71% of the time you are busted after the second.
86% of the time you are busted after the third.
So this "amazing" opportunity leaves you with 8x your stack 14% of
the time and busted the rest.
Whereas calling with AA left you with 10x of your stack 31% of the
time and busted the rest.
How's that 50% sound now?
But wait, you're better than that. You'll always get your money in
with 60/40 edges, such as AKo vs. QTs.
40% of the time you are busted after the first.
64% of the time you are busted after the second.
78% of the time you are busted after the third.
So you get 8x your stack 22% of the time. Still not looking so hot
compared to a 31% chance at 10x.
You're even BETTER though. You always get in as a 2-1 favorite,
such as KK vs. ATs.
33% of the time you are busted after the first.
56% of the time you are busted after the second.
70% of the time you are busted after the third.
Finally we're close to the AA situation in terms of probability
of survival, though recall that we had 10x stack improvement with AA
and you only get 8x with the "three double-ups" approach.
Is any of this clear yet?
The only way around calling with AA after nine people move in is if
you think you are so good, you never have to go all-in, and that if by
some awful twist of fate you do end up all-in, you will always have
the most dominating situation imaginable (e.g. always pair over pair.)
That is much like the brand of delusion hellmuth lives with, and it's
the reason he is the person I mentioned who might fold AA there.
But hellmuth is the most extreme case of this alive, and I'm fairly
sure even he couldn't live with himself if he folded.
It's not even close.
--
Paul Phillips | Love is a wild snowmobile ride across a frozen lake that
Future Perfect | hits a patch of glare ice and flips, pinning you beneath
Empiricist | it. At night, the ice weasels come. -- Matt Groening
Paul Phillips
You'd have gotten along well with pol pot.
--
Paul Phillips | Wacky calculator fun for kids: enter your current
Caged Spirit | age. Now add 1. The result is the age you will be
Empiricist | when you die.
John Harkness
wrote:
Let's see, the odds are 3-1 against you. The payout is 9-1. I believe
that's what's called an overlay.
John Harkness
John Harkness
If you aren't willing to go all in with the best of it on the first
hand of the tournament, you're wasting your time playing in the
tournament. You haven't got the nerve to win it. You think that if you
win, there will be 40 other people with 90K + in two hours? That's
kind of delusional -- end of first day, there aren't many people with
more than T100K.
John Harkness
John Harkness
wrote:
>Am I wrong that you yourself say AA has a 31% chance of winning against 9
>all-in'ers (i.e., a 31% chance of NOT busting out of a NL tournament)?
>That;s exactly what it looks like to me. Fine, I'll be the stupid one still
>sitting at the table and you can be the smart one complaining about your bad
>beat. I've had enough of your ivory tower BS--it doesn't make sense in the
>context of this discussion.
>
AA against nine opponents played all the way to the river wins 31% of
the time.
which means that 3 times out of tne you'll come out of this situation
with ten times the starting chips.
seven times you'll come out busted.
Let me ask you a question. Would you rather bust out of a tournament
on the first hand, or three off the money?
John Harkness
YoungJedi
pot.
"Paul Phillips" <rgp...@improving.org> wrote in message
news:birfqn$6v6$1...@spoon.improving.org...
jarrett40
How do you people come up with this stuff?
If you can't play the best 2 cards how can you call yourself a poker player?
jarrett40
Chris Leishear
news:3f51350a$0$62082$7586...@news.frii.net...
> 70% chance of being bounced out of the tourney is not the kind of odds
> most people would take. Ring game is completely different. But if, for
> instance, you just put up $10K hard earned dollars and just sat down at
> the WSOP (or any tourney for that matter) with $2.5M for winning. Only
> someone who had no faith in their own skills would risk a 70% chance of
> getting bounced out on the first day.
Its not $10K of hard earned money. They're little plastic chips. And if
pushing all of them into the middle with AA scares him, he's in the wrong
game.
-Chris
RTN4
>Do you risk your entire tourney on one hand like
>that?
You bet your sweet bippy.
RTN4
wrote:
>> (There are also tournament situations where you will give up some
>>> immediate chip EV to increase your chances of survival, but that too
>>> is outside the scope of this point.)
>>
>>It isn't oustide the scope of this point--in fact, this is PRECISELY the
>>point. Tournament survival. The original post related to a NL tourney. I do
>>not want nine all-in callers in a tounament when I hold AA. Under your own ,
>>AA is a 31% shot against nine callers--an underdog. There is the simplicity.
>>That was my point. Am I missing something?
>>
>Let's see, the odds are 3-1 against you. The payout is 9-1. I believe
>that's what's called an overlay.
>
>John Harkness
The most important point of this whole thread is getting overlooked.
(First of all I don't believe the 31% because there won't be nine
RANDOM hands, but hands that people decide to play because of their
inherent value and many of those hands will be dominated by the AAs.)
Once you win this pot, if you should be so lucky, you will have an
enormous chip lead, which is the true essence of tournament poker.
Get out front with a lot of chips and your whole body just oozes
confidence. Not only that you can't go broke!
It's more than worth being the first one out to gain such an
advantage.
YoungJedi
"Chris Leishear" <clei...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:e2d4b.7393$EW1....@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
In that case, spot me 10,000 in little plastic chips next May.
The basic quesiton biols down to this: why put your entire stack in the
middle with only a 30% chance of winning? The goal is survival and why would
you make a play when you are guaraneteed of losing 70% of the time. If you
get a chance to push in and double or triple up, sure. But why risk busting
on hand one when you know, statistically, that you are a 70% shot to lose?
I am not afraid of pushing in with AA but there is more to consider than
just teh two cards you have in front of you.
>
> -Chris
>
>
spoody
This is a hypothetical question that now has people worried about the
types of hands that would actually move all in on the first hand of a
tourney. Please. 30% is a good guess for AA winning against a full
table. I have no problem with all of the numbers you guys are throwing
around, but I would guess that there would be quite a few pros who would
not want a 60-70% chance of getting bounced out in the first hand. I
totally understand the upside, but the downside is absolutely no chance
at the bracelet if it was the WSOP. What if thats all you care about?
What if the $2.5M is what you care about? The chip leader from day one
of the WSOP never wins...why? Sklansky has some ideas in his tourney
book. All I know is he says avoid close calls, this is a close call.
You get one chance a year to play in this tournament. Most people would
play the AA, in fact I probably would too. Because I have not played
enough NLH tourneys to think I could make it w/o the huge stack I might
win...but I still bet there are pros who would fold.
Paul Adams
It's pretty much universally acknowledged that a big pair (and AA is
clearly the biggest) plays best heads up, or against few opponents. The
point of raising is not just to get everyone's money in. It's to scare
off the drawing hands, and narrow the field. If too many people call,
you're likely to get busted.
You're right that going heads up you're a big favorite against anyone,
with any two cards. You're a bigger favorite against something like AK
than you are against 89s, as Terrell said.
But was Terrell saying that you want everyone to fold? That's clearly not
the case. Or was he saying that you want to narrow the field, and chase
off the drawing hands? That clearly *is* true.
Complicating matters is the fact that the early stages of a tourney are
more about survival than increasing the size of your stack. So the
original question has some merit, though I reckon the answer "never fold
aces to anyone!" is a good one.
On Aug 29 2003 1:15PM, John Harkness wrote:
> On 29 Aug 2003 23:57:37 GMT, Terrell Owens <TOw...@SF49ers.com> wrote:
>
> >You only want certain hands to call you with aces. You dont want to be
> >called by suited connectors, because while you are still a big favorite,
> >they have plenty of outs to outdraw you.
> >
> >You push all in with aces in hopes of getting called by another pocket
> >pair or Ax, preferrably unsuited.
> >
>
> Yawn.
>
> There is NO two card combination against which AA is not a sizable
> favorite heads up.
>
> If I've got AA, I want all their money in the pot. suited connectors,
> smaller pair, whatever. I'll take my chances.
>
> John Harkness
_________________________________________________________________
Posted using RecPoker.com - http://www.recpoker.com
Paul Phillips
spoody <spo...@spoody.com> wrote:
>What if thats all you care about? What if the $2.5M is what you care about?
Then you call in .00001 seconds instead of calling in .0001 seconds.
>The chip leader from day one of the WSOP never wins...why?
Wow, that's got to go in the strawman hall of fame.
The chip leader often figures not to win because being the chip
leader on the first day IN REAL LIFE usually means taking the worst
of it a few times and getting lucky. Putting all your money in as
a huge favorite in a ten-handed pot is NOT how people typically end
up as chip leader at the end of day one.
There are so many mental breakdowns in that quote, I can't even go on.
Suffice to say that you have strayed even further into left field.
>Sklansky has some ideas in his tourney book. All I know is he says
>avoid close calls, this is a close call.
Heh. Why don't you ask David what he thinks? If he agrees that it's
not even close and that anyone sane would call (which he will) then will
you try engaging the brain a little bit? This is NOT a close call. It's
a HUGE, ENORMOUS, GIANT OVERLAY, a better deal than almost any situation
you are likely to encounter in a tournament. And you want to pass on it.
Hey David, would you chime in here please? These guys seem to be immune
to facts but perhaps an appeal to authority would be convincing.
>...but I still bet there are pros who would fold.
Name one.
Actually you're probably right, there will be some. The question will
be a good test of which pros have the absolute worst theoretical
understanding and manage to scratch out a living on instinct alone.
Why don't you find us someone famous who says they would fold and
then get back to us?
--
Paul Phillips | SEE ALSO: There is nothing else like this.
Everyman | -- "man vmware"
Empiricist |
slap pi uphill! |----------* http://www.improving.org/paulp/ *----------
Paul Adams
> In a no holdem simulation with 400 million hands played out...AA wins 31% of
> the time against 9 opponents....
> So against 4 1/2 opponents going to the river......
> 62%?
> So against 3 opponents going to the river.........93%?
> doesn't sound right?!
It doesn't sound right because it's not right. By this kind of math,
playing AA against 1 opponent would win 279% of the time!
You can't just divide the number of opponents in half, and double your
chances of winning.
Paul Phillips
Paul Adams <anon...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>It's pretty much universally acknowledged that a big pair (and AA is
>clearly the biggest) plays best heads up, or against few opponents. The
>point of raising is not just to get everyone's money in. It's to scare
>off the drawing hands, and narrow the field. If too many people call,
>you're likely to get busted.
Have you read any of my posts in this thread? I'm not sure what "plays
best" means, but you clearly have a mistaken idea of what is universally
acknowledged.
You want as many callers with AA as you can get. Look around this
thread, I've only posted about a billion words on it for some reason.
Hey, maybe you can be the first guy to change sides! I see some
evidence in that other thread that you think about things.
>But was Terrell saying that you want everyone to fold? That's clearly not
>the case. Or was he saying that you want to narrow the field, and chase
>off the drawing hands? That clearly *is* true.
It is NOT clearly true. It is sometimes clearly false; it is never
clearly true.
I'll give you a clearly false example: I raise all-in UTG in an eight
handed live game. One by one, everyone calls my raise. Which person did
I want not to call, so I could narrow the field? Answer: none of them.
I want them all to call. I did not raise to "chase them out." I raised
to take their money.
>Complicating matters is the fact that the early stages of a tourney are
>more about survival than increasing the size of your stack.
This is clearly false as well. The EARLY stages of a tourney are
precisely those that are NOT about survival; they are about making the
plays with positive expectation. Survival is only a factor in and of
itself when enough people have been eliminated to change the relative
value of chips in a material way.
>So the original question has some merit
It has merit if the answers are teaching anyone anything; it does not have
any "interesting question" merit, because the answer is too clear cut. If
I judged by the responses of people in this thread, nobody who did not
already understand the concept has newly realized that calling with AA is
automatic here if you want to win the tournament. But I'm cautiously
confident that some lurkers have picked up something, and/or future miners
of the googleverse.
--
Paul Phillips | ``Alcohol makes me look terrible!''
Moral Alien | ``No way. I thought alcohol made you look pretty good.''
Empiricist | -- actual next-morning conversation
all hip pupils! |----------* http://www.improving.org/paulp/ *----------
Damage_Inc
>
> the brand of delusion hellmuth lives with, and it's
> the reason he is the person I mentioned who might fold AA there.
>
> But hellmuth is the most extreme case of this alive, and I'm fairly
> sure even he couldn't live with himself if he folded.
>
> It's not even close.
So Paul, who has earned more bracelets, you or Hellmuth?
Paul Phillips
I'm glad to see phil's tireless efforts to make sure that we all
measure everything by "bracelet count" is finding adherents.
Unsurprisingly "bracelet count" tells us nothing about who is likely to
provide meaningful analysis of poker situations. I would dearly love
to see phil engage in side-by-side analysis with me so the readers
could decide whose theoretical understanding of the game is superior.
Since that would unmask him as the semi-literate that he is, and
probably uncover other fascinating nuggets such as his admitted belief
that AKo was a favorite over AKs, he would never risk it.
But you go on counting bracelets and trying to equate them to something
meaningful. I'll just keep sitting here WISHING I was phil, and that I
had more bracelets... except I guess with my never going into binion's
again my oh-so-important bracelet count is going to stay a nice steady 0.
Remind me to borrow some money from phil so I can afford counseling.
--
Paul Phillips | A number you have to memorize - 7
Everyman | -- heard on Family Feud
RTN4
wrote:
>The basic quesiton biols down to this: why put your entire stack in the
>middle with only a 30% chance of winning? The goal is survival and why would
>you make a play when you are guaraneteed of losing 70% of the time. If you
>get a chance to push in and double or triple up, sure. But why risk busting
>on hand one when you know, statistically, that you are a 70% shot to lose?
>I am not afraid of pushing in with AA but there is more to consider than
>just teh two cards you have in front of you.
Look, it was explained to you in several different ways. Poker is a
game of opinions. If it's your opinion to not play it then don't.
Next hand.
Jerrod Ankenman
> Nobody is even *close* to so good that they can pass that up. Nobody.
"I don't have an edge so that I can pass up these situations. I have
an edge because I take them."
Jerrod Ankenman
Jonathan Kaplan.com>
Phil has been playing in wsop events for more than a decade, and playing in alot
of the different tournaments, not just the final. there are at least 100,
possibly 200, maybe even 300 people who have played in as many wsop events as
Phil has?
if out of that group, a few people HADNT won 9 bracelets, it would be
surprising, dont you think?
Phil happens to be the lucky one who falls up to the pinnacle of that
randomness.
(put another way, if 300 people, all of equal skill, played a couple hundred
tournaments together, quite a few of that 300 would have won Zero (0) at the
end, and a couple of goofballs will have won some largish looking number of
bracelets.
the results that we see arent automatically because the better players have won
the most bracelets. there should be considerable variance of result even if all
were equally skilled.)
Jonathan
no matter where you go, there you are....
Jonathan Kaplan.com>
this discussion is never over, apparently. i've been here about 6 years posting,
and a few more years lurking, i am sure i have seen this discussion at least a
half dozen different threads. and still, the same thinking keeps surfacing.
there really is no question what to do on the first hand of the WSOP, you have
AA, and everyone goes allin in front of you. as you say, it is not even close.
if you're not going to put it allin in that spot you will not be world champion,
ever.
Jonathan
>...and still think you should fold, then
>your tournament expectation is a tiny fraction of what it could be, at
>best. Why don't you go ask a good player about this? Obviously I suck,
>but you must know some good player somewhere.
>
>You can use this as a litmus test, because nobody who is any good will
>suggest you can even consider folding AA there. There is just no way.
>
>I repeat my mantra from this thread one final time: It's not even close.
>
>--
>Paul Phillips | Entropy requires no maintenance.
>Vivid |
>Empiricist |
>i pull his palp! |----------* http://www.improving.org/paulp/ *----------
no matter where you go, there you are....
Jonathan Kaplan.com>
>
>
>> (There are also tournament situations where you will give up some
>> immediate chip EV to increase your chances of survival, but that too
>> is outside the scope of this point.)
>
>It isn't oustide the scope of this point--in fact, this is PRECISELY the
>point. Tournament survival. The original post related to a NL tourney. I do
>not want nine all-in callers in a tounament when I hold AA. Under your own ,
>AA is a 31% shot against nine callers--an underdog. There is the simplicity.
>That was my point. Am I missing something?
>
>
yep. let me put it more extremely.
first hand of the big tournament.
in this weird parallel universe, every player sees the flop for just the price
of the BB. the flop comes, and you have a hand that is 49% to win the pot
(whatever that combination of hands might happen to be), if all the other
players stay in. and that happens, everyone else is allin in front of you. and
you know exactly what your chances are...
do you call allin then? you are only 49% to still be in the tournament after
this first hand, but you'll have 100,000 in chips.
or do you fold, because you are now an "underdog" to win the pot, you are less
than 50% to survive to see the second hand?
i cant believe ANYone would fold there, even Hellmuth.
so assuming you'll play in that instance, i guess you dont disagree that it is
okay to take SOME "underdog" chance of survival, it just matters how much the
price is, relative to that chance of survival?
and 31% chance of winning 100,000 chips into the second hand isnt enough price
for you?
Jonathan
Perry Friedman
While this problem is a holdem problem, the general tournament principal
is universal. And Paul has *FIVE TIMES* as many non-holdem bracelets as
Phil Hellmuth.
Perry
PS Speaking as a bracelet holder myself, I agree 100% with Paul on this.
So score one bracelet in Paul's camp.
Paul Adams
> Am I wrong that you yourself say AA has a 31% chance of winning against 9
> all-in'ers (i.e., a 31% chance of NOT busting out of a NL tournament)?
> That;s exactly what it looks like to me. Fine, I'll be the stupid one still
> sitting at the table and you can be the smart one complaining about your bad
> beat. I've had enough of your ivory tower BS--it doesn't make sense in the
> context of this discussion.
It would be so nice if we could have a rational dialogue about this.
Well, at least Paul Phillips is having a rational monologue. I think I
may actually be learning something.
Unfortunately, Jedi, you're getting in the way of my learning. We can't
continue to expect rational discussion if you're going to rave like a
child or a lunatic.
As for the question of AA, and how many callers you want, I think the
biggest problem I have in grasping this comes from trying to apply what
I've learned about limit cash games to no-limit tourneys.
I've always heard that in limit cash games, AA wants to narrow the field
to reduce the chances of getting drawn out on. Just because I've always
heard it doesn't make it true, of course.
Perhaps the idea behind narrowing the field is the fact that in structured
limits, the limits go up on the turn and river. Therefore, the drawing
hands like JTs prefer a big field of callers, and they get to see the flop
"cheaply," even with a few raises, compared to the later cost when the
hand is more defined. Meanwhile, the guy with AA, if he doesn't improve,
is going to have to pay more on the turn and the river ONLY IF HIS
OPPONENTS LIKE THEIR ODDS. He'll be very happy if everyone who calls
preflop is forced to go all the way to the river, but he won't be quite as
happy if the missed draws fold on the flop, and the hands that improve
stay in against him.
If you get nine callers preflop, you're not going to get nine random hands
calling you to the river. You're going to be taken to the river by the
guys who improve, if they like their odds, while the one's who get no help
from the flop are going to fold and thereby stop paying you.
If I can indulge in fanciful metaphors for a second, we can see the united
front presented by your opponents as an evolving, intelligent enemy that
improves its odds on every card because of the way it sheds its weak
hands, and keeps only those that improve. And as it improves, it becomes
increasingly expensive for Mr. AA to stay in.
So, the AA hand has a 31% chance of winning against 9 random hands playing
to the river. But what are the chances against 9 callers pre-flop, 3
callers on the flop, 3 callers of one bet on the turn, narrowed to 2 after
a raise, and finally 2 callers on the river? Are his chances much better
than the 31% he would have gotten if all the players had called? Maybe a
little, but he's not getting 10 times his money. He's getting 10 times
his preflop money, plus 3 times his flop bets, plus 2.5 times his turn
bets (at the doubled limit) plus 2 times his river bets (also double
limit).
How much would his chances of winning improve if he narrowed the field,
and what effect would it have on his expected value? It seems
*conceivable* that he would improve both his odds of winning, and his
expected value by letting fewer see the flop. The flop is where the enemy
improves the most.
So that's an argument for narrowing the field in a limit game, but I have
no numbers to back me up. How does one calculate? Who has done tests
with AA against 9 pre-flop callers, vs. AA against 3 pre-flop callers,
assuming they play well from the flop on? Clearly it's not the same as
the scenario where all preflop callers see it to the river.
Meanwhile, if we change our discussion to a No-Limit cash game, then I can
see your point is very well reasoned. If you go all-in before the flop,
then everyone who calls increases the size of your potential payoff, even
while decreasing your chances of taking home the money in this particular
trial. I can see that. Get all the money in while you have the best
odds, and don't let them see cards "cheap" before they decide to go all
the way.
This leads to the same basic strategy, but for different reasons. In
No-Limit, you bet AA as hard as you can preflop, not to "narrow the
field," but simply because you've got the best hand, and want to get as
much money as you can while your hand is strongest.
What's most confusing to me is the case of No-Limit Tourneys. It's an
academic question, but an interesting one. I've never seen *all* players
at the table go all-in on the same hand. But your suggestion is that this
is still good if you have AA. You're probably right. For most, it's a
scary and unpleasant thought that they're risking a 69% chance of busting
out of the tourney. Is a 31% chance of multiplying your stack 10-fold
worth a 69% chance of busting out? Probably. I just don't know how to
figure this.
Well, let's look at a sit and go tournament for one possible example. It
costs $11.00 to enter. 1st prize is $50, 2nd is $30, 3rd is $20. If you
go all in against everyone at the table, and you win, you immediately get
1st place. You've got a .31 chance of winning $50.00 on the spot, and a
69 chance of winning nothing and going home. So your expectation is
(.31)($50) = $15.50 Well, that's better than the $11.00 you paid to
enter.
But what if you're skilled enough that you usually wind up in the money
about half of the time? If your usual expectation upon starting the
tourney is (.1666)($20) + (.1666)($30) + (.1666)($50), then this is equal
to $16.66. Slightly better than the scenario above. This player may be
losing something by putting all his eggs in one basket.
This all ignores the question of the advantage gained by letting the other
players knock each other off. And that's probably better to ignore in the
limited discussion above. In the sit and go mentioned, if all of the
other players went all in, you'd fold, but that's an absurd scenario that
teaches us nothing and doesn't have any analogs in a multi-table, so we'll
file that scenario under academic silliness.
Gary Carson
wrote:
>Maybe a few concepts are getting mixed up here.
>
>It's pretty much universally acknowledged that a big pair (and AA is
>clearly the biggest) plays best heads up, or against few opponents.
No, it's not.
It's not even universally acknowledged that the term 'plays best' has
any meaning.
MarkZ
> In article <3f51350a$0$62082$7586...@news.frii.net>,
> spoody <spo...@spoody.com> wrote:
> >Dude, You are not wrong. There are too many people who like to tell
> >people how stupid they are on here.
>
> "I'm very attached to my opinion and grateful that someone else in
> this thread holds the same incorrect opinion, because it relieves me of
> the obligation to do any thinking, now that I have safety in numbers."
>
> You are not being told how stupid you are; you are being told that you
> are wrong. There is no particular shame in being wrong; you don't become
> stupid until you're unwilling to re-evaluate your opinion. I'm sorry to
> say you're heading toward stupid.
>
> >But if, for
> >instance, you just put up $10K hard earned dollars and just sat down at
> >the WSOP (or any tourney for that matter) with $2.5M for winning. Only
> >someone who had no faith in their own skills would risk a 70% chance of
> >getting bounced out on the first day.
>
> And here we see why so many in the WSOP are dead money.
>
> EVERY good player I know would call with AA in that hypothetical
> scenario where everyone moves all-in in front of you; every single one,
> with the granted possible exception of hellmuth -- but in the parallel
> universe where it actually arose that way, I think even he would call.
> >BUT THIS IS A TOURNAMENT. THE FIRST HAND. YOU LOSE YOU GO HOME.
>
> No, you go downstairs and play in one of the hundreds of live games in
> the casino.
>
> But let's say poker has been outlawed worldwide and they're letting us
> play one last tournament. After this one the penalty for playing poker
> will be a horrible death, burned alive on a bonfire. Guess what? YOU
> STILL CALL! And it's still not even close.
>
> >Even if you win, so what.
>
> Yeah, so what? I have 100K and everyone else in the tournament has 10K.
> You're right, that's not much of an advantage. I should have folded.
>
> >just my 2 chips,
>
> If you can read everything I've posted in this thread (not to mention
> numerous other analyses of this sort of thing that have been posted to
> this group in rgp's long history) and still think you should fold, then
> your tournament expectation is a tiny fraction of what it could be, at
> best. Why don't you go ask a good player about this? Obviously I suck,
> but you must know some good player somewhere.
>
> You can use this as a litmus test, because nobody who is any good will
> suggest you can even consider folding AA there. There is just no way.
>
> I repeat my mantra from this thread one final time: It's not even close.
Gary Carson
money are a lot bigger than 70%.
On Sun, 31 Aug 2003 03:26:53 GMT, "YoungJedi" <kdudd...@cox.net>
wrote:
>
>
>
Paul Adams
> The basic quesiton biols down to this: why put your entire stack in the
> middle with only a 30% chance of winning? The goal is survival and why would
> you make a play when you are guaraneteed of losing 70% of the time. If you
> get a chance to push in and double or triple up, sure. But why risk busting
> on hand one when you know, statistically, that you are a 70% shot to lose?
> I am not afraid of pushing in with AA but there is more to consider than
> just teh two cards you have in front of you.
A lot of Paul's logic is pretty persuasive, and his comparison between
going all-in in one hand, or trying to double up three times for the same
results is one of the most clear examples to show the merits of calling
anything and everything with AA. Not that I can easily imagine folding AA
anyway, as I never have, but I've never run into 9 callers either so I
never had to think it out this far.
But your argument above doesn't work for me. You're not going to improve
your standing in the tourney without risking your chips at some point.
Either you risk a few at a time, or all at once. But every chip you toss
into the pot has to give you good odds, whether you're going all in, or
calling a blind of 10. The mere fact that you're risking chips is not a
good argument. And you're either going to toss the chips in on your own
terms, when you know the odds are best, or someone's going to eventually
force you all in on their terms, when you're short stacked and the blinds
are getting bigger.
If you don't make it into the money seats, then it doesn't matter whether
you lose on the first hand or 498th hand. So what remains to be
determined is this: If you win with your AA, and multiply your stack by
10, how much have you improved your chances of making money? How does
this compare to your chances if you don't play the hand? If it means
improved odds, even slightly, then you have to do it and screw any notion
of risk. The whole game is risk.
You don't like the idea of a 70% chance of being eliminated. But far more
than 70% of the players are eliminated before making it into the money
spots. Are you so good that you can make it into the money, let's say 20%
of the time? If so, then you're pretty good. But most players who are
that good probably don't get to the money spots by folding pocket Aces.
SteadyEd O
>types of hands that would actually move all in on the first hand of a
>tourney. Please. 30% is a good guess for AA winning against a full
>table. I have no problem with all of the numbers you guys are throwing
>around, but I would guess that there would be quite a few pros who would
>not want a 60-70% chance of getting bounced out in the first hand. I
>totally understand the upside, but the downside is absolutely no chance
>at the bracelet if it was the WSOP. What if thats all you care about?
>What if the $2.5M is what you care about? The chip leader from day one
>of the WSOP never wins...why? Sklansky has some ideas in his tourney
>book. All I know is he says avoid close calls, this is a close call.
>You get one chance a year to play in this tournament. Most people would
>play the AA, in fact I probably would too. Because I have not played
>enough NLH tourneys to think I could make it w/o the huge stack I might
>win...but I still bet there are pros who would fold.
>
first of all you are wayyyyyyy off... AA wins 30% if all see the flop.. when
you raise with them you will have 1 maybe 2 callers... Against 1 caller you
are about 88% favorite against a random hand.. against 2 you are against
2 about 75%.. any *pro* as you say who would lay this down is not a *pro*...
The only time would be LATE not early in a tourney, if you were were say one
out of the money and understood that playing them could cost you cashing if
the other player got lucky and bucked those odds...
Paul Adams
> Meanwhile, if we change our discussion to a No-Limit cash game, then I can
> see your point is very well reasoned.
I wrote "your," but in such a long post I failed to indicate who this was
addressed to. I meant to say that Paul Phillips' point is well reasoned.
Hopefully there weren't too many such ambiguities in my reply.
Itea
news:3f51a6d8$0$23201$9a6e...@news.newshosting.com...
<much snipped>
> Well, let's look at a sit and go tournament for one possible example. It
> costs $11.00 to enter. 1st prize is $50, 2nd is $30, 3rd is $20. If you
> go all in against everyone at the table, and you win, you immediately get
> 1st place. You've got a .31 chance of winning $50.00 on the spot, and a
> 69 chance of winning nothing and going home. So your expectation is
> (.31)($50) = $15.50 Well, that's better than the $11.00 you paid to
> enter.
Well, that's incorrect. It's not like the site won't pay out second and
third place. For the first hand of the tourney, it would be a 9-way split
for 50 bucks, so add another 5.55 to the expectation.
- Itea
YoungJedi
with AA in this circumstance, you can never be world champion. Bracelet
count aside, Hellmuth is willing to lay it down. He is a world champion. You
were saying?
"Paul Phillips" <rgp...@improving.org> wrote in message
news:bis0el$ejq$1...@spoon.improving.org...
YoungJedi
different opinion.
"RTN4" <RT...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:g323lv4t6kq4rra91...@4ax.com...
Gary Carson
YoungJedi
better cards under more optimal conditions. You don't need AA to win a
tournament and you don't need to put it all in with a 70% guarantee of
losing. I dare say that some tournaments have been won by players who never
saw AA the entire time.
Question: would you make the same all in call if you were 9 places out of
the money?
Another question: what if, instead of 31% you were 10%. Would you still make
the call? 5%? Where is the cutoff for you?
"Paul Adams" <anon...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3f51b375$0$23179$9a6e...@news.newshosting.com...
YoungJedi
"Jonathan Kaplan .com>" <NutNoPair@aol<spam> wrote in message
news:ICg4b.18101$cJ5....@www.newsranger.com...
John Harkness
wrote:
>One hand at a time. Survive that hand and wait to augment your stack with
>better cards under more optimal conditions. You don't need AA to win a
>tournament and you don't need to put it all in with a 70% guarantee of
>losing. I dare say that some tournaments have been won by players who never
>saw AA the entire time.
>
>Question: would you make the same all in call if you were 9 places out of
>the money?
>
>Another question: what if, instead of 31% you were 10%. Would you still make
>the call? 5%? Where is the cutoff for you?
>
Well, there is no situation where the AA has a one in ten shot of
winning against 9 opponents.
You're missing the fundamental odds question here -- you are a 7-3
dog, or a 2.3-1 dog, and getting 9-1 on your money.
And if you think that you win the WSOP -- or any big NL tournament by
playing supertight and farming your way to the bracelet, I'd say
you've never played, and certain never won a large NL tournament.
John Harkness
John Harkness
wrote:
>Fine. What if you were a 80% underdog? Or a 90% dog?
>
>
But you aren't.
John Harkness
Ken Lovering
the flop comes with a flush draw & two possible straight draws, i.e.
975...anyone with J,8....T,8 has an 8 out draw to the straight
You bet and get three callers because one has the flush draw and two have a
straight draw.
You're up against, at the most, 15 outs.
You will win slightly more than 1/2 the pots.
Since the pot odds are much higher than 2-1, you make money in the long run.
Are my figures right?
Of course someone could limp with 97 suited from the small or big blind and
have you beat on the flop.....
With six callers before the flop...3BB
& 3 calling after the flop...1.5 BB
& 2 calling on the turn...2 BB
You have 6.5BB of opponents money in to your 2BB before the betting on the
river.....3.25:1 pot odds.
So if you win 1 out of 4 you make 1 SB plus whatever is called on the river.
If you raise UTG with AA and everyone folds, you make .75BB
If you get one caller and win 75% of the time, you win alot more :-)
I limped yesterday with AA in early position and had 4 callers and flopped
a set. I checked and the AQ bet and me 1 other guy called him. I checked the
turn and he bet and we both called again. The river was a Q & I bet and he
raised and 3rd guy folded & I re-raised and he was stunned and just called
even though there was no straight or flush draw out there....the only way I
could beat his hand was with trips.
The only reason I limped with AA was because of the recent threads about
this......I have always understood that big pairs do better heads up....they
go down in value in loose games.......you always hear about 10/20 getting
the asses kicked in 3/6 games when they have to play while waiting for a
10/20 seat to open up:-)
"Paul Adams" <anon...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3f517c5a$0$23203$9a6e...@news.newshosting.com...
> Maybe a few concepts are getting mixed up here.
>
> It's pretty much universally acknowledged that a big pair (and AA is
> clearly the biggest) plays best heads up, or against few opponents. The
> point of raising is not just to get everyone's money in. It's to scare
> off the drawing hands, and narrow the field. If too many people call,
> you're likely to get busted.
>
> You're right that going heads up you're a big favorite against anyone,
> with any two cards. You're a bigger favorite against something like AK
> than you are against 89s, as Terrell said.
>
> But was Terrell saying that you want everyone to fold? That's clearly not
> the case. Or was he saying that you want to narrow the field, and chase
> off the drawing hands? That clearly *is* true.
>
> Complicating matters is the fact that the early stages of a tourney are
> more about survival than increasing the size of your stack. So the
> original question has some merit, though I reckon the answer "never fold
> aces to anyone!" is a good one.
>
> On Aug 29 2003 1:15PM, John Harkness wrote:
>
> > On 29 Aug 2003 23:57:37 GMT, Terrell Owens <TOw...@SF49ers.com> wrote:
> >
> > >You only want certain hands to call you with aces. You dont want to be
> > >called by suited connectors, because while you are still a big
favorite,
> > >they have plenty of outs to outdraw you.
> > >
> > >You push all in with aces in hopes of getting called by another pocket
> > >pair or Ax, preferrably unsuited.
> > >
> >
> > Yawn.
> >
> > There is NO two card combination against which AA is not a sizable
> > favorite heads up.
> >
> > If I've got AA, I want all their money in the pot. suited connectors,
> > smaller pair, whatever. I'll take my chances.
> >
> > John Harkness
Ken Lovering
tournies if I am going to go all in against the crowd with AA, or not play
them. ....:-)
Then, when I increase my stack size 9 fold or so, I need some skill tools to
get the rest of the way :-)
Now if I could get in on a $40 buy in tourney on the internet.............
"John Harkness" <j...@allstream.net> wrote in message
news:p0i2lv06ui2fme1dl...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 31 Aug 2003 00:14:44 GMT, "YoungJedi" <kdudd...@cox.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Am I wrong that you yourself say AA has a 31% chance of winning against 9
> >all-in'ers (i.e., a 31% chance of NOT busting out of a NL tournament)?
> >That;s exactly what it looks like to me. Fine, I'll be the stupid one
still
> >sitting at the table and you can be the smart one complaining about your
bad
> >beat. I've had enough of your ivory tower BS--it doesn't make sense in
the
> >context of this discussion.
> >
>
> AA against nine opponents played all the way to the river wins 31% of
> the time.
>
> which means that 3 times out of tne you'll come out of this situation
> with ten times the starting chips.
>
> seven times you'll come out busted.
>
> Let me ask you a question. Would you rather bust out of a tournament
> on the first hand, or three off the money?
>
> John Harkness
>
>
>
> >"Paul Phillips" <rgp...@improving.org> wrote in message
> >news:bircjt$56p$1...@spoon.improving.org...
> >> In article <lha4b.54635$0u4....@news1.central.cox.net>,
> >> YoungJedi <kdudd...@cox.net> wrote:
> >> >It isn't oustide the scope of this point--in fact, this is PRECISELY
the
> >> >point. Tournament survival. The original post related to a NL tourney.
I
> >do
> >> >not want nine all-in callers in a tounament when I hold AA. Under your
> >own ,
> >> >AA is a 31% shot against nine callers--an underdog. There is the
> >simplicity.
> >> >That was my point. Am I missing something?
> >>
> >> Dramatically.
> >>
> >> I don't know how to put it any more clearly though. Perhaps if you
> >> hired someone to analyze "that crap" that I wrote for you in the first
> >> place, things would become more clear.
> >>
> >> Put it this way: if you don't know what expectation is, you are not in
> >> a position to analyze anything relating to poker. And if you do (and
you
> >> can go find out right now if you like, we'll wait), then what you are
> >> missing is that your tournament expectation with AA is almost
invariably
> >> higher by putting money into the pot than it is by folding, regardless
> >> of the number of hands, which hand of the tournament it is, or anything
> >> else that might be distracting you from noticing the huge edge AA
holds.
> >>
> >> The exceptions where you might fold are pathological corner cases that
> >> exist almost completely for academic navel-gazing, and only apply when
one
> >> is very close to a dramatic leap in prize money status, such as in a
super
> >> satellite. The situations proposed in this thread are not even close.
> >>
> >> 31% of 10x your stack is a LOT OF CHIPS. Assuming a starting stack of
> >> 1000, you are suggesting throwing away *2100* chips just because you
can't
> >> handle the prospect of busting. This is insane.
> >>
> >> It's not even close.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Paul Phillips | I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all
the
> >> Future Perfect | little children jump up and down and run around
> >yelling
> >> Empiricist | and screaming... They don't know I'm only using
> >blanks.
> >> pull his pi pal! | -- Emo Philips
> >
>
Ken Lovering
> On Aug 30 2003 8:14PM, YoungJedi wrote:
> I've always heard that in limit cash games, AA wants to narrow the field
> to reduce the chances of getting drawn out on. Just because I've always
> heard it doesn't make it true, of course.
This is true if you want to win this pot on this particular night.
> Perhaps the idea behind narrowing the field is the fact that in structured
> limits, the limits go up on the turn and river. Therefore, the drawing
> hands like JTs prefer a big field of callers, and they get to see the flop
> "cheaply," even with a few raises, compared to the later cost when the
> hand is more defined. Meanwhile, the guy with AA, if he doesn't improve,
> is going to have to pay more on the turn and the river ONLY IF HIS
> OPPONENTS LIKE THEIR ODDS. He'll be very happy if everyone who calls
> preflop is forced to go all the way to the river, but he won't be quite as
> happy if the missed draws fold on the flop, and the hands that improve
> stay in against him.
Yes! And if he/she hits the draw to the nut straight with no flush draw or
the nut flush draw....he/she will want to be last to act so he/she can raise
when the pot odds are greater than his/her chances of making the hand. That
is why I stick with raising before the flop with AA. I have the best hand,
you pay to try and beat it.
> This leads to the same basic strategy, but for different reasons. In
> No-Limit, you bet AA as hard as you can preflop, not to "narrow the
> field," but simply because you've got the best hand, and want to get as
> much money as you can while your hand is strongest.
That is why I raise....
>
>
Ken Lovering
have been posting here lately, have stayed away from this thread.........
Is it because it's ridiculous.......or too close to the secret of their
success of ending up in the money so often..........
"Carl Perretta" <cjper...@NOSPAMcomcast.net> wrote in message
news:vu-cnVe7D_G...@comcast.com...
> Jim McManus, in his book, refers to T.J.Cloutier's advice that if you limp
> with aces, you'll never get broke with aces. This, of course refers to
not
> automatically pushing all-in every time you look down to see AA before the
> flop (or even after, just ask Umberto Brenes). But I got to thinking,
it's
> not always that easy.
>
> The situation: You are in a no-limit tournament, one in front of the
> button. On the VERY FIRST hand, second-to-act raises to 4X the big blind.
> The player two seats later pushes all-in. Everyone folds to you, and you
> look down at pocket aces. Losing the hand will eliminate you. What do
you
> do?
>
> In a situation where you would survive against the other player, even if
you
> lost the hand, he decision is easy. Bu his one is stickier.
>
>
John Harkness
<tainte...@adelphia.net> wrote:
> Has anyone noticed that the tournament pros, such as Howard Lederer, who
>have been posting here lately, have stayed away from this thread.........
>Is it because it's ridiculous.......or too close to the secret of their
>success of ending up in the money so often..........
>
>
Actually I'd like to hear from anyone who's played in several WSOP
tournies to see if they've EVER seen a situation where everyone's all
in at a full table early in the tournament.
I've played a lot of NL tourneys, and the most I've ever seen all in
in a full ring early in the tournament is four.
John Harkness
Ken Lovering
AA is a "no-brainer"
"John Harkness" <j...@allstream.net> wrote in message
news:g9u3lvok8dgq3jmt6...@4ax.com...
Paul Phillips
Of course not.
>If not you are assuming all 9 of your opponents would.
Of course! That's what makes it a ludicrous made-up thought question.
But actually once that many people are moving all-in in front of you,
there's no good reason to start putting anyone else on AA. Quite the
contrary if you think about it hard enough.
>Do you know any other player who would call for their whole stack with 8
>all-inplayers already in and 1 yet to act behind him(you inthe big
>blind)withless than AA?
EIGHT people just moved all-in on the first hand. What do they have?
The only way this can happen is if mind-control beams are shooting at the
table from someone's crazy scifi device. (It missed us in the BB, giving
us a chance to unwisely fold AA.) Since that's what's happening I see no
reason to put the small blind on AA.
I don't know anyone who would put their whole stack in after TWO all-in
players on the first hand of the WSOP with less than AA, let alone THREE,
FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, and EIGHT. So you see, either this deck has a
few more aces than normal, or we have to assume people are moving in
with whatever they find in front of them. Which means AA is unlikely.
--
Paul Phillips | New and Improved COLGATE, with extra, extra, extra
Protagonist | flouride: it's positively superfluous!
Empiricist |
pp: i haul pills |----------* http://www.improving.org/paulp/ *----------
YoungJedi
you should call 9 all-ins with AA as well. I disagree. I DON'T think that my
opinion on that is "ridiculous."
"Ken Lovering" <tainte...@adelphia.net> wrote in message
news:bit3g4$cu3dr$1...@ID-196892.news.uni-berlin.de...
Peg Smith
<tainte...@adelphia.net> writes:
>Has anyone noticed that the tournament pros, such as Howard Lederer, who
>have been posting here lately, have stayed away from this thread.........
>Is it because it's ridiculous.....
Perhaps. It certainly is ridiculous.
..or too close to the secret of their
>success of ending up in the money so often..........
Or maybe because this subject has been beaten to death here, especially in the
last few months. If you (generic "you") are so risk averse as to consider
throwing away the best hand before the flop in the situation described here,
you should stick to playing Old Maid. JMO.
Peg
Jonathan Kaplan.com>
>
>
>...The only reason I limped with AA was because of the recent threads about
>this......I have always understood that big pairs do better heads up....they
>go down in value in loose games.......
it ISNT true that AA goes down in value in loose games.
it is true that AA wins the pot less often the more hands against it.
but even with more hands against it, AA goes UP in value with every added
opposing hand. each new opposing hand has SOME chance of winning the pot
(generally), but that percentage chance of winning is LESS than the AA's chances
of winning. so for every dollar that any lesser hand puts in and is called by
AA, the lesser hand is expected to win less than one dollar, and the AA will win
more than one dollar.
tournament considerations affect decisionmaking in a way that MIGHT get one to
take less expectation in that specific pot in order to survive to play other
pots (and rise through the rankings).
but first hand in a 5 day tournament is not the right time to make that kind of
decision biased towards survival.
Paul Adams
> Fine. What if you were a 80% underdog? Or a 90% dog?
>
This no longer bears on the original question. But if you want to get
hypothetical, the idea of Expected Value is all that matters, and there is
no cutoff point at which the risk is too high to justify a bet.
In a hypothetical cash game, if you have a chance to place a bet that only
wins 10% of the time, but pays 12 for 1 odds, then bet. Bet a lot! Place
this kind of bet as often as you can!
If this is a roulette wheel that is some how broken or rigged to give the
edge to the players instead of the house, and you know you can play the
wheel as often as you like for as long as you like, then it would make
sense for you to retain a protected part of your bankroll to avoid
bankruptcy. You would want to spread your risk out over several small
bets, build your bankroll up, and increase the size of your bets
accordingly as you amass more and more money.
But that's only the case for a roulette wheel that's open and running all
day every day. What if the roulette wheel is only going to spin one time
before the management catches on and fixes it? Then bet your whole
bankroll. Don't sell your wife and kids into slavery. Just bet with the
money that you brought to gamble with, the money you can afford to lose,
because if you win you're going to win big, and this chance is offered
just once!
The pocket aces in a freeze-out tourney are like the broken roulette wheel
that's suddenly giving you greater odds than you can expect to see again.
And the chips you have in front of you are the money you can afford to
lose. You must be able to afford to lose them, because you already
irretreviably paid your entry fee, and there's no turning back... and you
started the tourney knowing that it was a long shot that you would even
make it to the lowest paid money seats.
Also, since you're committed, you know that if you don't put your chips on
the magical broken roulette wheel RIGHT NOW, then you're going to have to
play them later, on a less magical, less broken roulette wheel that offers
worse odds by far. So, take your chances and place your bets.
(P.S., for those who want to know how magical broken roulette wheels work,
they have 12 numbers from 1 to 12, and they pay 12 for 1 odds on every
bet. However, the numbers 11 and 12 never hit! And everyone knows this!
So any number from 1 to 10 has a 10% chance of winning)
Paul Adams
> "Paul Adams" <anon...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3f51a6d8$0$23201$9a6e...@news.newshosting.com...
>
> <much snipped>
>
> > Well, let's look at a sit and go tournament for one possible example. It
> > costs $11.00 to enter. 1st prize is $50, 2nd is $30, 3rd is $20. If you
> > go all in against everyone at the table, and you win, you immediately get
> > 1st place. You've got a .31 chance of winning $50.00 on the spot, and a
> > 69 chance of winning nothing and going home. So your expectation is
> > (.31)($50) = $15.50 Well, that's better than the $11.00 you paid to
> > enter.
>
> Well, that's incorrect. It's not like the site won't pay out second and
> third place. For the first hand of the tourney, it would be a 9-way split
> for 50 bucks, so add another 5.55 to the expectation.
>
> - Itea
Hold it. I was trying to simplify things by experimenting on a smaller
scale model, but I've obviously introduced unwanted complications. In
this weird scenario, the best strategy is folding AA, which guarantees
second place, but this teaches us nothing since you could never, in a
multi-table, guarantee 2nd place by folding on the first hand of the
tourney. Also, in a multi-table, we'll never get the chance to win with
one hand that gives us a 1st place prize, plus an equal share of all the
rest of the prize money! So I apparently made a poor choice of a model to
experiment on.
I've accidentally introduced one of those weird situations where we're
playing from just outside the money seats, which leads to weird strategies.
I should toss this model out the window. I was just looking for a way to
examine how a gain in tournament chips translates into a gain in final
ranking and prize money. I was also trying to compare the strategies of
putting all of one's eggs in one basket, as opposed to spreading one's
risks out over several bets, with lesser but still postive expectations
for each bet.
I'll post one more follow up message to this thread, detailing the terms
of my surrender.
Paul Adams
will have to do.
I've been greatly persuaded. Here is what I've concluded so far:
TERMS OF MY SURRENDER
I've been thoroughly persuaded that Aces are a good bet before the flop,
in no-limit, against any number of callers for as much money as you can
get in up front. I'm not so sure what the "ideal," number of callers is.
I suspect that if it's 9 callers in a cash game, then it's a smaller
number in a tourney, but I don't know. Could it be 6? But no number of
callers should intimidate you out of the pot under any circumstances.
As for limit cash games, I think the strategy of thinning out the field
still seems to make some sense to me. Which again means "never fold
aces," but also means "the ideal number of opponents to play aces against
is small." Perhaps my thinking on this is wrong too, and someone will
show me why. But my thoughts on this are not based solely on my own
reflections. In Super System, for instance, Billy Baldwin and Dolly
Brunson write this regarding limit hold em:
"There are two sound reasons for raising with big Pairs and A-K:
(1) You get more money with a good hand.
(2) You tend to narrow down the number of opponents (and this is the more
important reason).
Big Pairs *decrease in strength* according to the number of hands out
against them, and a raise is really your only means of protection. If you
have two Aces and someone wants to try and run you down with two Fours or
a Q-10, then you want to put them in the most disadvantageous position
possible. Anytime you do *not* raise you're concealing the nature of you
hand, and this can work against you as well as in your favor. If you
limp-in, you're taking the chance of losing the pot to a player who
*wouldn't* have gotten involved had a raise given him a clue as to the
strength of your hand. Naturally, if you *don't* raise and six or seven
people call, *you must proceed very carefully on the flop.*"
Also, in Hold'em Poker For Advanced Players, David Sklansky and Mason
Malmuth write:
"If no one has yet called, almost always raise with AA, KK, QQ, AK, and
AQ. Part of the reason to raise with these hands is that they lose value
as the pot gets more multiway (especially if your opponents see the flop
for one bet rather than two)."
Neither source made an exception of AA, to say that you want action from
as many players as possible. But both sources were directly addressing
the game of limit hold'em, and made no mention of tournament strategy.
Jeff Porten
bets per player):
1 85.3 0.853
2 73.4 1.468
3 63.9 1.917
4 55.9 2.236
5 49.2 2.46
6 43.6 2.616
7 38.8 2.716
8 34.7 2.776
9 31.1 2.799
Win percentages from http://www.gocee.com/poker/HE_Value.htm
Jeff Porten
> Let me ask you a question. Would you rather bust out of a tournament
> on the first hand, or three off the money?
John, I think you've hit the nail on the head with this one. It's a
matter of different ways of approaching tournaments.
Two hypothetical conversations.
Q: So how have you been doing in your tourney play?
Non-pro: Not bad. I placed 23rd in the 1st, 17th in the second, and I
made the final table in the 3rd.
Q: So you won money?
Non-pro: No, only the top 5 places were paid. But I played well.
Hypothetical #2:
Q: So how have you been doing in your tourney play?
Pro: I'm down 3 buy-ins.
The point being that the non-pro assigns value to playing for a longer
time, and getting the value of play for the buy-in. The pro just looks
at the money.
I'm very much a non-pro both in my thinking on this and my tourney
results. It *bugs* me when I'm out before the first break, regardless
of how well I played. My ongoing project, so far unsuccessful, is to
determine how to adjust my game so I start making the money and caring
less about busting out "well".
Lone Locust of the Apocalypse
>Am I wrong that you yourself say AA has a 31% chance of winning against 9
>all-in'ers (i.e., a 31% chance of NOT busting out of a NL tournament)?
>That;s exactly what it looks like to me. Fine, I'll be the stupid one still
>sitting at the table and you can be the smart one complaining about your bad
>beat. I've had enough of your ivory tower BS--it doesn't make sense in the
>context of this discussion.
I am strongly reminded of the sequence in Connecticut Yankee where the
protagonist attempts to explain the difference between exchange rate
and buying power.
Paul Adams
Is there something wrong with these numbers? What does the equity number
refer to? Is it the amount you should expect to get back for your bet?
I've never done this kind of calculation before, but it seems, for
instance, heads up it should look like this:
Opponents, Percentage Won, Equity:
1 85.3 1.706 (this is (1 opponents + 1 self) x chance of win)
In other words, you get approx. $1.71 for each dollar you bet.
The figures above suggest that heads up loses money, because it doesn't
include the bet put in by one's self. Same holds for all of the equity
figures in the table.
.. okay, I just looked back and found the similar table listed by Paul
Phillips:
AA vs. 1 random hand: 85.2% x 200 = 170.4
AA vs. 2 random hands: 73.4% x 300 = 220.2
AA vs. 3 random hands: 63.9% x 400 = 255.6
AA vs. 4 random hands: 55.9% x 500 = 279.5
AA vs. 5 random hands: 49.2% x 600 = 295.2
AA vs. 6 random hands: 43.6% x 700 = 305.2
AA vs. 7 random hands: 38.8% x 800 = 310.4
AA vs. 8 random hands: 34.7% x 900 = 312.3
AA vs. 9 random hands: 31.1% x 1000 = 311.0
Jeff Porten
> Opponents, Percentage Won, Equity:
>
> 1 85.3 1.706 (this is (1 opponents + 1 self) x chance of win)
Right, I should have added 1 player to the calculations to include your
own bet. Paul's table is better than mine; unfortunately, my reader
threaded his reply later than the thread I was reading when I posted my
duplicative (and less accurate) reply.
Howard Treesong
> >If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone bitching about getting
> >their Aces cracked when they limped in and had 7 callers, I might be able to
> >hire someone to decipher this crap.
>
PaulP:
> Summarized:
>
> YoungJedi: "I'm a freaking idiot."
> PaulP: "Here's a very polite and complete explanation of where you
> went wrong, for no apparent reason other than kindness."
> YoungJedi: "STOP THAT, FUCKHEAD. I SAID I'M AN IDIOT AND I MEANT IT."
>
> My apologies for briefly getting in the way of your ambition.
Paul,
You sometimes come off as condescending or arrogant, which can
irritate people even though you are usually right. This one, however,
had me ROFLMAO, precisely because of both your arrogance and your
correctness.
-Howard
Howard Treesong
> >So Paul, who has earned more bracelets, you or Hellmuth?
<Snip PaulP's humorous and largely accurate deconstruction of Phil,
including his obsession with bracelets and a characterization of him
as semiliterate>
Paul, you're missing the point -- almost certainly deliberately.
Phil has an undeniably good record in NLH tournaments, and Damage is
asking you if you have an equal track record. Quite frankly, after
reading Phil's book and a number of your posts, you're waaaaaay ahead
on the analysis front. Why hasn't that translated into a similar
number of wins? Phil probably plays more than you do, but we could
normalize to correct for this, but Damage's question is at least a
fair one, worthy of some response.
BTW, I haven't yet read the rest of this thread. I'm posting as I go.
-Howard
Howard Treesong
> Am I wrong that you yourself say AA has a 31% chance of winning against 9
> all-in'ers (i.e., a 31% chance of NOT busting out of a NL tournament)?
> That;s exactly what it looks like to me.
No, you're not wrong. You've done a nice job of interpreting this
part of the problem. Pat yourself on the back.
YoungJedi:
> Fine, I'll be the stupid one still
> sitting at the table and you can be the smart one complaining about your bad
> beat. I've had enough of your ivory tower BS--it doesn't make sense in the
> context of this discussion.
Paul, for all his snide superiority, is absolutely and clearly correct
on this issue. If confronted with this problem, I'd shove my stack in
so fast that my thumbnails might well burn off. And you know what?
On the 69% of the time I go bust, I'd not complain at all. Not only
that, I'd head home, read books to the kids, fall asleep like a rock,
and not torture myself for one second over having made a bad decision.
Conversely, if you took over my brain for a moment and caused me to
fold, I might be so angry that I'd be tempted to drive into a
telephone pole on the way home. If I made it, I'd yell at the kids,
then toss and turn all night, torturing myself over the worst decision
I'd made in a long time.
Hold'em is almost always indeterminate. This case is not. To parrot
Paul, it's not even close. Nowhere near it. Moreover, it's exactly
the opposite of an ivory-tower, overly intellectual analysis. He has
the stone-cold correct practical answer that stands the highest chance
of getting you in the money. If you can't see it, then you're simply
wrong.
-Howard
2 hi
If I am dealt AA, I fold immediately. Regardless of whether it's been
raised or not. Out of turn if possible.
:)
--
2 hi
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