On tournaments and gambling |
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Posted Thu Oct 12, 2006 6:53 pm GMT by snoogins47
I feel like sometime in the near-ish future, I'm going to finally be able to put into words some tournament concepts I've been thinking about for quite some time now... and I'll have time to fark around with numbers enough to illustrate them (and possibly prove/disprove some vague 'maybe' ideas I've had)
Anyway, at least partly due to my recent-ish foray back into tournament land (mostly SNGs) I've had some weird things on the brain, about why I'm such a maniac later in tournaments and why it works. I push. A lot. I make fairly thin calls... a lot, but often a lot less than said pushes. This doesn't always have to do with immediate EV.
Concept 1: Our 'edge' is as much a product of the game we're playing as it is our skill, if not moreso.
This is a combination of things, and contrary to what many of us wish to believe, there are plenty of intensely important factors to this that aren't dependent on just how good we are. Not only does the frequency with which our opponents make mistakes matter, but the MANNER of these mistakes is intensely important: especially when compared to the structure we're dealing with.
Late in the tournament, much of the 'edge' comes from dead money. Taking blinds. Push push push. It's only really POSSIBLE to have a very big edge here when opponents fold way too much. This isn't a matter of how good you are. This is just how the game works. With the blinds bitch slapping us every couple hands for a large chunk of our stack, we don't have time to 'outplay' our opponent on later streets, 'wait for better spots' and try to squeeze value out of our hands. With how closely so many hands run in value, in essence, fold equity is king. Knowing HOW you derive your edge can give you a much better idea of how large (or small, or negative) your edge really is, which will go a long way in helping you get your priorities straight.
Concept 2: You always have fold equity.
This is hyperbole of course, but it's important to remember. Don't be afraid to push from the button with rags. They probably know you could push with rags. I'm sure most of them do. Hell, go ahead and tell them. Say "I'm pushing with any two cards here." It doesn't matter.
Even if they know you're pushing with trash, they still have to look down at a hand to call you, and you still win more than you think when you're called
I'm not going to go over every detail about this, but here are some quick numbers I threw together just now (which means they may well be off by a bit... my methods are far from flawless, and I'm kinda careless sometimes) to illustrate this. Even if they're off by a bit, the concept still remains. It also really goes a long way at illustrating the nature of the game.
We'll ignore pot odds and everything for a second, and just go with this premise: you are heads up, and push all in preflop without looking at your cards. Your opponent knows you're doing this, and somehow decides that he needs to be a ______ favorite to call.
If he decides he has to be a 3:1 favorite (75%) to call you...
He calls you less than 2% of the time
If he decides he has to be a 2:1 favorite (66.666666six%) to call you...
He calls you a little over 4% of the time
If he decides he has to be a 3:2 favorite (60%) to call you...
He calls you a little under 18% of the time
If he decides he has to just have any edge (>50%) to call you...
He calls you somewhere around 47% of the time
Do you see what I see? Two things to take away from this:
1)People don't look at good hands all that much
2)It is VERY HARD to have a big edge preflop
The Skanlsky-Karlson numbers http://www.decf.berkeley.edu/~chubukov/rankings.html help illustrate this too. (Anybody counting? I've probably linked to these things like, 800 times) These numbers were derived from a question posed on 2+2: If you move all in from the small blind, flip your cards, and your opponent plays optimally (folding whenever pot odds dictate he should, calling whenever he should), how large of a stack can you have and still make the push profitable?
As you get lower, even when you're almost always getting called, the smaller chances they fold coupled with your "suckout equity" make pushing profitable. Look at how wide of a range you can profitably push down around the 4-5BB area, even when your opponent never makes a mistake Real life opponents make lots of mistakes. Especially ones like where they don't call with 73 because they see you have 65s.
Poker is quite clearly a game of skill. But these sorts of numbers do a good job of illustrating why it's basically folly to approach it with an "I'm not gambling" attitude, and why it's silly to sit back and wait for those massive edges in the mid-later stages of tournaments. Those massive edges don't show up much. And really, they're not all that massive.
This also brings up the idea that when people are close to busting and trying desperately to move up a few spots in the pay scale, we get to completely brutalize their blinds. They may even be right to do what they're doing, but because of how much of an edge they require to risk their precious stack, they hardly ever put up a fight. If we don't exploit that, we're basically giving up.
I've been sorta half-formulating some weird vague idea of the value of chips based on how different stack sizes relative to your opponents can put different amounts of pressure on them, based on what sort of edges they require to call, etc. etc... but since this post is long as it is, and those ideas are nigh impossible for me to put into words at the moment, I'm just going to stop this post now before it gets so long that even the weirdos who ACTUALLY read my posts don't finish it. I don't have a clever little tagline to end with either, since I'm hungry and about to go grab food. Make one up on your own.
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Posted Thu Oct 12, 2006 7:54 pm GMT by Sean_in_NJ
| snoogins47 wrote: | | Even if they know you're pushing with trash, they still have to look down at a hand to call you, and you still win more than you think when you're called |
Speaking from personal experience, most people play so few tournaments that they can't look past the initial "I worked so long to get here and don't want to donk off my chips with Q-high" impression because they'll never see a sample size large enough to justify such a move.
I don't think this is necessarily incorrect either, given the small sample size of the recreational player. Why risk your stack when it's perhaps the only stack you'll have to play with for a week?
OMG...METAGAME!
Posted Thu Oct 12, 2006 8:16 pm GMT by snoogins47
Yeah, most of us won't see a sample size large enough to have any real clue how good we are at MTTs with big fields. One of the few things that really struck me as pure gold from the HOH books was at some point where he says some sort of short stack push is correct, and says something to the effect of:
(Paraphrased and butchered here, of course)
"No need to be nervous making a play like this... you might get knocked out of the tournament, but you were pretty close to being out of the tournament anyway, and 'conservative' play won't help that."
When push comes to shove, it's really just a matter of how you want to try to get lucky.
Posted Thu Oct 12, 2006 9:37 pm GMT by Jauron
It can be important late in these things to recognize who is willing to fight and who is not.
Having said that however I find maybe too many are willing to call down without much, so unless you can find those willing to lay down you may get called with much much less than you'd think reasonable.
If a person enters a pot (limp), it's almost insane what they'll call their stack off with in certain spots. I sometimes wonder why they limped in the first place with a hand like 22 if they were willing to call an all-in preflop (nice trap).
I guess you need to find yourself on a table with at least a couple people who give half a shit before you can run over them....
Posted Thu Oct 12, 2006 9:56 pm GMT by supafrey
| Jauron wrote: | It can be important late in these things to recognize who is willing to fight and who is not.
Having said that however I find maybe too many are willing to call down without much, so unless you can find those willing to lay down you may get called with much much less than you'd think reasonable.
If a person enters a pot (limp), it's almost insane what they'll call their stack off with in certain spots. I sometimes wonder why they limped in the first place with a hand like 22 if they were willing to call an all-in preflop (nice trap).
I guess you need to find yourself on a table with at least a couple people who give half a shit before you can run over them.... |
Late in a tourney, people are much more likely to fold too much than call too much.
Posted Thu Oct 12, 2006 10:36 pm GMT by Ciso_B
good post Snoogins , I agree with the concepts you're talking of, and am still stunned at alot of peoples passiveness late on, when 1st place is there to be won and people just fold,fold, fold.
Again, good read. Well done.
Posted Thu Oct 12, 2006 10:52 pm GMT by Jauron
| supa wrote: | | Jauron wrote: | It can be important late in these things to recognize who is willing to fight and who is not.
Having said that however I find maybe too many are willing to call down without much, so unless you can find those willing to lay down you may get called with much much less than you'd think reasonable.
If a person enters a pot (limp), it's almost insane what they'll call their stack off with in certain spots. I sometimes wonder why they limped in the first place with a hand like 22 if they were willing to call an all-in preflop (nice trap).
I guess you need to find yourself on a table with at least a couple people who give half a shit before you can run over them.... |
Late in a tourney, people are much more likely to fold too much than call too much. |
SNG's, I've not found that to be the case which is what this post is about. I suppose results will varry site to site and levels.
I've found the opposite to be true in MTT's however the closer to the money and once in it people do fold, of course I run into a monster when I make the move.
Posted Fri Oct 13, 2006 12:16 am GMT by supafrey
SNGs are tourneys.
Posted Fri Oct 13, 2006 2:44 am GMT by xDiamond_CutteRx
Excellent post, and a good reminder that when stacks are short, Poker becomes much more of a "science" than an art. When you're down to the small edges with only ten or twenty BB's, the "perfect strategy" looks more like an ideal blackjack strategy than an ideal deep-stack Poker strategy.
Posted Fri Oct 13, 2006 3:57 am GMT by TheSalche
Excellent post Snoog
I still love it when people make fun of me for calling all ins with 37o when I'm getting 3.5:1 pot odds in SnGs.
It sometimes makes me cringe when I see somebody get down to less than a big blind in chips and then end up cashing in a tourney, but I bust out cause I got a little too aggressive from the small blind.
Posted Fri Oct 13, 2006 4:06 am GMT by MrDarling
Very interesting post. I do think that this might not work on low levels 1 table S&G..
They did not invest that much time or money to get into the 'late' stages of the S&G and will easily call with marginal hands or even start pushing with rags.
and since the blinds are a killer, once you lose two races you become a short stack and next time you push and fail you are out!
my last S&G I moved from ST with 4 left to BS with 3 - lost two races in a row (QJ against A4 A held in-spite of an open ended flop and 2's against Ax with the board giving trips A to villain)
I manage to climb back to the top by stealing, but then was not respected any more and people did start calling and I actually busted 3rd...
Posted Fri Oct 13, 2006 7:52 pm GMT by supafrey
| MrDarling wrote: | Very interesting post. I do think that this might not work on low levels 1 table S&G..
They did not invest that much time or money to get into the 'late' stages of the S&G and will easily call with marginal hands or even start pushing with rags.
and since the blinds are a killer, once you lose two races you become a short stack and next time you push and fail you are out!
my last S&G I moved from ST with 4 left to BS with 3 - lost two races in a row (QJ against A4 A held in-spite of an open ended flop and 2's against Ax with the board giving trips A to villain)
I manage to climb back to the top by stealing, but then was not respected any more and people did start calling and I actually busted 3rd... |
Sorry darling, but I'm going to have to insist that it works on the low levels much better than any other. In the higher levels, more and more people know bits of this kind of stuff, and respond in turn. Nowhere do people value their buyin money and playing ITM than in low level tourneys. Push push push.
Posted Sun Oct 15, 2006 7:00 pm GMT by AHBrownell
I really have been coming into an understanding of this concept lately - having switched to tourneys over the past month. The idea that edges in poker are so slim. I bubbled on about 3 tournies in one day and decided from that point on, playing for first is the only reason to play.
I started to mess around on poker stove and was trying to establish against a random hand the bottom end of what I would say is an average hand. So say you pick up the Q8s, that hand is pretty much average as it gets. If you push against an average stack, you have a lot of fold equity. When he does pick up a big hand you are way behind, but even if he decides to make a mediocre call with a KT or KJ, you still are in DECENT shape. You might even find yourself up against a pair of 7s.
The bottom line is, understanding how close most hands are in value like you said snoog. Its about realizing that fact, and using the folding equity to take advantage of the tight "wait for hand" players. Scott Fischman mentioned this recently on the poker edge radio show. He gets more 4ths in SitNGos than most people, but then he also gets more 1sts. 1st is where the money is, and playing survival poker makes it difficult to ever see that final table...
Posted Fri Oct 20, 2006 8:09 am GMT by red_pen
| Quote: | I still love it when people make fun of me for calling all ins with 37o when I'm getting 3.5:1 pot odds in SnGs.
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This call is not necessarily correct all the time.
Posted Sat Oct 21, 2006 11:21 pm GMT by mackkie
| red_pen wrote: | | Quote: | I still love it when people make fun of me for calling all ins with 37o when I'm getting 3.5:1 pot odds in SnGs.
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This call is not necessarily correct all the time. |
Yeah...call me a weirdo, but i usually fold something like 37o when i get pot odds... unless i have a huge stack or the amount is extremely minimal, ill usually lay that one down.
Excellent post snoogins 8)
Posted Sun Oct 22, 2006 12:19 pm GMT by supafrey
| mackkie wrote: | | red_pen wrote: | | Quote: | I still love it when people make fun of me for calling all ins with 37o when I'm getting 3.5:1 pot odds in SnGs.
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This call is not necessarily correct all the time. |
Yeah...call me a weirdo, but i usually fold something like 37o when i get pot odds... unless i have a huge stack or the amount is extremely minimal, ill usually lay that one down.
Excellent post snoogins 8) |
You shouldn't fold anything getting those kind of odds late in an sng. Anything.
Posted Sun Oct 22, 2006 6:13 pm GMT by tame_deuces
Good post.
An interesting point though, is that we can easily see how much of mistake we are doing by pushing too little and then correct this. Iow. pushing is the easy thing to do with some experience (you get this...'oh another tourney another blind to steal, oh..busted...next plz').
An indirect point from your post is that it is usually the calling part that is the hard thing to learn to do correctly.
Posted Mon Oct 23, 2006 7:28 am GMT by red_pen
| Quote: | | You shouldn't fold anything getting those kind of odds late in an sng. Anything. |
You should fold not because you might lose, but because you might win. "KO"ing the very short stack (which is what the 3.5-1 odds implies), is sometimes not in your interests.
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