Posted Fri May 11, 2007 11:17 pm GMT by xDiamond_CutteRx
Live Tournament Hand, blinds are 50/100, 9-handed table. Hero has   . Players at the table seem "bad," but no specific reads, as this is quite early.
Hero: 4875
Villain: 3600
Folded to villain in 3rd position, who raises to 600.
4th position folds.
Hero calls 600.
All others fold.
Pot: 1350
Flop:   
Villain bets 1000 (2000 behind now)
Hero ???
(This hand is in my blog if you want to see the outcome)
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Posted Sat May 12, 2007 1:16 am GMT by Phil14312
Probably push. Ok its live definately push, blind structure is probably bad (am i right?). You should be always looking to acquire chips here. You can easily be a favorite when called.
Posted Sat May 12, 2007 1:23 am GMT by MrDarling
I suck at these situation.
Lets hope he had an over pair - then you are ahead and can call or push (Though I tend to call, since it doesn't seem like there is any FE against this kind of players)
He could have a set, but chances are remote, the real worry is if he have you reversed dominated : A8 or something like that. Is your A any good here?
I think I just call, peel one of. If I hit I probably get paid. If I miss the turn and he doesn't leave me odds, I'll probably fold.
Pushing is probably the correct move, but chances are he will call, and then you basically coin flipping for most of your chips.
Going to check the blog now 
Posted Sat May 12, 2007 2:53 am GMT by xDiamond_CutteRx
OK, I ended up pushing, as you know if you read the blog. I was very comfortable with it at the time, but I thought a lot about it on the ride home (it's about an hour drive to that particular casino). An interesting notion occurred to me:
Even if we are almost sure we will be called, and if even if we are reasonably sure we are behind, pushing might still be a better option than calling or folding.
I thought of this regardless of outside concerns (although Phil's point about structure is excellent, and did factor into my initial decision), mostly based on our equity and effective stack sizes.
If we fold, we surrender the minimum 35% equity we have in the pot. With the size of the pot, that's not a good option. As it stands, we have to call 1000 to potentially win the 2350 in the pot, plus any future bets. That's pretty favorable, although we only stand to win 2000 more if we do hit our hand. Nevertheless, folding is incredibly weak here.
If we call, we will face a tough decision on the turn if we miss and our opponent pushes. At that point, we will have to call 2000 to win the 5350 in the pot. Depending on how we estimate our equity, that will likely be a pretty close decision, but it also belies a secondary concern: we will have to call all our opponent's chips and thus leave us only one way to win: we must show down the best hand at the end.
By raising on the other hand, we earn the additional equity in the possibility that our opponent might fold and surrender his share of the pot, which is good. However, even if we are dead sure out opponent will call, we then avoid having to make a close (and potentially "wrong" in the "Fundamental Theorem of Poker" sense of wrong) decision on the turn on those occasions when our opponent pushes after we miss. If we and our opponent had more chips, the situation might be a lot different, and we could make a decent case for smooth calling. Furthermore, as Phil alluded to, there are some groups of hands where we not only don't mind a call, we welcome it. In this case above, our opponent held QQ with the  . In this case, we are in a statistical dead heat. If our opponent instead held QQ or JJ without a heart, we are actually ahead, about a 55-45 favorite to win the hand, and we should welcome that kind of advantage even early in a tournament. And even when our opponent holds AA, KK, or even a set, with the money already in the pot, we aren't taking that much the worst of it when the money goes in (specificially in the case of KK, where we are less than a 60-40 dog). And in the real world where we can add even a few % of fold equity, pushing starts to look a lot better than calling or folding.
Does this line of reasoning make sense to you guys?
Oh and as to your question about structure, Phil, the tournament actually had about the best structure of any low limit tourney I've ever seen, but it still was relatively fast, and I did not at all mind taking an early race if it meant getting my hands on some chips.
Posted Sat May 12, 2007 4:43 am GMT by MrDarling
In a MTT I think it boils down to your edge against the players.
You seems to be a very good player and usually most other low level suck.
So why give someone you have an edge on a 50% chance?
I think your line is the right line for Poker in general. You put all the money in when chances are you are ahead (though just slightly ahead at best)
Would you call an AI with AKs so early on? Would you do it had you been sure about him holding any pair lower then K's?
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