Did I make the right call?

[daftpegasus]

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this hand. I was playing a live game tonight (7 at the table) and got dealt A4 diamonds on the small blind. A small raise 2xBB sees 3 of us reaching the flop. The flop is A74 clubs. I'm first to act. I'm the chip leader by about 1K more than the others left in the hand. My thought was that I was obviously concerned about the flush and should either put in a bet to find out where I was in the hand but potentially lose out if another club came on the turn or river. Or, I work on the 2 pair I had and go all in hoping that if someone has a flush draw they'd fold, or if they already had the flush draw it wouldn't include the King and they'd fold. I chose the latter and got called by 10, 6 clubs. (Edit orginially typed 10,7 in error) In hindsight I obviously made the wrong call, but, pre hindsight, did I make the right call, or the wrong call? Be as blunt as you like - no offence will be taken (only education). DP

[Valiant23]

Re: Did I make the right call?

The flop is A74 clubs.

10, 7 clubs.

I'm assuming that the 7 on the flop was hearts or spades? For me I think you did the right thing, the problem is that you will get callers in that situation. Assuming you lost, unlucky mate.

[daftpegasus]

Re: Did I make the right call? No, all the flop were clubs I just mis-remembered the hand. He called with 10,6 clubs - the flush draw. I'll just edit my original post so no one else gets confused!!!! and yes I lost the hand.

[slapdash]

Re: Did I make the right call? So he already had the flush? I don't think there's anything wrong with making a big raise so that somebody with a flush draw doesn't have the odds to call. But a raise of the size of the pot will be good enough for that. You didn't say how big the pot was compared to the size of your stack?

[Marcus0000]

Re: Did I make the right call? In that situation I would put out a medium size bet so I could gather the information of how my hand was. There are a ton of eager players that when they flop the flush will just re-raise you an insane amount and then you got your information on it. Also with that flop he got the flush but if he's a good player as well he knows in the back of his mind if you got a club over card to his 10 and he lets you stay in the hand to possibly catch it then he didn't play the hand right himself. So a medium size bet by you would have probably resulted in a huge raise by him and that would have told you what you needed to know. Plus I have no clue why people call raises on any suited cards. 7-10 of clubs? Yikes. Someone needs to tell him that just because 2 cards are suited doesn't mean its a good starting hand. But since he got lucky on it I'm sure he will call on any suited cards so maybe try to find him again at a table and exploit that on him.

[daftpegasus]

Re: Did I make the right call? I'm not 100% certain but I think my all in bet was approx 4x the pot. I wanted to take it down without a fight. The other thing was the guy that called was new to poker (he was playing earlier in the day on the play money tables to learn the game). Thus he was unpredictable (and had been lucky to that point in the game) and unreadable.

[robilaruk]

Re: Did I make the right call? rock and hard place matey FLOP you bet the pot he calls, no club on the turn then what do you do? or you bet the pot and he shoves all in - are you laying down 2 pair? I don't think you can get away from this except to check/call small bets and hope he bleeds you slowly and for not too much and that a club hits the turn/river and now he is worried you have the KQJ and so the betting stops Can't fault you for your play at all Damo :cheers

No, all the flop were clubs I just mis-remembered the hand. He called with 10,6 clubs - the flush draw. I'll just edit my original post so no one else gets confused!!!! and yes I lost the hand.

[Valiant23]

Re: Did I make the right call? Must be honest I think I'd have checked on the flop, being first to act in a hostile flop such as that then, although what Marcus says makes better sense. Unlucky DP. :ok

[Marcus0000]

Re: Did I make the right call?

I'm not 100% certain but I think my all in bet was approx 4x the pot. I wanted to take it down without a fight. The other thing was the guy that called was new to poker (he was playing earlier in the day on the play money tables to learn the game). Thus he was unpredictable (and had been lucky to that point in the game) and unreadable.

Ah well then its nothing to really question yourself about if he was a new player. New players are hard to get a good read on as they even think a pair of 2's might be a monster hand and play it big. But if your in that situation again I would just do the medium bet and get the information you need on how strong your hand is. I'm guessing you were first to act in this situation which makes it even more tough as your out of position and makes it vital that you try to get the information before you go big into it.

[daftpegasus]

Re: Did I make the right call?

Ah well then its nothing to really question yourself about if he was a new player. New players are hard to get a good read on as they even think a pair of 2's might be a monster hand and play it big. But if your in that situation again I would just do the medium bet and get the information you need on how strong your hand is. I'm guessing you were first to act in this situation which makes it even more tough as your out of position and makes it vital that you try to get the information before you go big into it.

It's funny but a couple of hands before he had pocket 2's and paid a good chunk of his chips to see the turn when the flop hadn't helped him, and, before that he paid chips after the river when faced with a bet when he had 5,7 in his hand and nothing on the table. Maybe I should forget it and put it down to beginners luck - but in truth I think I played it poorly - but I can't say that I would not do the same in the future when faced with the same situation. Thanks for your help.

[slapdash]

Re: Did I make the right call?

I'm not 100% certain but I think my all in bet was approx 4x the pot. I wanted to take it down without a fight.

But if he only has a flush draw, and you bet enough that he doesn't have the odds to call, then you want him to call. If you knew he had a flush draw and you knew he'd call a bet that didn't give him the odds to do so, then the perfect amount to bet would be the largest amount that he'd call. If you bet more than that and he folded, then (in the long run) you'd be losing yourself chips that you could have won.

[guesswest]

Re: Did I make the right call?

But if he only has a flush draw, and you bet enough that he doesn't have the odds to call, then you want him to call. If you knew he had a flush draw and you knew he'd call a bet that didn't give him the odds to do so, then the perfect amount to bet would be the largest amount that he'd call. If you bet more than that and he folded, then (in the long run) you'd be losing yourself chips that you could have won.

I certainly agree with that for cash play, and think it's an often misunderstood point - but I notice he's playing a tournament. I'm not sure you should always want your opponent calling without pot odds in tournament play, because you only have to lose one of those hands to be out, and you should be minimising variance. Obviously there comes a point where you want the call, a 10x pot bet called for a one outer etc - but I don't think that point is any amount better than 0 EV like in a cash game, I think you need more value. I don't know exactly where that point would be though, I suspect it's a really complicated calculation. I've been thinking about this for a while and I'm totally confused by it, risk to reward is pretty straightforward in a cash game but in a tournament - I can't wrap my head around all the factors involved to get a good sense of what kind of value bets to take and which to turn down.

[slapdash]

Re: Did I make the right call?

I certainly agree with that for cash play, and think it's an often misunderstood point - but I notice he's playing a tournament. I'm not sure you should always want your opponent calling without pot odds in tournament play, because you only have to lose one of those hands to be out, and you should be minimising variance. Obviously there comes a point where you want the call, a 10x pot bet called for a one outer etc - but I don't think that point is any amount better than 0 EV like in a cash game, I think you need more value. I don't know exactly where that point would be though, I suspect it's a really complicated calculation. I've been thinking about this for a while and I'm totally confused by it, risk to reward is pretty straightforward in a cash game but in a tournament - I can't wrap my head around all the factors involved to get a good sense of what kind of value bets to take and which to turn down.

It all comes down to what I dubbed "The Fundamental Question of Poker Tournament Strategy" in another thread recently: How does your probability of winning a tournament (or your expected prize money) depend on your stack size? If it's directly proportional to stack size (which I doubt), then you do just want to maximize your EV with every decision, and variance is irrelevant. I suspect that survival in tournaments is over-rated. Of course, you have to survive to win, but if you make negative EV decisions in order to ensure immediate survival, then you are making it harder for yourself to survive later on, so it's unclear to what extent you are helping yourself survive in the long run. You notice when you lose lots of chips by doing something risky, and identify this as the decision that cost you a chance of winning, but what about the times you play safe and cost yourself chips that would have saved you later on? My gut feeling is that making a significantly negative EV decision in order to reduce variance is a high price to play. And is it clear that you want to reduce variance? It depends on the type of tournament, maybe, but in a typical MTT, if I do averagely well (for me), then I don't finish in the money. So I want to increase the variance of my finishing position to maximize prize money, if I can do so without significantly reducing my average finishing position.

[robilaruk]

Re: Did I make the right call? spot on - in MTT's your variance will increase, and indeed you need to play more (potential) -EV situations to accumulate chips, otherwise the blinds wil gobble you up. no one ever ever ever wins a tounry by just playing better cards than their opponents, you wil play cards when you are behind and by either outdrawing someone or outbetting them win the pot - in cash games you can just sit and wait for the right cards/right position/right pot odds - in a tourny you don't get that chance also it depends on whether you want to win some real money or creep into the cash - tourny payouts are heavily skewed towards the top 3/4 finishes - often 25 times what final ITM place pays, so to win this amount of cash you need to take risks, and pick on those who are sitting waiting for their premium cards to come and will lay down beter cards than you have Just my thoughts Damo :cheers

It all comes down to what I dubbed "The Fundamental Question of Poker Tournament Strategy" in another thread recently: So I want to increase the variance of my finishing position to maximize prize money, if I can do so without significantly reducing my average finishing position.

[Cloud]

Re: Did I make the right call? I now have a fundamental question to ask regarding MTT's. I do agree with Slapdash, you do want to increase the variance without affecting your average finishing position. So if you have an average finishing position of 35th (per 100 runners) - you want to be having a few 1st's and a few 70th's, rather than a mixture of results between 20th and 50th. So my fundamental question regarding MTT's is : Should one be playing every hand where there is positive expectation??? My answer would always be yes (in a standard MTT where the prize accumulates - not necessarily in a qualifier where so many qualify) - even if it means risking all. Is that the right thing to do???

[guesswest]

Re: Did I make the right call?

It all comes down to what I dubbed "The Fundamental Question of Poker Tournament Strategy" in another thread recently: How does your probability of winning a tournament (or your expected prize money) depend on your stack size? If it's directly proportional to stack size (which I doubt), then you do just want to maximize your EV with every decision, and variance is irrelevant. I suspect that survival in tournaments is over-rated. Of course, you have to survive to win, but if you make negative EV decisions in order to ensure immediate survival, then you are making it harder for yourself to survive later on, so it's unclear to what extent you are helping yourself survive in the long run. You notice when you lose lots of chips by doing something risky, and identify this as the decision that cost you a chance of winning, but what about the times you play safe and cost yourself chips that would have saved you later on? My gut feeling is that making a significantly negative EV decision in order to reduce variance is a high price to play. And is it clear that you want to reduce variance? It depends on the type of tournament, maybe, but in a typical MTT, if I do averagely well (for me), then I don't finish in the money. So I want to increase the variance of my finishing position to maximize prize money, if I can do so without significantly reducing my average finishing position.

Shutting someone out of a draw isn't a negative EV decision, it's still +EV, it's just less +EV play than placing a bet that's going to get called. And I wasn't suggesting that you should shut people out of bets with a 'significant' EV loss, just the marginal ones that you'll take in a cash game. With increasing blinds you're playing for a similar proportion of your stack throughout, so whilst you have +EV, your chances of winning a hand like the one above (say) a dozen times in a tournament, is miniscule. That's the kind of consistency you have to hit if you're not shutting out small -EV draws over the course of a tournament, so if I can win a hand without relying on a draw missing and I'm only sacrificing minor EV for doing so without leaving it to the cards, I'm pretty sure that creates greater positive expectation over a tournament.

[slapdash]

Re: Did I make the right call? I've been thinking a bit about this, and it occurred to me that building up your stack during a tournament is somewhat analogous to building up a betting bank, which is something I've thought about a lot, and maybe some of the money management ideas from that might be useful. Bear with me for a non-poker introduction: Suppose you have the opportunity to make a sequence of bets which have a 50% chance of winning but where you are getting odds of 3.00, so if a bet wins, your profit is double your stake (yes, you're getting good odds!). Suppose you start with £100 and want to make your bank grow as fast as possible. How much should you stake on each bet? Obviously, as your bank grows, you can afford to stake more. The way to maximize the expected size of your bank after any given number of bets is to bet all you have every time. Unfortunately, the large expected size of your bank after, say, 20 bets is made up of about a one in a million chance of having an astronomical amount, and a 99.99..% chance of having nothing. But assume you'll have roughly average luck. It turns out that there is an optimal amount, which in this case is 25% of your current bank, to stake on each bet. If you bet 25%, then a win will multiply your bank by 1.5 and a loss by 0.75, so a win and a loss (i.e., average luck over two bets) multiplies your bank by 1.5*0.75=1.125. If you bet less, 20% say, the corresponding figure is 1.4*0.8=1.12. If you bet more, 30% say, it's 1.6*0.7=1.12. With average luck, 25% of your bank is the best amount to stake each time. There's a formula to work this out, called the Kelly formula. Playing a tournament is not exactly analogous, because you don't have a free choice of the size of your stake, and also the amount you bet affects the odds you're getting. But maybe the idea of thinking about how much a decision will multiply your stack by, rather than how much it will add to your stack, has some use? For example, suppose you face a decision to risk half your chips on a coin-flip, with pot-odds of 6/5. So in a cash game you would certainly have pot-odds. But if you win, you multiply your stack by 1.6, and if you lose, you multiply by 0.5, so if you faced this decision twice and had average luck, winning once and losing once, you would multiply your stack by 1.6*0.5 = 0.8, and lose 20% of your stack.