Child's QQ -v- Yang's JJ

[SunyD]

It seemed to me that Childs felt in his gut that he had the best hand, but he was just scared of potentially being knocked out early given the small chance he was wrong.

When you play for 4-5 long days, and make it to the WSOP main event final table, and fly out your friends and your family to come and watch you.... and then you are put in a semi-marginal situation where you could be gone in the first 20 minutes -- its easier to take the cautious route and wait for a better spot. Childs left himself with 4+ million by mucking.

I dont like his muck at all... but I feel like if it was day 1 or 2, or another tournament, he wouldve called immediately (i.e. his pocket Tens)

[pendragon]

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It seemed to me that Childs felt in his gut that he had the best hand, but he was just scared of potentially being knocked out early given the small chance he was wrong.

When you play for 4-5 long days, and make it to the WSOP main event final table, and fly out your friends and your family to come and watch you.... and then you are put in a semi-marginal situation where you could be gone in the first 20 minutes -- its easier to take the cautious route and wait for a better spot.

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I think you're probably onto something here. The guy was just afraid of getting knocked out so fast, in front of all his friends who spent a lot of effort to come and support him. He probably wouldn't have called even if he thought it was a coin flip.

Also I think he may have re-leveled himself out of it. He probably thought the others had him pegged as a tight player, so when he raised out of position, he must have figured Yang would not reraise him unless Yang had something (which Yang did - but it was a lesser something). Basically "Crazy aggro has to realize his table image is crazy aggro, so why would he reraise me, with tight image betting out of position, unless he had a monster?"

I think a lot of times players hurt themselves when making multi-level leaps of logic regarding table image and position.
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But man if there's one place you can make a lot of money by just surviving, it's the WSOPME final table. Look at Tuan Lam. Norm and Lon were bagging on his fold to the money strategy. I'll fold into an extra $3M any day. And he was ugly miracle river away from a real good shot at winning.

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Quite true.

Childs may have been close to getting 3:1 on his chips - but that doesn't mean he was getting 3:1 in "real money" terms. It probably wasn't close to that in terms of actual cash. Just being able to hand around the table counts for a lot.
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You need to calculate chip stacks and cash equity if you really want to analyze the situation.

Pure chip EV is not equal to $EV at a final table with steeply ascending pay ladder.

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Well this is pretty much what I wrote before I clicked the next page [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Very true.

I do think this was a bad play. And I hate it too. But, it isn't totally indefensible.
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uh the steepness of a tournament pay ladder is what makes it even MORE of an obvious call IMO

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Not at all. As you know the value of chips in tournament poker is marginally decreasing. The value of $20K in chips in this tourney is $10K, but the value of about $120 million (or was it $160?) is only $8 million, not $60 million. Obviously I'm not enlightening anyone here, but people seem to ignore this sometimes.

At the final table this is also much clearer than it is early in the tourney. The value of a having a couple million in chips is very high if you have a plan to play tight, and stick with it.
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That's right. With Childs' remaining stack, the small increments for 8th-5th and the huge additional EV of winning, chip EV and cash EV are close enough at this point not to come into the decision.

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No, because those extra chips don't guarantee him anything. They still have marginally decreasing value, not linear or increasing.
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In regard to another point, if I really thought that having my family there would inhibit my play, I'd ask them not to come. Seriously. In practice of course, I would want them to be there but if I have to bust on the first hand doing the right thing, so be it.

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Now I have to say, this is just rhetoric. And rhetoric that is highly unlikely to be true in practice.
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if someone has raised the past FOUR OUT OF EIGHT HANDS

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To be accurate, three out of eight hands. The fourth hand he won, he had called Khan's raise pre-flop, checked the flop, and won with a bet on the turn when an Ace fell. Plus, one of the three raises was a reraise from the BB to Kravchenko's attempt at a blind steal. That leaves two pre-flop raises plus continuation bets.

This was the first time Yang had re-raised pre-flop besides the Kravchenko steal attempt.

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Interesting.
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actually the only reason for folding QQ there is that childs thought he could outplay yang in the long run and take a huge pot of him when he hits a monster

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With that flop, QQ pretty much was a monster.

Again, I do hate this play, because 1) it was the pretty much the best possible flop for QQ and 2) Yang's aggressive record so far (though apparently that may have been exaggerated a bit). Child may have multi-level logic'd himself to discount issue 2, but with issue 1, calling is the obvious play. However, while a bad play, it isn't super horrible. Just fairly semi-horrible [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Bonified]

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No, because those extra chips don't guarantee him anything. They still have marginally decreasing value, not linear or increasing.


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I agree but marginally is the key word. I maintain that the chip/$ EV difference here is so small it doesn't come close to turning this into a fold. But I'll try to work it out and let you know.

Edit : According to my calculations, Childs needed to be 28% to win the hand on a chip EV basis (to make the call), and 37% to win the hand on a $ EV basis. If we add $10M to first prize to account for endorsements, Childs still needed to be 34% to make the call. This is a bigger difference than I had expected.

However, if we give Yang [AA-99, AcKc, AcQc], and that might be on the conservative side, QQ is 54% to win against that range.

[KiwiMark]

I kinda agree that Child's fold was understandable, he didn't want to risk his tournament life on that one pair - there were a few hands that had him beat.

But I don't think the fold was good play. I think that most of the hands that beat him were unlikely. It was possible that Yang had 77, KK or AA - but 44, 22, 74, 72 or 42 were all very unlikely based on the preflop action. There were too many other hands that Yang could have had that Childs was ahead of.

I also think that if Childs didn't want to gamble then he shouldn't have called of 2.5M chips preflop and then bet out 3M chips post flop. Having invested 5.5M chips into the pot he then folded to a bet that was not ten times the pot or anything like that - it was actually less than a pot sized bet (giving him better than 2 to one on his money for a call.

[automat]

watching the hand and knowing that yang would win the thin, i was SO sure that childs would insta-shove only to get sucked out on ... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

sickest fold i´ve ever seen, even more so since yang was playing a hyper-agressive style on the final table ...

pretty sure i´d shove and pray before the flop in his spot ...

[ShizzMoney]

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the worst laydown in the history of televised poker is by some guy whose name i have forgotten (surprise) who had TT and flopped a set and then folded on like a KT8 board. i dont know if anyone remembers this hand, but right after he folded he said to phil ivey who was next to him that he folded TT and he may have made a mistake and phil just laughed at him and said, "no. no way you folded TT just now. no way." i think it was on espn a few years ago.

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Yes, it was during the 2005 WSOP Circut Event in Reno. Granted, he folded on the turn when a straight card hit, but it wasn't that much to call for the river, and he would have also boated up. I think instead David Pham won the hand by bluffing that the actual villain who was raising with a King and a weak kicker.

The teevee makes ppl play funny.

[cero_z]

Ok,

I've read most of the thread, but not all of it, so if this was mentioned already, sorry. What I haven't seen mentioned in all of this is that Yang places a high emphasis on tells, his opponents were ALL giving off classic tells in most hands, and he seemed to pick up on them accurately vs. all of them except for Kravchenko (who also was very readable IMO, though he played the best of anyone at the FT). Now, granted, due to the run of cards, in most cases, Yang's actions can also be interpreted as a donk not being able to let go of any hand. However, in the few spots he did back down, his opponents were, in fact, quite strong. He was reading readable players well, IMO.

Childs, Hilm, Lam, and Kravchenko all consistently exhibited facial tells that were visible on television, and I believe a trained psychologist with an interest in this area would have little trouble spotting them. In the QQ vs. JJ hand, I think Yang had both a hand that he personally could not lay down, AND Childs was showing weakness, because he was, in fact, very afraid he was facing AA, KK, or TTT.

[KiwiMark]

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AND Childs was showing weakness, because he was, in fact, very afraid he was facing AA, KK, or TTT.

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I think if Yang had TTT then it would be a misdeal - you only get 2 cards in Hold'em. It might have been possible that Yang had hit a set of sevens, but not incredibly likely. The board was 7c 4d 2c.

[JereLock]

You only get 2 cards in holdem? Which WSOP were you watching?

[sapol]

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Childs, Hilm, Lam, and Kravchenko all consistently exhibited facial tells

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explain