Hank Azaria laying down KK.....should I be impressed?

[nath]

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Nath I wouldn't and I don't think anyone would argue; you're a better tournament player than me, better player overall for that matter. I'm not intending to come off as an authority on the this subject. I am intending to voice my opinion and back that opinion up.

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Sure. And I'm trying to use the experience I've accrued and the authority that gives me to explain to you why it's wrong.

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To sum everything up No I wouldn't fold KK pf like Hank did, even if the guy flat out told me he had AA because I wouldn't believe him, and I think there's some considerations about table image if I fold in that spot, it's too weak tight for my liking. But I can't see how folding KK is bad when your opponent shows AA. Yes the pot odds, the pot odds, the pot odds.

[/ QUOTE ]
KK is about a 4:1 underdog against AA. If you're getting 4:1 pot odds to call, you make money in the long run.
Go read the recent thread in MTT about "When to take a coinflip". Read the Matt Matros article I linked. The pot odds make it a positive-expectation gamble, and therefore you are making a mistake if you don't play it.

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I'd refer you to page 202 of TPFAP, entitled You're Broke, You're Done. That's pretty much my thinking why take a slighty EV+ call if it means you stand a very good chance of being eliminated.

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This has been covered extensively in the MTT forum; the consensus is that you are rarely good enough or have the time vs. the field to make passing on a close +EV gamble a good idea. In general, you are not as far ahead of the field in terms of skill as you think you are.

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Also no one had researched the hand I thought the hand occured later in the tournament when I really think you should avoid hands you are well behind in.

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I called an all in at the WSOP main event with 32 offsuit because I was getting 3 to 1 pot odds. I really don't think you understand just what a big factor pot odds are in tournaments. They might be even more so than in cash games because a nitty tight player who doesn't gamble much can still make money at no-limit cash, just not as much as he could otherwise. He will never win a tournament unless the deck completely hits him in the face.
You don't win tournaments by passing on favorable gambles. You just don't.

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Also the advice I'm giving in this thread is WSOP FT/ME late stages specific. You're right I've never been to one of these, so it's alot like listening to Uncle Rico talk about how he'd of been playing in the NFL if his high school coach had started him etc.

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Yeah, and no offense, but the advice is equally as misguided as Uncle Rico's NFL aspirations.

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You kinda made my point for me though, you've been to 1 WSOP FT. There's no guarantee you'll be back next year or the year after that. So the "advice" I'm giving takes that into consideration

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You seem to be more interested in hanging out at the final table as long as possible. For me, the fact that there's no guarantee I'll be back is MORE incentive to play for first. An opportunity to win a WSOP bracelet does not come easily, and to weak-tight my way out of one because I wanted to "survive" would haunt me for a long time.

Take a look at the coverage of my final table. I play a number of big pots with marginal holdings and even hands where I expected to be behind, because they were correct plays according to the pot odds. I was playing to win.

Here's the deal: You don't know how often a good spot is going to come along. If you keep waiting for a better one, you will lose chips getting ground down waiting-- and that spot may never even surface. So whenever you have the chance to make a play that has a positive expectation, you need to take it.

[Thundercat32]

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Nath I wouldn't and I don't think anyone would argue; you're a better tournament player than me, better player overall for that matter. I'm not intending to come off as an authority on the this subject. I am intending to voice my opinion and back that opinion up.

[/ QUOTE ]
Sure. And I'm trying to use the experience I've accrued and the authority that gives me to explain to you why it's wrong.

[ QUOTE ]
To sum everything up No I wouldn't fold KK pf like Hank did, even if the guy flat out told me he had AA because I wouldn't believe him, and I think there's some considerations about table image if I fold in that spot, it's too weak tight for my liking. But I can't see how folding KK is bad when your opponent shows AA. Yes the pot odds, the pot odds, the pot odds.

[/ QUOTE ]
KK is about a 4:1 underdog against AA. If you're getting 4:1 pot odds to call, you make money in the long run.
Go read the recent thread in MTT about "When to take a coinflip". Read the Matt Matros article I linked. The pot odds make it a positive-expectation gamble, and therefore you are making a mistake if you don't play it.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd refer you to page 202 of TPFAP, entitled You're Broke, You're Done. That's pretty much my thinking why take a slighty EV+ call if it means you stand a very good chance of being eliminated.

[/ QUOTE ]
This has been covered extensively in the MTT forum; the consensus is that you are rarely good enough or have the time vs. the field to make passing on a close +EV gamble a good idea. In general, you are not as far ahead of the field in terms of skill as you think you are.

[ QUOTE ]
Also no one had researched the hand I thought the hand occured later in the tournament when I really think you should avoid hands you are well behind in.

[/ QUOTE ]
I called an all in at the WSOP main event with 32 offsuit because I was getting 3 to 1 pot odds. I really don't think you understand just what a big factor pot odds are in tournaments. They might be even more so than in cash games because a nitty tight player who doesn't gamble much can still make money at no-limit cash, just not as much as he could otherwise. He will never win a tournament unless the deck completely hits him in the face.
You don't win tournaments by passing on favorable gambles. You just don't.

[ QUOTE ]
Also the advice I'm giving in this thread is WSOP FT/ME late stages specific. You're right I've never been to one of these, so it's alot like listening to Uncle Rico talk about how he'd of been playing in the NFL if his high school coach had started him etc.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, and no offense, but the advice is equally as misguided as Uncle Rico's NFL aspirations.

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You kinda made my point for me though, you've been to 1 WSOP FT. There's no guarantee you'll be back next year or the year after that. So the "advice" I'm giving takes that into consideration

[/ QUOTE ]
You seem to be more interested in hanging out at the final table as long as possible. For me, the fact that there's no guarantee I'll be back is MORE incentive to play for first. An opportunity to win a WSOP bracelet does not come easily, and to weak-tight my way out of one because I wanted to "survive" would haunt me for a long time.

Take a look at the coverage of my final table. I play a number of big pots with marginal holdings and even hands where I expected to be behind, because they were correct plays according to the pot odds. I was playing to win.

Here's the deal: You don't know how often a good spot is going to come along. If you keep waiting for a better one, you will lose chips getting ground down waiting-- and that spot may never even surface. So whenever you have the chance to make a play that has a positive expectation, you need to take it.

[/ QUOTE ]


Nath,

You're being to swing me around to your way of thinking on this. I'd have to completely concede the part about Uncle Rico. I have no experience whatsoever in these high buyin tournaments. I certainly defer to your judgement/experience about what actually happens and what you actually need to consider playing them.

I think I'd agree Hank made a small mistake folding KK. I don't believe it was a huge mistake, but nonetheless a mistake that probably shouldn't be made by serious players.

I agree with you about the fearlessness you should have playing a FT, I've always told myself any tournament I'm playing I'm playing for first. Of course I've never been in a situation where just folding could net me a couple extra thousand dollars, I might change my mind than, but I certainly don't embrace that as a philosophy. When I get home tonight I'm going to have a look at your FT hands see what I can pick up.

Let me ask you this as the more and more I think about it I agree with your last point, how can you turn down EV+ situations however slight they be and expect to do well in the long run. But there has to be a few times you'd deviate from this approach.

Say you are at the FT of the $5k No Limit Hold'em 7 players are left. Blinds are 12k/24k 4k ante You are 2nd at the table in chips with 657k, Paul Wasicka is in 1st with a little over 900k, Erick Lindgren has 440k, Eric Lynch has 410k, Kevin Petersen has 325k, Dan Harrington has 270k, and the short stack is Steve Danneman with 175k.
Payout structure.
1 $818546
2 $423893
3 $233872
4 $204638
5 $175404
6 $146170
7 $116936

Wasicka is in the BB and you're on the Button with QQ. Lindgren limps in from UTG, Harrington pushes all in from the CO for 266k. You call, than Wasicka pushes all in from the BB for 908k. Lindgren calls his remaining 412k. You have 387k remaining the pot is $1,654,000. You're getting better than 4.2-1 on your money and winning this pot puts you in prime contention for the bracelet. Yet how could you not be dominated and risking going out in 7th place is a huge drop in money from even 3rd or 4th place.

If it helps Lindgren has AA, Harrington JJ, and Wasicka AA, what would you do with your remaining 387k in chips?

[Rottersod]

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KK is about a 4:1 underdog against AA. If you're getting 4:1 pot odds to call, you make money in the long run.

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This is the problem I have with this kind of robot thinking. As the previous poster pointed out it's fine if you are playing in a $109 MTT and will keep playing in those. The WSOP ME is a once a year event and costs $10,000 to enter. The "long run" is a statistical comparison of your entire poker career and sometimes you need to take other factors into consideration if you want to move ahead in a tournament that is so lucrative to the final 200 or so.

Also, if you know your opp has AA and you have KK then the best you can be pre-flop is 4-1 underdog and if he has your suits then it will be worse. You will know for a fact that if you don't hit the flop then your odds get even worse so I don't see how the fact that you're getting 4-1 odds on your money is that good - especially that early when survival is much more important than accumulation.

[nath]

Man those stacks are short.
Anyway:
At the final table, situations do come up where when someone can possibly be eliminated on a hand that $EV comes into consideration as different from cEV. In this hand, a fold will probably move me up one spot in the money, possibly two. If I call and lose, I'm out, possibly 7th, and the call is only so very slightly better than breakeven chipwise, if that (i'm between a 4 to 4.5:1 dog against one overpair, let alone two if one has AA and one has KK) that the potential cost in real money isn't worth the potential gain in chips.
Here the effect of the payout structure does play a determining factor. But we are at the final table dealing with a multi-way all in with a call that may be breakeven at best and almost surely is not. (There's little range involved here. I pretty clearly have the worst hand. There's no chance the two plays who have me covered are both sitting on JJ or AK.)
In the Hank Azaria hand, Azaria had the pot odds to make this call if his opponent's range was exactly AA. Factor in any chance at all that he's overplaying AKs or QQ and it's a clear call by the time the fourth raise goes in.

What it really comes down to is that saying things like "I don't make this call even with the pot odds, because I know I'm beat," shows a lack of understanding of what pot odds are and how to apply them.

[nath]

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KK is about a 4:1 underdog against AA. If you're getting 4:1 pot odds to call, you make money in the long run.

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This is the problem I have with this kind of robot thinking. As the previous poster pointed out it's fine if you are playing in a $109 MTT and will keep playing in those. The WSOP ME is a once a year event and costs $10,000 to enter. The "long run" is a statistical comparison of your entire poker career and sometimes you need to take other factors into consideration if you want to move ahead in a tournament that is so lucrative to the final 200 or so.

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No, when there are 8,000 people left, you need to be taking good spots when they are offered to you and hope the cards go your way. I think you really don't understand that the best way to win any given tournament is to make the play that works out the best in the long run. You cannot win every tournament; you make the best decisions you can, and sometimes the cards fall your way enough to propel you the rest of the way there.
You call my thinking robotic but being aggressive in these spots instead of weak/tight is really what revolutionzed tournament poker strategy. Doesn't it occur to you that a vast school of successful winning players think this way for a reason?
The robots are the ones who repeat myths about "tournament life on the line" and "you're either a small favorite or a big dog" without looking at other considerations.

Also, specific to this hand: Is there a better than 21% chance Hank Azaria can get from 2,900 to 15,000 chips if he folds KK here? Not only that, it's not even getting to 15,000; it's making up for all the opportunities he missed at chip-gathering along the way because he didn't have as many chips as needed to leverage certain spots. So he really needs to be an even higher percentage than that, to pass up this spot here.

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Also, if you know your opp has AA and you have KK then the best you can be pre-flop is 4-1 underdog and if he has your suits then it will be worse. You will know for a fact that if you don't hit the flop then your odds get even worse so I don't see how the fact that you're getting 4-1 odds on your money is that good - especially that early when survival is much more important than accumulation.

[/ QUOTE ]
IF YOU'RE GETTING 4:1 ODDS ON YOUR MONEY, AND YOU'RE 21% TO WIN, YOU HAVE A POSITIVE EXPECTATION IF YOU CALL. YOU HAVE A ZERO EXPECTATION IF YOU FOLD. POSITIVE IS GREATER THAN ZERO.

Survival being more important than accumulation is a myth.


Everyone REALLY needs to go read the MTT forum. I'm getting tired of this thread because I'm explaining concepts which are considered fundamentally basic to winning at tournaments, and they're covered extensively there.

[SuperUberBob]

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The opponent practically told Hank he had aces.

If the guy kept quiet, Hank would have probably called.

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If he gave more than good enough odds to Hank, why would he want a call?

[/ QUOTE ]

He may have had the odds.

But there are some times where you can't rely solely upon pot odds. If somebody pretty much screams at the top of their lungs that they have aces, that I could fold that in situation.

The guy came over the top of a raise and a re-raise. In T.J's book, I believe he said that is most of the time indicative of kings or aces. Since Hank has two of the kings, that means by that logic, he's at best case scenario a split pot and even that's not a guarantee.

Apparently, Hank felt that he was pretty honest in his play. Not a heavy bluffer. Pretty by the book type play.

I guess this is more read dependent more than math wise. Since we didn't see any past hands, we don't have enough background in this situation.

[Diamond Lie]

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In the WSOP ME, he correctly folded KK to AA preflop. Was this a really good play? A really bad play? Standard play? (I don't know much about donkament strategy)

Dunno, it was just kind of surprising to see anyone fold KK preflop, much less a celebrity amateur player.

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I find it almost impossible to lay down King's preflop, aside from a few unique situations (on the bubble, etc...).

The one time I (almost) layed them down was a live game, first hand of the tournament I was in. Chip stacks of 4500. Blinds 100-200. UTG raised to 800, I raised to 1600 from MP1, CO pushed all in. I knew that there was a very good chance I was up against aces here. Almost positive, but I called regardless. Villain flipped over Aces on a dry board we both missed. UTG said he folded AQ suited.

[nath]

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The opponent practically told Hank he had aces.

If the guy kept quiet, Hank would have probably called.

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If he gave more than good enough odds to Hank, why would he want a call?

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He may have had the odds.

But there are some times where you can't rely solely upon pot odds. If somebody pretty much screams at the top of their lungs that they have aces, that I could fold that in situation.

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Do you even know what pot odds are and how you use them to make decisions?

[Thundercat32]

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Man those stacks are short.
Anyway:
At the final table, situations do come up where when someone can possibly be eliminated on a hand that $EV comes into consideration as different from cEV. In this hand, a fold will probably move me up one spot in the money, possibly two. If I call and lose, I'm out, possibly 7th, and the call is only so very slightly better than breakeven chipwise, if that (i'm between a 4 to 4.5:1 dog against one overpair, let alone two if one has AA and one has KK) that the potential cost in real money isn't worth the potential gain in chips.
Here the effect of the payout structure does play a determining factor. But we are at the final table dealing with a multi-way all in with a call that may be breakeven at best and almost surely is not. (There's little range involved here. I pretty clearly have the worst hand. There's no chance the two plays who have me covered are both sitting on JJ or AK.)
In the Hank Azaria hand, Azaria had the pot odds to make this call if his opponent's range was exactly AA. Factor in any chance at all that he's overplaying AKs or QQ and it's a clear call by the time the fourth raise goes in.

What it really comes down to is that saying things like "I don't make this call even with the pot odds, because I know I'm beat," shows a lack of understanding of what pot odds are and how to apply them.

[/ QUOTE ]


Nath,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my posts in an instructive manner even though you found them a little frustrating. I've learned a little something from this discussion. Also I don't want you to think I brought up the $5,000 NL WSOP FT hypothetical to show you up or anything, I didn't want you to take me for a total moron. I wanted to demonstrate the sort of scenario I also had in mind besides the Azaria hand when I was coming out strong against calling. Anyways you're right about me needing to better understand what pot odds all encompasses. I know you sometimes get frustrated with the less experienced players, but stay patient with us we're still learning. I really appreciate getting your feedback so I hope you continue to give it, especially when I'm way off base with something I'm saying.

[nath]

No problem. I feel the need to correct obvious errors in thinking when I see them. I'd really do better to just stay out of strategy discussions in the TV forum, though, and keep them in MTT, where the eopel who really want ot learn can find them.