Theoretical question..
 

Setting: Standard tournament with standard structure. First hand.
Situation: Utg shoves.. folded around to you in the bb and you look down at q2o.. you fold and he shows 72o

A friend of mine said that in this situation utg made you make a mistake by folding the best hand.. if his hand were face up you would have called. I said that it is not a mistake to fold because your hand is so far behind villain's range of shoving hands? So, in this situation is the bb folding a weak but dominating hand a mistake?

Re: Theoretical question..
 

I think your friend refers to the "Theorem of Poker" by Sklansky, doesn´t he? Which means that every time you play a hand other than you would have played it when you played face up you make a mistake.

Said this, your friend is correct. But even Sklansky admits, that this point of view is purely theoretical and sometimes we cannot avoid making mistakes ... [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

Re: Theoretical question..
 

this is dumb unless he shows u his cards

Re: Theoretical question..
 

as tackleberry said - you are both right.

by sklansky's theorem of poker you made a mistake not calling it (obvious - if you had called you had a 74% chance of winning this hand). but this assumes that you know what UTG was playing - and you can't.

you were right not to call - even if you give UTG a range of playing any 2 cards from UTG that way you can't call - because your Q2o makes only 47% against 2 random cards.

this is theory on the one and real poker life on the other side.

Re: Theoretical question..
 

Following Sklansky's fundamental theorem to a strict interpretation, like your friend, is a good way to be a bad results oriented player.

Re: Theoretical question..
 

I don´t assume OP´s friend to have seriously blamed him for not calling - this seemed just like an academical discussion (as OP already said). [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]