Final Table Theories

[crankalicious]

Okay, I'm sitting at the final table of a 70 player live tournament short stacked with 41,000 in chips. The blinds are 6000/12000. Nobody else at the table has an M higher than 10 and the average is probably 5. I'm UTG and am staring over at 18000 in blinds about to render me neutered. The play at the table is pretty much all-in, all the time - usually any player stealing the blinds. I've done so once and survived, raising my stack from 23,000 to its current level, but I'm feeling that any good hand now needs to be played. I look down at A9 suited and push all-in.

What's your approach at this point? Do you:

1. Push all-in as I did realizing that you can't afford to eat those blinds and are unlikely to see a better hand than A9 suited soon?
2. Fold because you're going to wait for a better hand in the next orbit with the intention of going all-in?
3. Fold because you're in early position and the odds of getting called by a better hand are fairly high? You'd rather go all-in with any two cards in late position, even with 23,000 in chips.
4. Fold with the intention of getting blinded out because its the best chance of moving up given the level of the other chip stacks at the table and the all-in play that's happening.
5. Something else.

[JammyDodga]

Not that I think it matters when you are this short, but how many people are left at the FT?

[crankalicious]

There were 8 at this particular point.

[levAA]

1. yed push all-in with nearly ATC cause the blinds will cripple you down where you have no more FE - A9s is a monster here
2. next orbit you're M will be under 2 so this is def. the last hand you can play with FE
4. moving up depends on the other stacks and the payout-structure, but usually you want to reach first 3 - so folding for reaching 7th place isn't usually worth it.

[HorridSludgyBits]

This depends on the payout structure, but if it's like most MTT's, your play should be geared toward making the top 3 spots, not to move up from 9th to, say, 7th. Push your A9 and suck out when you get called by AJ.

The fact that all in pushes are "mostly" successful reinforces that this is the right move. No one at the table can afford throw away chips even to the short stack. The fact that you will increase your stack by nearly 50% most of the time is enough. This is one spot where HOH2's FT movie is right: position and even hand strength take a back seat to getting it all in first.

levAA beat me to it [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[4CardStraight]

Push it and turn the ace face up.

Im only slightly joking.

4Card.

[crankalicious]

If it helps, the payout structure was something like this:

8. $70
7. $110
6. $175
5. $245
4. $350
3. $500
2. $650
1. $955

The tournament cost $50. Having been in this spot a few times, I wondered if just getting blinded out wouldn't have produced a 5th place finish. Certainly though, it's a question of how the move over time will play out in terms of overall finish.

[4CardStraight]

we are highly likely to just steal the blinds here and they are huge. Our plan shouldnt really ever be to fold into the money, all we do is limit our ability to make the big bucks. Tournament ROI is all about the top couple spots. We take risks and gambles to try to secure the first and second places more often than our opponents. SO we push A9s utg with 5bb and less. many times we get called by an underpair and were a good coinflip with plenty of overlay. sometimes we face a King high hand and were a 60/40. Very occasionally were dominated by a bigger ace and we still have a 30% chance to win the pot, and with that much in the pot already its a very good gamble.

Some math I was showing some friends... Lets say tournaments are all just coinflips for stacks. If a tournament is 132 people , if we double up 7 times, we win the tournament having all the chips.

Each person might normally have a 50 50 shot of doubling up, but lets say we go for a thin edge, and we are able to get a 55% chance to double up most of the time, by playing good situations, by stealing some, by having the best of it when we call pushes. Now we are able to land 7 double ups 1.5% of the time instead of 7.8% of the time that most people do. We end up winning first twice as much as the next guy (and second, and third, and so on).. our tournament ROI is now 100%. Now all we need to do is make sure that when we are "flipping for stacks" that we have enough edge that we are 55% to double up. One way to do this is to have the blinds be 10% of our stack when we push a nearly optimal +cEV push. we may be 50/50 against any range that calls us or better, but we are 55% to double up. We only need 7 of them, and it really doesnt matter much when they come. Sometimes we can be favored 80/20, but its impossible to know ahead of time when we push QQ if were up against 33 or AK, we want to NET OUT to being 55% to double up. Its almost theoretically impossible to get much higher... Like we can wait to go all in until after the flop, but we need to be 60/40 favorites post flop to be much ahead of the 55% range, and who goes all in with us with under 10 outs? doesnt happen much... When are we favored that much preflop? Not often, since all hands have a decent chance to win with 5 cards to come. So we shoot for going all in post flop whenever we have that same likely hood of a 10% edge to double up.

4Card

[JammyDodga]

[ QUOTE ]
we are highly likely to just steal the blinds here and they are huge. Our plan shouldnt really ever be to fold into the money, all we do is limit our ability to make the big bucks. Tournament ROI is all about the top couple spots. We take risks and gambles to try to secure the first and second places more often than our opponents. SO we push A9s utg. many times we get called by an underpair and were a good coinflip with plenty of overlay. sometimes we face a King high hand and were a 60/40. Very occasionally were dominated by a bigger ace and we still have a 30% chance to win the pot, and with that much in the pot already its a very good gamble.


[/ QUOTE ]

What he said...

Also, the thing we are worried anout most is beingd ominated by a higer ace yeah?

I just did some quick maths which help show how why we have to push here. If we are called by a higher ace who isnt one of the blinds, we are still only 10k -EV.

We are going to make much more than this up when they call with a lower pair, or when they call with a lower ace or a king.

The other thing to think about is that with our stack size, being in the blinds is going to be -EV in itself. If we double up, our expectation of the blinds goes up, so the move is +EV for this hand, and +EV for the next 2 as well.

I'm not sure I made that clear, but i hope you get my drift.

[SengioKang]

it's a much better hand pushing than calling that's for sure.

steal the blinds... double your stack... J3o is HUUUGE in your spot.... remember "UTG is the new cutoff"