When Equity and EV disgree

[Cablelessray]

I posted a question in a thread first hand: aces killer in which i explained myself terribly, but i really do want to discuss the concept i was getting at.

when do EV and equity in a tournament disagree on a hand? i tried to come up with some examples, and the example i gave i think fits quite well. many people have said that doubling up does not double your equity, which i will take for fact as i agree as well. if however, you find the situation that does double your equity, you could take a counflip in that situation and it would be even money. if however you can find a situation where you would more than double your equity, logic would say you could take a -EV stand in that case.

an example: if i expand the wotmog theory example to 100 players, buy in $100. let's assume you have $200 equity. that would mean that 99 players combined have $9,800 total equity, or $98.98 per person. to triple up would mean you would have an equity of $397.96. however, if you can 4x your stack, you will be over $400, and over doubling your equity. if this is true could you not take a -EV shot, or say 24%?

gigabet reasoned that you could risk the "additional" chips in your stack to have a chip lead that you can do many more things with, if you are a good player. i know mayn people who say they are good with a big stack are actually just weaker without one, but please ignore that for this thread.

i'm proposing that you can risk your whole stack(at even odds) if you can double your equity. and that there exists a curve on which you can take a -EV situation when you will more than double your equity.

the original question is:

[ QUOTE ]
first hand of a live tournament, with a good structure and a deep field. (for the sake of argument, you didn't come to the casino JUST for the tourney and you are a regular live game/ tournament player)

you are in the BB with 6 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

UTG raises, and 3 people go all in behind. the rest fold.

is this not a good call?

I did some rough calculations assuming their collective ranges are JJ+/AKs/AK and it looks like 20% against 5 people and 25% against 4 people (i'm in communist china, can't DL a odds calculator or use an online one [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]). and if you lose you can go play cash, if you win you have 4 or 5 times the chips (depending on action of UTG)

If noone has A [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] you have 21%/26% [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

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answers about the example before we start:

You are assuming everyone is sharing cards at the top when it seems unlikely for 4-5 players to be doing so if you are calling with suited connectors

yes, and i think this is a fair assumption as not many people will play for all their money on the first hand, as in the example.


you will donk the chips right back off

i've never made this play, and it's never come up, i'm asking a theoretical question about when EV and equity conflict, and how the meta posters would deal with it

why all the random information in the original question

because i needed random posters not to say things like "play when you are ahead only" or "you'll lose and be busted" to clog up any discussion... they did anyway [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

THX anyone who brings enlightenment to the concept, or helps me understand my own thought process. i hope it's clear cut and not written like a caveman.

[BigAlK]

Headed out for an appointment so nothing to say at this point. However here in facist America we may not be able to move our money around, but we can run Poker Stove. Here are some more accurate numbers.

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 25.739% 22.82% 02.92% 24696158112 3158497350.00 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }
Hand 1: 25.739% 22.82% 02.92% 24696158112 3158497350.00 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }
Hand 2: 25.739% 22.82% 02.92% 24696158112 3158497350.00 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }
Hand 3: 22.782% 22.72% 00.06% 24591025872 63532926.00 { 76s }

[ItalianFX]

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 19.318% 17.01% 02.31% 5222706 708021.38 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }
Hand 1: 19.320% 17.01% 02.30% 5223465 707624.88 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }
Hand 2: 19.324% 17.02% 02.31% 5224284 708034.22 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }
Hand 3: 19.321% 17.02% 02.31% 5223810 707800.72 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }
Hand 4: 22.717% 22.67% 00.04% 6960379 13789.80 { 7s6s }


It seems as though this is very tight. Assigning this range to all of these hands is like optimizing data to fit your parameters. It's like fitting data so that you can get the results that you want.

There are too many assumptions to make about these players because they are humans. It is very unreasonable to assume they are all holding premium hands. You can't will the players to have the hands that you want them to hold.

Some may go all-in with a pocket pair because they figure if they can hit a set that they are in for the gold rush. Another may go all-in because he has a legitimately strong hand that is worth pushing or calling a raise.

The fact is that most players are irrational. Some will say, "You were pushing alot of hands so I had to take a chance."

The only thing I find odd about this is that you are opening an alternative that busting out of this tournament implies that you go and play a cash game. If that is the case, then you could just go all-in with every hand because you don't value the tournament like the other players do. On that same note, the fact that you are content with busting and being able to go play a cash game without a second thought leads me to believe that you <u>should</u> just call here with any two (preferably cards that will be deemed live because the opportunity to quadruple up is huge and probably doesn't happen very often - assuming that you play good poker after you win the hand.

Another case is that you will be facing overcards 100% of the time. You are leaving yourself with 19 outs preflop, and then when the overcards are shown, you probably have 9 outs at most (three 6's, three 7's, and 3 spades to catch a monster flush). That is also assuming that nobody else is playing with pocket spades. However, the likelihood that a pair of 6's or 7's will be good is very small; therefore, we must rely on the fact that you have to hit two pair, three of a kind, or the flush, and maybe the fullhouse, which is even a smaller amount, or dodge every card in the deck and win with one pair. I don't know the numbers and I'm not going to try to figure them out or go out of my way to figure them out, but it seems to me that the chances of hitting a big hand on the board is probably pretty slim and shouldn't be the sole purpose of playing this hand.

In my opinion, the fact that you are willing to bust and go out and play a cash game negates any effects of expected value because you are not playing with expected value. You are essentially playing only equity and the amount of chips that you will gain if you come out with the best hand - assuming you slow down and play poker.

Note: I'm no poker scholar and it may be evident by this post. I tried to think through things and come up with a thoughtful explanation. I could be completely wrong, but it was worth a shot.

[Mingdu]

[ QUOTE ]

If noone has A [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] you have 21%/26%



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[Cablelessray]

ItalianFX,

thanks.

i explained that in the question, the [censored] extra stuff like "i can go play a cash game" were just there to avoid posts saying "you busted and are out", which i got anyway.

also, i said i have never made a play similar to this. i am more interested in the thinking of the concept. i do agree players are human, and therefore unpredictable, but i was under the assumption that on this site we both "put people to a hand" and make generalizations about players, as wide ranging from zeejustin's "what if all players played perfectly" to the accepted titles of "normal player" and "god player", etc.

I'm not saying what you said is not valid, but i think you got too hooked on the question in the first thread, and not what i really wanted an answer about. again, thanks for the response and i do think the first part of your post is a lot of help and i agree the ranges are tight, but i was looking for a hand example to fit the idea i wanted to mention (not a real hand obviously)

maybe i should change my assumption to a wider range, but that's besides the point. the range i gave you lead to a +EV play. in the post I'm actually talking more about the -EV situation.

as i said, i explained things poorly in the first thread.

-raymond

[Cablelessray]

[ QUOTE ]
If noone has A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] you have 21%/26%

[/ QUOTE ]

sorry, rereading the original post, i guess i worded it like a donkey. that's why i wrote the rest of the new post to explain.

it was a joke actually about the fact that i was trying to do calculations on a pen and paper, and i gave up and just typed that at the end. (i hate Chinese internet censorship)

[elstunar]

[ QUOTE ]


an example: if i expand the wotmog theory example to 100 players, buy in $100. let's assume you have $200 equity. that would mean that 99 players combined have $9,800 total equity, or $98.98 per person. to triple up would mean you would have an equity of $397.96. however, if you can 4x your stack, you will be over $400, and over doubling your equity. if this is true could you not take a -EV shot, or say 24%?

[/ QUOTE ] I've been trying to think about this some, and i dont think that you would calculate your equity just by redistributing the equity from the players you knocked out into your equity (e.g. $200+ 2*98.98=$397.96). Instead, I think that you would recalculate your equity in a similar fashion to how you calculated your original $200 worth of equity by simply re-evaluating the situation as a whole, and I think it would be less than the 397.96. So if you triple up, you will have 3x the amount of starting chips. So the equity that the two players you knocked out is now redistributed to mostly you, but also somewhat to the other remaining players in the tournament according to a similar argument about the decreasing value of chips. So I can't give you an exact calculation, but I think this somewhat injurs the idea of taking -cEV risks to gain $EV. I hope my thinking here is understandable

[ItalianFX]

Just a quick note, I never really read the first thread so my response was not in connection to the other one.