Daliman vs Sklansky

[Daliman]

This is more a first draft than anything else, so some of the edges may be more than a bit rough, but basically, a few months ago I was working on content for my website, and came up with a section I was planning on calling "Spitting into the wind" or something similar, where I take on some of poker's foremost authorities and most widely held beliefs and attempt to dismantle them. This was me versus Sklansky, and it's been sitting on my comp now for 3 months, so i figured I may as well put up what i have and see where the holes are. For most of the heavy-lifting calculations, I used eastbay's SNG Power Tools, possibly improperly. Both barrels please, everyone.


The first person I am going to take on in this series is none other than the Granddaddy of all poker theorists, David Sklansky. In his excellent book, Tournament Poker For Advanced Players, (TPFAP), he has a quiz section where he gives hypothetical tournament situations as questions, and then gives you the “answer”. On page 186 of TPFAP, he gives the following question (#48);

It is the last table of a no-limit hold’em tournament. There are five players left. The three players behind you have about T20,000 each. The player on your right has T70,000. You have T60,000. The blinds are T1000 and T2000. The chip leader makes it T12000 to go under the gun. You have JcJs. What should you do?

To which he answers;

Throw those two Jacks away. You are not getting good enough implied odds to try to hit your set. And to try to win this hand without improving is too risky.
There are three players who will probably go broke soon. You have a good chance of coming in second, maybe first, and almost certainly, at least third. Your playing two jacks without improvement could easily result in slipping all the way to fifth. This question is a classic example of avoiding someone who can bust you in no-limit, especially when most of the other players cannot.


Now, I suspect many of you will have the same initial inclination as I did; that Jacks are simply too strong to throw away 5-handed preflop. Then, you may consider the fact that since the raiser is the only person that can bust you, the prudent move is to avoid the big stack at this time, as I initially did when I first read this.

But as I have become more experienced in tournaments, I realize that a few of my previously-held beliefs regarding proper poker/tournament strategy, largely shaped by Sklansky, are fundamentally flawed. When I reread this passage from TPFAP, I recognized this as one of the flawed beliefs.

Now, to debunk this strategy, there are some things I am going to have to ignore, and some things I am going to have to assume, since I am going to attempt to utilize only the information given in the situation, and extrapolate strategy as lineally as possible.

#1 I am going to assume that all the players are of equal skill level.
#2 I am going to assume that all the players will make plays cognizant of stack size and position.
#3 I am going to ignore 3-way allin scenarios, first because it would happen such as tiny percentage of the time, and foremost because I am not smart enough to figure for these situations. I doubt very seriously adding 3-way allin possibilities to the equation would change very much anyways, but the main reasoning for this is that the short stacks are only going to call allin with monsters, the big stack will only overcall with a similar monster, which he has less chance of having if the small stack has one, and a majority of players are familiar enough with the value of letting someone else get knocked out that I feel overall the EV difference is infinitesimal.
#4 I am going to assume the players are all good tournament players.
#5 I am going to assume the players are all of the same interest in the money at stake.
#6 I am going to assume the players are all as equally interested in winning as their chip position dictates.
#7 I am going to ignore calling as an option with the Jacks.
#8 I am going to assume all three of the small stacks have EXACTLY T20000
#9 I am going to somewhat ignore the raise size with regard to how strong or weak the initial raiser is.
#10 I am going to ignore future considerations and ramifications of stacks sizes based on my action, (this is, of course, ludicrous, but I am treating this as somewhat of a “vacuum hand”; that only the outcome of this hand matters. For those that say that Sklansky always uses these factors, refer to the previous question , #47, in TPFAP, on page 184-186.)
#10 I am going to assume a relatively standard payout schedule of;

1st $1000
2nd $600
3rd $400
4th $250
5th $150

Ok, on to the debunking!

Now, using an equity calculator I downloaded from HERE(), I factored first for the $EV of the initial chip stacks at the beginning of the hand.
T70000=$657
T60000=$618
T20000=$375 each.

So at the beginning of the hand, the $EV of your chip stack,(which is really all that matters), is $618. The other stacks’ $EV is not relevant specifically. From here, I want to figure out how raising allin

Using the wonderful SnG Power Tools, which can be found at (), I was able to figure out;
a. How often I would get called when I give a specific range of calling hands.
b. What % of the time I would win when I am called.

Since I am assuming that the players are good players, I gave them what I would consider proper calling ranges, and the resultant % of the time they get those hands when I have JJ, and finally, the % of the time I win vs. those hands with JJ, which were;
Button: QQ, KK, AA/ 1.47%(1.5%)/ 18.4%
Small Blind: QQ, KK, AA/ 1.47%(1.5%)/ 18.4%
Big Blind: QQ, KK, AA, AKs/ 1.8%/ 24.9%, (I figure the BB may loosen up if he knows the other 2 short stacks have folded already)
Initial Raiser: TT, JJ, QQ, KK, AA, AK, AKs/ 3.35%/ 43.2%, (If you think this is too loose, I agree with you, but you need to watch the WPT more)

Now, before I go to work on these numbers, I need to figure out a standard range of hands for the initial raise, then figure out what % of those hands fit into the allin call range. Now, of course, the first part of this is highly player-dependant and subjective, but since the raise is essentially putting any of the short stacks allin, I am going to give him a relatively strong initial raise range of 66 , ATs , AJ , KQ , and QJs or better in all cases. This is 9.06% of the total hands dealt, and 3.35%(the raise-callable hands) equals 36.97% of the initial raising hands, which I will round to 37%.

From this info, we know that;
a) The Button and SB will each call 1.5% of the time, and we will win vs. either of them 18.4% of the time they do call.
b) The BB will call 1.8% of the time, and we will win vs. him 24.9% of the time.
c) The Initial raiser will call 37% of the time, and we win vs. him 43.2% of the time
d) Everyone will fold to the raise 58.2% of the time, resulting in a T15000 win with zero risk.


Ok, next order of business is figuring pot sizes for each outcome, what my EV is in each case, then multiplying the resultant number by the % frequency it occurs, then adding up all the totals for my overall EV of pushing.

Pot size and EV for each outcome

vs. Button: Pot size= 12000(raise) +20000(callable portion of reraise) + 20000(His chips) +1000(small blind) +2000(big Blind) = 55000. 55000 x 18.4% = 10120. 10120+40000(Our remainder chips which the caller could not cover)=50120
vs. SB: 12000+20000+20000+2000=54000. 54000x18.4%=9936. 9936+40000=49936
vs. BB: 12000+20000+1000+20000=53000. 53000x24.9%=13197. 13197+40000=53197.
vs. Initial raiser: 12000+60000(higher callable portion of reraise) +1000+2000+48000(remainder to call) = 123000. 123000 x 43.2% = 53136
All fold: 12000+60000+1000+2000=75000

Outcome frequency multiplied by EV

vs. Button: 1.5%(call frequency) x 50120(pot size) = 752
vs. SB: 1.5% x 49936 = 749
vs. BB: 1.8% x 53197= 957
vs. Initial raiser: 37% x 53136= 19660
All fold: 58.2% x 75000= 43650

So, from here, getting our EV is a simple matter of adding all the resultant totals;

752+749+957+19660+43650=65768

So, pushing here is worth T5768 more than folding. Simple call, based on the #’s right?


Right.

But we’re going to go a bit further with this, getting back into $EV. If you are not familiar with $EV, please refer to the glossary.

To figure the $EV, I am going to need to deduct a stack-size-as-a-proportional amount of chips from each player to offset the chips I have gained. Each short stack player has 15.4% of the total chips in play not counting mine, and the big stack has 53.8%, so the will take a commensurate hit of my chips gain to their individual stacks, leaving us with resultant average chip stacks and $EV’s of;

Initial raiser: T66897=$648
Our Hand: T65768=$644
Small stacks: T19112= $369


Now, of course, the $EV can vary wildly based on the payout structure, but as you can see, no matter how you cut it, this is an easy push with the variables given.


For those of you that say the calling range for the other big stack is far too wide, I also narrowed his range down to QQ, KK, AA, AK, and AKs, which made approximately a 1250 chip difference overall, still making this push proper.




I am posting this in both the MTT forum and my home-court, the SNG forum, even though it doesn't have much basis in SNG strategy.

[Irieguy]

I read the hand example and thought "clear push." Then I skipped to the end and saw how Daliman "proved" that pushing is way better.

So, Daliman is right in my opinion. I hope all the stuff in the middle shows why.

Irieguy

[raptor517]

you must have a lot of free time dali mang. holla

[Daliman]

Was when I was on VACA in FL, no internet will do this to me..... but no work on it since.

[Apathy]

All you need to do is write a clever limerick or tell a story in asofel/Mat Sklanskys post in oot right now and you could ask David about it.

LINK

[Daliman]

[ QUOTE ]
I read the hand example and thought "clear push." Then I skipped to the end and saw how Daliman "proved" that pushing is way better.

So, Daliman is right in my opinion. I hope all the stuff in the middle shows why.

Irieguy

[/ QUOTE ]

Seriously...

[raptor517]

[ QUOTE ]
I read the hand example and thought "clear push." Then I skipped to the end and saw how Daliman "proved" that pushing is way better.

So, Daliman is right in my opinion. I hope all the stuff in the middle shows why.

Irieguy

[/ QUOTE ]

oh, yea, i just looked at it. im shoving every time. all that math stuff im sure i calculated immediately in my head before deciding instantly to push. holla

[Tyler Durden]

Dude, that's like a lot to read. And there's lots of numbers too.

[Newt_Buggs]

I'm sorry Daliman, I'm like everyone else and too lazy to read everything since this is a fairly easy push for me as well. I don't know if you already said this, but he probably knows that he can bully the table, giving him a wide hand range here but the size of the raise seems to imply that AA,KK isn't even included in this range.

[raptor517]

oh, another reason i shove there is because anyone that open raises to 6x the bb that late in a tournament prolly isnt hte most amazing player ever. holla