HugePoker

I call this one … “What are pot odds?”

And this one (six hands later) … “I might make a flush again … I CALL!”

Caution: This post will probably only be of interest to poker nerds – maybe math nerds might have fun with it, or anyone who has ever studied game theory. Or if you just want to roll your eyes at what poker nerds get all excited about, you might enjoy a couple of pages of it in that context. You’ve been warned.

In his comment to my last boastful post about my Step 6 tournament win, Pete brings up a good question about the three final hands in which the chip leader had a total catastrophe and busted out on the bubble. His comment was:

Congrats! So, were the last 3 hands a complete meltdown on Octavian’s part, or was that just terrible luck? (both!) He went from chip leader to bubble-boy in just 3 hands! It seemed like he was in ”I’m chip leader, I’m all in every hand” mode, and didn’t put on the brakes once his stack had a big bite taken out of it. Sucks to be him.

It certainly was striking to watch the one guy at the table who seemed to have a lock on winning one of the three prizes fall apart in three consecutive hands. A couple of months ago I would have thought the same thing, ie that he threw away a near lock on victory, but now that I’m trying to be a student of this Nash Equilibrium & ICM stuff I’m not so sure. I’ve wanted to go back over all the bubble hands in that tournament to see if I can find mistakes I might have made, and tendencies in some of the opponents I’m likely to run into again, and just to make myself more familiar with the different kinds of situations that can come up on the bubble, so I’ll do that (publicly) here. If you’re going to follow along for this, you’ll need to bring up the hand replayer by CLICKING HERE and skipping to hand number 95 (actually if you do a Shift-Click it should open the replayer in a new window so you can have both on your screen). [It's possible that these hand histories only get stored for a limited time. If you click on this link and get an image of a poker table but you can't actually play any hands, let me know and I'll reload it] I’m also going to be linking to the “ICM Nash Calculator” at holdemresources.net which I use to calculate shoving and calling ranges for situations in a single table tournament. If you click on each hand number I list, you’ll see the analysis for that particular hand/situation. If you’re just interested in seeing Pete’s question addressed, just read the preamble here and go through the first hand, and then skip to hand 122, but I’m going through every hand on the bubble from the time we got down to 5 players until bubble-boy was eliminated in fourth. I’m going to get a donut and settle in – you might want to do the same…

The 6th place player was knocked out on hand 94, so the 5-handed bubble starts on hand 95. At this point we all have $1200 locked up and we’re playing for $5300 that will be awarded to the final three players standing. In effect the five of us are playing for three $4100 prizes.

Octavian_C 9335
woltas 5735
strike1 (hero) 5535
Dirty4b 3305
DDBeast 3090

At the start of the bubble my stack is healthy but I’m in a tough spot position-wise. With Octavian_C on my left, any stabs I take at the pot are going to have to go through the chip leader, who can try to bust me without risking his tournament life – in fact if he calls me and loses he will just be knocked down to third.

If I go to the entry page of the Nash calculator and enter all the stack sizes and blinds, I end up with THIS PAGE.

I’ll explain what some of the numbers on that page mean:

Players are listed in order of their preflop action. I’m the first player on the list (UTG or under the gun) with 5535 chips. I should go all-in with the best 18.3% (my Push%) of possible hands, and my tournament seat is worth about $2657 (remember we’ve already discounted the $1200 we have locked up, so it’s really worth $3857, but for the purposes of calculating this stuff it’s simpler to remove the 5 $1200’s that are already in the bank). The next player (CO = “cutoff”) is Octavian_C with 9335 chips and $3372 in equity. Next is dirty4b on the button (BU) with 3305 chips and $1828 in equity. Then there’s woltas in the small blind (SB) with 5735 chips, just slightly more than me, with corresponding equity (EQPre) of $2712 (EQPre means equity prior to posting the blinds). Finally in the big blind (BB) is DDBeast with the shortest stack of 3090 and the lowest equity of $1729. Note that even though the chip leader has over three times as many chips as the short stack, he doesn’t even have double the short stack’s equity – that reflects the fact that poker tournament chips have declining value – ie your first 1000 chips is worth x, and your next 1000 is worth y and your next 1000 is worth z, where x is greater than y is greater than z. This is in contrast to a regular old cash game (or a tournament that only awards one prize) where every chip has the same value.

In the next box on the page are everyone’s pushing, calling, and overcalling percentages and ranges. I should shove the best 18.3% of my hands: this range is expressed as 22+ A2s+ A9o+ K7s+ KJo+ Q8s+ QJo J8s+ JTo T8s+ 98s, meaning I can shove any pair, any suited Ace, any unsuited Ace with at least a Nine kicker, and so on. If I decide to shove, then the cutoff can call with 1.4% (meaning QQ, KK or AA) and if HE calls, then any of the remaining players can only “overcall” if they have exactly Aces. If the cutoff folds, then the button can call with 2.6% (pairs Tens or higher or AKs), and so on down the line.

OK let’s start looking at the hands:

As you read through this post, every time I list a hand number you can click on it (again, I recommend shift-clicking) to see the calculated ranges for that hand.

Hand 95:

According to the Nash calculator, I should be shoving all-in with the top 18.3% of my hands. Some of the weakest looking hands I could theoretically shove would be J8s, JTo, K7s, all pretty mediocre looking, but still above average hands. My pathetic little 86o comes nowhere near this list, so I have a clear fold.

Octavian_C can theoretically push all-in with the top 44.2%, meaning hands as bad as K2s, 54s, Q9o etc. He diverges from our little theoretical ivory tower by min-raising. This is something I’ve been trying to think about lately – when is it effective to just raise a normal amount instead of pushing all your chips in? Obviously if you can get away with it and people are almost as likely to fold, it’s great because it risks fewer chips, but if an opponent sees that raise as just more money they can steal by pushing all-in themselves then you end up kicking yourself for flushing those chips down the toilet. But this time it works for him, everyone folds and he picks up the blinds.

Hand 96:

With the big stack under the gun, he should be shoving a lot of hands, 46% according to Mr Nash, but he doesn’t. We don’t know his cards so we can’t judge him yet, but if he keeps folding in spots where he should be raising half the time, I’ll start to think that his pushing range is tighter than it should be, and I’ll tighten my calling range against him to exploit that. The next three players should be pushing 29%, 52% and 69%. The first two fold and DDBeast shoves, which is probably correct unless his hand was super-duper-stinky. Because I expect that he should be shoving a wide range, I can call with a somewhat wide range (29%), meaning I could call with K6s, 44, QTo or better hands. I would have a hard time calling that wide, so perhaps it’s just as well that I have 7-5-offsuit, and have no difficult decision to ponder.

Hand 97:

It’s folded to DDBeast on the button and he shoves again. This time he should be shoving 36% of the time, so there’s no reason to doubt that he has that good of a hand, but I’ll keep an eye on him to make sure he’s not shoving too much. In my shoes, with the chip leader to act after me, I would have to have a serious hand, top 7.1%, to think about calling, a pair of 8’s or better, AJ or better, etc, and again I have a hand I don’t even have to think about. Note that if DDBeast had folded, then I *would* have had to think about pushing with my 4-2: Nash says I should push 86.2% of my hands, and 42o doesn’t make the cut, but JUST BARELY … 42s is good enough to shove with.

Hand 98:

It’s folded to me on the button, I have crap, and I fold. The Nash calculator says Octavian should push any 2 cards, and he does, which doesn’t really give us any info. The short stack in the big blind would need a pretty good hand, top 16%, to call, so it’s no surprise that he folds.

Hand 99 (blinds are up to 200-400 with a 25 ante):

With the blinds up and antes added, everyone has to loosen their pushing (and calling) ranges a little, because there’s more in the middle to fight for and more danger in just sitting around letting the blinds and antes eat you up. I have crap again. It’s folded to dirty4b in the small blind, who just calls. That’s pretty weak. Nash says he should be pushing 74% of the time, so with hands as weak as 85o. If his hand is worse than that he shouldn’t even put in the extra 200 chips, and if it’s better than that he should shove and put pressure on the BB instead of allowing the BB to pressure him. He gets punished for his weakness and has to fold. “woltas” in the BB is the most accomplished player in this bunch and understands what an opportunity he’s just been presented with – he could be making this move with any two cards. Mental note not to ever try limping or standard-raising with him unless I’m trying to trap him, which I’m rarely going to be doing on a satellite bubble.

Hand 100:

I don’t think I really considered shoving with J8o, but it’s not that far off. Nash says 26.4% for me, so if my J8 were suited I could shove, and if I had JT or QT offsuit I could shove. It’s folded around to woltas who shoves. The suggested shoving range for him is kind of funny: 99.1%, 22+ 4x+ 32s, meaning any pair, any hand with a 4 or higher in it, or 32s. So there’s exactly one hand he should fold, 32o. DDBeast needs a decent hand to call, and he doesn’t.

Hand 101:

Here Octavian the chip leader makes a weird 988-chip UTG raise. If he had fewer chips so that I could do him some serious damage I would consider re-shoving on him, but as it is I have no idea what his raise means and my hand is decent but not great and I fold. I’d love to know what sort of hand he would choose to do that with, but for now I just have to wonder.

[edited] In a recent comment, V7i7c brings up hand 101 in which I fold K7s to an odd 2.5x raise form the UTG chip leader. He didn’t compare the two, but it made me try to justify folding here as opposed to re-shoving on hand 106 when DDBeast raised me from the small blind. I was tempted to shove the K7s, but I think there are several reasons to fold K7s in hand 101 and shove with the AJ in hand 106. Interestingly I think that the LEAST important reason is that AJ is better than K7s. The most important reason (to my mind) is that in hand 101 I can’t bust or even cripple Octavian_C. This means that he can call me with a pretty good hand and not be too afraid of losing, so my reshove is less likely to yield the desired result. The second most important reason is that in hand 101 I can’t bust or even cripple Octavian_C … no, that’s not a typo … that reason counts twice, because there’s another branch to it –if I shove, get called, and win on hand 101, it will be a great result, but I won’t (virtually) eliminate an opponent (hugely important in a satellite), whereas in hand 106 if I shove, get called and win, the tournament will be nearly over for me – I’ll have the dominant chip lead and dirty4b will have 4 big blinds and DDBeast will have less than one, so my gain from the best possible outcome of the hand is much better in 106 than it is in 101. The corollary to that is that I have more to lose in hand 101 than I do in 106 – in hand 101 I’m in a pretty comfy spot: I’m 3rd in chips, so if all goes according to plan (lol) the two shorter stacks will bust out and I’ll win. In hand 106, there’s one shorter stack, but the other three non-chip-leaders are bunched closer together, so the chip leader can put a lot of pressure on us while we all wait for one of the others to bust out. So in 106 I’m a little less gamble-averse, whereas in 101 I’m more inclined to sit back in my armchair and see if anything good can happen elsewhere. Also, the fact that in 101 Octavian_C is making that raise into 4 opponents, pretty much just inviting them to reraise him, makes me more nervous that he might have a big hand – in 106 DDBeast only has to get one player to fold, so I don’t give him as much credit. And lastly, AJ is a better hand than K7s.

Hand 102:

I finally land in a spot where I could profitably shove a whole lot of hands (72.9%, as weak as 96o), it’s folded around to me in the small blind, and I have 8-2o. Even 8-2s (aka “the Larry” as dubbed from my home game) isn’t quite good enough.

Hand 103:

Finally some action! (and we get to see some cards to evaluate decisions) DDBeast shoves from the cutoff and big stack Octavian_C calls from the SB. Clearly the shove with QQ is correct, but what about the call with AT? My gut says it’s an easy call – his stack won’t be dented too badly if he loses and DDBeast could easily be shoving a weaker Ace or a non-Ace hand. Nash says the call is correct, but not as clearly as my gut thought. A9 is the threshold according to Nash – A9 is a call but A8 is not. This reflects the fact that Octavian_C has no real need to gamble – he can sit back and wait for a better spot. This makes me think that even though the call is theoretically correct, maybe the AT should actually be folded here, since (1) DDBeast might be shoving a narrower range than theory dictates, and (B) Octavian knows what he’s doing and can’t assume everyone else does, so there’s potential for other people to make bad mistakes, in which case it makes sense to play a little on the conservative side with the big stack. But whatever you think about that, certainly calling with AT here is not much of a mistake, if at all. The poker gods torment him for it – an Ace on the flop looks great but the Queen on the river taketh away, and we’re still 5-handed.

Hand 104:

With DDBeast doubling up my stack has now dropped out of the top 3, which sucks. This will probably result in me having to make something happen instead of sitting back and waiting for others to implode. I thought K7o was a good enough hand to use for that purpose, but Nash says I’m (just barely) wrong. He says I need KTo or better to shove here. I’m inclined to defend my decision and argue that woltas and Octavian are probably calling a little tighter than equilibrium here (although perhaps I’ll be proved wrong about that in the case of woltas – see hand 123) so that I can shove a little wider than equilibrium. Even so it’s close, and a fold would clearly have been fine. But I get what I want as everyone folds.

Hand 105:

A pretty easy decision – I have KQo UTG, and I can cripple or bust everyone else at the table. Note how narrow everyone else’s calling ranges are against me – other than the short stack everyone else has to have a hand like Tens to call me. My KQ is easily good enough to shove – KTo would have been good enough.

Hand 106:

Before looking at what actually happened in the hand, note that both Octavian and woltas should have been shoving with close to half of their hands, and neither of them did. They might have both had trash, but it just gives a little more weight to the idea that they’re likely shoving a little tighter than equilibrium, in situations where Nash would say for them to push some pretty ugly hands. So it’s folded around to DDBeast, who raises my big blind to 1000 instead of just shoving. Luckily I have a good hand and have an easy shove, but I think I could have done this with a much weaker hand here. DDBeast is really offering up his neck – he pretty clearly just wants to take my blind without risking much, and I just don’t think he’s going to throw away his tournament on the bubble unless he’s trapping me with a monster, so I can pretty much shove here with just about any two.

[edited] Ace asked a good question about this hand in the comments - What do I do if DDBeast shoves instead of standard raising. The Nash answer is on the calculator link for this hand - on the last two lines of the table with all the percentages and ranges, it says:

SB 100.0%, Any two
BB 4.2%, 77+ AQs+

So DDBeast is supposed to shove no matter what his cards are, and even if I know that, I should call with only my best 4.2%, namely pairs 77 or higher or AQs or AKs (that seems a little odd - is AQs being ranked higher than AKo? Sure enough - pokerstove says AQs is better against a random hand than AKo even though AKo is better against a top-10% hand - cool). So AJo doesn’t make the cut and I should fold. I think I would even make my range tighter than that, because I’m not sure DDBeast is likely to shove his worst hands - lots of people including me wimp out in spots like this, and later on hand 111 when DDBeast is supposed to shove 81% he gives me a walk instead, which might mean he’s too careful in that spot. If I think he’s only shoving the top 80% of his hands I need to tighten my range to 88+,AKs to get the same edge that I would have against a random hand with 77+,AQs+. If he’s shoving 70% I need to drop AKs and only call with 88+, and if he’s really wimpy and only shoves 50% (I think lots of weaker players might fit this mold) then I can only call with TT or better AND if he’s that wimpy then he’s going to give me more walks in the future so I really don’t want to gamble here, so maybe I should drop TT and only call with JJ+. But I don’t think DDBeast is that wimpy, so maybe 88+,AKs is a good calling range here. Excellent question, I should have thought of it. It really shows what a mistake he made - by shoving he puts me in a very difficult spot, and instead he gave me a pile of chips on a silver platter. The followup question is what do I think his range is when he raises to 1000 and then can I really shove all-in with Any 2? Would he do it with AA or KK to try and trap me? I don’t think that would be wise - even with AA or KK he should prefer to just shove and take the blinds I think - if he takes the blinds his equity goes up to about $2950, if he traps and loses it drops to near zero, and if he traps and wins it goes up close to $4100, let’s say $3950. So he gains $1000 if his trap succeeds, loses $2900 if it fails, so he needs to have almost 3:1 winning chances against the hands I will re-raise with - OK that works - he’ll have better than that with AA but just about 3:1 with KK. So in his spot trying to induce me to shove with AA is a good plan. So if I think that he thinks that I’ll shove a lot of hands against him and that I’ll rarely fold, then it makes sense for him to do this with (and only with) AA. But in that moment I decided (obviously correctly) that he wasn’t trying to induce me into shoving, he was trying to trick me into folding without risking his whole stack. And if that’s right then I think I can re-shove with Any 2 … or I could get really tricky and fold some of my worst hands (A) just in case he’s got AA and (B) to encourage him to do it again so I can shove. Maybe that’s a bit much. Again, great question.

Hand 107:

With that last hand my standing has dramatically improved. I’m now in 2nd, not far off the chip leader, and DDBeast has put himself in a precarious position. Before looking at the actual hand, note that if everyone folded to me I could shove into the chip leader with Any Two Cards. That would be a terrifying choice to make, and I might wimp out if my hand were really weak, but it makes sense: Octavian just can’t call me, because losing would be so catastrophic for him … Nash says he could call me with 99 or better, but that’s if he assumes I’m shoving any two, and he can’t really assume that – I wonder if he might fold JJ or maybe even QQ, and if that’s true then I’m completely justified in shoving any two, and I should remember not to be a wimp when situations like that come up. OK so dirty4b is getting desperate and should be shoving 30% (I bet he’s shoving even wider than that), which he does, and everyone folds.

Hand 108:

An interesting hand. It’s folded around to Octavian, and you might think, as he apparently did, that he could shove any 2 here. That would have been true before dirty4b bolstered his stack with a blind steal, but with his stack up to 2400 Octavian should be a little more careful – Nash says 52s is OK but 52o is not, so theoretically it’s a bad shove. In Oct’s defense, he might reasonably have thought that dirty4b would not be calling wide enough (Nash says 45%) in which case shoving 52o is probably OK. I think I would choose to err on the side of being conservative though, if for no other reason than to avoid letting everyone at the table know that there are situations in which you will shove 52o. Clearly dirty’s call with 66 is correct, and he is vindicated with a full house on the river.

Hand 109:

Guess who just became the chip leader (by mostly sitting on his ass)! That’s the good news. The bad news is that a player has not been eliminated, all the stacks are close together so anyone can cripple me – we’re in minefield territory now. Ironically, the fact that I’ve been getting crappy cards and have not showed much aggression might make people think I’m being careful or timid, which might make them more likely to fold when I come out of my shell, which would be fabulous. After DDBeast folds, any of the rest of us have the right to go after the pot without much of a hand, Octavian does and gets the blinds.

Hand 110:

Nash actually says I could have shoved T7s here, but it’s right at the bottom of the range and I think folding it is fine. Octavian either has a better hand, more guts, or just a determination to regain the chip lead, as he shoves and everyone else folds.

Hand 111:

A WALK! What a blessed gift! Woltas should be shoving 46%, but doesn’t … DDBeast should be shoving 81%, but doesn’t … someone is probably playing too tight. And perhaps I’m reaping some dividends from hand 106 when DDBeast tried to take my BB cheaply and I bitch-slapped him. Maybe he had a bottom-20% hand, I don’t know, but I’m going to guess he’s wimping out a bit (and so I should tighten up my calling range when he does get his backbone in place enough to shove)

Hand 112:

Before I replayed the hand I looked at the Nash numbers and I was afraid I might have to eat my words from the previous hand. It’s folded around to me and as the chip leader I should be shoving any two cards. I would have been sorely tempted to wimp out if I had a crap hand, but as it is I had an easy shove with 77.

Hand 113:

Again I’m spared any real temptation to wimp out – it’s folded to me on the button and QJ is more than enough – J2 would have been enough, or T3, or 95. The blinds can’t call and I improve my chip lead.

Hand 114:

Again Nash puts my 98o near the bottom of my pushing range, but I think my decision to fold is sound. I’ve just shoved the last two hands and people might think I’m just big-stack-bullying. Dirty4b should be shoving 82% from the SB and he gives a walk – I’ve got to think that’s probably a mistake. Even though Nash says 82% I would probably shove any 2 here, because I just wouldn’t expect woltas to call lightly (again – I’m about to get evidence to the contrary on hand 123, but that’s what I would be thinking in dirty’s shoes). So I’m thinking dirty is playing a little too tight in must-shove situations, so when he does shove I’ll give him a little extra respect.

Hand 115:

33 is a pretty easy shove here, and no-one can call me without heavy artillery.

Hand 116:

DDBeast couldn’t give me another walk. Note that because my stack has grown so nicely his decision is more difficult. His stack won’t wound me so badly anymore, so I could call more easily, so he has to be more careful. I’m guessing he had a real hand here.

Hand 117:

Finally what we’ve been waiting for … both plays are clearly correct … DDBeast can happily shove any Ace, and Octavian could have called with 77 let alone Queens. We’re down to 4, the final bubble, Octavian has regained the chip lead but I’m in great shape.

Hand 118:

Once again I have a hand near the bottom of the Nash barrel, so Nash says I should shove, but I think I’m right to fold here. For me to shove here I have to believe that Octavian will only call with KK and dirty4b will only call with 88, AJs, AQo or better, and I think there’s a significant chance that one or both of them might call lighter than that. Octavian has to shove any 2 and dirty pretty much has to fold, and that’s what happens.

Hand 119:

This time I get a hand just underneath the Nash chalk-line, but not by much. If I had T6 I could shove (but I probably wouldn’t). Octavian has to shove any 2, does, takes the blinds, grows his chip lead.

Hand 120:

Same deal – Octavian should shove any 2, and none of us can call. Note that I can’t call with Aces here even if I know Octavian is shoving any 2. Even the short stacks need big hands to call, although I think dirty4b should widen his range a bit because the big blind is about to hit him, and Nash doesn’t take that into account.

Hand 121:

Here Nash says I dropped the ball, and maybe he’s right. If I shove here Octavian just can’t call – Nash says he can call with TT but I wonder if he might even fold JJ here. So I should be shoving any 2, and I just couldn’t do it with 8-2o. I guess a possible justification for folding is that the blinds are about to hit the shortstacks, and it’s more likely than normal that we’re about to see an elimination, which gives some extra value to folding. I should run the numbers to see how much equity I’m giving up by folding – my guess is not much.

FOLLOWING ARE THE THREE HANDS PETE WAS REFERRING TO…

Hand 122:

Straightforward – Octavian should be shoving any two cards, but he actually has a good hand. Dirty4b has to call pretty tightly, but he has a monster heads-up in AK. Nash actually says he should fold AQ here, but I bet he wouldn’t. dirty doubles up, Octavian still has a healthy chip lead, and I’m feeling just a hint of anxiety.

Hand 123:

Nash says I’m a pussy again, and that not only should I shove K7, but Q2s, or Q8o would have been good enough. And using the same logic I applied before, the fact that the blinds are about to hit me should weigh in favor of pushing (though that doesn’t matter as much here since I have a much bigger stack than dirty did when I brought up that angle). The other thing I can try to weasel out with is that Nash expects Octavian and dirty to only call with KK or AA if I shove, and I just don’t think they’re going to be quite so tight – hard to imagine dirty4b folding Queens to me here. But K7 isn’t on the Nash borderline, it’s firmly in the shove range, so this is probably a mistake. After I fold, things get really hairy. Octavian shoves with Q8 and woltas calls with KT. Nash says both plays are mistakes, but that Octavian’s shove is a small mistake whereas woltas’ call is a major blunder. I think I agree. If I’m Octavian, I can make a case for shoving here – dirty can’t call at all, and woltas is a strong, very successful player in these things – I would expect him to know his calling range well, and I would expect him to narrow it a bit to compensate for his perceived skill advantage over the rest of us, and apparently I would be wrong on all counts. All I can say for woltas is maybe he thought Octavian was shoving any 2, in which case *maybe* his call is correct (though I’m not even sure of that). I don’t know, I think it’s a stinky call. But the poker gods reward him for it, and Octavian has fallen in 2 hands from dominant chip leader to short stack, without doing anything seriously wrong.

[edited] I just ran the numbers to figure out if woltas’ call would be correct if Octavian were shoving any 2. It came up as a tossup - he can call, he can fold, it doesn’t really change his equity either way. And I think it would be silly to think that Octavian is pushing any 2 here, so I think it’s just a bad call.

Hand 124 (final hand):

OK this is just rubbing salt in the wound. Octavian is correct to shove with A7o according to Nash, but I think after the last hand seeing woltas make such a loose call with KTo, maybe we need to re-evaluate our assessment of his calling range. If he’s calling wider than equilibrium, then A7o probably drops off the list and can be folded comfortably (though, again, the blinds are about to bite into Octavian so that puts a little extra pressure on him to make something happen). Whether it’s a mistake or not, it’s certainly not a big mistake … and then woltas is just a lucky-ass bastard to wake up with KK.

So Octavian goes from having about 94% chance to win the tournament to zero in three hands, the worst fear of chip-leaders everywhere. But it is exactly that fear that you have to conquer if you want to play correctly on the bubble – you have to take the calculated risk of that worst-case scenario in order to keep the pressure on your opponents.

I guess it’s kind of funny that in my last post I said I should show some self-restraint in long-ass blog-writing, and then I go and produce this little magnum, but this has been a good exercise for me in going through hand by hand and looking at each decision critically. It looks like there are some situations where I am a little gun-shy about shoving my chips in with crappy or marginal cards, but I think for the most part I did a good job of playing situational bubble poker. Writing this up has helped me to look at this stuff – if anyone else gets something out of it that’s just a bonus (as long as you don’t bust me out on the bubble in my next tournament).

If you have questions, comments or criticisms about how I played a hand or my explanations or whatever, fire away…

-huge

Tonight I played in and won the biggest buyin online poker tournament of my career. That sounds pretty good, right? Well it is, but it’s also the best and most hyperbolic spin on the event I could possibly invent. I think I’ve written about the “Steps” tournaments that I’ve been playing a lot of lately. They’re single-table tournaments (9 players) and if you finish in the top 2 or 3 you advance to the next Step. They start at Step 1 for $7.50, Step 2 is $27, Step 3 at $82, Step 4 $215, Step5 $700 and the final step, Step 6 costs $2100 to play. I’ve been doing pretty well with them, and had built up a good stash of Step 5 tickets at $700 a pop, intending to use them to win a few Step 6 tickets, which I would hopefully transform into at least one $12,000 WSOP package. But then I won a WSOP package elsewhere and started making plans to go to Vegas and the Steps got put on the back burner. I did play one Step 5 in Vegas and won it, yielding my first Step 6 ticket, but other than that I didn’t play much online poker in Vegas.

On my return to Seattle I discovered that the target for the next set of Steps tournaments would be the upcoming World Series of Online Poker, or WCOOP, a series of tournaments running from Sept 5th through the 21st, culminating in what will be the biggest online tournament in history: $5200 buyin, $10,000,000 guaranteed prize pool, over a million dollars for first prize. So now instead of a Step 6 tournament yielding one $12,000 WSOP package and a bit of loose change for 2nd – 4th finishers, now a Step 6 ticket would lead to a $5200 WCOOP main event entry for the top 3 finishers and $1200 in cash for 4th and 5th. And if I win that prize I can just unregister from the target tournament and collect tournament dollars, which are like cash to me since I play so many tournaments. Obviously that’s not as great a payday as $12,000, but those of you who’ve been reading my long-winded stories (and have actually paid attention to some of them) might have noticed all my crowing about my satellite prowess, and that a 9-person tournament awarding the same prize to the top three finishers is about as satellitey as you can get. When you get to the point in a satellite when there are 4 or 5 players left and 3 of them get the top prize things get pretty tense, and normal poker strategy goes out the window. In that situation there are spots where you should push all your chips into the pot with 3-2-offsuit and times when you should fold a pair of Aces before the flop. A strange phenomenon happens in which player A bets all his chips and player B has a pretty good hand and is thinking about calling, so player A’s job is done and is praying for player B to fold, player B has a tough decision because he KNOWS that his hand is probably better than player A’s, but if he calls and loses he’s out of the tournament, whereas if he folds he might be able to just wait for someone else to bust out. Meanwhile players C and D are just pray-pray-praying for player B to call so that they might win the tournament without firing a single shot. A poker hand between two players in normal circumstances is usually pretty close to a zero-sum game between just those two players, ie if I hurt you then I gain, and if I make a mistake then you gain, and the players not in the hand don’t care all that much what happens to either of us. But in a satellite bubble, all that gets out of whack. If you make a smart bet and I make a bad call, obviously I hurt my own chances, but I hurt yours as well, and mathematically if you and I are hurting someone somewhere has to be happy, so it has to be the other players who are out of the hand. It’s weird. It’s mostly a game of chicken, where I bet, banking on the idea that you can’t call, but if I overestimate your intelligence or sanity or if you wake up with a monster hand, then I’m screwed and the other players rejoice. There’s a whole new branch of math that comes into play called Nash Equilibrium – if you’ve seen the movie “A Beautiful Mind”, it’s that Nash – John Nash, math and Economics and game theory guru, sometime loony, husband of the incredibly beautiful Jennif … oh wait, that’s the actress, never mind. Anyway, in a satellite bubble, I try to decide what range of hands I should bet with and you try to decide what hands you should call with, but my range depends on my estimate of what your range is and vice versa. If I bet and you call and I win, that’s terrific, but if I bet and you call and I lose that’s absolutely horrible, so given a choice I would almost always prefer to have you fold. If I know you’re never going to call then I can always bet, but if I’m always going to bet then you can call as long as your hand is pretty strong, but if I know that you’re going to call pretty often then I’m only going to bet with a pretty strong hand, and if you know that then you will only call with a VERY strong hand, and then if I know that, then I can loosen up a little, and so on and so on. We keep dancing around each other until we zero in on an equilibrium in which I’m betting the exact perfect range of hands and you’re defending with the exact perfect range and neither of us can exploit the other one’s mistakes. That’s Nash equilibrium.

So if everyone knows what they’re doing, a satellite bubble becomes a cold exercise in shoving and folding until someone gets a great hand or someone gets so many chips that they don’t care or so few chips that they’re desperate. That’s the theory anyway. But I’ve never been on a satellite bubble in which everyone knew what they were doing, and that throws another monkey wrench into the machinery. Are you too scared to call even when your hand is strong enough, or are you too stupid or stubborn or drunk to fold when your hand is pretty good but not excellent? If the former is true, then I can diverge from Nash equilibrium to take advantage of your timidity to maximize my own profit. If the latter is true then I HAVE to diverge from Nash in order to protect myself from your stupidity, while hoping that someone else will not be so observant of your hubris and gleefully pull the pin out of your grenade while I watch safely from the bleachers. And if I think one of the above is true but I’m wrong, then I’m likely to end up in a world of hurt.

So as of a few days ago I had notched up two more Step 6 ($2100) tickets and was down to one remaining Step 5 ($700) ticket. My record with the Step5’s had been mediocre – a small profit but nothing exciting. I think I played a couple of them badly and got unlucky in one, so it seemed like there was potential for profit there, I just hadn’t tapped into it. I played off my last one and won it, improving my profitability substantially in one blow. But I still hadn’t taken a stab at the big leagues, the Step 6. The whole Step system creates an exaggerated microcosm of the whole poker economy. The Step 1’s are filled with the little fish, putting up $7.50 for a lottery ticket to glory. Some little fish play a handful, some play hundreds or thousands. No matter how good or bad or fishy they are, some of them win and move up to Step 2, where they join some slightly less fishy bigger fish, as well as some sharks who play 8 or 12 Step 2 tables at a time, playing straightforwardly and feeding on the stinky mistakes of the fish. This upward percolation continues through Step 3 and 4. I’ve played a fair number of Step 3’s but lately I’ve been mostly just starting at Step 4. At the higher step levels you start running into the same people, and I’ve gotten to know some of them pretty well. It’s harder to find the Step 5 and Step 6 tournaments running, so the sharks just hang out there waiting for unsuspecting fish to stumble into their shark … umm … caves. And then there are a handful of great white sharks, who play every Step 6 tournament they can get their hands on, and maybe some Step 5 tournaments just to keep their teeth sharp while waiting for a Step 6 to get going. I’ve played with all of them in the Step 4’s and 5’s, and I’ve watched some Step6’s, so I pretty much know who they are, I know a few of their tendencies, and I know which ones play a ton of tournaments at once. I figure that even though these guys are bigger sharks than me and their knowledge of push/fold decisions might be a little more solid than mine, I have an advantage over them to the extent that I know I can count on them to play somewhere in the ballpark of correct bubble strategy, but they don’t know the same about me. But it still doesn’t seem like the greatest idea to jump into a tank filled with them - much better if I can find a tank filled with tasty tasty tuna for the sharks to feed on while I swim behind them sticking harpoons in their side from time to time.

Tonight I was playing in a $130 multitable tournament, and doing OK. I happened to notice that a Step 6 tournament with 6 players registered so far. It only had one of the great white sharks in it (perhaps the biggest Step Shark of all – Stevie444, who seems to be in every Step 6 that ever runs, and who has reportedly won over 100 WSOP packages, ie over a million bucks playing these little single-table tournaments) and several names I didn’t recognize. Names I don’t recognize in a Step 6 tournament is a good sign, so I started to look them up in the StarTracker and Sharkscope databases, and the good news continued. Two players looked pretty good – they played in over-$100 tournaments on a regular basis and clearly were successful in them. But three of them looked like little fish that didn’t belong there – their usual habitat was the $10-$15 buyin aquarium and here they were in a $2100 tournament, just waiting to be filleted. I started to think that this might be a good time to pop my cherry. Two 2nd-tier sharks smelled the blood in the water and joined in, but Stevie444 (British) must have needed some tea and crumpets or something because he unregistered, leaving room for one more fish.

As I decided that this looked like a good spot for me to move up, I started playing wildly in the $130 tournament I was already in. I didn’t want to just throw it away, but I figured I would either build up a big stack or crash and burn trying, thereby freeing up my focus for the big one. I did crash pretty quickly in the $130, and I could give my entire focus to the $2100. CLICK HERE to watch the tournament over my shoulder.

I treaded water for a while through the low blind levels until I caught my first big break – a pair of Aces and a re-raise into me from the big blind. In a normal tournament I would likely just call here hoping to lure an opponent into the fray, but in a satellite like this avoiding risk is more important than taking a stab at trapping an opponent’s whole stack. So I reraised to 700, over a third of my stack. The flop came all diamonds and I had the Ace of diamonds, so I was in pretty good shape, and when my opponent immediately tossed all his chips in I could worry a little about an already made flush or set, but it’s not like I really had much of a decision to make. Turned out he had A-Q with the Queen of diamonds, and his only faint hope was a Queen on the Turn and another Queen on the river – I think I was about a 300:1 favorite at that point. He caught a little glimmer with the first Queen, but the River was a blank and I had gobbled up the first fish and chips dinner of the event, putting me solidly in the lead.

Maybe I need a little self-control on the blog-writing front. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m picking up from where I left off at 2:30 in the morning, it’s three pages long and I’ve only described one hand. Sigh. I guess there aren’t any specific big hands to report on after that though. I played carefully from there on out until we got down to 5-handed. The bad players played badly and busted out and we were down to me, three strong players, and one guy who maybe was out of his depth but seemed like he knew what he was doing. Two of the better players seemed like they were not adequately shifting into push/fold mode, and I picked up a nice pot from one of them when he made his fourth or fifth standard raise and I came over the top of him for all his chips in a spot where he just couldn’t call unless he was holding a monster. It was a good lesson for me because I’m sometimes the guy caught with his proverbial pants down in that situation, and it felt better being the one doing the pantsing. Between that hand and the fact that they just weren’t putting as much pressure on my big blind as they should have been, I maintained a healthy chip stack all through the bubble. I never called an all-in bet and was never called when I shoved all-in, except one time when I doubled up a short stack without too much harm to my own. The 5th and 4th place finishers busted out in confrontations when I was already out of the hand, so I just got to watch the fireworks. When the smoke cleared and the whooping died down, and after I unregistered for the tournament I had won the seat in, I was down one $2100 Step 6 ticket and up $5200 in tournament dollars, or $3100 to the good for an hour and a half’s work. I’m not sure but I think that might be my best ever hourly rate for a session of poker – I’ve had a few $1000/hr sessions, including last year’s world series main event, and maybe some of the smaller WSOP satellites might rival this one, but I always had investors’ money in for those, so I think this one probably takes the lead at just over $2000 profit per hour free and clear of any encumbrances. I probably won’t be able to maintain a 100% win rate, but if I can win with one of the two remaining Step 6 tickets I’m holding, I’ll be in excellent shape.

If you’ve stuck with me through this rambling … I can’t decide whether to say “bless you” or “get a life” … take your pick.

-huge

OK I’ll give you the funny first - this part should appeal even to non-poker players (basically anyone who wants to make fun of me):

Funny

If you like that one, there’s a whole series of “Joe the Pro” videos on YouTube, and some of the others are funny, but I think the first one is still the best.

And now for the ugliness. 227 players, $130 entry “sniper” tournament on UB (same as “bounty” or “knockout” tournament - you get $10 for every player you eliminate). Five hours in to the tournament we’re down to 11 players, so we’re in the money, but 11th only gets $300. UB has tables of ten, so one more player to go and we’re down to the final table, where the next prize doubles to $600. First pays $7,800. I’ve busted 6 players so I’ve already collected $60 in bounties. I think I’ve played well. The guy on my right is random bordering on insane, throwing chips around pretty recklessly. There are 3 or 4 other bad players still in the tournament, so I really want to get to the final table and kick some ass. Then this happens:

Ugliness

For various reasons I’ve removed this post from the prying eyes of the world … if you didn’t get to read it during its short public life, and you want the latest poker story, get in touch with me and I’ll email it to you. There’s not anything scandalous or super-dramatic involved, but a friend astutely pointed out that I’m probably better off not having it out there for all to see.

-huge (ie hugely mysterious)

I’ve been meaning to write some sort of WSOP post-mortem – there are stories I haven’t written and it just seemed like some sort of summation was in order. But it’s been a weird process adjusting to life back in the real world after a month and a half in Las Vegas, and I’ve had family stress – mom fell and hurt her back, turned out to be a compression fracture, she’s been in the E.R., the hospital and a rehab facility for the past week. For those of you who know my mom, she’s been moving better after a procedure involving the injection of bone cement into one of her vertebrae, and she’ll return home tomorrow. OK OK back to the poker…

After a few days off I’ve been playing a fair amount of poker online, mostly in single-table tournaments because I’ve been hesitant to commit the time to a big multi-table tournament, and because PokerStars has started running single-table tournaments called “Steps” that are right up my alley. They start with a $7 Step 1 – win that and you get a ticket for $27 Step 2, then $82 Step 3, $215 Step 4, $700 Step 5, and $2100 for Step 6 (I’ve generally been starting at Step 3 or 4). In each one the last two players standing get the ticket to the next step, third place (and sometimes 4th or 5th) get a “do-over” ticket to the same Step, and usually one or two lower finishes get the booby prize – a ticket to the next lower step. In the ultimate crap prize, if you pay $215 for the privilege of playing a Step 4 tournament (or you fight your way through a Step 3 and come out on top), and you happen to finish 6th in the Step 4, you get the exciting prize of a $27 Step 2 ticket. At the end of the road, if you win or buy your way into a Step 6 tournament and you win it, you win entry into a major tournament, like the WSOP main event or a big European Poker Tour event. If the tournament is expensive ($10000 plus) then only the top finisher gets the seat and maybe a couple of others get a grand or two in cash. With a less expensive tournament the top three or even four finishers get seats. I played some of these before the WSOP, trying to win a WSOP main event package, and I did alright – I gathered a couple of Step 5 tickets and one Step 6, but I never played the Step 6. Since coming back from Vegas I’ve played more - I now have the distinction of having not very much money on PokerStars but several thousand dollars worth of Steps tickets.

But what about Aruba? Well I’m glad you asked that. The other focus I’ve had since coming back from Vegas has been to win a seat in the Ultimatebet Aruba Classic. As you may recall, I won an Aruba package last year and had a great (and lucrative) trip, so I’ve been eager to go back this year. I had pretty much decided to go even if I didn’t win a seat – it turns out that Rachel has some free time so she can actually join me this time around, so that made it seem like a must-go – but I hadn’t quite committed. They’ve been running $320 and $530 satellites three times a week and I’ve played a couple of those, getting very close to winning a seat in one before having Aces cracked by KQ in a huge pot. A few days ago I won a seat to the $530 super-mega-qualifier that will take place on August 16, in which they guarantee to award fifty $8500 packages ($3000 cash and $5500 tournament entry fee), so I was pinning my hopes there. I wasn’t quite as keen on the $320 tournaments because they’re basically winner-take-all: 2nd and 3rd might get some cash, but the $8500 top prize dominates all strategic considerations. And I prefer satellites that award multiple seats, because I think I’ve become something of an expert in handling the strategic decisions that come up near the end of those satellites. And this afternoon I fell asleep in the hammock and didn’t wake up until 5:45, 15 minutes past the start time of tonight’s $320 event. But UB lets you join a tournament late as an alternate, so I got out of the hammock and into the office to see how the field looked. I decided that a lot of the 47 players were players who had won their way in via satellites, and that even though it wasn’t my favorite payout structure I had to have a significant edge in that field, so I jumped in.

I folded my first two hands, and on the third I picked up JJ in early position. The blinds were 10-20 and my starting stack was 3000 chips. I raised to 60, and a very strong, very successful player re-raised to 500. 500? Really? WTF? So I’m thinking and trying to decipher that … He’s pretty much screaming at me “I HAVE ACES! If you have a pair and you’re trying to flop a set on me, I’m not giving you the odds to call, so get out of town now or make a mistake by calling.” That’s what he’s saying, but sometimes poker players “say” things with their actions that aren’t true, that are in fact designed to mislead. This guy knows me, probably enough to think that I’m capable of hearing the message he’s sending me, but I feel like if I just trust him and fold JJ or QQ here, then can’t anyone do the same to me and get me to fold 99% of the time? And does he *have* to have Aces here? If he’s messing around even 10% of the time it makes up for the odds I’m missing to try to flop a set … maybe? So I decide to call, perhaps foolishly, but I’m pretty happy with my choice when the flop comes J-9-2. I think that even if he doesn’t have Aces he’s going to have to try to represent them at least on the flop, so I check and he bets – I can’t remember exactly, but something like 900. I pause for a long time and then call – I want him to think I have Queens or Kings here. A King comes on the turn and I’m a little worried that either he has Kings or that he’ll be scared that I have them and fold his Aces, but I’m not worried enough to do anything other than get all my chips in. I check again and he bets 1200-ish, and now there’s no reason for me to slowplay anymore so I checkraise for the rest of my chips and he calls, and he has Aces. He had a few more chips than me so he’s still alive after I double up, and he goes ballistic in the chat window, ranting about how I wasn’t getting proper odds to call for a set and blahblahblah. He also kept saying “honest site”, implying that Ultimatebet is rigged somehow (but people say that whenever a bad beat happens on any site). I had a good time in the chat window with him – you can see the exchange HERE.

I’ll skip the middle of the tournament and get to the final table. Nine players remaining, first prize is $3000 cash plus $5500 tournament buyin, 2nd pays $2800, 3rd $1600, 4th $1100. I came to the FT as one of the leaders, but quickly crippled myself by shoving my Eights into another pair of Aces, and this time failing to flop (or turn, or river) a set. I malingered in the painful 8-10BB region for quite a while until winning a coin flip with AK vs TT (flop T-J-Q). After that I think I played well, punishing people who seemed to be trying to coast into the money and staying away from people who could hurt me too badly. With six players left, two short stacks busted on the same hand, so we were in the money, but with 1st prize worth 3 times as much as 2nd, we were all primarily wrestling over the Aruba package and not concerned with the piddly few thousand dollars lying on the floor. When 4th place busted we were left with two of us at 60,000 chips and the short stack at 20,000. Unfortunately the other big stack knocked out the short stack, so we went into heads-up play with Huge at 60k and villain at 80k. The blinds were only 800-1600, so there was a lot of room to maneuver, and we were clearly both trying to play small ball. My opponent’s screen name was “Beaver Fever” (yeah, classy) which kept sticking the song “Boogie Fever” in my head, which let me tell you right now was a real walk down memory lane for me

“Boogie Fever, got to boogie down, Boogie Fever, I think it’s goin’ around…”

Aside from the possible meanings and implications of his screen name, he was a very successful online player who I had played with before, and I couldn’t expect him to make too many mistakes. He had already won an Aruba package so he was just playing this for the $8500, and he didn’t agree when I suggested that he should just leave this one for me. I thought my best shot was to out-agress him, that he wouldn’t want to play big pots with me without a serious hand. This worked well at first, until I tried it one or two too many times and he decided to start calling me with bottom pair (actually once with King-High on the river). So first I turned the tables on him and had him 80-60, but then he caught me with my hand in the cookie jar a couple of times and we were about even. We jockeyed back and forth for quite a while, and then I stumbled, running head-first into situations where I was trying to either put pressure on him or protect what I thought was the best hand, only to get my head snapped back by my opponent checkraising or just leading for all the marbles. A couple of those hands and I was hurting, down to 40k against Beaver Fever’s 100k.

“doctor, doctor, please; I got this feeling rockin’ and a’reelin’; Tell me, what can it be, is it some new disease?; They call it boogie fever; You got to boogie down; Boogie fever, I think it’s going around…”

He clearly had decided that my bets were not to be trusted, and I thought that I knew how to bet to trick him into thinking I was bluffing if I had a strong hand … the problem was that I needed to find a strong hand to spring the trap with. But with my back against the wall I got what I needed – twice I turned a flush in situations where he couldn’t escape paying me off, not for all my chips but for significant pots each time. Those brought me back up close to even, and a couple more hands (again where he just couldn’t believe I wasn’t bluffing) put him in bad shape, with me over 100k and him in the 30’s. The coup de grâce came with (poetically enough given my first big hand of the tournament) another pair of Jacks on the button. He had been giving my button raises too much respect, so I had begun raising my crappy hands and limping with my strong ones. I followed the plan with the Jacks, hoping he might just shove on me, but he refused, and we saw a flop of 7-5-4 with two clubs. Good news: no overcards to my Jacks, bad news: scary as hell for Jacks against a guy who checked his option in the big blind. He checks the flop and I bet out for full pot (protecting my hand against a draw seems more important here than being afraid of a made hand) and he shoves all-in. I’m a little apprehensive but it’s not like I can fold an overpair heads up for 15 BB – mostly I’m afraid he has something like a pair and a flush draw and an overcard – so I call, and he has 7-10. He has five outs twice, but a 6 comes on the turn so now he can chop the pot with a 3 or an 8, but when the river bricks off, Beaver Fever is history.

“I got the boogie fever; (You) You got the boogie fever; (She’s) She’s got the boogie fever; Everybody’s got the boogie fever”

So I’m definitely going (with Mrs. Huge) to Aruba – the event dates are Sept 27 – Oct 4, but we’ll try to add some extra days for lounging on the beach, perhaps a trip to Curaçao or Venezuela. If anyone wants to join us in Aruba I highly recommend it.

-huge