Big MTT. Lets say Hero is on the turn and just hit OESD + Flush draw and bets strongly against single opponent who goes all in. Hero is getting 1.5 : 1 pot odds or around 40% but just has around 30% equity with his draws. But if he calls he will almost triple his stack (counting other bets) and if he folds his stack will be cut to just 10X BB big. So is it correct to call to stay in the tournament?

As far as getting the most expected money out of that tournament's prize pool, no. Now, if winning is very important to you for other reasons (non monetary reasons like that it just makes you feel good, monetary reasons like you think you can turn it into a sponsorship or extra book sales, the value of your time, etc) it might be worth lowering your expected value from cash outs to increase your final table or win %. Also, as you probably know, it's sometimes correct to not call with favorable pot odds in a tournament.

You can also probably make a very thin argument regarding the types of mistakes your opponents make. In an extreme case that might change the answer to your question to yes, but it's a stretch. The general answer is a strong no.

yeah, I tought so its better not to call

i know youll hate my reply

but sometimes i find in tournaments people seem to think because you havent hit the flop, you should fold.

For example

Pot is 700

Flop 7 5 2 rainbow you have ace king - they go all in for 1250 with 10s.

The way i see it.. i was prepared to race pre flop as it is , and im not here to just hand people pots because they over bet the pot. Like.. you cant keep folding just because you havent hit. Im only worried about sets, aces and kings really..

Your logic is way off. The fact is you don't have odds to call in this spot if you know you're behind.

Being prepared to race pre-flop doesn't mean much, as you now missed on 3 shots to improve in a race. You're now less than 25% vs an underpair after you missed.

The fact that you would have been happy to race preflop is kinda irrelevant. I mean, say you have 22 and you were prepared to race pre with the 10 BB you have left, but for whatever reason, you misclick-checked every street to the river. By that point the board is 64433 and villain shoves. The fact that you were happy to race preflop hardly matters, since your equity is pretty miserable at this point.

As for the original post, yes, it definitely makes sense sometimes to call in tournaments even if you aren't getting the right pot odds. If by folding you'll be left with an almost unplayable stack, for example, but your equity isn't really too bad and winning would greatly improve your chances of coming first, then calling is probably way better than folding. By which I mean: if you can fold, and then have a 75% chance of min-cashing, but only a 5% chance of a really high finish, or you can call and have a 30% chance of a really high finish and a 70% chance to go broke... you should call every time. We make money in tournaments by finishing near the top, not by min-cashing.

It next to never does.

Lets use a simple example. 90 in the pot, your last 10 chips to call. You are getting 9 to 1 on your money but lets say you only have 5% equity which all comes from wins. 1 out of 20 times you'll have a 100 chip stack and 19 out of 20 you'll bust. Now, lets say you make the correct fold and keep a 10 chip stack. All things being equal 1 out of 16 times you'll build it back up to a 160 chip stack. Even ignoring the times you'll limp to a small cash without ever building it up this is clearly better and all it represents is being able to get fair flips with absolutely no edge. People who talk themselves into not folding here because they have the option of either trying to win a big pot for the wrong price or being left with an "unplayable" stack are making a huge error.

Basically, unless you are a very bad player who doesn't even think he can do as well as a fair gambler's shot in the future why would you knowingly take worse than a fair gambler's shot? Again, the only real situations I can think of are 1) it is very close to correct and table conditions for a large stack are very favorable or 2) external influences that don't relate to what is the best play for that tournament.

The stuff about not making money by min-cashing and the like is just blatantly false as far as theory (and really usually doesn't matter much anyway as folding in a bad spot and then just pushing your chips around often still gives you a better chance of accumulating those chips, as seen above), though it's fine if it's your personal preference the same way it's fine to play Lotto if it's your personal preference.

you're not going to get it in 4 times as 50%... if for example you're all in on the BB next hand, you get to take a random hand, against the best one of 9 random hands.

just putting this out there, I'm interested to see how this thread develops

pokerstove has random vs top 11% as 33/67

Yeah, as K2AA points out, good luck with 5 BB left or whatever your 10 chips represents getting all in on a 'fair flip'. And if you're at an ante stage of a tourney and you want to wait for a spot where you'll get anything resembling a fair flip, you won't have 5 BB when you get all in. And if you change your odds of winning from 5%, which is completely appalling equity to something a bit more marginal, like 7.5% (i.e. something a lot more similar to the example in the OP) you can see that it may make perfect theoretical sense to get all in with slightly worse equity than pot odds say you need.

And there are other advantages to having a big stack that are also worth factoring into any analysis here if our goal is to accumulate enough chips to be able to play at the final table, and not just to get back to our starting stack.

And please don't patronizingly insult me by suggesting I "play Lotto" when I play tournament poker. I haven't coinflipped my way to my tournament results, tyvm.

That's if the other 9 players collude against you. If not there will be situations where say a good mp hand raises to try to play hu against your random hand, a slightly better hand re-raises and knocks him out, a player with an even better hand behind decides he can't call a raise and re-raise even though he'd gladly play for your money, and you get a chance to better than triple up w/ a random hand against what was not the best of the other 9 hands.

I mean you can play that game back and forth all you want. Point is even short stacks should be able to get a fair gambler's share on average and can usually get better than that. The 50/50 flip odds of reaching a certain stack is just a short way of saying you should still probably get a fair gamble one way or the other, and again, you should. Under-estimating how quickly an "unplayable" stack can become playable and WILLFULLY taking the worst of it to avoid that situation is almost always silly.

To the other poster who took offense to the lottery example, what else would you call overly valuing the big pay-off at the expense of the better value? Again, if you place a higher priority on big cashes than they are mathematically worth, that is a valid choice, but it also is what it is...

I addressed this as one of the few valid reasons that occasionally makes this thinking right in very close spots. It's very rare and usually vastly over-estimated though.

Also, "goal is to be able to play the final table", was addressed, though you for some reason take offense to how it was addressed. It's covered in external factors (such as a justified, or not, desire to play the final table at the expense of getting the most value based strictly on the tournament).

I guess your example is true, but what also happens often is they will check down the all-in player.. in that case you're all in with a random hand vs the 2 best hands of the 9...

But I think you're right about how quick you can make a 'comeback' as a shortstack...

You're right in that they will sometimes collude against you but your initial example is very close to a worst case scenario and even a little stretched out at that. Again, there are also many counter examples. Here's another one; the best of the 9 hands is A2 held by a middle stack player UTG. Would you play that hand against a random hand? Would you open it from UTG just because a random hand was all-in in the big blind? I'd answer yes, and no...which is basically a case of the other players colluding to protect your hand and giving you better than a fair shot. I think your example of guys calling and checking it down (which often still isn't much worse than a fair gamble as your hand is also guaranteed show-down and is almost always getting some sort of price) is over-stated by many and the many, many examples of a short stack getting a better than fair deal are under-stated (before Black Friday short stackers in cash games were one of the biggest concerns in the poker community, think about the reasons for that...).

I do think the fairest way to represent a short stack's chance of come-back is a series of no-edge coin-flips. That should tend to be the bottom end of its expectation if you don't make mistakes with that short-stack (and it's far easier to learn how to play a short-stack correctly than it is to learn how to play a bigger stack correctly, or even to play against a short-stack, so this should be true for most players).

Now, in rare cases, such as the worst player at the table being a big stack (and you being fairly sure you and he won't be moved) it might be right to give up a slight price for the increased chance of getting a much better than normal price in the future. That's similar to making a willful mistake on the turn against a player who will tend to make large mistakes on the river. In general though it will be making a bad play to avoid making future neutral plays, about as good an idea as it sounds like.

Just in the limiting case where you'd have 1 ante left if you folded and are obligated to be all in next hand, you can see that at some stack depth, it makes no sense to fold, at least if you're thinking is "oh, I'll have fair flips later". You won't have fair flips, or at least not soon enough, if your remaining stack is too shallow. And if your plan is to preserve your tiny stack, whatever it is, then it really matters where you're positioned relative to the blinds. If you have say 5 BB left, but you pay the big blind next hand, you'll be down to 4 or 3.5 BB by the time you get that fair flip most of the time.