very impressed by all the responses itt

aliquantum- enjoyed your posts a lot

Interesting post sir, you mention about the blinds going through us once and our stack equity is going decrease by a margin as we know. I think Given we are btn next and can jam reasonably wide this is a good counter argument to taking a -$Ev call here.

Very true, and its a solid counter argument. That's why I said I've made a few assumptions. The point I'm trying to highlight is that the call is really not as bad equity-wise as we might think, and that we can lose the same amount of equity very quickly if we lose even a tiny portion of our stack in future hands.

While it is way more ambiguous, I'm glad we are discussing what might happen in future hands because just noticing that SNGWiz says to fold neglects this.

its def no ICM suicide if his range is somewhat as wide as it should. obv you have to add ICM to your decision and tighten the calling range a fair bit.
and yea close either way

This is just a great reading

Very good post Aliquantum but I've been left somewhat confused by the main concept, you say our current equity in the prizepool is ~21.1%, and if we make a call it drops slightly to about 20.5. (Which is like $30 right?).

You say if the blinds pass us then our equity drops to ~20%, but we're on the button next hand, so surely the opposite to what you're saying it true right? We're on the button so our equity is more than likely to increase the next hand?
I know you're not looking at the hand in a vacuum and taking the hole game into account, but why are you assuming our equity is going to decrease over time if we make the fold? Surely with us on the BTN next hand it's more likely to increase, no?

If he's jamming the narrow side of our range, yes. If he's jamming 65% or more, it's costing much less than that in equity.

Absolutely, and like I said above these are great counter-arguments. My example is just one of an infinite number of ways that the game might play out if we make the ICM fold. I just feel that if we continue to fold 95% of our range to the reg, its ambitious to think that we're going to chip up consistently going forwards, and increase our current equity.

The example was just to highlight that we can easily lose more equity in future hands (e.g., if the BB doubles up, or if we eat a blind or two, etc.) as this call loses. Essentially, it's a very cheap price to pay, for a big opportunity that ends very favourably for us a huge percentage of the time.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying a fold here is bad by any stretch of the imagination, I'm just saying a call isn't too bad either .

I understand that sometimes we need to make plays with blind pressure but I'm not too sure if this is going to be the best spot to be taking. I'm not sure what ICM model/variables you are using in your calculations, but to me the $ev lost by calling here seems to be quite a bit more than most of the spots you consider taking on the final table. I was definitely overreacting calling this ICM suicide, but I just saw that the red $ number was lower than spots I usually consider. I try and distance myself from the cards and ranges, and instead think about my thresholds of $ev I am willing to take. We gladly fold spots with these prize pool implications all the time, I'm seriously wondering why we suddenly choose this one. Maybe I just play too much like an ICM nit who knows...

The blind pressure thingy is something that interests me a lot. Sometimes I think it is A++ reasoning, and sometimes I doubt it a bit. It's not like we don't get dealt cards in the next few hands, but yea our stack being taxed sorta suxors.

I ran through what the next few hands will look like if we fold here:

We get dealt two random cards on the button, and have 20.93% of the prize pool. The act of FOLDING here is going to net us anywhere between 0.06% and .11% of the prize pool giving SB and BB various shoving and calling ranges. On average we can probably expect to gain something like 0.15->0.24% of the prize pool (we get g00d cards and can shove sometimes!) depending on how badly our opponents are playing.


If we are still 3handed at this point, the stacks will definitely vary a lot in sizes, but I'm just keeping them the same size to make my life easy (and calculations innaccurate).

Here if we fold our hand on the big blind and button gets the chips, we are indeed down to 20.11% of the prize pool. This is definitely a worse outcome than the ATo call gives us. If I understand correctly this is the argument for calling here. Here is my problem with this logic:

This 20.11% situation assumes that:

The big blind folds when we fold ATo P = ~80->87%
We do not get a +EV hand to shove on the button P = 70->85%
We fold button and SB and BB are not all in = P = 77%->82%

This will only happen between 44% and 60% of the time depending on opponents ranges (I tested using lots of different ranges). We actually don't even get to this big blind spot very often. In addition to this:

-Assuming we are playing well, EVERY SINGLE of these 'branch situations' gives us tournament equity in the long run. I'm way too lazy to figure out specifics here, but the equity gained from these branches need to be considered just as much as the equity LOST from the big blind hitting us branch. I think it should be more than enough to make up for the small chance (see below) we go down to 20.11%.

-Once we are in the big blind branch, the only way our big blind gets shipped over to the shortstack is when HE shoves and both of us fold. You can take this 44-60% of the time at least cut it in half (probably way more). If the big stack gets the chips, it really isn`t a big deal here, we are only down to around 20.4% equity. If the shortstack and bigstack get all in, we are quite happy! And this is only in the 44-60% of the time we get to this situation in the first place!

Please let me know if some of my logic is wrong here, it took me a bunch of time to wrap my head around the right way to approach it. I gave a loose and tight range for every spot to see how things change, and as you can see I don`t think it makes a huge difference. If the ICM numbers are a few % off it`s because I am using the Ben Roberts ICM model, another thing that shouldn`t change too much.

^^^ The numbers are obviously rough like you say, but the logic is solid. These "branch" situations are what I'm referring to when I say that there are an infinite number of ways this tournament can play out if we take this ICM fold. Some branches are better for us than taking the call here, some of them are worse for us than taking the call here.

Let me reiterate that I am not suggesting that folding here is a leak. What I am suggesting is that calling is also not a leak. What is a leak, is looking at SNGWiz and saying, "it says fold, I have to fold". It's much better that we break it down, consider the context in which the hand is being played, and understand how the recommendations by ICM tools are made (the "under the hood" if you like). It's quite clear that you're across all that stuff now. I just got the strong impression from your first post that you believed calling was a massive leak. Nice post.

I'm calling here.

Snap fold ainec.

You gotta say more than "snap fold", especially if its not close at all. I'm sure you have a good reason, I'd like to hear.

I just know im calling this in game.

Well, if you think he's shoving 23o here then I guess there is some slight closeness to it, in that ATo is just about break even vs atc here. I agree there are times to ignore it, but ignoring anything that's worse than say -0.5 edge is never good imo. The times to ignore it a very tiny amount is a few places earlier into the money, say from 7th to 6th or so. Pay jump from 3rd to 2nd is way too big to be making bad calls.

I agree- great discussion guys, especially Aliquantum.

I would call here, just because ATo may seem weak vs results, but you can go 10 more hands and not get anything better to play with and blind away.