That would depend a lot on the payout structure. With 25 left it's likely either ITM (which you didn't say) or a smaller tournament with a sharper bubble, so probably a legit concern.

My dead horse for the summer: Players use ICM as an excuse for passivity when in really isn't. But here it could be.

Not in the money... we have like an hour left in Day 1A. It was like 90 runners or so with 25 left and a Day 1B still to be played. I’m guessing they combine with like 40 and pay the top 25 or so.

I had five big bets left after this hand.

The sick thing is that if he doesn’t lead out on 6th like a maniac we probably go 3-handed to 7th and everything changes.

Suddenly I'm obsessed with finding the actual payouts but neither B's nor Card Player has them. Let's pretend it's the 2017 payouts. 157 entered, 19 paid (12% of field), mincash is 1.8x buyin. Slightly sharper bubble than a WSOP event but still pretty smooth bubble.

All the way to 9th pays 3x buyin so you really need lots of chips to aim for the big prizes. I understand you to be with 25 left in your 1A flight which is roughly equivalent to 50 remaining. So you're still a good ways from the money.

I don't see a huge ICM excuse for passivity. Fold equity with your stack is a consideration, but less so in a limit tournament. If you derive significant psychic value from staying in the tourney rather than going somewhere to play cash, that might swing your decision. For pure $EV you should still push all but tiny edges. 5th is debatable against a four-card 8 and a four-card 6, but 3rd against a Q and a 6 is an immense edge:

ProPokerTools Razz Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
(7-7-6)	42.98%	257,153	1,472
(6-6-Q)	14.77%	88,182	881
73A	42.25%	252,812	1,353

Actually your hand gets better if the Q has wheel cards because of fewer pair cards.

ProPokerTools Razz Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
(7-7-6)	42.03%	251,441	1,423
(5-5-Q)	14.91%	89,052	856
73A	43.06%	257,624	1,487

I don't play tourneys but it's clear that you've got to get all of the chips to win. Can it be the case that not jamming 3rd and 5th bec you're trying to survive is the way to approach this hand?

Well what should happen is you jam 3rd the low card re-jams and forces the queen to fold. Then you flip over the dead money. This actually reduces your variance. If the queen doesn’t fold for two more than you cap it up on 3rd street and make around 1 BB of EV which is a ton for a 3rd Street spot.

“Trying to survive” and “get all the chips” are opposing concepts.

I don't understand this comment, because it's literally the opposite of how MTT equity works. It also seems to contradict your next sentence, if you're advocating cautious play.

As illustrated ITT (or in the LO8 forum) even good players tend to lean toward cautious play in limit tournaments so I wouldn't be surprised if the low card flats our raise even with a 3-card 6 and the Q comes along. But occasionally we/they knock out the Q as you say and the rest of the times we're getting good value so this raise isn't close in cEV or $EV.

I have zero idea re MTT equity so everyone who does is ahead of me. My point: You want to win the tourney? That's WIN, not just get some money, you've got to get chips and if you aren't willing to fling in chips w/ this hand what in the heck are you sitting there for?

Yeah, there are a lot of places to read up on MTT theory--Mike Caro's diatribes against winning a prize for going broke are relevant here -- but in a nutshell, consider a single seat satellite. It's just a big freezeout cash game because only the player who captures all the chips wins a prize. So there, you are absolutely correct because you literally have to win all the chips and then you win the entire prize pool.

Once you add additional payouts, winning all the chips doesn't win the entire prize pool, so the marginal value of each chip decreases as your stack gets larger. If you double up from 20% of chips in play to 40% you still don't have 40% equity in the prize pool. (An MTT top prize might be 30%.) You might increase from say 15% to 25%.

I like your general orientation of aiming for top prizes--this is a very good mindset in MTTs because it's the opposite of the weak-tight mentality that tries to sneak into mincashes--but you've gone a little too far in that direction.

Story of my life...........

Yes.... I saw the movie.

So the Q calls a complete by a low card w multiple low cards behind him, including your 3. Must've have been playing stud hi and had 2 suited cards in the hole, including the A. That's only thing that makes sense in my head.

Would that be the thing to do if he's short stacked?

So can someone explain why you'd want to raise 5th here with the worst hand and likely not the best 4 card draw either?

Here’s best case: http://propokertools.com/simulations...735K&s=generic

Here’s worst: http://propokertools.com/simulations...735K&s=generic

Even in worst case we have fair share equity. Player A despite the best board is not in a good spot here. And player B has already proven he’s too loose / optimistic by being in this pot. He could power through a paired card here and even if he doesn’t we make money on the bets.

The sims are kind of confusing me. Why does it look like they have pairs in the hole?

For razz, 8- means "any card 8 or lower." 8-8- means "two cards 8 or lower, regardless of whether they make a pair." (8-8-), with parens, means "two unpaired cards 8 or lower."

See Syntax Help on the bottom menu above the ad.

But they're in parentheses on both sims, yet one seems to mean possible pairs and one means unpaired?

Different numbers of items within parenthesis. (6-6-)Q26 means either of the cards in the parenthesis can be a six or a deuce but they can't both be the same rank.

Funny game idea.

Breich, Jesse, DougL, Hank, Ranch99 and I fired up a 4-8 TOE game at Red Rock on a Thursday and were sitting around playing 6-handed with two open seats. A waitlist started to fill up...

I thought it would be hilarious if we each had to book one player that sat down in our game that night. Realize that this is 4-8 Red Rock mixed, where almost everyone that sits down wouldn't know the rules to probably 2-3 games, and the median age was like 52. Not sure how you would get to choose your horse, but auction for the players as they sat down would be the most fun(ny).

Rules:
You had to book one and only one player.
What they win/lose for the night is what you collect/pay the other 5 players.

First guy that sits down is the 75 y.o. man. Initial thought is pass, but as the night wore on I realized that if you could just find a nitty old guy that doesn't play any hands, he might be the sleeper nut high pick.

How did you have a wait list with 2 empty seats?

Call-ins?

Doesn't that set up a huge conflict of interest when you end up HU against your horse? You stand to lose 4x as much by winning the hand as you do by losing it?

I played a session of poker (5 or 6 hours), and then went over to my Mom's house to visit. She asked me what my best hand was. I told her that I had AA in a 7 way pot that held up for a big pot. 4 hands later I got AA again and three people put in 5 bets each before the flop, and I won another big pot.

Mom said "your best hand all day was only one pair? You never had something better, like three of a kind?"