Quote:
Originally Posted by omgbaxter
For sure. I probably come off/sound ignorant/new because I haven't played online poker in almost over a decade, but things like ICM and GTO are still ideas I'm trying to grasp. So wanted to see how this falls into those realms.
No problem. I basically took almost a decade off myself (with a stint where I tried again in 2016, but it didn't really go well), and I've only been doing it again for a little over 2 1/2 years. I've been really working on modernizing my game by learning GTO ranges and lines, fixing my old leaks (which, frankly, were playing far too many hands and not particularly considering ICM), and trying to incorporate that into all of my experience and instincts.
ICM just refers to the concept that in tournaments, chips you gain are less valuable than chips you lose, and each chip you have is worth slightly less than the one before it. So you have to make some adjustments to chip EV lines to account for this, although they are usually only significant around the bubble and at or near the final table. (One of the biggest ones being that, when pay jumps matter and especially when your stack is at risk, you want to be leveraging fold equity more often and you need a significantly tighter calling range to call an all-in when you jam yourself.) That said, with a stack this deep and this late in the tournament, you don't really want to invite unnecessary variance.
Here's a fantastic example of ICM effects at a final table, from the 2022 WPT World Championship. They're six-handed, Benny Glaser has almost 100BB, Eliot Hudon has almost 50BB, third place has 17BB, and the other three have 10BB or less. Glaser's shoving range is extremely wide here, surely far wider than AJo, because of the payouts:
1st: $4,146,400*
2nd: $2,830,000
3rd: $2,095,000
4th: $1,608,000
5th: $1,301,000
6th: $1,001,050
Glaser can shove anything that has decent equity when called, particularly if he has a high card to block a calling hand, because the other players need a significant equity advantage over his range to call off their stacks and risk busting out. Even the shorter stacks aren't going to want to call off too wide considering they could make hundreds of thousands of dollars by waiting for another short stack to bust-- and in their cases the hit to Glaser's stack is so miniscule that he doesn't particularly mind. And with the great position Hudon is in, it would be a disaster for him to go out 6th; he'd surely be costing himself over $1 million in equity by doing so. In fact, the ICM effects are so strong here that
Hudon's entire calling range is KK+.
Anyway, even given the point you are in the tournament and your stack depth, I wouldn't be looking to take unnecessary gambles and flips.
Quote:
Originally Posted by omgbaxter
This is a very good point. I think (which means I'm sure) I probably have a (major) leak(s) playing OOP, and would rather get it all in with tons of outs instead of misplaying the hand all the way to the river, so that's something I definitely need to work on.
Regardless of ICM, when you make a bet, you should be thinking about the result you want and which hands you're targeting. In this case, I'm not sure what you're trying to get to fold that would bet 60% pot on a board this connected-- and I'm assuming that his size up makes his c-bet range tighter/stronger than it would be normally. (And since you don't have a made hand, folding is the result you want.)
I wouldn't check-raise at this depth for exactly this reason; the villain is showing strength-- or at least, this 60% bet size is more polarized than a 25-33% bet would be, which means a check-raise folds out all his bluffs and lets him continue only with his strong hands-- and I don't
want to get all-in against his flop 3-betting range. I would rather keep the weaker hands in his range in and try to hit my hand. If we were 20BB deep, then just check-jamming the flop is no problem: We have loads of equity, we maximize our fold equity, and we guarantee we see two more cards if called. But this deep, we have a problem when we check-raise an unmade hand with this much equity-- we have enough chips behind that we can get 3-bet and put into a terrible spot, and if we get called we've built a huge pot against a strong hand with an awkward stack-to-pot ratio remaining. Did you have a plan if your check-raise got called?
We want to polarize our check-raising range between strong enough made hands to go with, and some bluffs that block villain's strongest hands and still have some equity or backdoor equity if they get called, but not enough equity that we mind folding against a 3-betting range. (Something like Qc6c would make sense; we block both ends of the straight and could still win with a Jack and maybe a seven, plus we have a backdoor flush draw that we can barrel again if we pick it up on the turn. Or even that might be too strong a hand by GTO, I'm not sure, but I think it makes the point well.)
As much as I hate call/call/folding, it might just be the right line here if you brick out. It's never fun to play passively across multiple streets, but this is a spot where you want to realize your equity without committing your entire stack to it, and unfortunately, being OOP, you can't really control the pot size.
And playing OOP sucks too, but again, you have to think about what you want to accomplish with your bets. Which hands do you want to fold, which hands do you want to call, what are you going to do if you get 3-bet, etc. Like I said above, the larger c-bet size has a polarizing effect on his hand range-- meaning it's more likely he has either strong hands or low-equity bluffs, and very little in between. If you call the flop, the bluffs likely give up and you'll get a free river, and even if you don't hit on the turn, you should still have enough outs to continue against a bet, depending on the bet sizing and the exact turn card. (Some we should be more prone to fold than others, like turns that pair the board.) So you still stand a decent chance of getting a fair price to hit your hand. Heck, against some villains who will two-barrel wide or with semi-bluffs of their own, you could check-shove the turn and put
them in this terrible spot.
With a check-raise, though, you're getting him to fold the bluffs and you put more money in against his strong hands. We generally don't want to bloat the pot when villain is going to have a strong range if they continue. And, as we saw, you also open yourself up to getting 3-bet, either pushing you off your equity or forcing you to take a huge flip (and very likely the bad side of it). And since you have two of the best semi-bluffing cards, it's more likely he has a made hand-- and his best semi-bluff is AsJs, which you are in
worse shape against than even his best made hands.
So, in other words, not only do we not want to take a flip this big and this late in the tournament, we've played the hand in such a way that we're getting our stacks in against all his hands that have us in the worst shape.
Having gotten to this point, though, after running the numbers I still think it's a call, because we're getting the right price even against the stone nuts. We're getting the right price against 76s, two pair, and overpairs, if he's ever shoving those (JJ maybe, the others increasingly less likely the higher you go). We're only significant dogs against sets and the nut flush. You have 37% equity against even the very tightest range of sets, straights, and nut flush draws with some other significant immediate equity (AJs, A9s, A7s). If you start adding J7 and 76 that equity goes up. And then if he ever has two pair or overpairs it goes up more, although it goes down if he semibluffs more nut flush draws (although I think that's less likely without at least some kind of other equity / straight blocker).
Quote:
Originally Posted by omgbaxter
This is probably the biggest takeaway. Flipping for top 5 stacks with 30 left seems disastrous in retrospect.
Yeah. To follow up on the above, we don't want to get to that point. You can't be afraid to play big pots with big hands this late, but you want big hands for that, or in a situation like this you want to be able to leverage the all-in bet, not the other way around. If you're going to semi-bluff with this many outs, you need to be able to maximize your fold equity by moving in; if you want to bluff at this depth, do it with hands you don't mind folding to further action.
(No advice is universal; there may be situations where check-raise bluff with your hand is fine here, perhaps against a smaller bet-- but that keeps the pot smaller and makes a 3-bet all-in from villain an unrealistic option-- but may make 4-betting all-in a realistic one from
you. Again, the deeper in a tournament we get, the more important being able to leverage fold equity is.)
You don't want to create situations when you're this deep in a tournament where you're getting the right price to call off but have a substantial chance of busting (or losing nearly all of your chips).