Live tournament High roller. final table payjumps are
68k 44k 29k 19.7k 14.3k 10k

The exact hand Stacks relative to position are
LJ 4.2m
HJ 1.5m
CO 60k (Just lost Flip vs BU last hand) (0.6bb)
BU 1.3m
SB 3.8m
BB(me) 1.4m. roughly
Blind is 100k.
Start of the hand SB says if folds to him his is going to blind jam and did so. Overall not much edge.
we peel AQo and felt like its too good to fold and calls off. Loses to K5s on 552Q and was out 6th
At the time i felt like this call is pretty maginal but ultimately decide that i want to play for the dream(we all do right) and not the payjump. Otherwise would called off a hand that is more likely do dominate our oppoent like 99TT. since AQ often goes 60/38~40 with a random hand. Should we call more often if we have 3m and double means huge, probably not. If we had 2-4bb and peel kings are we always call it off and hope for the best?

It left a lot of controversy between the audiences. What would you have done?

I likely call as well. It may not be the best decision ICM wise but I don't care. Yes we can wait to move up a single spot which is worth 4k but by winning this hand which I believe we will do about 60% of the time we move into second place (not that we are guaranteed to finish there - just that we have a lot of potential).

The other reason I call is that we are surrounded by the big stacks. And with the SB making plays like this it will continue to limit our capabilities unless we stand up to the aggression.

Sorry it turned out this way. But if you do this (or have done this) a bunch of times then you will be finishing at the top of a lot of high payout tournaments.

Yeah very wp and experienced choice by the CO who manage to fold T7s for 0.7 bb otherwise hand might played out differently. I mean he probably folds KK there just hope for the best because nothing can change for him until he reach the bigblind.

Idk this is the easiest slam dunk call in the world. You go up 2 buyins if you fold and shorty gets knocked out? We play to win. This spot- if sb didn’t look at his cards- AQ is just a smash call. I would call regardless if he looked jamming into 14bb bb stack effective. AQo is printing 5.39 bb against a perfect bash shoving range in this spot. I’m sure villians are jamming proper but still it has to be printing 4+ bb against the range so never a fold imo.

Idk. With icm here- I would look more at the EV of our potential payout based on each action. If we fold, we lock up a ladder but we have 10bb and are the short stack. If we double we have 28bb and are 3/6 with a much higher expected payout based on chip distribution (sure we can still get unlucky and go out 5th or 6th [super unlikely]). Idk folding AQo to a sb jam just seams way too weak.

I know it sucks to lose to k5ss but it happens. I wouldn’t even really care. Sb jammed a hand he is supposed to, we called a hand we should snap call with. We lose in an unfortunate spot.

You have quite some ICM pressure with CO being short but that is not worse than for example, 6 max and 9 max STT bubbles. You are still a short stack and are going to risk your stack very soon.
If you swap stacks with LJ than THAT would be a fold.

And STT players are snap calling ATC shoves all days with AQ on the bubble. It is not fishpump but it is a call.

ty for helping me understand this spot

Here's the range I got as close as I could figure it* on Hold 'Em Resources:



* - BB ante isn't an option, so I tried it with an ante and your calling range is slightly wider, but with an ante the calculator assumes the CO will call off any two since they're anteing every hand rather than just the BB ante. So for this range I used no ante, which still has CO calling off 71.9% of hands, which obviously did not happen here.

If you were deeper-- and more clearly in second or third place, say-- I'd imagine the range is significantly tighter. But you only have 14BB anyway.

For the record, though, I decided to look at the hands at the bottom of the calling range and the top of the folding range:

A9s is a call and is 62.78% vs. a random hand.
KJs is a fold and is 62.57% vs. a random hand.

Just to give you an idea that you still need to tighten up a fair bit more than what would be a standard cEV call.

This is a snap call IMO and it's really not even close. If this were a satellite situation, then maybe there is a conversation to be had here. But if you are folding AQ in this spot, then what are you calling? JJ+/AK?

OP, it sucks to lose in this spot (getting the money in a slight favorite), but that is the ups and downs of tournament poker.

In regards to your follow up questions. Should we call if we are deeper (probably), if the player is going to do this multiple times, and you both have 100BBs, then maybe you can wait for a real premium spot where you have a big pair, but in tournament that are top heavy, you need to push your edges.

If you are shorter stacked, yes call here as well. I think you have to shift your mentality to play to win when the pay jumps are marginal. You are looking at a $4.3K jump vs a $58K payday for 1st place. If you were to win in this spot, you are going to be 2nd in chips and will put yourself in a much better spot to win.

I had a similar situation occur in a tournament in Prague a couple of days ago. We were down to 8 players in the money. 9 to 11 had paid 11,000 crowns (the buy in was 3500 crowns).

8th place was 16,000 crowns and 7th was like 22,000, 6th maybe 30,000, 5th 40,000 crowns then up to first at like 120,000 crowns (all more or less).

I was BB and it folded to SB who had basically shoved every time it folded to him on the BTN or SB.

SB had 425,000, I had 575,000. Avg chip stack was 605,000. One player had like 1,200,000 then most of us had between 550,000 and 650,000. Maybe a couple at 450,000. The short stack was ~300,000. Blinds were 20,000/40,000 with a 40,000 BB ante.

SB shoves of course. I look down at 88 and call before I could think about it. He had A7o and I lost (on the river of course because that's how it works in Prague). Average stack size was about 15 blinds for me and 20 for you. So we are basically in turbo mode.

I could have waited until I laddered up but then I would have been very short stacked. And yes with an average of 15 blinds we were basically at an all in or fold stage and you still had some levels to go. I would do it again every time.

It's very different when you cover the shoving stack. You're not risking busting out and losing your potential remaining equity; you can actually gain some by locking up a higher pay spot. And I think 88 is a definite call covering the an SB shoving 10.5 BB.

This is irrelevant to the question at hand - the question is the CO in the hand has .6 of a BB so what should be our calling range. SB is smart obviously jamming 100% - the other issue is this is a live 2k so the value of doubling up isn't as valuable as doubling up in say a softer lineup. I don't know the math behind this but I would say this might be a fold with moving up a payout spot essentially guaranteed.

FWIW, Pairs are MUCH better to call with here. When Villain is jamming ATC, their cards will mostly be live. AQo is about 64.5% vs ATC. 88 is 69.1%.

My intuition was that pairs were better, but the gap here is very wide. Even AK isn't as good as 77 to call with.

It is irrelevant to you but not to me.

I could care less about laddering up for an additional 4k when first place is an additional 58k with 2nd place being an additional 34k. We have 14 blinds which means that our 3 betting power is limited. If this is an average 60% winning opportunity I will take it every time.

Calling wins $645 according to my ICM calculations. This doesn't account for position, or FGS.

The situations are very different because you are covering the shoving stack, among other things, and therefore do not risk busting out.

Then you'd be losing money by doing that.

The whole point of ICM is that you can calculate the equity of your stack before the hand, the equity if you call and win, the equity if you fold, and the payout you would get if you bust out. You can figure out exactly how much real-money equity, not just chips, you're risking, and at what point it becomes profitable to call. You can't do it at the table, but you can do it away from the table to give you a better foundation for when a situation comes up in an actual tournament.

As I showed above, the breakeven line is somewhere between 62.57% and 62.78%. If you call as a 60% favorite, you are losing money.

I wasn't referring to my situation. I was referring to the hand in this thread.

Maybe not.

ICM is a good tool for getting an abstract idea of what is EV.

I am often in situations where I am either one of the worst players at the table (OK maybe not quite true but clearly not a favorite) or one of the best. So my shoves or calls are more related to that than specific ICM numbers.

The other thing I believe in is that ICM does not take into account the value of having more chips where you can do things other than shove or fold. With 14 blinds this is always going to be a shove or fold situation except maybe for stop n go's in the BB (where we get to shove on the flop).

Though it wasn't mentioned in this thread, the length of time of the levels is critical to me for knowing when to fold or call in this situation (with AQ). Similarly are we playing online, live with a shuffle machine, or dealer is shuffling? How many hands we are going to see before each level change makes a huge difference from a strategy standpoint. Are we likely to see another strong hand before our chips dwindle?

Since we are already in the money, these differences matter especially if I feel like a strong player. I would prefer to be in 2nd place 60% of the time than to be basically guaranteed 4k and a random chance to improve my final place.

OK I got this wrong...

What I found similar to the two situations is that in both I would be reduced to getting knocked out (in OP's case 100% of the time and in my case most of the time). I did get knocked out in 8th place in my situation though I did double up once and then shoved with A9s and lost to the smaller stack with AJo and then amazingly had AK the next hand and lost to K9.

Still the point was in both cases if we win the hand in question we gain big stacks that can do more postflop (and preflop).

Straight ICM can't be correct. How far off it is will be solved in the next few years, but this hand is a perfect example of the problem.

SB has a profitable shove with ATC. ICM doesn't understand itself, since it doesn't realize how profitable situations arise that are far away from chip EV.

I'm calling 66, A8s+, ATo+, KTs+, QJs, and KQo

Okay, I see where you're coming from. ICM isn't perfect, no, but I still think it's good to study so you have a baseline of what your calling ranges should be and the equity you need, and you can adjust for your own perception of the table or for other factors in the tournament. The goal, in the end, should be to make the decision that makes us the most money.

Or, as I heard someone put it, how can you know when and how to deviate from GTO-optimal play if you don't know what the GTO-optimal play is?

I'm not clear what you're trying to say.

ICM isn't perfect, and doesn't account for future game scenarios, but the simulation I ran is aware that SB should be shoving ATC here, and the calling range accounts for that.

I may be doing this wrong and I'm not a high stakes player but OP's stack should be worth close enough to 3rd place payout in ICM terms. The value obviously improves if he wins but it's still below 2nd place payout. OP walks with 6th place money if he loses.

Again, I may be doing this wrong but my math suggests OP would need 70% equity just take break even, Calling it off with AQo (64,43% equity vs any two) isn't making money.

I would fold this 100% but I see the advantages of taking a -EV gamble if all you want is winning the tournament. It basically comes down to the specific circumstances which aren't mentioned in the OP (ie, is he rolled/does the money matter etc).

Come on guys, you can just run it in a ICM calculator
SB 100.0%, Any two
BB 9.5%, 66+ A9s+ ATo+ KQs

BB 140 15.47% 15.11% -0.362%

BB have 3rd place equity but this does not prevent AQo being a call.

I was gonna try to get a more specific ICM calculation through PT4-- the exact evaluation of stack equities-- and see what it says, but I somehow managed to crash PT4 while doing it.

OP only has 13 big blinds which is probably why the call is a little wider than you might think.