Maybe you should first look what first to eight pays. If you quadruple up and almost elimnate these guys in the same hand you are almost guaranteed six place and should have a good chip stack compared to others. If the payout structure in your tournament isn't totally weird this is an instacall.

edit: I just saw that you wrote that you are in sixth place before the hands. As two of your opponents have you covered, they are obviously ahead of you. That will make you close to chip leader after the hand.

If the payout structure isn't superflat and the chip leader doesn't have like 80% of chips or something you can't fold this.

November 9, there are 10 players left. That's about the only time it would make sense, barring very unusual circumstances. That's what he was saying when he said 10 players at main event. Being a member of the N9 does have a lot of side benefits that throw ICM calculations for a loop.

Not to be grammar nit, but I think your placement of "if a short-stack is around" is incorrect, and actually makes the statement incorrect.

You're saying ICM says on-money bubble, with a short-stack around, you only call chip leaders shove with AA/KK (at least I think that's what you are saying).

The way you wrote it means - "On money bubble, HU, only call chip leaders shove with AA/KK IF a short stack is around", as in, if there's no short-stack around you should fold to chip leaders shove with less than AA/KK.

If anything, the lack of a short-stack should make it more reasonable to call the chip leaders shove with less than AA/KK.

Edit - I don't think it's too off-topic for this thread, but if it is, mods feel free to edit/remove, I won't get offended.

enough to fold AK there, but Aces are +EV by 2 million$ or something. plus the attention you get for busting out at that spot with Aces.
If you fold that on TV you might actually get killed before november by a tilted 2+2er. So put that into your calculations and you have a snapcall.

8/16 game had a guy fold QQ face up on an AA2 board bc other guy bet and he said "guy doesn't know how to play jackpot"... jackpot was 40k.

to clarify:

9 man SNG pays 3 20-30-50.

4 left. blinds 200/400 5800c, 4900c, 2000c, 800c. chip leader first to act shoves, you on button look down at QQ. what do you do? ICM says fold.

All I am saying.

if 10 left in main event and faced with 1 all-in with AA always call, 2 all-ins ( now 62-38) probably have to call. in the unlikely event of 3 all-ins ahead of you, I think you can't be faulted for the fold.

The guy on the PS Big game got to $240k and folded AA and KK. If he had played AA, Phil Laak's flopped quad 6's would've hurt him badly.

Then the last show where the dude got AA in vs KK...awesime, loved seeing the pro get crushed. And how does that pro make the call of a shove there. Guy ONLY has AA there EVER.

You would still massively increase your chance to win the event. If you take into account final-table-exposure money, you clearly should take into account WSOPME-champion-exposure money. And the payjumps escalate at the final table too.

Of course I understand if people want to reduce variance, but you seemed to present folding like a +EV decision. It clearly isn't.

I'm not famliar with the PS Big Game, but I think the guy gets to keep everything above 100k. Correct?

Now assuming Laak had 100k, the EV of going all-in against an underpari is roughly .8*(140k+240k)-.2*(-240k)=304k-48k.

So you make around 250k Sklansky bucks by doing that play. Of course it's different if there was post-flop play, but you can still move all-in instead of folding. Obviously that reduces your EV as you will only pick up the blinds a lot of the time, but still it's better than folding.

Again if your goal is do reduce variance that's perfectly understandable and if you include your psychological well-being it might be +EV that way, but that's not the way you present it.

Post of the Year, IMO.

The big game makes it pot-limit preflop to prevent the amateurs from doing exactly that.

+1 to Bobby the Bus for only running it once like a pimp. Didn't even hesitate. Let's make it a true daily double, Alex.

That's music to my ears. That and talk of lucky seats mean I'm not changing tables for a while.

Was playing O8 @ the V last weekend and had a regular who everyone else at the table knew request a "wash" about every five hands. It was an old guy with white hair and severe male pattern baldness who played like a complete moron. He even had the audacity to critique my play one hand where I sucked out on three other players to scoop a 1.5-rack pot. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I responded with, "And how do you think washing the deck is going to help you win?"

Heh, I think I know who you're talking about from my last visit there. I almost asked the dealer to wash the cards after he scooped a couple hands in a row, but I didn't want to slow down the game.

The Affleck/Duhamel suckout thread touched on this exact question. And I love your point about the tilted 2+2er.

I will say this - barring very unusual circumstances/tournament structures, there is no better example of "folding aces pre" than 10 left, WSOP ME, shove from chip leader. It's pretty much the perfect storm of a situation, and even then it's almost definitely wrong.

We agree. I was pointing out the way you wrote it actually read the opposite - that your calling the chip leader's shove range tightens to AA/KK when there's NO short stack around - if there was a short stack, then the range loosens. This is the exact opposite of what you're saying, but that's how it read.

The 2nd amateur, after winning a hand to get up to about 180K in chips, which meant 80K in profit, had shown a willingess to continue playing "standard poker" - by that I mean he wasn't just going to play nothing but AA/maybe KK. In fact, only a few hands higher he played a non-AA/KK, non-flopped nuts hand to showdown. That was absolutely HUGE in that by doing so, you couldn't automatically assume his range was AA only. That said, it's still pretty easy to narrow the 3-bet and 5-bet (remember, it's pot-limit pre-flop...the betting went raise by Jetten, 3bet by pro, 4bet by Jetten, 5betshove by pro, call by Jetten) to AA, but hindsight is 20/20 - QQ does exist as a possibilty, as does the other KK.

That said, just to illustrate that the amateur was willing to gamble, Jetten offered to run it more than once and the amateur said no - one time.

Pot limit pre, no limit post. First amateur clearly was affected by how much money he had just won - 120K (4 year salary for him). If at any point he raised pot pre-flop from that point on, it'd essentially tell everyone else his range - AA/KK, and give the pros (which included Phil Laak, Jason Mercier, Joe Cada and David Williams - say what you want about how bad the last two are, but they still know enough to exploit the situation) - decent pot-odds to hit their hand with strong implied odds given that they know the amateur's range is AA/KK, and also the pro would have tremendous fold equity on any and all streets because unless the amateur is holding the stone nuts, it's awfully hard to call 4 years' salary with just an overpair on a wet board.

If you're not going to play anything but AA/KK, with pot-limit pre-flop, sitting on 220K in chips, 120K of it is profit for you when you only make 30K a year, then just shutting down entirely is absolutely the right thing to do - tightening up to only AA/KK just makes no sense.

I loved that. +1 to pointing that out before I did. I was shocked to see that. I'm up that much, I'm running it as many times as the cards allow. Heck I'm taking an equity chop if I can.

Back on topic - I think very old nitty men are probably the only group where you don't have to worry about glass-tapping or them leaving because you said something like that. They're pretty set in their ways and something like that, they're most likely going to shrug off as a dumb comment from a young-in who doesn't know better. Of COURSE washing the deck is going to help - they've been playing this game for 40 years and they've seen washing the deck help change up the luck so many times they lost count...of course they also lost count of their chips today because they're 95 years old, but that's another story.

That would have been hilarious. Then he'd have to have them washed again to reverse your reverse juju.

True, but I still feel like I shouldn't have said anything because nothing good could come of it (other than maybe--just MAYBE--him realizing that he's wasting everyone's time).

True. But the most likely response - grunt, groan, mumble something under his breath about young players and how dumb they are.

speaking of which, one of the old regulars slow-rolled me the other day when the whole hand was checked to the river and there was 4 to a flush on the board. i instantly showed my 5-high flush, dealer is basically making the pot and ready to push it in my direction when the guy finally flips over his 9-high flush.

now i dont really care about a "slow-roll" in a checked-down pot, but really what the heck was the guy waiting for? he kept claiming he needed to recheck the board to see what he had, and couldnt understand me when i said that the hand was over and the dealer can read the cards for him if he just flips over. seriously STOP WASTING EVERYBODY'S TIME, OLD PEOPLE!!!

That changes things obviously, but it doesn't really fit the orignal situation anymore either as EV is obviously much harder to calculate with multiple streets to come.

I suspect he was playing for comps. Washing the cards takes up more time delaying when he he had to pot money in the pot.

I know, but someone brought up the example as bad play by the amateur, and I felt that he had to be defended because I absolutely believe the amateur made the right decision once up 120K. Both amateurs did - either you keep playing to the best of your abilities, or you lock it down entirely. The latter INCLUDES folding AA and KK. Trying to do any amount of both ends of the spectrum is massively -EV.

I have seen a player call a pretty big all-in bet on the river with 7 high then continue to say "it was worth a go..."

at Foxwoods one time playing 1/2. UTG raises to 15, CO 3bets to 50, UTG goes all in. For some reason UTG thought he called so fliiped over AA.

Because CO never called and it was UTG's fault for flipping, they let CO make his decision. CO deliberates for literally 3-4 mins, then says "I have KK, I have to call."

Of course K on the river for a $600+ pot.

i don't know if this was "thinking" or not, but it was a bizarre hand for sure:

i call a small raise in the BB with AJ. three ways to the flop. flop comes J32r. i check, pfr checks, button bets. i call, pfr folds. turn comes 7 rainbow. i bet out, button calls. river pairs the 3 for a board of J32-7-3 (no flush). i lead out again for about 1/2 pot hoping for a call from KJ / QJ or maybe TT/99. he snap shoves. i'm getting about eleventy-billion to one on the call (probably more like 5:1), but what hand that i beat takes this line??

i'm thinking about my action, not sure yet whether i was going to call or fold. i was literally sitting very still and didn't utter a single word. the dealer was looking straight at me cuz the action was back on me. after about 10 seconds of me thinking, the villian rolls his cards over and reveals the K9o. i immediately say "call" and table my AJ. villian looks confused, so i physically put the money in the pot and say "i call" again. dealer is also confused cuz he never saw me act, but pushes me the pot. very weird stuff.

No, vs a set of 9s is 8 outs. Don't know what I thought was 2 outs.