And the final table of the 2018 WSOP Main Event is set! Congratulations to everyone that made it, especially Nicolas Manion with a near triple-up to soar into the chip lead. That being said, my heartfelt condolences go out to both Yueqi Zhu and Antoine Labat. Zhu got eliminated with Kings in the grossest FT bubble spot I’ve ever seen. Labat is still in it, he is just a distant ninth place with a lot of work left if he wants to win the title. Oh, he had Kings too. He lost over 80% of his chips in that last hand.

And it was a TERRIBLE CALL.

As an MTT player, it is so important to be ICM aware. As you approach a final table, ICM pressure becomes very real. You need to be aware of the stack constellation at your table: who are the big stacks, who are the short stacks, where does your stack fit on that spectrum? ICM affects everything about how you play these tables where the prizes and the pay jumps really start to matter. One chip is no longer worth one chip. Chips are all intensely more valuable, in this case worth millions of dollars based on where you can expect to finish with your current stack. Using software like Holdem Resources Calculator or ICMizer, along with the payout structure of your tournament, you can calculate what IS or ISN’T a profitable all-in or call of an all-in. Labat had good reason to fold his Kings and hopefully you will all agree.

I entered in all of the payout information for the final ten spots along with chip stacks. Nicolas Manion is UTG, Antoine Labat is MP2, and Yueqi Zhu is MP3. As you can see, Labat is second in chips with over 51 million. Manion is fifth with 36 million and Zhu is in seventh with 24.7 million. Zhu is the effective stack with just over 40 big blinds. This is SUPER important. ICM pressure is very high mid-stack vs mid-stack with shorter stacks likely to bust before you. This is important later on…



Blinds are $600k/$300k with $100k ante. The action of this hand starts with Manion openraising pocket Aces from under-the-gun to to $150,000. Labat gets sneaky with Kings and just flats. Directly behind him, Zhu also wakes up with pocket Kings. Rather than flatting or 3betting smaller, Zhu casually flicks in his FORTY BIG BLIND STACK (WTF???). If any of you were watching the action, Manion was probably the nittiest of all the remaining players, rarely getting out of line. After thinking for only a few seconds, Manion casually rejams his SIXTY BIG BLIND STACK (HOLY SH*# !!!!!!!).

This is the spot Labat finds himself in. Currently being in second place which pays out $5 million, and being faced with insane action from two players, including the tightest one left, on the biggest final table bubble of the year, Labat calls off with Kings.

Manion’s Aces hold and he becomes the overwhelming chip leader. Zhu is eliminated in 10th place for $850,025. Labat does make the FT but with a life support stack of $8 million, not even fifteen big blinds. He locks up $1 million by making the FT, but likely lost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars by calling off Kings.

Enough with the recap. Let’s calculate.



This is my 14.3% UTG opening range for Manion. Honestly in this spot, being the tightest player by far, this is an intensely OPTIMISTIC opening range. He could easily be opening a 10% range or less on the FT bubble of the Main Event, the most important poker spot of his life. I gave Manion as wide a range as I did to help illustrate just how bad Labat’s call with Kings is.



Labat is the next one to put chips in the pot from MP+2, electing to flat Kings. I gave him a 10% flatting range, but this is also a little difficult to gauge. Against the nittiest player left he may be flatting even tighter. Labat will also three-bet some of these hands, trying to put pressure on the tightest player. KK+, AK are only 50% flats precisely because Labat is three-betting these on his own a fair amount of the time. Here he flats though, and this is the range I gave him.



Finally, this is Zhu’s 3bet jam range. Once again, this is incredibly OPTIMISTIC. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for Zhu to have a 3bet jam range of QQ+, AKs or TIGHTER, especially with a massive FORTY BIG BLIND STACK (WTF?????). What Zhu does here is ICM suicide with hands that basically aren’t QQ+. Once again, I am choosing this wide range just to help show how bad this call is.

After setting my ranges for the first preflop betting actions that are largely subjective and range-dependent, I ran my HRC calculations to see what is profitable for the following actions.



This is Manion’s profitable 4bet rejam range. Repeat: this is MANION’S range, our UTG friend holding pocket rockets. A profitable 4bet jam for him is KK+, so Aces are an easy get in here.

To re-emphasize, Manion is the TIGHTEST PLAYER ON THE TABLE. By jamming his 60BB stack, he not only puts two-thirds of his stack on the line, he is putting his entire Main Event on the line should Labat call. To be fair, he likely isn’t expecting Labat to show up here with a monster after only flatting pre. Despite that, he has still put forty big blinds on the line with barely ten seconds of thought put into it. Manion is not showing up here with garbage.

And that is why this spot is so sick. Labat was dreaming of bracelets and is suddenly living a nightmare. To his credit, it looked like he understood how sick the spot was. The ICM pressure is absolutely massive. Facing the action he is, with all of the shorter stacks at the table and ability to run deep, he needs to call off way TIGHTER. Here is Labat’s profitable calling range of both Manion and Zhu facing a Manion KK+ rejam.



Yes, Labat can only call Aces. This is because of ICM. Labat’s stack, starting the hand with over 80 big blinds, is worth MILLIONS of dollars. Kings might be good here, but he loses often enough that it is not worth getting it in in this spot. Kings are BURNING money. You are better off calling 54s in this spot.

Alright, maybe Manion rips it in a little lighter, lets say QQ+ as best case scenario. What is Labat’s profitable calling range then?



Kings are doing a lot better but are still absolutely torching money. Let me remind you, this was calculated using optimistically wide ranges for both Manion and Zhu. If they are both playing tighter than I gave them credit for, Kings are performing even worse in this spot. Labat just has to find the fold button.

This is all based on my personal, flawed, man-made ranges. If Labat thinks Manion is rejamming a little wider, let’s say QQ+, AK, then Labat would be making a profitable call. Now, is Manion rejamming that wide in this spot?

Not a ****ing chance.

Give credit where credit is due though. This was absolutely one of the sickest spots I’ve ever seen. Biggest tournament of the year, biggest poker moment of all of these guy’s lives (unless you’re Joe Cada). Just a sick cooler, but that’s poker.

Yes, Labat made a bad call. But it’s easy to sit here and say that he made the wrong play. Could you lay down Kings in this spot?

(I’d like to think that I could )

Always Fold pre, Brah’

What are the odds of a chop before this hand? If all you were playing for was the bracelet, doesn’t that changes things?

Kings are a good hand. I like kings.

so much this. interesting read. thanks for posting your analysis of the hand.

In unrelated news... the Brat won his 15th . Suck it all you High Roller GTO robots who laugh at his play.

Hey OP- you are only 99% Nerd ... you got a few things wrong, there are Total Chips 393,700,000 in play, not what you listed, and also the ante was not 100k this hand, thats a mistake on pokernews, it had to have been 50k if i had to guess. Theres no chance the ante is a third of a smalll blind

Horrible call though i agree and said that from the start. Hes chopping at best and not commited at all.

Gotta love poker, Phil Hellmuth branwashed millions of pokerplaying recs like this guy.

You just see the big picture and get star struck. the guy won a turbo donkament which requires a large amount of rungood, and he was behind 4 times for his tourney life. You wont talk about that, or acknowledge that his play is really laughable. Do you think its ok to limp/fold an Ace with 7 bbs? sb to bb? Do you think its ok to raise/fold your button with 8 bbs? Do you think its ok to fold QQ to a single raise preflop in a 4 handed game? Phil has done these on more than one occasion, cashgames form around him, he avoids the big super high rolller scene and the tough EPTS. He is a fish in todays game.
One night of rungood doesnt take away the yrs of crap he shown us.

nice analysis, does seem like a terrible spot

The ante was indeed 100k.
Level was 300k/600k/100k


Also, you can’t just take the number of entries and multiply by 50k to get the number of chips in play. You will only ever get the chips in play at the start of the tournament from that.
Colour ups and errors in colour up change that figure, not to mention DQs and chips removed by players like Men Nguyen

I don't know man, some people are just connected to the universe.
When I was playing a tourney with my GF
And I told her I'm not folding to an all-in with QQ 13bb deep far away from the bubble in a top heavy tourney
She said I'm wrong
she can feel it
we will lose this one
let's fold!
I just couldn't.
And of course, we lost that hand...to A6o and I still have it on my plate!
Just like there might be god, there might be people playing with the feels that people bound by the nerdy shackles of math and reality can never understand.
People that don't stack off with QQ in that spot and live on in the tournament
People that win 15 Bracelets and become the best WSOP players of all time and keep pushing the envelope of what's possible

if a King had come on the flop, this thread would never happen.

pretty sure he is still down money in the past 10 years though

a bit OT to otherwise good thread.... but he's had a bit more than one night of run good.

also perhaps there is something more to winning large field, MTTs than making absolute game theory optimal play each decision.

On a personal level PH comes across as a tool (IRL dunno). But you just cant argue against the strategy he has developed over the years to beat these large WSOP fields.

I was simply making fun of any of the high roller regs that make fun of Phil. Why? Because it makes me laugh. They jelly much? My post had more to do with them than PH.

this

While I do believe you make a valid point, I will argue that this type of comment would never be made is some high praised German would have won a bracelet. If that happens, we praise the German or High Roller player as a "wizard" or "end-boss". Of course Phil plays less than GTO in quite a few spots....I think some of his plays are whacky and not mathematically correct....But, regardless of his play, he does consistently Final Table events each year or at the very least run deep quite a bit. His whiny attitude is annoying, but he obviously is doing something right in these tournaments.

oh i dunno i have a sneaking suspicion that had a king come on the flop there would have been a thread here on 2p2.

id even go out on a limb and say that thread would have been much longer than this one.

Nice analysis. The key to the hand is Labat's flat of Manion's open. Instead suppose Labat 3 bets to 5 million, then Zhu's 4 bet shoves for 40 BB and Manion 5 bet shoves 60 BB. With this action, it looks like both Zhu's and Manion's ranges are kk+. I think with this action, Labat could find the fold. With his flat, his hand is under repped and Manion's range now includes QQ and AK and Labat can't find the fold.

i would make the following range adjustments:

- add more suited connectors for Labat's first flat. stacks behind and tightness of UTG increase playability of hands like 87s

- i would remove AQs from Zhus range. i think he has JJ+/AK only.

add QQ to manions reshove range when factoring if labat should call. i dont think manion only reshoves KK+. i think he definitely reshoves QQ+. AK is debatable cuz i think in theory it might be a fold but i think manion could just shove AK because he has AK.

i appreciate the amt of work that was put into this, when opening NVG today i was expecting to see a "hurrrdurrr he should have folded kings DUH OBVIOUSLY" thread but generally those threads are made by idiots who dont put in the elbow grease. at least you ran some range calcs, thx.

Lots of problems with this analysis.

1) ICM is flawed. None of the top-players use pure ICM in this kind of spot because there is an element of circular logic.

Having a big stack is in itself a massive advantage of people play pure ICM, so taking +CEV but -$EV gambles will be profitable in some instances when it leads to a huge chip-stack.

The point is ICM doesn't consider the fact that if everyone plays every single hand the way ICM thinks players should, 1st place will win a whole lot more than their stack is worth according to ICM.

Don't take my word for this. Go to RIO, there's a full video by Sauce explaining this concept much better than I can. Galfond is also well aware of this and has referred to it.

Making pure ICM assumptions here leads to everyone having vastly tighter ranges, and the problem is with so many bets, the initial tight assumptions create a hugely unrealistic cascade of tighter responses.

This is not a correct equilibrium solution, though folding KK might be a correct exploitative response, especially to Manion who himself finds folding KK to be +EV as shown earlier.

Paraphrasing from somewhere "ICM was invented by the top-regs to keep the mediocre ones in line"...


2) Zhu's play (of having a 40bb shove range) is actually an excellent response to the ICM constraints because shoving the 40BB stack puts the pressure on his opponents rather than himself. Value 3-betting is tough because calling off, even with hands ahead of his opponents range, is tough the more importance you ascribe to pure ICM.

TLDR.

The gist I’m getting is that OP is saying it’s bad to get it in pre with kings with 40-60 BB stacks. As a cash player it’s amusing that both boldface and all caps were used to emphasize how deep that is.

i think the emphasis is relevant when factoring ICM and the fact that people are gonna have tighter ranges on the FT bubble of the main event.

i would normally handwave off the idea of folding this but i do think ranges are artificially narrow given the circumstances

great analysis; thanks for taking the time to share it!

Nobody at that table would have dared called an open raise with suited connectors outside the blinds.

Yeah there is no question that was a big factor and it was a very bad misplay too. You can’t flat call that from as early a position as Labat was in. If you want to flat call that from the button or blinds if nobody else has called in front it’s not a bad move but with like 6-7 more to act behind you it’s just bad