So hero on bb and V on BTN both have about 20bb (ave is about 15bb)

He shoved against previous bb as sb, and then the next hand - & hero has AKo

Is that a call? Don't have a HUD but he'd been playing with average aggression I'd say

im calling 100% of the time

and if someone attempts to stop me from calling ill punch him and jump to the pc and press the call

call

I hate flips though for my whole stack, if he's holding a pair I'm behind. Why is it a call?

20bb is not considered a big stack at this point you need a double up or go bust

so it all comes down to ranges
if he is pusing pairs then he is definitely pusing AT+ KJ+ minimum
against the above we are 52% favorite to win 8% split 40% we lose

now if we add A9,KT,QJ

our winning chance goes up to 57% and 6% split

so taking into consideration all the above i would rather take a 53%-57% chance to double up now than wait to drop to 15BB and be forced to push with less than 50% chance of winning

is this a cash game or a tournament? People are assuming a tournament, but I don't see where you say.

yeah 'twas a tournament

effective big stack right? with 5bbs over average - i was #2 on the table.

thanks for explaining the maths

Also, regarding me being ahead, surely you want to make sure you're a good lot ahead before getting your $ in. Why would you go basically flips for your tournament life? What's the point? Sure, in the long-run you double up very slightly more, but you also get knocked out at that point almost half the time and progress no further.

I'm not sure I get this principle.

Sounds like he was using his stack to try and steal the blinds...most likely A rag... you had a perfect spot to snap him off...or he could have had AA and you'd be on the rail... but I think from your description, most would call in that spot

I guess my last post was asking more why people are happy to get it in at anything over 50%..... rather than being more sure (holding nice pockets, or playing the streets)

because we have 20bb and there is not enough room to "play the streets" or wait for "nice pockets" and we have ace ****ing king

hahaha!

at what point (how many bbs) would you not call with AK? also, why would you be so eager to go all in with 55-60% chance?

There is a saying, "Poker is a game of small edges." To put it another way, poker isn't about winning a tournament, it's about winning over time. The math term for that is "expected value.

I'll use baseball as an example. A baseball season is 162 games. The manager knows that he's not going to win every game. In fact, he might do something that will put a game at risk, such as resting a key player, to win more games in the long run. A team usually has to win about 90 games to make it to the playoffs.

Tournament poker is the same concept. It's not about winning every tournament, it's about the "expected value," how much you can win in the long term (> 100 tournaments, thousands of hands, a year.) Not playing your AK is the same thing as not calling when you have the odds to do so, and over the long term it will cost you money.

No, your AK isn't going to win every time, only a little more than half the time, but given the odds it's good enough

If you call a flush draw and you're getting the correct odds, most of the times you won't hit your flush. But when you do hit, you'll win a big pot which could put you on your way to the final tale.

Most of the money in poker is at the final table, and most of the money at the final table is in the top three spots. Once large cash is more profit that a lot of small cashes.

Here are the prize jumps at a tournament on Juicy Stakes Poker, $1.10 buy-in, 60 players:

15th place, $2.10
12 $2.40
9 $2.75
8 $3.50
7 $42.5
6 $5.25
5 $6.50
4 $9.25
3 $13
2 $17
1 $25

First, notice that one tournament win pays as much as 11 minimum cashes. Second, the higher you get, the bigger the pay jumps. If hitting your flush gives you the chips to get to the final table you're playing for real money:

The jump from 15 to 12 is an extra 30 cents. The jump from 6 to 5 is $1.25. The difference between winning and second is $8.

You don't want to get a bunch of cashes between 15th and 12th. You want to take chances, even if you don't cash very often. The few big cashes that you get will more than make up for it.

It's a call everytime, get the biscuits in.

quoted for truth

if someone still doesn't get it i could write a gigantic wall of maths explaining it
but i would rather not since i just woke up

Im always calling in this spot.

That's really, really helpful. Thanks for laying that out for me. I get that other people think "it's obviously a call" but I didn't understand why - I appreciate this a lot!!

If I ever take more than 3 seconds to call in this spot I am either disconnected, masturbating on the side or dead.

You're welcome. Most of us have been where you are. It is no fun to get knocked out of a tournament when you could have just folded your way into the money. A lot of us struggle with that concept at first.

By the way, there are a few players that will take this idea even farther. Bertrand Grospellier, aka Elky, says that he is always trying to win, to the point where he will sometimes go all in even if he doesn't have the odds. The most common situation is if he is trying to knock out the best player at his table, clearing the way to make a run at first place if he survives the hand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Grospellier

If he has a pair you are behind, but you have to consider how likely that is. A pair is dealt about 6% of the time, or about once in every 17 hands.

http://www.pokersyte.com/texas_holdem_poker_odds_1.htm

Even at 5BB above the average stack, I'm finding the call button 100% of the time

He's also unlikely holding Aces or Kings even if he has a pair, and against every other pair you're not all that far behind. Again, I'm calling 100% of the time.

That's really interesting. I've seen him play a lot and guess it kind of makes sense after you take the skill difference between you and the best player into account, if you're actually gunning that hard for 1st place.

I'm probably over-doing the 'thanks', but I really appreciate you laying it out that clearly (and kindly!). I'm learning so much from these discussions on here!

I guess I wanted to find out why - I wanted to find out the long-term value of calling vs. folding and waiting till a 'safer' hand (ie post-flop TPTK)

Thank you for saying that. I don't know what I would have done if I had not found this forum.

I was watching poker on TV and I saw a hand between two PhDs (computer science and theoretical physics.) I didn't have any money to play and I didn't even know anyone that played poker. But these guys were nerds, and I'm in MENSA. I could do this! Wrong.

I scraped together $50 to put on a site. I got poker books from the library, since I couldn't afford to buy them--but they were all at least 10 years old and way out of date.

I played with that $50 for three months before I lost it all. Then I realized that if I used interlibrary loan I could get better poker books. One of them was Theory of Poker, a 2+2 book, and now I was all set right? Wrong.

My wife and I talked it over and decided to give it one more shot with another $50 and I started posting on 2+2. So then things got better right? Nope.

I spent two months posting a lot in 2+2 and I got 50 different versions and explanations of "You're doing it wrong." Most were kind, a few slapped me down pretty hard. I thought I would get a few of my mistakes fixed and everything would be OK. After all, my IQ is 154. How hard could it be for someone as smart as I?

One of the many things that I learned was that in poker, everyone is smart. Well, maybe not everyone, but David Sklansky, the author of Theory of Poker, estimated that the average IQ in a Los Angeles cardroom is 125.

On 2+2 I was getting hit with concepts that were new to me, what I believed was often wrong, and I was struggling to keep what money that I still had online. One of the many new concepts that I had to deal with was bankroll management. I tried to play $1 MTTs with $50 and that's never a good plan. I was overwhelmed with all the feedback I was getting on 2+2. When you find out that you're doing 20 things wrong, where do you start?

Then came Black Friday. I was playing a tournament and suddenly the FBI logo popped up on my screen. I felt like I was starting all over again, and in a way I was. Like many others I had to adapt to an entirely different poker environment.

I finally became a decent player, and you're doing exactly what I did. You got on the Beginners Thread, you asked good questions and you're ready to adjust your game. I now regularly answer questions to pay back what 2+2 has meant to me. I still ask questions as well. When a new concept comes up that I don't fully understand, I ask my questions in Poker Theory or whatever other thread applies.

You strike me as someone who really loves to do the work and turn it into money and I believe that you will succeed.

The following might give you some ideas:

When I study, I usually aim for the areas where I am the weakest. My study is all about plugging leaks. When I started playing live, I knew nothing about tells, so I got a book about tells. (There is also a forum thread that covers that topic.)

I found out that I was playing too few hands (about 10%) so I got a list of the top 15% of hands and kept it next to me when I was playing online and I stuck to that list for a little while. The idea wasn't to play exactly those hands. I just wanted to get comfortable opening up my range. I did the same thing with the top 20%. Now in an MTT I usually play 20-25% of my hands in the first few levels.

I didn't plan on making such a long post, I hope that you're not overwhelmed. I think you're going to do very well.

That's awesome. I know it sounds stupid (well actually given what you said maybe not), but I've played a few games recently and not done very well, and I'm doubting myself. I way over-committed my month's very limited bankroll (as in, 1/2 on one game haha) because I wasn't being disciplined whatsoever. I'm gonna leave it a month while I get university work out the way and come back to poker, and really get stuck into it.

I've not started reading yet, or got a HUD yet because my next month is so busy. When I think about poker rationally, I can see that I'm investing money in something I'm not 'qualified' in - like betting on basketball games that I know nothing about (which I've recently stopped doing!!!!) or investing in the stock market when I've not researched the company (not done this yet, don't plan to). All are equally silly.

So I need to pull my head out my *rse, realize that I know next-to-nothing and get down to studying and diligently practising rather than putting 1/2 my month's bankroll on one game... after next month's university work anyway

I think there are a few obviously leaks in my game, aside from the HUGE ones of not having the basic knowledge down (ie from reading) or having no HUD, both of which I will fix beginning in March. I think:
- I get too attached to hands, find it hard to believe other players have hit on a dry board
- I get annoyed by losing to wide-range-players too easily, then move up instead of down and as a result lose my bankroll
- I don't play methodically. Linked to my bankroll but more to my play; I play my good hands and then when I've not had a decent hand in a while I start to raise with crap. (Does everyone here play several tables at once? I feel this could help with this issue.) I have a friend who uses a HUD and who said I have a low VPIP I think, or the one that determines your activity PF anyway, and I'm quite low, but I still need to tighten up for sure.
- I try to win most pots I'm involved with, and some of the time it obviously doesn't work, and some of the time I will be holding crap based on the last point!

Parts of these issues can be helped with a HUD and by reading, but I need to be more disciplined in my play and emotions. But I guess by reading and chatting on here, these can be overcome too. I think my conclusion is that I need to commit myself to studying properly... which I will begin after uni work!

You're right, I think I am somebody who works hard, and I guess when I study diligently this will naturally have better results than I do at present!

Also, what happened on Black Friday, is that when poker stopped being allowed in the US? I'm from the UK...
and 154 IQ is fairly high, I love IQ tests. I might even do one today in my break.