FL $11 MTT - blinds 300/600
10 players left - 5 places pay - Hero is CL


Seat 6: UTG (5,418 in chips)
Seat 15: UTG+1 (6,837 in chips)
Seat 12: Dealer (6,514 in chips)
Seat 20: Small Blind [Villain] (5,555 in chips)
Seat 37: Big Blind [Hero] (8,850 in chips)

3 folds, V calls 300, Hero checks with 6 4 K K

*** FLOP *** [Q J 5]
V checks, Hero bets 600, V calls

*** TURN *** [Q J 5] [A]
V checks, Hero checks

*** RIVER *** [Q J 5 A] [2]
V bets 1200, Hero ?


Late regged so not much info on V. Played 1 hand with him where he raised river on me but only got 1/4 pot. I usually only play PL, so I would normally just call to avoid a reraise, but that seems like less of a concern here. For sure 4 3 is a reraise, but how often would something like T987 reraise?

You are only scooped by Ah plus:
34x with a heart
36x with a heart

You are likely to split but it is limit poker so raise until the cows come home. You are more likely to scoop or win 3/4 than the other way around.

If they show you Ah3h6x from the small blind in a BvB unraised pot then smile and say good hand.

He needs three perfect cards to scoop you. God bless him if he does.

Raise. AINEC

And don't compare the first raise to what you should do if he reraises. They are completely night and day and should be treated as such.

I don't raise the 789T hand---they're not even the same. At all.

i would have played almost every street differently

I think this is a lot closer than some the other posters are making it seem. In a cash game you should absolutely reraise this. But in this exact tournament situation, I think just calling might be correct.

There are four main situations you could be in:
1.) You are chopping with Villain, who will call your raise
2.) Villain is bluffing, and will fold to your raise
3.) Villain is value-betting a worse hand (in both directions) and will call your raise
4.) Villain is scooping and will reraise

I think situations (1) and (2) are far more likely than (3) and (4), but these situations don't matter, since you make the same whether you raise or call. In order for a raise to be profitable, you only need to be concerned about the ratio of (3) to (4). (You'd marginally prefer to call in situation 2 so you can see villain's hand.)

In a cash game, you need (3) to be twice as likely as (4) to raise. And I think it almost certainly is. Villain could be betting a lot of worse flushes, and if he actually had something like A34Xhh, he would have raised preflop and/or bet an earlier street.

But in this tournament spot, I think calling my be better for three reasons.
First, ICM suggests that the ratio of (3) to (4) needs to be more than 2 to justify raising. If you lose three bets on the river here, you immediately go from chip leader to short stack. This is much, much worse of a cost than the benefit you get from winning one more bet when villain is value betting worse.

Second, the same ICM considerations will probably make villain less likely to make a thin value bet with a medium flush. The benefit to villain of this is much less than the penalty of paying off an extra bet when you raise with a better flush. So situation (3) is less likely than in a cash game.

Third, because everyone is so short-stacked, villain may be more likely to pot control with strong but still speculative hands. So he may be less likely to raise pre-flop, and less likely to bet flop or turn with the A34hh/A36hh than in a cash game. So situation (4) is more likely.

Again, situation 4 is still very unlikely. But I think (3) is also pretty unlikely in this tournament spot, and the cost of the small number of times you are in situation 4 may outweigh the benefit of the only somewhat larger number of times you are in situation 3.

its Bovada, Villian might value 3 bet 9 high flush.. raise and if he A36 with hearts than so be it.

didn't realize it was tournament. never play them so don't know. nevermind

Thanks - that was my line of thinking, but wanted to make sure I wasn't being too results-oriented. And Rush I'm sure you wouldn't raise 789T but it seems possible that the avg Bovada player might.


I thought (1) and (3) were more likely based on V's line, so

(1) 40% - ICM stays the same = $0
(2) 10% - ICM goes up = $10
(3) 40% - ICM goes up even more = $15
(4) 10% - ICM goes way down = -??

$0 + $1 + $6 - .1*?? = $0
$7 = .1*??
$70 = ??

I don't have the info on the other table stacks, but if my assumptions are close, I'm not sure I would lose $70 ICM, so it seemed ok to me. I think all your reasoning makes sense; we really just differ in our ratios of (3) to (4). Essentially I should be giving more weight to the possibility of pot control, which seems reasonable. Just out of curiosity, what would you weight them at? 40-30-20-10?

I also like the idea of just calling to find out which scenario I was actually in, so wish I had given that more consideration in game.


Possibly the most important piece of info I left out of my post...

when you raise and villian folds because he was bluffing(and you will scoop) the outcome is identical to when you flat call.

so your indication of a change in ICM for (2) is a mistake.

there is no difference between calling and raising for both (1) and (2).



the presumption is that when you raise you must call a re-raise because, again a presumption, is that he will re-raise with both the one-way nuts as well as the 2 way nuts. As a consequence you lose twice as much when you raise/call when he scoops(4) then as when you raise and he calls and you scoop(3).

so as long as (3) is more then twice that of (4) then raising is +chips.
Nick factors for ICM and as consequence it needs to be more then 2x perhaps 2.3x?,2.6x?? nice post Nick!

with regard to ranges, i don't really have any basis for guessing the percentage of hands into each range, but i think its important to realize villian is certainly not betting 100% of his range, he has check/call and check/fold ranges to go along with his bet/fold, bet/call and bet/raise ranges.

and for completeness, if he will bet/fold hands that split that is to the advantage of raising.
these of course would have to be hands with a better low, which leaves hands with 34(the nut low) ans hands with 36 hands. so again we are talking a small number of hands.

also don't forget about the hands for #3 that we are scooping and will "value " 3 bet

What am I missing? If I raise and scoop in (3), I win 2 bets. If I raise and call a reraise in (4), I lose 3 bets. Why does (3) have to be more than twice (4) for raising to be +chips? Ignoring the ICM of it for now, which I agree makes it higher than 3:2 (and probably 2:1).


It wasn't clear but my calculations were not comparing calling to raising - just looking at the EV of raising as outlined in Nick's scenarios. They do ignore some other possibilities like deadpeddler noted below (what I was getting at in my original post when asking would V reraise 8h7h), but they're good enough for me.

I agree that there is no difference between calling and raising in (1) and (2); just that (2) is more +ICM than (1). This was what I originally had before I edited it down:

call
(1) 40% - ICM stays the same = $0
(2) 10% - ICM goes up = $10
(3) 40% - ICM goes up = $10
(4) 10% - ICM goes down = -$20

raise
(1) 40% - ICM stays the same = $0
(2) 10% - ICM goes up = $10
(3) 40% - ICM goes up even more = $15
(4) 10% - ICM goes way down = -$40

The EV of each of those came out to $3, but since the numbers were guesses to begin with, I didn't bother to try to refine it anymore than that. Instead I turned it into the equation in my response to Nick to find the breakeven ICM for (4); since I don't think it would go down to -$70 when I raise and get scooped, it seems like raising is +EV as long as my ranges are right. I do think Nick is right that it is not clearly better than calling as I thought in game.


I agree he probably has bet and check ranges, but didn't think I really needed to take into account his check ranges (in terms of %s for scenarios 1-4) since in this hand he bet. Are you saying that, for example, 40% for scenario 3 is too high because he might be more likely to check his weak flush hands instead of value bet them?

my bad, sorry. sure the stacksizes at the end of the hand are certainly different when you scoop because villian bet/fold'd than the stacksizes when you split.
i was too focused on my own thoughts, i guess on the raise or call comparison, to be able to see what you were indicating. certainly my error calling it a mistake.

with regard to bringing up the checking ranges. it was just to affirm, that its possible (3) and (4) are small. that if they are 40% and 10% of the bet range if the bet range was only 10% of the entire range(check range being the other 90% and i'm not saying 10/90 is the ratio i expect) then (3) is 4% and (4) is 1% for EV purposes. ( i think )

i really have zero experience with ranges here, zero!. i was thinking in terms of him not betting poor flushes without same or better lows, that he'd ck/call that sort of hand. i was thinking checking is a much larger percentage then betting.

Agreed - think I probably overestimated (3). Changing it to 40-30-20-10 makes calling $1 better than raising with my ICM estimates. But I really have no experience with ranges here either .