I thought he had enough nut los here to make this call. I may be wrong. Tell me your thoughts.

You should be splitting often with this action and one blocker. Then again, you better split often since the bet is over 3*pot.

I think calling is OK chip-wise, but maybe you could let it go in a tournament.

He bet almost 800% of pot on the river... just fold. Not even sure why you’re chasing on the turn. Let 4% of your chips go and move on.

If the pot is 100 chips, villain has 10000 chips, you have 1 chip and villain goes all-in, is he really betting 100*pot? In a sense, yes.

I disagree with c/f turn, too.

Your too deep to call. Add this to the fact your playing against a bb none raised range means your just going to see worst case scenario far too often.

lets call the payouts for the final 3

1st = $733
2nd = $546.5
3rd = $386.5

then accepting ICM to turn chips into $

with folding to the turn bet as baseline (=0)
then
busting = -$141.44
splitting 50/50 = +$6.32
folding the river = -$7.95
getting villain to fold river = +19.88
villain is bluffing = +$98.17


if for an example when you don't fold to the turn bet but rather--- you split 85%, you bust 10% and he's bluffing 5% (??) your ev = -$3.86

if splitting or busting are the only options if he scoops more often than 4.3% you are -EV not folding to the turn bet.


it does seem like a miracle for him to have a scooping hand. and it is no doubt a 'stupid' deal.

he didn't raise preflop, so he is seeing the flop with 100% of his dealt hands, on the flop (considering card removal) QT is 6.45% of his range.
if you believe he would raise some hands preflop and so for instance you remove the top 15%3handedranking from his range QT is 6.9% of his range. remove up to the top 25% and QT is nearly 7.5% whereas only remove the top 7% and its 6.6%.

seeing the turn with 100% of his dealt hands, when he turns a low, QT is just 2.45% of his range.

I think Hero is never scooping and I also think that check-folding turn to this sizing is just weak-tight. How often do we need to get the split on the river for calling beat folding ICM-wise?

like 90.5% splits

TBH I think it's very borderline then. Villain must have QT less than 10% of the time.

River is interesting, I liked the icm analysis from ng

Other relevant take aways for me are:
1. Flop sizing should probably be bigger, we can infer a range advantage from pre-flop that extends to this flop, no need to be timid with the sizing
2. Continuing from #1, we might as well fire (and maybe even xr) the turn

for those checking the math or doing math of their own,

the 1st place prize should read 1st = $773
and not the $733 it currently says in post #6. (its a typo)

the ICM $ figures do represent 1st being $773.


niss....you may want to fix it, (edit post #6 to read $773 and not $733)

Wow I am kind of surprised this conversation is still going on. I do not think this is close to borderline.

If you commit to every set you flop in o8 mtt's your going to go broke quickly.

If the villain likes to make massive over shoves on the river with weak holdings there will be better spots than this when your 40 bb's deep.

This is where all the money is your deep presumably your better than average play to win.

ICM in arriving at a $ value for your chipstack determines the probability of the chipstack's finishing positions relative to the other chipstacks(the total number of chips in play).

so to provide another perspective.....

when split 50/50:

hero has a 23.95% chance of finishing 1st and a 34.49% chance of finishing 2nd and a 44.04% chance of finishing 3rd or 41.56
bb has a 53.43% chance of finishing 1st and a 32.44% chance of finishing 2nd and a 14.14% chance of finishing 3rd or 14.13
btn has a 22.61% chance of finishing 1st and a 33.07% chance of finishing 2nd and a 46.66% chance of finishing 3rd or 44.32

when hero folds the river:

hero has a 20.8% chance of finishing 1st and a 33.19% chance of finishing 2nd and a 48.16% chance of finishing 3rd
bb has a 56.59% chance of finishing 1st and a 31.40% chance of finishing 2nd and a 17.86% chance of finishing 3rd
btn has a 22.61% chance of finishing 1st and a 35.42% chance of finishing 2nd and a 42.49% chance of finishing 3rd

when hero is scooped:

hero 100% finishes 3rd


the situation, like many tournament spots that get posted, is ---it's likely +EV but its a rather small impact / wait for the better spot, avoid the rather unlikely event that has a big impact.
i obviously don't have the answer, though i'd 'wait' and hope for easier decisions.

also, like Monikrazy i was curious about the flop bet sizing, and then relinquishing initiative.

Flop sizing feels very standard to me. Yes, obviously we have a range advantage on this board, which means we could bet more often and presumably bigger. However, this is a tournament. We are hurting ourselves building big pots (with our range, not necessarily with this hand). Over half pot bet can't be too small imo.

One thing I don't want to do on the turn is bet-fold. Check-calling a bet of a reasonable amount feels definitely OK for me.

Agree that 3*pot is the more relevant number. To your other point, I think it’s already weak to limp this from the sb so I’m fine making a weak-tight fold on the turn when a low is out.

To assume he has QT less than 10% of the time is fine in a vacuum but (to me) he clearly has it more than 10% of the time when he puts you all in on the river especially considering pf check. Maybe as much as 50/50 but more likely 75% nut low/25% nut high.

Thanks for the math ng!

I don't think it's weak to limp it from SB. Being fine doing a weak play because you already made something that you consider a weak play in the same hand is a new concept to me.

You are using the term "vacuum" quite liberally, but I understand what you mean. With your actual point I disagree, but I understand that you might be way more aware how players play at such stakes. If you logically look how the hand went, what blockers you have and what you don't, it seems way more likely that villain has 34xx (or 35xx with a decent high).

To me this discussion is only interesting in the sense that it highlights that some times that good poker sense/proper range/situation analysis is of greater value than statistics.

I think the numbers you have listed like greybeard suggests is based on a flawed analysis of the situation anyway.

Like I said previously if he makes a play like this with naked nut low then that it great for us as he is obviously a pretty weak player and we will have plenty of spots to take his chips. If he has a strong high as well to make this play (which imo is very likely) then this narrows his range considerably. Thinking that his high range is wide is a mistake I believe.

This is just one of those spots you learn to avoid going broke on after playing 1000's of games.

Good hand to post. Bet bigger on flop, c/r turn (or bet bigger), close call on river. The turn is key.

Hero very rarely has nut lo or nut high so villains river play makes sense as a
a) semibluff with nut lo, not much high. 3 pots + ICM pressure means hero should fold almost always, including this time. People who say this bluff would be bad play are wrong. Hero is very unlikely to check-call with any nut low on the turn meaning Hero is very unlikely to quarter villain.

b) semibluff/ value with nut high no low, QT is so rare especially if you are blocking it it is more likely Hero is calling with weaker high only than calling with a hand that beats it
c) value with nut low + way above average texas hold'em hand made by remaining two cards. 34 + any two pairs is huge monster and given positions even A34 can valuebet all in, since Hero often has weaker high hands beaten shoving all 34 hands makes sense, though 34+ one pair weaker than A is weird merge and there might be a case for smaller sizing with some range.
d) value with nut high + any low. Clear valuebet; Hero might have hand like TJQA or AKQT, especially if Hero opens many small blinds as bet, limprange has too many high only hands.

Turn call is standard. Barreling turn would also be good since Hero probably has close to 50% equity against villains range and the equity is quite nutted compared to hands like blank 35, 45 or something like A67. BB player should never check back AA preflop meaning Hero can semibluff rivered full houses with very large (allin) sizing and villain has problems calling without nut low or very good two way hand thus Hero wins whole pot very often if river is 9 or pairs board. 3,4,5 have us bluffcatching and with those rivers folding against bet that is close to potsized is possible - hero still has good equity against villains range with those rivers but villain checks back many of the split pots. T,J and Q are the hardest rivers against shove, since Hero is very often good for half pot, but check-calling full shove is slightly -$EV; smaller bets are easy to call. Due to ICM implications last river call is bad as shown by many posters here.

Love the post Paklu. Makes a ton of sense.

Interesting comment. I believe ngFTW is the only one even close to showing anything, and I don't see how you arrive to your conclusion from his math.

Honestly more like I think river call is not good, but I make it all the time. I didn't read all the comments carefully but I assumed the ICM calculations made sense. Still OTT our hand is definitely strong contender for winning whole pot, not half-pot hand as some people thought and after this river KK is good until we see that villain bets the whole stack. This is also river that punishes turn check-call since it is kind of natural to check river which makes it consistent for villain to shove most nut low hands. If Hero would barrel turn, Hero should also barrel this river and villain wouldn't have sensible reraise with all nut lows since Hero would also have many nut lows. The more I think of this the more I think betting turn is better than checking since capping range in ICM spot when villain is fairly likely to have 2 barrel semibluff is not good idea and KK is easily good enough for barreling.

E: For example villains eventual showdown hand would be call turn fold river if river is not J or 4, though would only fold against big river bet or shove. Also villain should call flop with weak low draw + one pair which has much weaker prospects against looming river barrel, but would call turn.

Assuming ngFTWs math is correct, villain needs to have QTxx less than 9,5% of the time for this exact hand to be a winning call ICM-wise. Especially after reading your post, I think it's a better call against stronger players (i.e. there are certainly players against which it's simply a bad call). Mediocre players have a hard time shoving other than nut-nutty hands.

Good points.

I think PLO8 KKxx OTT seems c-call 2 streets since the hand clearly has enough equity and betting turn would allow villain to get in much bigger stack of chips when villain is freerolling. In NLO8 with ICM dynamic betting turn makes us uncapped, which should decrease pot size instead of increasing it in problematic scenarios (villain shouldn't think 34 is a freeroll bluff when Hero has 34 strongly present in range). Also in PLO8 barreling turn and river might not be enough to make villain fold combinations with non-nut low hands, while shoving 3 pots in NLO8 with good rivers is unlikely to get called by non-nut lows without significant high hand, thus this specific hand is much better to barrel in NLO8 compared to PLO8.

If I call an overbet like that, at least in one direction I want to/should have the nuts.