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November 6, 2006
Lesson From The Pro
I always read these little Full Tilt Tips from the Pros that they email me. Sometimes they're pretty decent, sometimes they're not. Today's was one of the worst. Here's why:
While playing the final table of the $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold 'em event, I found myself in a difficult spot when we were down to four-handed play. I was in the big blind and Rizen, a tough, respected online tournament pro, was in the small blind. It was folded to Rizen who announced that he would raise the pot. With blinds of 15K/30K, his raise made it 90K to me.At the time, I had about 400K in chips; Rizen had 750k and the other two players had about 250K each.
I looked at my cards and found As-8s, a pretty solid holding in short-handed play. I decided to raise the size of the pot. My total bet was 180. Rizen immediately re-raised, forcing me all-in.
First of all, that's a min-raise, not a pot sized raise. A pot sized raise would have been 270k. There's a pretty huge difference between the two. One is terrible, one isn't. I think his correct play would have been to go all in, but that's not really relevant.
He then continues:
The pot contained 580,000 (400,000 from Rizen, 180,000 from me) and I had 220,000 remaining. I was getting nearly 3 to 1 on my money, so this looked like an automatic call. I needed to win the pot only about 27 percent of the time to justify a call.Against a big pocket pair (other than aces), my A-8 suited would win about 32 percent of the time. Against a bigger ace (A-K, A-Q, etc), my A-8 suited would win about 30 percent of the time. There was also a non-zero (though small) chance I was up against a small pocket pair and would win about 50 percent of the time.
So this was almost a zero-equity chip decision. That is, folding and calling would have pretty much same result over the long term.
A much better way to analyze this hand would be to give Rizen a range. If you put small pairs in his range then the absolute worst you can be is 35%, and that’s assuming that Rizen's range is any pair and any bigger ace. Add in a couple more hands like KQs and you jump to 38%.
So that's pretty far from a zero equity chip decision. He then goes on to justify a fold by saying:
Each chip in a short stack is more valuable in terms of cash-equity than each chip in a large stack. By calling in this situation I would have been risking chips of great value to pick up chips of lesser value.That's called chip devaluation, and if given the payouts for spots 1-4 we could calculate it. Luckily I found them online, assuming it was the $1,500 WSOP event he won, and did just that.
The payouts were $346k, $180.5k, $104.5k, and $75k. Let's do some math, and please excuse me if I mess it up, it's been a while.
If he folds he has 220k chips, two opponents have 250k, and Rizen has 930k. His equity is, according to the ICM Calculator, $141k.
If he calls and wins his equity is $240k. If he calls and loses his equity is $75k, since he is out in fourth. So if you want to know what % chance he needs of winning the hand to make the call profitable you use the formula
240*x + 75*(1-x) > 141
240x +75 – 75x >141
165x > 66
x > .4
So if I did my math correctly he needs at least a 40% chance of winning the pot to make the call, according to the ICM method. Rafe doesn't give us a range for Rizen, but it seems reasonable to fold. It really depends on that range.
I really just don't like the logic behind his article, especially when he says:
Folding removes any chance of busting. By folding, I would give my opponents a chance to bust on subsequent hands, which would move me up to a bigger payday.That's really irrelevant. For one, it only removes any chance of busting on one hand, but you can still bust on the next. And all of that is factored into the math already. They aren't two separate ideas, they are the same. An ICM calculator takes that into account, that's its purpose. I suppose there is some chance that an opponent will have a stroke in the next 5 minutes too, and ICM doesn't take that into account, but I don't think that’s what Furst meant.
Logic like that is scary because it convinces people to make a lot of mathematically incorrect plays by tricking them into believing that they have to take something into account that the math already hasn't, when in reality it already has. You're effectively taking the same idea into account twice, and that's awful. It's akin to Phil Hellmuth's "If I fold these pocket kings preflop, even though I don’t think my opponent has aces, at least I won't go broke."
Once you correctly factor in chip devaluation there are no more concerns to deal with. He lists them as two separate concerns, and that logic is dangerous because they are really the same thing. A lot of players would knowingly fold a hand that had a small positive expectation, after devaluation is account for, for just that reason. And some, like Hellmuth, will fold ones with large expectations that way.
And I'm not saying he made the wrong play by folding, given what I think was a bad min-reraise for half of his stack. In fact he probably came to the correct conclusion, but so does a broken clock twice a day. This analysis is poorly thought out, or at least very poorly worded, and might be dangerous to readers. It doesn't teach them how to properly look at a situation and come up with the best answer, and it advises people to fold too often.
**Edit: Reader Roswell pointed out that he can't just go all-in due to it being pot limit. Durrr. So he should have just made an actual pot sized reraise.**
Posted by themaroon at November 6, 2006 5:27 PM
Comments
Now I'm no expert on pot-limit, and I'm usually confused by what is considering the pot and and things like that, but wouldn't the min raise have been to 150k? The bet was 30k to the sb and he made it 90k, so +60k, therefore, the min raise would have been 60k on top of that 90k so = 150k correct? I agree it wasn't the full pot sized, but to me it doesn't seem like the min either. Like I said though, I'm no expert on pot-limit calculations.
Posted by: Mike at November 7, 2006 4:03 PM
Lol. Yeah, that too. That's why I don't write Lessons from the Pros for a living.
Posted by: Matthew Maroon at November 7, 2006 8:12 PM
At the risk of being Helpful Critical Guy I have to say that the whole first paragraph may not be relevant to your criticism, Matt, but it does seem to be correct. When everyone folded to Rizen he called the BB and raised the pot bringing the pot to 120k and making it 60k for Rafe to call (I think when he writes "his raise made it 90K to me" is where it gets confusing.) Rafe called the 60k and bet the pot of 180k. When he gives the amount of his raise he is leaving out the 30k blind and 60k call. So he did put in 270k and it was a pot sized raise, the pot just wasn't big enough yet for him to move all-in. It's the way he's written it that makes it so confusing.
Posted by: PrettyUgly at November 8, 2006 2:25 PM
There's nothing confusing about it. He said he had 400k before the hand and that when Rizen made it all-in he had to call 220 more. That means he made it 180 total, not 180 more for 270 total. If he had made it 270 he would have only had to call 130 more and folding would have been downright retarded.
Posted by: Matthew Maroon at November 8, 2006 7:04 PM