To Push or Not to Push?
Tournaments are tricky. You can play several days of perfect poker, then you are obliterated by one bad read or bad beat. The pressure in tournaments is high, especially as you get deeper into the field. When you face a critical decision for all of your chips, everybody at the table is watching you for any kind of tells. It is quite an eerie feeling. As everybody is watching you, you must have kept track of the pot size, pot odds, hands odds, what your opponent might have, what your opponent might think you have, and what your opponent might think you think that he has. All this must be done while not giving off any tells. Here is a situation that I faced once:
Tournament: Word Poker Tour, Battle for the Season Pass
Location: Cable Beach Resorts, Nassau, Bahamas
Buy-in: $4,000
Entrants: 198
People left: 69
Starting Chips: 20,000
Payouts:
First: WPT buy-in for 15 Main Events, plus airfare and hotel. This package is worth about $170,000.
Second: $25,000 WPT World Championship buy-in
Third: $10,000 buy-in
Forth: $5,000 buy-in
Fifth: Invite to WPT Celebrity Tournament
Sixth: WPT Champions Boot Camp Pass
Day 1: This would be classified as my first major tournament. Levels were 60 minutes long and we started out with T20,000 chips. This was a deep-stack tournament with 15 professionals. On day one, I had two professionals at my table (Jennfer Tilly and Jules Leyser). I was up to about T80,000 in chips. Late in the day, I ran into a set over a set (I had the smaller set). I lost a good portion of my chips on this hand. I ended day one with about T28,000.
Day 2: I had a bad draw and was seated between the two chip leaders (Chris Stadler and Crispin Leyser). I do not know if this was a blessing or a curse. I knew the big stack would not want to compete against each other. Nonetheless, I had two big stacks that might be able to double me up several times if I caught cards. I survived the first hour (with no opportunities to double up) and my table was broken. I was then moved to a table with Karina Jett. Also at the table was a guy who I had played againt at the cash tables before the tournament started. This guy was pretty arrogant and thought everybody else was inferior. He had no problems telling people that he made a final table on the WPT. He also claimed to be a professional poker player, although I had never heard of him. To be honest, he was an idiot. Anyway, he does know the game and plays well despite his arrogance.
We were at Level 10, which was well into day two of the three-day tournament. Blinds were 600/1200 with a 200 ante. At the moment, I had about 18,000 in chips.
Mr. Arrogant raises to 6400 (4x BB) from an early/mid position (UTG+2). Everybody else folds.
I look down at:
Now, I have a tough decision in front of me. I had been card cold all day. You can only see so many 84o before you get sick. Here is the analysis that I did at the table:
According to Dan Harrington, both of our Ms are in the Orange Zone (about 6 – 6.5 for me and about 7 for the enemy). Both of us are starting to drift toward the bottom of the Orange Zone and are in danger of entering the Red Zone. The Red Zone (M of 5 or under) is a bad place to be. Both of us need to think about making a move soon.
What would he make this move with? Assuming he has knowledge of the zones and he plays inflection points in a reasonable manner, I figure he would raise with a pocket pair down to about 77, AK, AQ, AJs (weak), ATs (weak), KQ. The problem is that he raised about 1/3 of his stack. He is essentially committing himself. If he gets a caller, then there is no way anybody will fold on the flop with anything reasonable. At that point, he can only make a pot-sized bet, which would give anybody 2:1 pot odds. This is certainly enough for an open-ended straight or flush draw.
With everybody at the table staring at me, I ran the following distribution probabilities, (taking into account that I have AQo). Below are the various hands and possible combinations:
AA: 3 combinations
KK: 6 combinations
QQ: 3 combinations
JJ through 77: 6 combinations
AK: 12 combinations
AQ: 9 combinations
AJs: 4 combinations
ATs: 4 combinations
KQ: 16 combinations
I am a big underdog against AA-QQ and AK, which is 24 hands.
I am a big favorite against AJs, ATs, and the KQ, which is 24 hands.
I am a coin flip against pocket pairs of JJ and lower, which is 30 hands.
All in all, this looks like a true coin flip situation. I made this exact analysis in the tournament and decided to call. Later when I analyzed this hand, I realized that I made a mistake when I did my calculations. Did you catch it? I adjusted the number of combinations for AA, QQ, and AQ correctly, however, when I calculated the number of combinations for AJ, ATs, and KQ, I forgot to take into account the fact that I had an Ace and a Queen in my hand.
Doing the correct hand distributions gives the following result:
AA: 3 combinations
KK: 6 combinations
QQ: 3 combinations
JJ through 77: 6 combinations
AK: 12 combinations
AQ: 9 combinations
AJs: 3 combinations
ATs: 3 combinations
KQ: 12 combinations
This tells me:
I am a big underdog against AA-QQ and AK, which is 24 hands.
I am a big favorite against AJs, ATs, and the KQ, which is now only 18 hands.
I am a coin flip against pocket pairs of JJ and lower, which is 30 hands.
This corrected analysis shifts me from being a total coin flip to a slight underdog based on probability. Had I correctly analyzed this situation in the tournament, it would have been enough for me to fold the hand.
Getting back to the problem at hand, what do I do in this situation? Calling is certainly out of the question. If I call, I am committing over 1/3 of my stack. I am then in the red zone. My only options are to fold or push all in. If I fold, then I am still at the mercy of the cards. If I push all in, then I have the possibility that he might fold several of the mid pairs and maybe some of the holdings like KQ, AJ, ATs and pick up a free 6400 chips (plus blinds and antes). I decided that I was going to take the true coin flip (which was inaccurate) and push all in. He called and showed QQ. The board did not help me and I exited the tournament in position 68.
Final thoughts: The pressure of a tournament is high, especially as you get deeper into the field. While I was running these numbers, everybody at the table was staring at me wondering what I was going to do. It is not easy thinking on this level with 10 people wondering why you are taking so much time. In the end, I was on the right track with the analysis, but I made a very expensive mistake by not calculating the correct distribution of possible hands. Looking back on it, I would have folded if I had made the correct calculation. Oh well, live and learn. I got to go snorkeling that afternoon and took this wonderful picture of an Eagle Ray:
