It's a slow night, so I think I'll start a thread

[deathpotato]

The Bubble "Fu*ck You!" Call

So, it's the bubble in a $215, it's level 7, and you're the big stack with 6000 chips. What's better, there's a shortie sitting around at 500 chips, i.e. forced all-in in his next BB, and two middle stacks at 2000 and 1500 apiece. Let's say that the middle stacks are solid players (and that they regard you as such - you play with them frequently), and that the shortie is likely to wait to be forced all-in in his BB when the time comes, hoping for someone to do something stupid. You've been stealing the blinds for a while and have built your lead a lot, but the shorter middle stack is getting fairly desperate.

Now, here's a hand, halfway into level 7. You are in the BB with T8o, UTG with 2000 folds, short stuff folds on the button and the 1500 stack pushes into you from the SB. Given a fairly loose calling range for you of 22+, A2+, K9o+, K7s+, QTs+, JTs, SB needs to win about 43% of the time when called for this to be a significantly (>.5%) +$EV move compared to folding. He can push with 33+, A2o+, KTs+, KJo+, and gain about .5% of the prize pool. However, with the shortstack forced all-in in a few hands, SB will likely be slightly tighter than this. For the sake of argument, let's assign him a much tighter range of 44+, A9o+, A7s+, KJs+, KQo.

To recap:

Stacks:
Blinds 200/400
BB (Hero) 6000 with T8o <font color="#F7F7F7">.... </font> Current equity: $811.8
SB 1500 <font color="#F7F7F7">............W........... </font>Current equity: $467.4
Button 500 <font color="#F7F7F7">...................... </font>Current equity: $181.6
UTG 2000 <font color="#F7F7F7">........................ </font>Current equity: $539.4

Action: Fold, Fold, All-in (1500) with a range of 44+, A9o+, A7s+, KJs+, KQo

Almost everyone, when presented with this situation, would mumble under their breath something about the SB being lucky they didn't have a decent hand while they fold their slightly sub-average T8o. But do we, the noble BB, have to stand for this abuse? We're the big stack, that puny 1500 doesn't scare us! How much does it really hurt us to call? And won't this SB (not to mention shortie and UTG, if they notice - and they almost always will) be far less likely to push in this sort of situation in the future if they see you make this call?

If you fold this hand, ICM says you lose about $23.4. What happens if you call?

T8o wins approximately 33.3% of the time against 44+, A9o+, A7s+, KJs+, KQo.
The 33.3% of the time that you win you will have a commanding lead of 7500 going into the money, and equity in the prize pool equal to about $895.4. The 66.7% of the time that you lose you will still have the chip lead with 4500 and immediate equity of $721.2, and you will also be able to steal more should the shortstack survive his blinds. So by calling you lose:

.333*895.4 + .667*721.2 = 779.2
Recall that your equity at the start of the hand was 811.8.
811.8-779.2 = $32.6
Calling loses $32.6, but compared to folding you only lose 32.6 - 23.4 = $9.2! Considering how strange it seems, calling is really not much worse than folding.

Now, what kind of effect does this call have on SB's equity? 66.7% of the time he will have 3000 and $615.6 of equity, and 33.3% of the time he will bust (and be really pissed off).

.667*615.6 = 410.6
Recall that SB's equity at the start of the hand was $467.4
467.4 - 410.6 = 56.8
This call loses the SB $56.8 on average, but compared to folding he loses 56.8 - 27.8 = $29.

Calling with T8o hurts SB more than three times as much as it hurts you!

I think that making this call against a good player at an observant table sends a very strong message. You effectively give SB a $30 kick in the ass and distribute about $90 of EV to UTG and the short stack, while costing yourself about $9. Next time you find yourself in a similar situation with any of these players they are likely to push into you even more cautiously, and if they fold their KJs even once you more than make up for this $9 loss.

My apologies if this concept lies under the definition of a spite call and I've wasted your time, but I thought this was perhaps a more extreme version of the concept, and better for the caller.

As a side note, making this play all but requires you to type something obscene and drunken into the chat box beforehand. At any rate, next time you encounter this situation, don't resentfully click that fold button! Flip your monitor off, type "GAMBOOOOOL!" and give that SB the spanking he deserves.

[deathpotato]

dum de dum (guess the night was TOO slow)

[citanul]

this is a decent post, but i think that you picked a bad time of day, amongst other things, to do it.

also, i think that spite calls in general, even with icm workups, have been talked about alot lately. there was a thread recently i started called something like "AK button/bubble push" i think, that asks about similar things, if you're interested in more.

spite calling is an interesting topic, particularly if yo'ure going to play many games against the same competition. as you point out in your post, you often can find spots where it's only marginally -ev to you to really take a shot at peeing in someone's soup.

in the "SNG quiz" post, freemoney has been arguing that starting to call with middling pairs in a certain spot, like 88, will be effective deterent to a "push any two regular opponent." all these discussions clearly do have value. while i do think that some players take it too far sometimes - either by making spite calls that are too -ev to be used (most prefer the spite call to be very very close to 0 ev, if they have to be 0 or - ev at all), or by making these calls too frequently.

additionally, i think that since the topic of "playing a certain way against regulars" started coming up a little while ago more and more, people have started taking that into account in their analyses more and more often, and most likely to worse and worse results. amonst other reasons, even at the 100s, the player pool just isn't all that repetitious, and most, even the good players, aren't paying close to enough attention to care about inter game things.

a note, which i know is incredibly small sample sized and all that, but whatever:

in the first 3 days of june, i played 95 109s, in that time, i had one opponent 10 times, one opponent 7 times, and a bunch of guys 5 and 4 times. that's just not terribly much overlap, especially considering that my play is often for 6-7 hours fairly continuous. if you play with someone 10 times in a few days, you might start noticing things they do, but most players just don't. the frequency they're going to see you do something noteworthy just isn't that often, and, my real point i guess is, that in say 10 games, there isn't much room to make an image play against that ONE opponent and still be not throwing away money doing it. the concept of making image plays for anyone that you run into one out of 20 tournaments or fewer is patently absurd.

so for me, for instance, there's only 2 players i've played with more than 5% of the time, and looking over hands against them, i only made any play close to an image play against one of them, and i made several against that player, because i hate him.

anyway, this turned rambly, but i thought i'd say something, because i didn't want you to get depressed.

citanul

[Newt_Buggs]

[ QUOTE ]
dum de dum (guess the night was TOO slow)

[/ QUOTE ]
thanks for the post, you give some interesting insights. I opened this up at 3am last night, glanced it over and decided to save it for the next morning. I'm glad that I came back to it.

[freemoney]

yeah i agree but any regular who i notice to be pretty decent but you still arent sure if he really understands the bubble scares the crap out of me, and definitely helps them, i think its pretty important and can be a significant enough difference of ROI.

[deathpotato]

Yeah, I think it's clear that significantly -EV image plays can be pretty much pointless should you not play with your target enough, or should they not take note of the odd plays. I almost didn't post this thread, because the advice is completely inapplicable to the lower buyins, and if anyone tried to put my advice into play they would just be costing themselves money. But then I thought of the situations that would arise and I posted it anyway. The thing about this play, I think, is that it almost ensures that decent players take note, as it upsets a very fragile bubble situation, what with the shortstack. The fact that calls like this cost you less than 0.5% of the prize pool also makes them almost certainly profitable when your opponents do notice.

I think in the SNG quiz thread the problem is that the calling range has to loosen up a ton for SB not to be correct in pushing any two, to a point where it is significantly -EV for BB to call. On the other hand, as you say, with calls like this you give up almost nothing for the opportunity to make a very malicious and noticeable play. And we both know that being malicious can be a lot of fun /images/graemlins/cool.gif

[curtains]

Im not a big fan of spite calling. However I am fine with putting opponent on any 2 when it's reasonable for this to be the case, and then calling with a weak hand when its slightly +EV.

Calling with an absurd hand in a ridiculous situation often won't fool anyone, and they should know you won't continue to shoot yourself in the foot over and over again.