Thought on Near the Bubble Laydowns in Stars $25 rebuy satellites

[MicroBob]

this hand isn't the whole point of my post.


Yes...it was a kinda-sorta bad-beat that didn't work out for me hence the reason why I'm thinking about it.

But mostly I'm just thinking some more about how the strategy changes a bit in these things.


1st through 5th ALL pay the same. You get 650W$.
6th gets $100 in cash which is about the cost of the buy-in so it's pretty negligible for the most part.

The way the strategy changes when 1st through 5th all pay-out equally interests me.



Okay....so I'm in 5th place with 9 players left.
The guy in 6th is about 4BB behind me.

7th through 9th are all just clinging on...but I've seen (and have made) comebacks with fewer chips on a regular basis so it's not like they're completely out of it of course.
but they're close to the edge and it COULD become 7 or 6 handed VERY quickly.
So, for that reason, even with 9 players left (and paying only 5) it really is much closer to 'bubble-time' imo.



I have KK and obviously there is no way I can lay it down.
Somewhere I get all-in pre-flop against the gigantic stack (has 4x more than me) who busts me with his AQs catching his flush on the river.
Oh well. It was KK afterall...what was I supposed to do?


thoughts:

Lets assume that in 5th place out of 9 right now I have around a 55% chance of making the money.


Now lets assume that if I'm all-in against someone I will have a 65-70% chance of winning against the likely range of hands that they would gamble it all with against me.

In these situations only the short-stacks like to take too many chances (and sometimes not even then).....but I could see a big-stack going for it with QQ all the way down to 99 or 88 so there WILL be situations where I'm as huge a favorite as I could hope to be.
But there will be a lot of AK and AQ and such where I'm not such a huge favorite.


Anyway,
Now lets assume that if I win with the KK and double-up that I now go from 55% to 75% or so to win one of the seats.
Obviously if I lose with KK I go from 55% all the way to 0% since that's it for me.


If I lay it down to his all-in after I 3x raise or something then lets say my chances of getting the seat go from 55% to 50% (I'm still in 5th place...but not by as much of a margin of course).


this is all just guess-work and I'm not very good at crunching all these types of numbers and currently am not quite in the mood to try (maybe later).


It looks to me that playing the KK is warranted here and that you have to take SOME chances with so much play still remaining.
but it also looks like it's not quite as clear-cut as I might like to think it is even if his AQs is face-up.

for example, if I had QQ or AK I'm beginning to think we are getting into fold territory.
But that kind of ultra-tightness just doesn't sit well with me. I guess it's just my instinct that I should be getting aggressive with such hands I suppose.



I'm thinking about these things because I believe there are occasions where I'm just not conservative enough when I need to be.

And, again, the structural difference where 1st through 5th ALL get the same prize is something that interests me.

I should say that overall I seem to do pretty well in these things simply by staying aggressive. But I think I could do better and it's little situations like these where I like to analyze the 'what-ifs' that I believe can make me a better player.


General thoughts on such situations appreciated (not necessarily on my specific hand).
Thanks.

[autobet]

I don't think I would be folding either. You have a ways to go and are not a huge stack. If you were a huge stack, then it would be wrong to go broke against another huge stack when you could probably just fold your way into the money.

If you won that hand and became a huge stack then you would be very reluctant to play another large pot. You would focus on playing the small stacks...

If it was 6 handed and you had AA and you could fold your way into the money then it would even be correct to fold AA in a even payout situation.

[MicroBob]

Right.

I'm on-the-border enough where I certainly have to play this.


But when I thought about it post-mortem it just struck me how much closer the decision was when I considered the risk/reward.



I had a different situation where I was comfortably in 3rd or so out of 20 players...top 8 getting spots.
My AA gets busted by an almost-as-big stack (I hung in there short-stacked for awhile before busting).
Obviously you can't fold AA there....but sitting so strongly in 3rd with 20 players left...and it paying top 8...it just feels a little awkward to be taking ANY kind of chances there.


I'm not trying to sound like Hellmuth here. I'm actually MORE aggressive than I should be much of the time.
But blowing through huge amounts of chips, even with an advantage, when the gain is NOT that strong (because 8th pays the same as 1st) should alter one's perspective on these things.