Two Plus Two Older Archives - Tonights WPT-Scotty N-You've Gotta Swallow

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I ran PokerStove on your hand range with a couple of randoms thrown in. By the way, I think your range might be a little wide here, but regardless, the number for K8s is 45.7%.

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In light of the number of beers consumed, his play in the hands immediately preceding this hand, and his former actions specifically against Stolzlann, I think my range is pretty close, if not a little conservative. Some smaller Kings and Aces could easily be in there, likewise very small pairs.

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I would like to make one point, though. Keep in mind that I didn't watch the broadcast, so I might be missing something (I apologize if I am). It seems that people are looking at this from the wrong perspective and are forgetting a key factor: Stolzmann ALSO has a wide range of hands there, many of which he might lay down. I don't care how tight he plays or has been playing; he opened on the button in a 4-handed final table with large blinds. That says very little. Does he open with Q9o there? Probably. Does he call the rest of his chips off? Questionable.

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Very good point, and we DID see exactly this kind of thing happen a few orbits earlier when Stolzmann opened with K5o only to fold to a substantial re-raise by Scotty, who had JTs. So there was some precedent for Scotty thinking he could force a fold. That said, the circumstances were different the second (or was it the 10th? We'll never know how many hands were cut out) time around: Stolzmann now had fewer chips, and the blinds appeared to be even larger. There must be some point in terms of stack commitment at which Scotty can no longer expect to elicit a fold under the very same circumstances (e.g. cards/position/betting) where Stolzmann might have folded before.

Insofar as Stolzmann's range of hands, I think without seeing more hands its hard to say, but Kxs would seem to be near the bottom for the kind of bet he made. My argument would be that if he had a lesser holding, he'd have tried to use his entire stack to win the blinds, instead of leaving over 1/3 of it hanging out in the open with multiple players left to act. The 200K bet to me indicated more strength than a push. Maybe you more experienced NL tourney people know better on this point, though. I guess I'd wrap this part of the discussion up with the thought that Stolzmann's range could not possibly have been wide enough for Scotty's push to be profitable when called. That means he'd need Stolzmann to fold a decent % of the time to get the best of it, and again I don't think that will happen given the circumstances here. Deeper stacks or a wider gap between 4th and 3rd prize money and its an entirely different ballgame.

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My point is this. If Scotty somehow knew that Stolzmann had K8s and still pushed, then yes, it's probably a bad play. Virtually any reasonable poker player would understand that they were receiving a big overlay in that spot with K8s against Scotty's range. But Scotty doesn't know Stolzmann's hand!! All he knows is that John opened on the button 4-handed and has shown a tendency to lay down when faced with heat (I pulled those assumptions from the post above. Again, I didn't see the show). Maybe Stolzmann folds many of his opening hands there. If he does, it's a huge coup for Scotty. And if he gets called, is it really that bad? As it was, he ran in to a tough hand and was still only a 2-1 dog.

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Well, ok he figures to be close to (but very likely on the underdog side of) a 55/45 a lot of the time he's called, maybe more like 60/40, which as you say isn't awful. My thinking in saying Scotty made a big mistake was that he has less than 5% of his stack invested in the BB and can surely get his money in vs Stolzmann with much better odds. Why take a marginal bet now when (as a world champ and decent stack) you can get a much better bet in a few hands later?

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Here's something else to think about. Give Stolzmann this range of opening hands: any pair, any ace, KQo-K8o, KQs-K7s, QJs-Q8s, QJo-Q9o, JTs, JTo, J9s, J9o, 9Ts, 9To. That's a very generous range for him. Really, we should probably dump the 9To/J9o stuff and add in a few more Kx's, but we'll stick with this because the range actually fares better against 89s. If you run PokerStove, you'll see that Scotty's hand has 39.1% equity. Again, against one of the worst reasonable ranges for Scotty's hand.

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Without seing a more complete hand history from four handed play its hard to say that Stolzmann's range would contain hands like 22 and A3o, but it very well could have. I really doubt the Jx, Tx, and 9x hands would be included, though (as you said). The problem I see isn't that Scotty's hand looks ok against that range, its that he is going to get called basically every time. When you get to that conclusion, moving in with 39% equity or something in that ballpark, well that's pretty bad poker to me.

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Now let's assume that Stolzmann doesn't just raise, he pushes. Stolz started with 575k. What kind of price is Scotty getting? 85k in dead money (25k/50k blinds and 10k in antes). He has already posted his blind, so it's 525k to call with 660k in the pot. He gets 1.26-1 on his call and needs 44.3% equity to make a breakeven call.

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Hadn't thought about that -- very interesting point. What range for Stolz gives Scotty's hand 44.3%? Call me a wuss, but I'm still focused on the "ok, yeah maybe you can justify his move some ways, but he surely could have had an even better bet later on" kind of thinking. Scotty had the stack to pick when and where he wanted to engage John, not the other way around.

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So with fold equity of ZERO, Scotty is making an equity mistake of 5% or less. Guess what happens when Stolzmann will fold 5% of his opening hands? Or 10%? Or 25%? Remember that every time Stolzmann folds, Scotty picks up a 'free' 335k.

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See above -- this does change my mind a little.

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With large blinds, you need to be very careful how you judge these all-in situations. I'm not saying that Scotty made a well-reasoned, mathematically logical move. For all I know, his fold equity could have been exactly zero. But to dismiss his move as bad poker because he'll usually get called is nonsense.

The Bear

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You definitely have a valid point that this isn't automatically bad because he'll get called, but I think when you look at the totality of the circumstances, it sure does look pretty marginal. Great post -- made me think about a bunch of things I might normally ignore or skip over.

Lets talk about it in Vegas!