View Single Post
  #13  
Old 12-30-2005, 12:20 PM
AaronBrown AaronBrown is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: New York
Posts: 505
Default Re: Question on Behavior in Tournament Play

I agree with pzhon (as usual).

I think more clearly with specific numbers. To keep it simple, assume you think you have an even chance heads up against the short stack, and another player has a four flush after the flop. If you check, all three of you have 1 chance in 3 of winning.

If you raise and tall stack calls, you clearly gain. If you raise and he folds, your chance of winning the pot goes up by 1/6, from 1/3 to 1/2. However, the short stack's chance of winning also goes up by 1/6. For you to forgo the raise, you have to say that moving a chip from the short stack to the other high stack is worth more to you than getting a chip yourself. That's crazy. So raising is good if tall stack calls, good if he folds.

You could change the numbers in two ways. In ScottieK's extreme example, you don't care about getting chips yourself at all, all that matters is taking them away from the short stack. So it would be correct to call in that case. Or you could create a situation in which the other player is much more likely to beat the short stack than to beat you; for example, if tall stack is holding an Ace King to short stack's Ace Queen, while you have a pair of Nines. If you get him to fold, your chance of winning goes from 47% to 56%, but short stack's go from 19% to 44%. It could be worth 1 chip to you to move 3 chips from short stack to large (although only near a big kink in the payoffs). But there's no way you'd recognize something like this at the table without everyone exposing their hands.

My other objection is that this has nothing to do with courtesy, common or otherwise. It's strategy. One of the great virtues of poker is it does not tolerate whining that other people's strategies are discourteous; leave that to cricket.
Reply With Quote