A Question: What the heck is the "Gap Concept"

[Mojo, The Programmer]

Hi all...

I've heard the term the "Gap" concept a few times on these forums...

What the heck is it?

Thanks!

[CrisBrown]

Hi Mojo,

The "Gap Concept" is introduced in Sklansky's Tournament Poker for Advanced Players, and it essentially says that you need a much better hand to call a raise than you would need to open raise yourself. This owes to survival equity in tournament play, that is, the value of not getting eliminated.

So while you might raise with AJ if you thought your opponents would fold (and you could steal the antes and blinds), you wouldn't call a raise with that sort of hand in most situations.

The "Gap Concept" expresses the value of aggression: you can raise with many hands (or nearly any hand, depending on the situation), but you don't want to call unless you have a very strong holding or very good implied odds, or both.

Cris

[jedi]

Also, the "Gap Concept" applies to all poker situations, not just in tournaments. However the Gap tends to be bigger in tournaments because of the survival factor.

[CarlSpackler]

If I’m not mistaken, another important principle of the Gap Concept is that the size of the gap is different throughout a tournament. With regards to the AJ example, early in a tournament in late position when faced with a raise, you would want to fold this most of the time, but with no raise in front of you, you would generally raise with this hand. The Gap here would be rather large. In the same situation late in a tournament, however, when faced with an all-in raise by a short stack, the gap is much smaller, and you would want to call more often in this scenario. This is because late in a tournament, the blinds are very big, and the number of hands the small stack will raise all-in with in this situation increase significantly, because he doesn’t have time to wait around for a premium hand, or he’ll get blinded to death.

[Ivan Garp]

Hi,

You can read more about the Gap Concept on http://www.pokerlistings.com/poker-s...he-gap-concept but the book Tournament Poker by sklansky, where the Gap Concept first was mention is worth reading.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Despite what others have said, the Gap Concept didn't originate in TPFAP. It's a concept common to all poker that long pre-existed TPFAP.

Simply put, it means that you need a stronger hand to call a raise than you need to raise yourself. No more, no less. Any more detailed discussion would be analysis on how to put the concept to use in a game situation.

For example, UTG, you would open-raise with AQo, but if you were in MP and a decent player open-raised from UTG, your best play would be to throw AQo away.

[CrisBrown]

Hi Kurn,

Agreed that the Gap Concept pre-exists the description of it in TPFAP. I'm not sure if that particular name first appeared in TPFAP or not, but obviously the concept existed before Sklansky described it.

Cris

[Deorum]

The Gap Concept says you need a stronger hand with which to
call a bet than you need to make a bet in the same
situation. Everyone so far has described it as needing a
better hand to call a raise or make a raise, but that is
not true. It applies to all bets, not just raises. The
basic theory behind the Gap Concept is this: if you make
the bet yourself, you have two ways to win. The first is
that nobody will call, and the second is that you can show
down the best hand. If you are calling instead of betting,
you only have one way to win: to show down the best hand.

[jedi]

[ QUOTE ]
Everyone so far has described it as needing a
better hand to call a raise or make a raise, but that is
not true. It applies to all bets, not just raises.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, as Sklansky once described it, a bet is just a raise of a bet of 0.

[Rusty266]

Yeah well, here's my take. Its true that you need a better hand to call with when someone has raised ahead of you. Big deal, no great relevation there, everyone knows that.

But thats the point.

Everyone does know that. The idea of the gap concept in tournament play is to take advantage of that situation.

The difference between a hand that you would call a raiser with and the hand you would raise yourself with is the "gap".

In a tournament, you should be willing to raise with hands that would be considered inferior, if someone else had already raised.

With a raise and a call ahead of you, you might opt to fold a hand like Qs-Js. But from middle to late position with no one else in the pot yet, it becomes a hand you should raise with.

By being the raiser, the pressure is now on the players left to act, and their requirements for playing their hand have now gone up, because someone has raised ahead of them. Because of the "gap" they may very well fold hands that are superior to yours, K-Q or even A-J for example.

Bacause of the "gap" you avoid confrontations with the players ahead of you that have already raised and shown some strength. Thats a pretty common thought process and common way of playing.

What is not as common is using that information to your benefit by raising with more hands when no strength is shown ahead of you, trying to apply the pressure to the players that act after you. Players who are trying to preserve their chips, and now, because you have raised, must elevate their hand requirements when deciding whether or not to call.