Do You Call With QQ Here?

[Rushmore]

IMO, one integral part of a winning NL perspective is making plays that remove the need to make big decisions, which is to say that you want to do what you can to put the other players to the test.

This involves acting, as opposed to reacting, wherever possible, obviously.

Yes, he should have pushed all-in preflop.

[Schmed]

he should have raised all in to keep him out of the pot. By calling he was giving himself the out to lay down and then he didn't take his out. Once he just called I thought he should have folded to the all in reraise with the way the prize money was being paid.

[sweetjazz]

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Second, is that he knows he is probably the worst player at the table.

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I didn't see anything on television that even suggested that he was a worse player than Randy Jensen. Clearly, he was helped by having Jensen to his right, but it wasn't the amateur who limped in and then called a preflop raise from the blinds with 93o only to check behind the flop and fold to the turn bet.

Also, while there is no doubt that the amatuer was not as good as Reese or Greenstein, he looked sufficiently good that by the end of a tournament when the blinds are big, the difference in skill level was probably fairly insignificant in terms of affecting his decisions at the table.

Given that Greenstein twice bet big when there was a large pot (once with AKs and once with something like K2o iirc), calling the all-in with the intention of calling an all-in from Greenstein looks to me to be a pretty good play. Getting all-in against Greenstein and Reese with the best of it at this point in the match is pretty good imho.

[freemont]

But at the final table, where most of the prize money is in the top three places, I can move up a spot just by folding and letting the big stack bust the small stack. I'll still have chips to play with (about 2/3rds of the second stack) and I can pick a better place to die than a small-favorite-big-dog spot like this.

One thing you may be overlooking is the clarification he received from the tournament director. IF both players bust out on the same hand, the larger stack takes the higher place. I had the same debate with myself untill I heard this was the rule (I'm assuming this is fairly standard in big tournaments? but since my only experience with it is busting out 5th instead of 6th in SNGs I wasn't sure [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] ) IMO this takes any debate out of the question of calling or not. He thought his hand was better than Chip's before Barry got into it, I think the presence of Barry would only solidify (in his mind) that Chip was going to need a lot of luck to win that hand. Thus he is looking at a minimum of busting out third and a best case scenario of having a commanding chip lead in three-way action.

For the record I would have shoved behind chip in a heartbeat.

[SossMan]

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This is the flaw in your thinking. Top no-limit tournament players will make this play with many hands in order to isolate the all-in player. James showed weakness by just calling in the small blind. So, the Big Blind can make this play with many hands.


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You guys can stop reading now....the above explains everything.

[SossMan]

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I agree that 'the amateur' played excellently after he got that early JJ limp out of system.


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I think he played this hand expertly. He knew that his flat call of a fairly large all-in raise would induce Barry to call and/or raise w/ many hands that he could beat. Barry reraised him to about 300K. He was getting about 2:1 on his call. He decided to see a flop before committing more of his chips. The flop had a King...he made a nice read, and check/folded when he was drawing to 2 outs.

I thought he played brilliantly throughout. There must have been some very aggressive play earlier in the tourney for those guys to be going for that many steal, resteal, reresteal attempts. It was like it took three bullets before anyone believed you had a gun.

[Stagemusic]

A whole lot of second guessing going on here. Sure in hindsight it was an easy laydown and we can criticize the call of Chips move too. However, he had everything to gain and not one damn thing to lose by moving in after Barry. He had third absolutely locked at that point if he or Barry wins the hand. If Chip wins he has a great chance of significantly increasing his stack against Barry on the sidepot because Chip had a suited K and Barry had AK only a 5 or 3 spades would let Chip win without Barry's hand being improved. If he takes the hand he takes over 2nd and puts himself in good position to win the thing. Also remember that they were 4 handed and QQ is a monster. Obviously AK is too but there is no way that he could really know what Barry was holding. To me it looked like he agonized over his decision for quite awhile. I would be interested in knowing how long it really was. Tough call to make in the situation. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

[J.R.]

He knew that his flat call of a fairly large all-in raise would induce Barry to call and/or raise w/ many hands that he could beat.

Jacks are too vulnerable to price overcrads into the pot in that spot. With aces or king his play becomes much better, but I think this was a horrible play in a tournament setting, where the risk of busting increases by inviting Barry into the pot and yet he doesn't substantially increase his equity, as at worst he is close to a coinflip and is out of position against a very good player.

[SossMan]

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He knew that his flat call of a fairly large all-in raise would induce Barry to call and/or raise w/ many hands that he could beat.

Jacks are too vulnerable to price overcrads into the pot in that spot. With aces or king his play becomes much better, but I think this was a horrible play in a tournament setting, where the risk of busting increases by inviting Barry into the pot and yet he doesn't substantially increase his equity, as at worst he is close to a coinflip and is out of position against a very good player.

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The point is to win chips, not pots. He lost the minimum on this hand. If he paid off w/ his JJ w/ the K on board, then I agree that it's pretty bad. However, he was check folding to pretty much any overcards.
If he raises preflop to say 300K, Barry moves all in w/ his AKs, and he has a tough laydown. He played it for the implied odds of flopping the set/overpair when Barry came over the top.

Remember too, Barry folds 95% of his hands there with the raise and the call. James thinks he's playing w/ Can Kim Hua heads up and has position on him.

[J.R.]

The point is to win chips, not pots.

That's certainly the case in a side game, but not the whole story in a tournament, where risk aversion takes on greater importance because you can't rebuy when you get drawn out on, and the chip to dollar ratio moves further from 1-1 as the tournment progresses. I think winning decent sized pots a great deal of the time is far more important than maximizing your EV (and thus incresing your variance) when you are near the money and especailly so in a spot where the money significantly increases with each position. In general, EV maximization is a less significant consideration the closer you get to first place, since the repurcussions of busting grow greater.