Josh Arieh's call all-in.

[sdplayerb]

Harry actually just posted on recpoker (link is in the thread on him) that he did make a mistake in the hand by putting josh in, since he had to call.

[Daliman]

Yes, but it was a mistake only for HIS strategy. HE wanted to avoid a major confrontation in a coin flip situation, but it was not a violation of the "theory of POker"

[sdplayerb]

yes..if he knows josh's exact holding..but he didn't.

[Daliman]

not the point, as he says it was a mistake even KNOWING what josh had.

[sdplayerb]

where did he say that?
his quote i read on where he said he made a mistake was:
"I made a check raise all in bet knowing full well that Josh would call (he had already put half his stack in) and as it happens I made the mistake by doing this but the play itself is not the point. Neither is the fact that
he won the hand by hitting the heart on the river"

Was their some other quote to which you are referring?

[daveymck]

Harry Posted this on the hendon mob site.

"However as for my play itself, I believe that in hindsight I made a clear mistake and that I was actually lucky to be in front on the hand. It's just a shame that being in front didn't hold up as it cost me a lot of sleepless nights becaseu I could easily have been in the top 1 or 2 with 17 players left:-(

However NL Poker tournaments are about backing your judgement and unfortunately a consequence of this is that sometimes you can get it wrong.

The day I stop backing my judgement or get too scared to make a mistake is the day I quit playing.

I look forard to playing again next year and will do my very best to finish 18 spots higher."

[EnderW27]

Just reviewed the tape. It doesn't give all the details but here's as best I can gather from the limited info ESPN provides.

Arieh had ~ 1m in chips.
Harry had ~ 1.2 million
That's about as best I can guess, even though the math doesn't work out quite like that as you'll see later.

Josh raises 80,000 pf. Two callers. One would think there would be about 250,000-350,000 in the pot but with blinds and antes unknown it's hard to pinpoint down.

Flop comes and the announcers say Josh bets 400K. Harry raises all in and now, finally, we get an official pot size of 1.3 million.

But here's where the math gets funky. Josh calls and the pot goes up to 1.9 million, so Josh must have called an additional 600K into a 1.3m pot.
BUT...if he bet 400 and then put 600 more in, along with his opponent, there's NO WAY the pot can be less than 2m. Something's not right here.


But given that ESPN doesn't always give us the full story, let's just go on what was presented in the broadcast.
Josh has put half his stack into the pot and is now faced with putting the rest of his money in on a draw. He'd be getting 2:1 odds on his call.

Is he getting pot odds to do so if his opponent just has a pair? Yes. He's getting a pretty good overlay. But even Josh didn't think he "just" had AJ.

With two pair, AhJd, a set, two jacks with the Jh, and many other hands, Josh's call is somewhere between just barely +ev or just barely -ev (62-67% liklihood Harry would win). It's a coinflip and Josh is willing to CALL and risk his tournament on it.
That excludes the hands where Josh is so dominated (AhXh, etc.) that it's most assuredly -ev to call.

In short, if he knew what his opponent had, he would have the pot odds to call. But I still believe, after review, it was a lousy call to make and he should have saved his 600K for another spot.

[random]

Why do you keep saying coinflip? That play call is +EV all the way, and you have no concept of what pot odds really are. It's not like the pot had 0 dollars in it and Arieh called an all in bet.

You are walking down the street with your boyfriend when he spots a bag with $1m cash in it. He agrees to flip a coin with you to see who will get to keep it. However, for this coin to be flipped, your friend is charging you $2,000. You are the idiot that says "why risk $2,000 on a coinflip?"

[poboy]

[ QUOTE ]
Why do you keep saying coinflip? That play call is +EV all the way, and you have no concept of what pot odds really are. It's not like the pot had 0 dollars in it and Arieh called an all in bet.

You are walking down the street with your boyfriend when he spots a bag with $1m cash in it. He agrees to flip a coin with you to see who will get to keep it. However, for this coin to be flipped, your friend is charging you $2,000. You are the idiot that says "why risk $2,000 on a coinflip?"

[/ QUOTE ]

This is so far off-base it's funny. I think it's pretty obvious who doesn't understand pot odds here. In your example the person is getting 50,000:1 pot odds. In the play that's being debated the odds were not even close to that, I don't remember exact numbers but I believe they were in the range of 2:1 or 3:1. Why would pot odds even matter to you in this situation? This isn't a cash game where you can make the play over and over, its a tournament where if your wrong you're going home. Draws are death in tournament poker. Someone stated Josh was in it to win it and folding would have killed his chances of that. If I remember correctly the average stack at that time was 800K-900K, if Josh folds he is really not in that bad of shape. I don't think taking a coinflip(and I really don't think his odds were that good) is the best way to ensure you make it to the end. Horrible call and your argument supporting it is even worse.

[EnderW27]

I call it a coinflip to be charitable. It's actually worse than that and the pot odds push it up to 0 ev.

On most hands Harry can expect to push with here, Harry will win 62% - 66% of the time on showdown. In some cases it will be as low as 54% (as it was in this case) and in some cases it will be as high as 90%. But on average, you can expect Josh to win or tie 38%-34% of the time.
That, in itself, means he is most definitely NOT in a coinflip situation. He WILL lose more often than he wins.

But, Josh is getting 2:1 odds on his call (600K into a 1.3m pot) against an unknown, but certainly limited range of hands. Which means that, because of the pot odds, this play is pretty much break even EV.
For that reason, it's a coinflip. But it's still break even EV unless Josh is CERTAIN Harry only has a single pair and no flush draw. Even then Harry's still in the lead but Josh has the odds to call.
As it was, Josh didn't know...and he risked his entire stack calling it down.
I don't like that call. I also think your hypothetical with the suitcase is ridiculous, but another poster has already explained why.