Marginal EV situations for a lot of chips, and some theory discussion

[ansky451]

Ian J and I were talking on AIM last night, about chip accumulation. We were questioning, whether the best players truly can accumulate enough chips without a showdown, that they can pass up small edges for significant portions of their stack. There are also lots of subtleties to this, because of the decreasing marginal value of each additional chip you have, IE, is 70k chips instead of 60k chips, the same difference as 60k chips instead of 50k. So I brought up a hand from a 20 rebuy from about 2 weeks ago on pokerstars. We decided this was an excellent example, to discuss this theory.

There are 47 players left, and top 45 get paid. Making the money is of no concern to me, and I'm pretty sure I need to come close to final table to even break even (with all the rebuys).

Ian disagreed with both the first raise, and the call. I am a reckless gambler I guess.

I have no reads on the player who pushes, but I beleive I'm about 2-1 against his range, which is pretty much what I'm getting.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t2000 (8 handed) converter

SB (t25385)
BB (t78606)
Hero (t37563)
UTG+1 (t21165)
MP1 (t38680)
MP2 (t17068)
CO (t23389)
Button (t39120)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with T[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].
<font color="#CC3333">Hero raises to t6000</font>, <font color="#666666">3 folds</font>, <font color="#CC3333">CO raises to t23289</font>, <font color="#666666">3 folds</font>, Hero calls t17289.

So this is a pretty marginal EV situation. If I call and lose, I have 7 big blinds, and I'm bb next hand. If I fold, I have 15 big blinds. If I call and win, I have 32 big blinds, a big stack at just the right time. So there is more to calculating the cEV here, as each result gives me a totally different situation in the tournament-- desperate shortstack, midstack, or monster stack.

Discuss.