Chip Value first hand of a tournament

[ekky]

Hello sharks

I have been having a discussion with a friend of mine about the tournament equity value of doubling up first hand.

Let us assume the following:

1000 runner tournament:
1500 chips to start:
First hand you get 66 and your villain has AK os.

I maintain this is a definite call because you have the edge, you are getting positive equity vs your opponent, and most importantly, I think that at this early stage, a double through in chips is almost going to be exactly the same as a double through of Tournament equity (seeing as it is first hand)

My friend maintains that because the chips you win are worth less then the ones you lose, you should not be going with any edge less then 60%.

I dont think this runs true when you are playing for 1000th of the chips on the first hand of the tourny.

I apologise if this has been addressed here before (which I assume it has) but I did not have much luck finding it out in the archives..

so if anyone has a little time, could you possibly spend a minute or three saying:

a) if you CAN work out an exact chip valuation and what edge you need

b) how you would go about doing it?

thank you in advance and I apologise if this is bringing up old stuff, but I am not yet cognisant with the search function.

Thanking you in advance

Ekky

[jgunnip]

I'm almost 100% sure this your line of thinking is horribly flawed. Given this situation on the first hand of every MTT you entered you would survive a little more than 50% of the time. Clearly this is not worth getting a little chip equity early a tournament.

[ekky]

Id say it was exactly the right time to take a slightly better then coin-flip proposition.

It maximises my time value, gives me +EV on my decisions, and gives me a playable stack or I hit the cash tables.


What I want to know is if it is chip +EV, or does the chips won really have much less value then the chips lost, this early

[AlwaysWrong]

No YOUR line of thinking is horribly flawed.

Clearly if you have AA on the button and everyone goes all-in ahead of you you should call, though you will bust more than 50% of the time.

There is no perfect answer to this question as there is no definitive value you can place on doubling at this point in the tournament. You're right to suspect that being far from the money in a large tournament makes chip ev closer to $ ev. Winning about 55% of the time seems like it's probably around the break-even point, but I suspect you're a little under.

Of course since you never KNOW your opponent has AKo and not TT this would be a dumb call in a real situation.

[ekky]

yeah, it was merely exploring the hypothetics of the situation.

I thought ICM might be able to give an answer, but I dont really understand that fully.

[jgunnip]

[ QUOTE ]
No YOUR line of thinking is horribly flawed.

Clearly if you have AA on the button and everyone goes all-in ahead of you you should call, though you will bust more than 50% of the time.

There is no perfect answer to this question as there is no definitive value you can place on doubling at this point in the tournament. You're right to suspect that being far from the money in a large tournament makes chip ev closer to $ ev. Winning about 55% of the time seems like it's probably around the break-even point, but I suspect you're a little under.

Of course since you never KNOW your opponent has AKo and not TT this would be a dumb call in a real situation.

[/ QUOTE ]


NO, this is NOT the same situation. With AA you of course call because you're getting 8-1 or 9-1 odds on the call depending on the table. So if you win you have origional stack x10, this is clearly more valuable than OP situation of having just origional stack x2.

[augie00]

This has been discussed before. Half of the people say call, half say fold. Nobody knows.

[ThrillFactor]

[ QUOTE ]
This has been discussed before. Half of the people say call, half say fold. Nobody knows.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure it's been discussed before. But if you're listening to the MTT gurus, I think it's an overwhelming call.

The experts (Sklansky and Raymer, two of the most notable) state quite simply that YOU cannot pass up a 10% edge in this situation. Ever. Period.

MLG had a post a month or so ago with a similar hypothetical. TT v. AK on the first hand of the WSOP ME. His answer was simple. Even in this deep-stacked tourney, if your opp flashed his AK, you should call with TT.

In a shallow-stacked online tourney, its even more clear-cut. You don't have enough time to sit and wait for 60/40 situations to double up. They don't come around often enough and the blinds are relentlessly increasing.

It took me a while here on this forum to begin to comprehend and accept these choices.

I call here with 66 every time if I "know" that I am against 2 overs.

[marrek]

[ QUOTE ]
Clearly if you have AA on the button and everyone goes all-in ahead of you you should call, though you will bust more than 50% of the time.


[/ QUOTE ]

This has been addressed in a few tournament books, and has been said to be a fold! Actually teh situation is 1st hand of the WSOP, your on the Big Blind adn pick up AA, every one goes all in ahead of you.

Its a clear fold ( to Sklansky i think, i will look it up tonight). The reason is, you are only a 30% favorite to win and while winning guarantees you absolutely nothing more than 1 more hand, losing guarantees you will not win a dime.

So while you have a +EV situation, losing means your out. Sklansky talks alot about giving up +EV situations if losing it means that you can not take even more +EV situations later.

With 3000 entrants into the WSOP, Sklanskys +EV is probably 10 x better than average, but that only leaves him with like a 0.33% chance of winning. Gaining 90,000 chips early is not going to increase his +EV by much considering that there are 30,000,000 chips in play and he still has 7 days worth of poker to play.

Marrek

[JoshuaMayes]

[ QUOTE ]


The experts (Sklansky and Raymer, two of the most notable) state quite simply that YOU cannot pass up a 10% edge in this situation. Ever. Period.


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know where Sklansky said this, but IIRC, in his tournament book, he explained that more skilled players shouldn't push small edges early in a tournament because it deprives them of the chance to get there chips in with a bigger edge later in the tourney. By calling off all your chips as a 55:45 favorite in your example, you deprive yourself of the chance to get your chips in in more favorable situations and to outplay your opponents by winning pots without showdowns later in the tourney every time you lose (which will happen 45 out of 100 times). In contrast, the upside if you win, 1000 chips, is relatively meaningless when there are 1,000,000 chips in play. Sure its nicer to have 2000 than 1000, but you still need to amass many more chips to even make the money, and 1,998,000 more to win.