WSOP Hachem JJ Hand

[HesseJam]

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2) for most people, the utility value of money goes up more at lower amounts, meaning that the difference in value to Hachem between 5 million and 2.5 million is likely to be more than the value between 7.5 million and 5 million, to use a simplified example.


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This is the key here. Situations like these are once-in-a-lifetime-events. $EV is clearly the wrong concept here and as we know the chip EV concept would be very wrong here.

It comes only down to Hachem's risk-utility-function. Then a lot of things come into play which we might not be aware of. Maybe he owed somebody a huge amount of money, let's say 2,5 Mio. Then I personally would be happy with a 2nd place and desolated with coming in 3rd. Maybe he had a backing deal where he had to share only up to 3rd place money.

For example, Dannenmann was accused of not using his big stack at the final stages of the tourney and giving away the win. His decision to play a bit too tight in the light of the ICM-model could also well have been very rational.