sam farha vs. (unknown) day1 wsop

[Jordan Olsommer]

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Right. And even taking this fact into account it's still +EV. Haven't we been over this? Are you advocating NEVER playing any hands for set value because there's always a possibility of set-over-set? Or only not to do it when it represents the huge chunk of your stack that is 4%?

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The play is worth 63 chips, and that's assuming you can avoid set-over-set 100% of the time.* Keeping your big stack at a time when nobody else has a big stack and everybody is playing as tight-weak as they probably ever will is worth much, much more in overall $EV than the extra 63 chips.

If you still don't get it, reread my posts, because I'm not going to explain it again. Best of luck.

*edit: using gergery's numbers, if you can avoid set-over-set 40% of the time (a pretty good percentage, if Dan Harrington is to be believed), the play is -EV.

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if you want to put your entire life's savings on the line with an 11-to-10 shot, be my guest.

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I would argue this is -$EV.

Retaining my life savings allows me to continue to make +$EV choices. Taking the 11-to-10 may be +cEV in the tournament of life, but it's still -$EV. My current savings of $X has greater $EV than X over the course of my lifetime.

[gergery]

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There is no way Farha could have calculated that at the table and been confident enough that he hadn't made an error to say it was barely, but surely, +EV.

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Yes, there is no way he calculates that at the table. But very good experienced players can get pretty close. i'd be willing to bet that Sammy figured something like "9:1 for my set with no better set, I can read this guy for sure, so I'll make a little money on a call here".

I'd also guess that Sammy thinks that having 30k in chips 1x and 19k in chips 7x is better than 20k in chips every time. I'll also guess that he thinks he can make a set under set read with 95% accuracy here, and with his experience and that guy's obvious bet he might be right.

Note: I also did not include in here things like sammy outplays the guy on montone flops, or if the guy actually had 10,900 in chips, etc. so the EV of +63 is just under one set of assumptions, but sammy could well have had slightly different ones that increased the actual EV.

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In fact, if he knew with 100% certainty that his EV was exactly 63, I think he would have folded before the flop - too much risk for too little gain.

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No, you have it backwards. Sammy would be more willing to gamble with small edges early on. He wants to get a big stack very early so he can bully others around, and so he has better chances of making it all the way. He believes his win-rate at the ring games is high enough so that the worst possible outcome for him is chilling out a long time in the tourney and winning back 2x his buyin over 6 days or something. He wants a good shot at millions or to bust out and play cash games. And that means gambling early on with any EV edge.

--greg

[gergery]

Sammy needs to be correct in his read roughly 55% of the time for his call to be EV+. FWIW, I saw him in the other hand correctly put the guy on "QQ or JJ with 1 diamond". I saw him last year call down big bets because the other guy "should stick to internet play because you're shaking like a leaf"? He's been a pro for 25+ years. Nothing is certain in life, but weighted probabilities suggest his reads are pretty damn good.

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I also find it questionable that all of your scenarios when Sammy hits begin with "AA goes all in...". You're saying that the AA will go all-in no matter what flops? That's quite a read. Sure he's a donk, sure he's likely to make postflop errors after the massive overbet, but are you 100% certain you get his stack? If not, that knocks your EV even lower. (What if he acutally had KK and an ace flopped? You're probably not getting his whole stack there.)

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If Sammy gets some of his chips in scenarios where sammy doesn't get a set then that makes this call MORE ev+, not less. The biggest negative in your calculations is having to fold no set flops. If AA will fold on monotone or straight flops, then sammy's call makes even more sense.

Personally, I can't see anyone who makes a massive overbet prefop being willing to fold on a rag flop. But there are lots of calculations I didn't do. AA is likely to put sammy on KK-JJ here -- what happens on QJ9 flops? Can sammy outplay him there? What about 456 monotone flops?

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But as an individual hand in a vacuum, I don't think you can say this is +EV without making a lot of questionable assumptions about what the player has and how he will play it.

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I should have been clearer -- I was not saying he should have called, nor am I saying he made a good play. I was merely doing the calculations under one set of assumptions that I felt were most likely the assumptions Sammy would have been making, and presenting his likely thought process and internal arguments. I also don't think those assumptions were at all questionable -- i think they are pretty reasonable and in fact likely. If anything, I didn't include scenarios where scare cards let sammy bluff him out.

--greg

[gergery]

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EV is everything in every situation, tournament or no.

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Nonsense. Read my post again.

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If you can afford the variance, have good alternatives available (side games), and see this opportunity as being something like +500 chips (likely all true in sammy's case) then EV is everything.

-g

Of course there are a million different ways this hand could play out depending on the texture of the flop, the willingness of the AA to fold to aggression, Sammy's desire to bluff without a set, etc., etc. My point was not to come up with a complete EV calc for every scenario but just to point out that your calculations were based on a specific set of assumptions, namely:
(a) Sammy knows he has AA.
(b) Sammy will always fold in cases of set over set.
(c) Sammy will fold 100% of the time when he doesn't make a set.
(d) The other player will always go all-in.

These are your assumptions, not mine. My point was simply that your calculated EV does not "prove" that the move was +EV, it simply means that if all your assumptions are correct it was +EV. If I make one small change to assumption (a), and give him a range of AA or KK, it turns to -EV. Obviously there are a lot more variables that could come into play if we wanted to get really picky, but I was just using that one alteration as an example.

The issue I have with your assumptions though is that they assume the best case scenario for Sammy: he knows his opponent's cards and he knows what his opponent will do. It's literally impossible for him to make a mistake according to the FTOP. Even with that massive edge, it's only marginally +EV. If you add more hands to the other player's range and/or assume his post-flop actions will be less predictable, you make it more and more likely that Sammy will make a mistake that will cost himself EV.

If you alter assumptions (c) and (d) you could maybe come up with some additional EV from fold equity on a bluff, but even that's marginal at best and very player dependent. If he's a calling station it's flat-out -EV to bluff. Besides, I think it's really a stretch to argue for a calling a huge preflop raise with a dominated hand based on the assumption that he could bluff him off AA later. (Sounds strangely similar to the strategy in the article that stirred up a lot of controversy over in the magazine forum. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]) I'd be really concerned if the line between +EV and -EV was determined by my chances of bluffing someone off aces.

[gergery]

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Of course there are a million different ways this hand could play out depending on the texture of the flop, the willingness of the AA to fold to aggression, Sammy's desire to bluff without a set, etc., etc. My point was not to come up with a complete EV calc for every scenario but just to point out that your calculations were based on a specific set of assumptions, namely:
(a) Sammy knows he has AA.
(b) Sammy will always fold in cases of set over set.
(c) Sammy will fold 100% of the time when he doesn't make a set.
(d) The other player will always go all-in.

These are your assumptions, not mine. My point was simply that your calculated EV does not "prove" that the move was +EV, it simply means that if all your assumptions are correct it was +EV. If I make one small change to assumption (a), and give him a range of AA or KK, it turns to -EV. Obviously there are a lot more variables that could come into play if we wanted to get really picky, but I was just using that one alteration as an example.

The issue I have with your assumptions though is that they assume the best case scenario for Sammy: he knows his opponent's cards and he knows what his opponent will do. It's literally impossible for him to make a mistake according to the FTOP. Even with that massive edge, it's only marginally +EV. If you add more hands to the other player's range and/or assume his post-flop actions will be less predictable, you make it more and more likely that Sammy will make a mistake that will cost himself EV.

If you alter assumptions (c) and (d) you could maybe come up with some additional EV from fold equity on a bluff, but even that's marginal at best and very player dependent. If he's a calling station it's flat-out -EV to bluff. Besides, I think it's really a stretch to argue for a calling a huge preflop raise with a dominated hand based on the assumption that he could bluff him off AA later.

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Good reply. I agree with most of that, with 2 comments
a) i think its actually pretty likely that all those assumption will be true
b) the EV could be significantly better than +63 in scenarios where AA does not push in but instead makes an incorrect fold. (FYI, someone else said AA had 14k stack not 10k, giving significantly more EV right there for eg.)

fwiw, i think SAmmy's call with his skills was marginal but probably eV+.
-g

[pindawg]

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Online, I understand huge overbets to usually mean 99-JJ.

If he is committed to getting stacked on any flop, he should have bet 3k preflop. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Yea .. I love how people whine about always losing with JJ, so instinctively they commit their stack preflop whenever they get JJ.