Thoughts?

[SossMan]

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I'd say, that in the MTT context, that when you are pot committed, you want to maximize your chances of winning the pot first, and worry about chip EV next.

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This is as far as i got in your post.

There are spots very late in tournies where this is true, but for the most part take this idea and trash it. The priority is EV and you should not make a habit of sacrificing EV for variance hardly ever.
-Jason

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even if it's for your (cue scary music) TOURNAMENT LIFE?!?!?

[nightlyraver]

I disagree with this statement. Despite the fact that you are committed to a pot, your primary goal should be to gain the most with the least possible risk. This is not an exact equation, but a player certainly must ballance these competing goals. Therefore, you really want to manipulate the pot as best as possible with these goals in mind. It follows that you should use the most likely range when making these decisions. For example, if you are on the flop and tied to the pot, you need to use the most LIKELY range to determine whether you want to encourage or discourage a wager. If the LARGEST range puts you at an 85% favorite, you want to encourage a call. If the most LIKELY range puts you at only a 55% favorite, you probably want to discourage a call assuming you are not completely desperate.

In your preflop example, your statement really falls apart. With AA, you want to encourage a call from exactly 1 caller. Even if you assume a very wide range for 2 or 3 opponents, you are much worse off if you get all in with multiple callers. With 15BB's it's not the time to screw around with fancy preflop play. Move in and hope that the original raiser interprets this as weakness and calls.

[LearnedfromTV]

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Im more interested in the statement than analysis of the example.

It has other implications. Let's say you are out of position and have a weak made hand against a player you suspect has a draw or a bluff and will push it hard. Instead of, say, leading out all in which will give him a terrible price on his draw (which he may call or may fold), and causing him to fold his bluffs, you might decide to check and let him stick all his chips in before you call (assume you both have 1 pot sized left). Checking increases the range of hands you are against, and if you determined you are committed then according to my statement it would be the optimal line.

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I frequently check middle pair or even bottom pair on the flop if shortstacked for this reason, especially heads up against aggressive players.

The danger with a weak made hand, of course, is that your opponent almost always has outs - even a bluffer can have overcards to beat a "weak made hand." Standard Theory of Poker stuff, if a check will increase the average amount he puts in the pot on a bluff or with few outs by a large enough margin over the value of betting yourself and folding out some of those hands to make up for the times he checks behind with outs and hits, then a check is correct.

[LearnedfromTV]

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In your preflop example, your statement really falls apart. With AA, you want to encourage a call from exactly 1 caller. Even if you assume a very wide range for 2 or 3 opponents, you are much worse off if you get all in with multiple callers. .

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This is so wrong. Wronger you could not be.

[adanthar]

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I'd say, that in the MTT context, that when you are pot committed, you want to maximize your chances of winning the pot first, and worry about chip EV next.

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This is as far as i got in your post.

There are spots very late in tournies where this is true, but for the most part take this idea and trash it. The priority is EV and you should not make a habit of sacrificing EV for variance hardly ever.
-Jason

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even if it's for you (cue scary music) TOURNAMENT LIFE?!?!?

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nh

[Apathy]

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Im more interested in the statement than analysis of the example.

It has other implications. Let's say you are out of position and have a weak made hand against a player you suspect has a draw or a bluff and will push it hard. Instead of, say, leading out all in which will give him a terrible price on his draw (which he may call or may fold), and causing him to fold his bluffs, you might decide to check and let him stick all his chips in before you call (assume you both have 1 pot sized left). Checking increases the range of hands you are against, and if you determined you are committed then according to my statement it would be the optimal line.

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When I read the statement this was the first thing I thought of, I think it is much more applicable to this situation then that of the example where you hold the nuts with cards left to come.

[Roman]

thats what I meant... your statement sounds like an absolute to me.

[Jason Strasser]

I can spend all day doing examples, its a flexible idea.

No one has yet to really address it though directly.

-Jason

[Black Aces 518]

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I'd say, that in the MTT context, that when you are pot committed, you want to maximize your chances of winning the pot first, and worry about chip EV next. The main reason is that if you are all-in or potentially all-in, you NEED to win the pot in order to stay alive in the tournament.

For instance, in the given example, just calling the raise on the button with AA is a good idea if it'll cause more callers or reraisers with weaker hands (smaller pairs, Ax, etc.) These hands don't affect your pot equity too much since they still need lots of help to beat you, so your chances of winning the hand will still be large. However, with a pair like JJ or QQ, you'd be better off reraising to isolate the primary raiser. The last thing you want is another person to come into the pot with an A or K in his hand, and thus decrease your pot equity greatly.

To put some numbers on it, lets say the first raiser has AQs, and will call a push (not necessarily true depending on the player, but for the sake of argument lets assume it). The big blind has either KJs or 88. If you reraise, he'll fold, but if you just call, he'll call as well.

Chances of winning the hand are as follows:
AA with reraise - 87.5%
AA with KJs call - 70.8%
AA with 88 call - 68.3%

QQ with reraise - 65.7%
QQ with KJs call - 42.3%
QQ with 88 call - 50.6%

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But your equity increases even as your percentage to win decreases, due to the increase in the size of the pot. Your equity in the AA hands are 26.25 BB headsup, 31.86 BB vs raiser and KJ and 30.74 BB vs raiser and 88 (disregarding the SB and assuming raiser and BB both have you covered).

At some point, YOUR TOURNAMENT LIFE is important, but when you are getting this short, unless there's some satellite payout or other info, you have to take the most equity possible.

[gergery]

I think your statement would be correct for a wide range of situations, but there are definitely a few exceptions where it won’t apply.

Let’s say his entire range is hands rank-ordered 1 to 100, where 1=monster and 100=complete trash. Let’s say hands

1-8 will stay no matter what,
9-18 will very likely stay and have odds,
19-30 will likely stay but don’t have odds,
31-50 likely won’t stay,
50-100 are likely to fold

If you try and keep the range very big, you are then you are giving up value to 9-18, since you want those hands to fold, but getting value from hands 19-30 who don’t have odds, and getting value from 31-50 who might hit miracle cards and give you money. You need to get more from 19-50 than you give up to 9-18, which won’t always be the case.

Some examples where you probably don’t want others around: a) medium-small pairs which give up lots of equity going from 1 opponent to 2, b) pairs plus flush draws that are not big favorite nor big underdogs no matter what the opponent has, c) situations where the pot is big or odds offered are good.

just some initial thoughts, i may be wrong,
-g