[Spaceman Spiff]

All right, we had our big finale tournament last night. $500 prize pool with starting chip stacks determined by your finishes during the season. I started out with the chip lead!

I maintained my stack pretty well all night and was able to get aggressive and get some nice steals in when we were down to 5 and 4. Eventually I made it to heads up with a slight chip lead.

Details: Blinds 500-1000. He's got 11,400, I've got 13,000.

He's on the button and limps for another 500. I look down and see A9s and raise to 3,000. He re-raises all-in. If I call the all-in, it leaves me with just 1,600.

The bad guy is a pretty solid and fairly aggressive player. I forget my Harrington and instead of thinking about a range of hands, I'm pretty sure he's got a pocket pair, hopefully a small one. I call and he turns over TT, not the pair I wanted to see as I'm now a 70-30 dog. I flop a 9, but no farther help and I'm crippled. Next hand I'm all in with 73o against 63s. Sure enough, flop is 2 diamonds, turn is the 3rd, and I'm out against his flush.

Like I said, I think I made a mistake by not thinking about a range of hands and instead putting him on a hand, and in this case, guessing wrong. First, my odds. There's 14,400 in the pot with our calls and his all-in re-raise. Costs me 8,400 to call. That's about 1.7 to 1. Factor in also that if I win the hand, I win the tourney. If I'm right about the smaller PP, it's a great call. However, if I thought about it more, he could have possibly also had A-10,J,Q, or K, and I'm still a 70-30 dog. The only hands I'm a favorite against are A-x with x<9 or some random bluff/steal type hand. I wasn't getting nearly the price to call as a potential 70-30 dog.

Bottom line in retrospect, I don't think I was getting the correct price to call. If I lay it down, I still have 10,000 in chips and can regain the chip lead by winning just 1 or 2 hands.

Thought?

[jojobinks]

in HOH2, harrington rates A9s in the first tier of headsup hands. so your raise was obviously in order.

in this case you have to call 8k to win 13k. so...getting 3-2 odds...that's not bad! you're only dominated by AA-99 and a better A.

the thing is, folding leaves you with 10k, which is plenty (M~ 7). i guess you should have folded if you think you're a better player, and called if you thought you were going to be outplayed by him in the headsup match.

[VARoadstter]

Basically I agree with your assessment.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Originally Posted by jojobinks

in HOH2, harrington rates A9s in the first tier of headsup hands. so your raise was obviously in order.

in this case you have to call 8k to win 13k. so...getting 3-2 odds...that's not bad! you're only dominated by AA-99 and a better A.

the thing is, folding leaves you with 10k, which is plenty (M~ 7). i guess you should have folded if you think you're a better player, and called if you thought you were going to be outplayed by him in the headsup match.

Man, I need to find a copy of HOH2.

Considering my chances against him was a factor, and I'm sure the fact that is was getting late also helped push me into a call. The last time he and I were heads up, he ran me over. That was my wake up call to revamp my heads up game. I would say we're closer to even now. In that case, it just adds another coin flip factor in.

I guess I'm OK with my call. Like you said A9s is a pretty big hand HU. I think if I had taken more time to think though, I might have realized I was pretty likely to be a dog going in.

[Wooderson]

I'm with Jojo.

I'm curious though how you figured out your percentages of 70-30 dog. I've never been able to understand how to do that.

[jojobinks]

Originally Posted by Wooderson

I'm with Jojo.

I'm curious though how you figured out your percentages of 70-30 dog. I've never been able to understand how to do that.

cardplayer.com has a calculator.

rules of thumb abound though.

if you have one overcard to a pair...you're about 30%
if you have 2 overcards to a pair you're about 50%
if you have pair over pair you're about 80%
if you have two cards to the other guys cards but you have high card you're about 60%

and so on. play around with the cardplayer calculator or buy a book that'll help.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Originally Posted by Wooderson

I'm with Jojo.

I'm curious though how you figured out your percentages of 70-30 dog. I've never been able to understand how to do that.

Yeah, cardplayer uses a big Monte Carlo simulation to spit out probabilities of certain hands winning. That's why the numbers don't come up exactly the same each time you run it, but it's close enough. It's pretty cool if you've never checked it out. You can even set up situations with up to 5 players in the hand and look at odds pre-flop, post-flop, and on the turn.

As it turns out, a dominated ace (or any other card for that matter) and one overcard to a pair are both roughly 70-30 dogs. If he had AA up against my A9s, I'm almost a 90-10 dog, that's the worst case.

I guess it's one of those things that could've gone either way depending on the read. If I put a higher probablility on him holding one of the hands that makes me 30%, it's a fold. But if I also weigh in a greater chance of him holding a small PP, or being on a bluff, etc., my "odds" in my head could be 60-40 against. In that case, by a pure odds analysis, I've got a call.

[joey umbatz]

i think your call was horrible...now obviously i dont know the player youre playing with. i have no idea if he's aggresive or even capable of check raising. However, if you put him on a small pocket pair, you cannot consider your call a "great call". He allready has a made hand. excluding the straight and flush possibilities, you really only have 6 cards that can help you. do you really want to put your whole tournament on an A9. however i dont think your play was as bad as his. unless he picked up a physical tell on you or had a gut feeling you were going to raise, that was a pretty bad move to just call in that position with tens. after your raise however, he made a good play.

[pager23]

Originally Posted by joey umbatz

i think your call was horrible...now obviously i dont know the player youre playing with. i have no idea if he's aggresive or even capable of check raising. However, if you put him on a small pocket pair, you cannot consider your call a "great call". He allready has a made hand. excluding the straight and flush possibilities, you really only have 6 cards that can help you. do you really want to put your whole tournament on an A9. however i dont think your play was as bad as his. unless he picked up a physical tell on you or had a gut feeling you were going to raise, that was a pretty bad move to just call in that position with tens. after your raise however, he made a good play.

At first I thought Joey was off his rocker, but after thinking about it for a bit, I'm actually beginning to agree with him on this one. I seem to remember something in HOH along the lines of... with your raise of $3000, you are basically committing yourself to the pot (1/4 your stack pre-flop) - you would be better off to push if you like your hand that much. Also according to HOH, your call of his re-raise should only be done with a VERY strong hand. I'm not sure A9s qualifies, but if you put him on a small pair, you were already a dog (albeit a very small one).

Also, I'm only referring to what I recall from HOH1, and he really doesn't talk about heads-up play until HOH2 (which I don't have).

[TomHimself]

Originally Posted by pager23

At first I thought Joey was off his rocker, but after thinking about it for a bit, I'm actually beginning to agree with him on this one. I seem to remember something in HOH along the lines of... with your raise of $3000, you are basically committing yourself to the pot (1/4 your stack pre-flop) - you would be better off to push if you like your hand that much. Also according to HOH, your call of his re-raise should only be done with a VERY strong hand. I'm not sure A9s qualifies, but if you put him on a small pair, you were already a dog (albeit a very small one).

Also, I'm only referring to what I recall from HOH1, and he really doesn't talk about heads-up play until HOH2 (which I don't have).

3k is a pretty normal raise here considering blinds but is pretty big with stacks,i think this is a fine line you took, the blinds are pretty big and you've committed about 25% of your stack here, I have a tough time folding. I think I might check behind him preflop but if you did that you probaly would've lost anyway when you flopped top pair to his overpair. I think you played it fine