The Must-Call

Don't confuse this column with another column I wrote, "The Just-Call." In that one, I discussed the merits of calling versus raising in certain situations in which both are viable options. In this column, I want to discuss a tournament hand in which the only choices are to call or fold; in other words, to play on would be to risk elimination from the event.

Many, if not most, players fold way too often when someone sets them all in during a no-limit hold'em tournament. They prefer to win hands with no showdown. Hey, I prefer to win hands with no showdown, too, but a lot of times the rules of the game don't let me. As regular readers know, I'm a strong believer that the skill of this game is in finding edges, no matter whether those edges come from your opponents folding or from your hand winning a showdown. If you insist on entering a showdown only when you're very confident that you have the best hand, you can't be a winner in this game, in my view.

Here's a hand that came up with only about 5 percent of the field remaining in a recent no-limit hold'em tournament I played online.

With the blinds at $1,250-$2,500 and the ante at a measly $125 (curse you, PokerStars! Didn't you read my "Ante Up!" column?), everyone folded to an aggressive, but not crazy, player on the button. He moved all in for about $19,000. The small blind folded and the big blind pondered. He had a hand with which players normally like to see a cheap flop - 10-9 suited. He had only $7,259 left after posting.

When he finished thinking over the situation, the big blind called. An observer watching this go down asked me about the hand. He said that it was a strange call, because the button really hadn't been playing all that loose. I said that it was a "must-call" for the big blind.

Why? Well, the big blind was being offered $14,634-$7,259, or more than 2-1 on his money, to call the all in. For that price, against a typical button range, he's correct to call with almost any two cards, let alone a hand as good as 10-9 suited.

To make this more clear, remember that the big blind needs about 33 percent equity against the button's range to make calling a positive expected value (EV) in terms of chips. (I went over this in one of my early columns, but quickly, when you're getting 2-1 pot odds, you need to win 1/(2+1) = 1/3 of the time to break even.) And remember, I believe that if you have a positive EV in terms of chips, you should almost always play in a tournament situation, and this hand is no exception.

Let's say the button is highly aggressive, and he moves in with about 70 percent of his hands here. Against that range, the big blind has about 50 percent equity with his 10-9 suited, a monstrously high number. The worst hand in the deck, 7-2 offsuit, has about 32 percent equity against that range, and with that hand against this highly aggressive opponent, the big blind would actually have a very close decision. With 10-9 suited, the decision isn't close.

But even if the big blind doesn't consider the button an overly aggressive player, he has to think that given the button's stack size, and the big blind's stack size, the button will move in with a lot of hands in this spot. Even if he gives the button a range of just any ace, any pair, big cards, decent kings, and some suited connectors, that's still 37 percent of all hands. (I got that number from the latest version of PokerStove, still my favorite program, which is downloadable at www.pokerstove.com.) A 10-9 suited has 42 percent equity against this range, and folding is still not a reasonable choice, if you follow my philosophy of taking any edge you can in this game. Of course, everyone should follow this philosophy when he has only a couple of blinds in his stack and there's almost no skill involved except knowing when to make a positive-EV play preflop. So, as I said, it's a must-call.

Decisions like this come up all the time in tournaments, and late in the game you'll see far more bad folds than bad calls. This is in contrast to early in the tournament, when you'll see far more bad calls and bad raises than bad folds. In the later stages, if you have an average stack, you're often near the top of the leader board, and it's because many players are simply looking to slide up to the next slot on the pay scale. If you make more all-in calls when you have an edge, you'll find yourself in contention to win more no-limit hold'em tournaments, and not just move up the ladder.

The real issue, though, is that it should be very rare for a no-limit hold'em tournament player to get down to four-big-blinds-or-less territory. About the only way I ever find myself there is if I've just lost a big showdown. With four big blinds in your stack, it's almost correct to move in every time it's folded to you. Because of this, knowledgeable players rarely find themselves with an extremely short stack; they move in before their situation becomes desperate.

Furthermore, knowledgeable players also usually know that they have to call all ins with a whole mess of hands when getting 2-1 pot odds. Conversely, when I see a player posting a quarter of his stack in the big blind, I'm going to assume he doesn't understand the concept of calling a loose all in when getting 2-1, and I'm going to go after his blind a lot. I won't need much more than connecting cards, one high card, or even any two suited cards. If I had been the button in this hand, I probably would've raised with about 70 percent of my hands.

And as it turns out, I was the button in this hand. I had 7-6 offsuit, and lost. Unfortunately for me, my opponent actually did seem to understand the concept of calling when getting the right price, as was evidenced by his chat afterward, in which he talked about "doing the math." I'm not entirely sure how his stack got as low as it did, but he made the right call against me for the right reasons. So, nice hand, sir, well-played. I hope you went on to win the thing.

Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player, which is available online at www.CardPlayer.com.