I often hear tournament players tell me about their "pet peeve." It turns out that a lot of these players share the same one. When a player is all in, they tell me, everyone else should check the hand down, every time. "We want to eliminate the all-in guy," they say, and the best chance of doing it occurs when none of the active players bet their hands, forcing the all-in player to beat as many people as possible. When someone does bet at a side pot, I often hear a lot of grumbling. When a player folds a hand that would've won the pot, only to see the all-in player win and survive, someone usually goes ballistic.
I'm here to tell you that it's OK to bet at a side pot - even a dry side pot. Please don't misunderstand me, it isn't
always correct to bet at a side pot. In fact, sometimes it's catastrophic. Take the most obvious example of a supersatellite that's giving away six seats to a major tournament. If there are seven players left and one player is all in, eliminating that player should be everyone's primary goal. If the all-in player gets eliminated, it doesn't matter how many chips each of the remaining players has, because they've already won. So, if there are two or more active players in the pot, a bet into a dry side pot improves a player's prospects only if (1) the all-in player wins the hand and (2) another active player calls the bet. Getting an opponent to fold doesn't accomplish anything except increase the all-in player's chances of survival, which is the last thing anyone (except the all-in guy) wants. I think it's safe to say that in this situation, it's correct to check the hand down unless someone makes the nuts on the river.
But what if, instead of a supersatellite, we're playing a regular tournament? Let's say there are nine players left at the final table and a short stack moves in from under the gun. There are a lot of supposedly good players who say that you should never reraise this player without aces or kings, and that if one or more players call, you should never bet before the river without the nuts. This advice is crazy. The jump in money from ninth place to eighth place is typically miniscule compared to the jump between ninth place and first place. In this year's
World Series of Poker main event, there was about a $400,000 gap between ninth and eighth, and about a $10.5 million gap between ninth and first. Now, $400,000 is a lot of money, and if you're a short stack, you should think very seriously about trying to slide up a spot to earn that extra cash. If you're the chip leader, however, and a short stack moves all in, it makes perfect sense to reraise to try to isolate him. You don't care about eliminating players and sliding up the pay scale; you care about accumulating chips to try to win the whole thing. You care about increasing your own chances of winning the pot, which means that you should be reraising.
Earlier in the tournament, it makes even more sense to keep betting, even if a player is all in, and even if there is a dry side pot. Think of it this way: When you bet in general, you're often trying to get your opponent to fold so that you can win the pot. When a player is all in and there is no side pot, you can't win the main pot immediately by betting, which is why most players just give up and check it down. You can, however, win your
equity in the main pot against the all-in player.
Let's say, for example, that you have A-Q and you raise preflop. A short stack calls the raise, which puts him all in. Another player with a lot of chips calls the raise from the big blind. The flop comes 9-7-3 rainbow and the big blind checks. There is $1,000 in the pot and each of you has $15,000 remaining in your stack. Should you bet?
First ask yourself, with what hands will the big blind call me if I bet? Many players who subscribe to conventional thinking will call only with an overpair or better here, thinking there's no way the original raiser would bet into the dry side pot with less than that. Both the short stack and the big blind are likely to have a very wide range of hands preflop. If we assume a fairly wide range for the short stack (all pairs, all aces, a few hands with big cards), and an even wider range for the big blind (let's say he'd defend with about a third of his hands), our A-Q has only about 28 percent equity in the pot after that bad flop. This means that checking the hand down is worth about $280. But if we can knock out the big blind, our equity moves up to a whopping 51 percent. When we succeed in eliminating the big blind, our hand is worth about $510.
So, how often does our bet need to succeed in order for it to make sense? Well, let's say that we plan on betting $600. And let's further stipulate that if we bet and get called, we automatically will lose the hand. (This is, of course, a ridiculous assumption, but it enables us to make a very conservative estimate of how often the play has to work.) These assumptions enable us to write the equation $280 = F x $510 - (1-F) x $600, where F represents the chance that the big blind will fold. Solving, we get $280 = $1,110 x F - $600; or, F = 79 percent. Therefore, betting is better than checking if the big blind will fold more than 79 percent of the time. (Note: This math isn't perfect, because our equity against hands the big blind folds to a bet is higher than our equity against hands with which he calls. Therefore, we don't really gain quite as much as these numbers suggest by making the big blind fold. But when you consider there is a chance that we can win more money from the big blind after betting, and a chance that by checking, we might eventually fold a hand we would've won, I'm still pretty comfortable with the 79 percent number. If you want to look at these details more closely than I did, please send an e-mail to
[email protected].) We don't win the pot when the big blind folds; we "win" a better chance at taking down the main pot. Many typical players will fold to a bet on this flop far more often than 79 percent of the time, as they will need nearly a nut hand to play. We flopped nothing and hold only ace high, and yet a good case can be made for betting into the dry side pot. Needless to say, if you have any kind of hand with more showdown equity (for example, a pair), the bet makes even more sense.
A typical retort to this argument is that you always want to eliminate players. Let me ask this: With 1,000 players left in a big tournament, would you rather have a few more chips, or would you rather knock the field down to 999 players? If you prefer eliminating a player to picking up chips at this stage, you need to seriously reconsider your approach to poker tournaments.
Finally, all of the above analysis assumed a dry side pot. If there is actually money in the side pot, money that can be won immediately when your opponent folds, the case for betting becomes much, much stronger. In fact, if your opponent will fold very tightly just because there is an all-in player, and there is significant money in the side pot, you probably should bet at that side pot in the early/middle stages of a tournament regardless of what you have.
Be ready to face angry opponents, and know-it-alls who claim your "ignorance" is costing them money, but start betting into side pots when a bet is called for. You can bristle at your opponents' curses all the way to the bank.
Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player, which is available online at www.CardPlayer.com.
