I received an e-mail from one of my poker clients recently on an exceptionally instructive subject. Whether or not you are committed to a hand is an important poker concept. (Committed means that you have put so many of your chips into the pot already that you must put the rest in rather than folding.) Here is his e-mail on preflop commitment:
"Hi, Bob. Here is a tournament hand I went out on recently. I had the A
10
on the button at an eighthanded table. We were playing with a $200 ante and $1,000-$2,000 blinds. I had $30,000 in my stack. My "M" [maximum number of rounds that can be played without winning a pot] was $30,000 ÷ ($1,600 + $1,000 + $2,000), meaning I had enough chips for just over six orbits of the button. Everyone folded around to me and I open-raised to $10,000. The average stack size was $40,000. The small blind put me all in by going all in himself with a $40,000 stack. The big blind folded; I called. He turned over Q-Q; I failed to help, and was out. I think I should have folded and tried to double up on the next orbit, as I would be in position. I thought he might think I was stealing. I knew he was a good player. (He finished 16th overall for $6,100 in prize money.)
"I saw $10,000 + $1,600 + $3,000 + $29,000 = $43,600 in the pot, and I had to call $20,000; $43,600÷$20,000 is odds of 2.2-to-1. I had to be less than a 69-31 underdog to have the right odds. If he has aces, I am dead. If he has kings, queens, jacks, or tens, I am a big underdog, just as I am to a better kicker of A-K, A-Q, and A-J. Anything else, and I am OK. But I guess the question is, would he have pushed there without a premium hand? Do I want to take about a one-third chance to stay alive and go from $30,000 to $63,600?"
Here is my answer:
I like money games, and take that attitude when I play in a tournament, meaning that if I bust out, I can go and play in a cash game. I think you have to have that attitude in a tournament, or you hold back too much from taking a committal action when the situation calls for it. Your hand may be an example, as it is crystal clear to call the all-in reraise.
It is obvious that your opponent, if he plays, will reraise all in. He is never going to just call, as these days, even the donkeys know to push all of their chips in this situation.
Here is the math. It makes a slight difference depending on the suit of your opponent's cards, so what I am giving you is approximate. Against aces, you win only 13 percent of the hands. Since there is a wide variety of hands with which he may reraise all in, and you hold an ace, the chance of running into pocket aces may well be less than 2 percent. Let's look at the hands that have an overlay against you. Versus kings, queens, or jacks, you win about 33 percent of the time. Against tens, you win 34 percent of the time. Against an underpair, you win in the 47 to 50 percent range, depending on the underpair. Against a bigger ace, if it is suited, you are around 27 percent. If it is unsuited, you are about 28 percent. So, what we see is that you are going to be around 30 percent against an average of all of the hands that concern you. In other words, even if your opponent has the premium hand that you expect, you are getting sufficient pot odds to play.
How big a hand does the button need to open-raise the pot with $30,000 in chips when playing $1,000-$2,000 blinds with a $200 ante? It depends who it is. If it were me, I would not be raising on any two cards even in this favorable a situation, because I am a little too deep. (If I had less than $20,000 in chips, I may well have anything to move in with only two players to get past.) Yet, even a solid citizen like myself is going to open-raise from the button with a dry ace, two suited paints, and possibly some other shaky stuff. I think there is perhaps a 30 percent chance that your opponent has either a worse hand than yours or a pocket pair smaller than tens. This means that folding to the all-in raise would have been weak poker. You cannot play in tournaments by renouncing gambling, or you will be reduced to a doormat.
The question arises here that if you are committed to the pot if reraised, why did you open-raise for $10,000? It would seem that you should take a different action. For example, you could open for $7,000 and fold if reraised. That way, you still have a chance to win the pot without a fight, having made a respectable raise of three and a half times the big blind, but you have not married your hand (meaning you put so much in that you are committed for all of your money). At the other end of the spectrum, you simply could move all in.
I teach my students that if there are no antes, they should never open-raise part of their stack when they have less than 10 times the big blind. Their only choices are fold, call, or raise all in. If there are antes, there is more money in the pot, and I suggest they use 10 times the sum of the blinds rather than 10 times the amount of the big blind for their "commitment number" for not making a partial raise.
On this hand that we are discussing, the stack size to blind size happens to be exactly on the cut line that I suggest, so it is reasonable to either move in or make an open-raise of about $7,000, depending on your hand. A-10 suited is quite a good button hand. Being suited is definitely a plus if you get called by a better hand. I would be likely to bet all of my money here. First, it gives me a better chance of winning without a fight. My opponents in the blinds may well fold hands with which they might reraise me all in, like pocket pairs of sevens through fours. Second, raising to only $7,000 with antes looks a bit wimpy. An opponent may opine that you are making a small raise to give yourself wiggle room to bail out, and play aggressively at you with as little as a dry ace.
You can see in this hand that running into pocket queens would have made you play for all of your money and lose, whether you played the hand by raising to $10,000 and calling the reraise, or simply open-raised all in. However, there are many other hands for your opponents in the blinds in which your choice of action would make a big difference in the outcome. When the cards are being dealt, you should know whether or not your stack size is an amount that will commit you to raising all in if you choose to raise. Think ahead.
Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Poker. All can be ordered from Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons: e-mail [email protected]. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert's Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called www.fairlawsonpoker.org.
