Winning Poker Tournaments III – Hand No. 23

Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time Volume III by Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet, and yours truly, analyzes fifty online poker hands. In Volume III, PearlJammer, Rizen, and Apestyles analyze the same hands and then I give a summary of lessons learned at the end of the hand. This article looks at hand No. 23.

Seat 1: 3,025,660
Seat 3: 6,627,126
Seat 4: 19,29,172
Seat 6: 3,440,945 Button
Seat 7: 4,426,702 Small Blind (SB)
Seat 8: 2495395 Big Blind (BB) Hero
70,000-140,000 Blinds, 17,500 Ante

Setup: This is the final table in an $11 freezeout. The villain in this hand appears to be an average player — not too loose-aggressive, but frequently opening pots with a raise. I have reraised twice at the final table, showing down queens once.  

Preflop A 6 (315,000): Seat 6 raises to 325,000.

What do you do?

PearlJammer

With a weak suited ace in the BB against a standard raise from the button, I will either push or fold. Here, my opponent has 24.5 BBs and should certainly be able to raise/fold with a wide range of hands.

I don’t want to just call, as my hand plays very poorly postflop out of position. With my current stack size, I should be looking to reshove all-in when I’m not opening the pot. Here, I have fold equity, as the button would have to call off over two-thirds of his stack, making my shove an almost automatic play. I would have to put my opponent on a very narrow range of hands to consider anything other than moving all in. I certainly run the risk of running into a hand that dominates me, but picking up chips in spots like this is crucial to building my stack back up and playing for the win. I reshove all-in.

Rizen

I have a good “re-steal” stack that I can use like a hammer to come over the top of other players and make them fold. Here, I have a suited ace in the BB against a button raiser who should be raising with a wide range of hands. If I push all-in and he folds, I will win a 640,000 chip pot, increasing my stack by about 25 percent. Any time I can increase my stack by that much, with reasonable fold equity, I consider making the play. Even when called, my suited ace has decent pot equity. A-6 suited has nearly 35 percent equity versus sixes plus, A-10s suited plus, K-Q suited, A-10 offsuit plus, K-Q offsuit — a reasonable estimation of his calling range, about 10 percent of total hands. Therefore, if he raises with 30 percent of total hands (which most players do on the button), he will fold two-thirds of the time, making this a pretty easy reraise all-in.

Apestyles

I have nearly 18 BBs when Seat 6 raises on the button. I’ve mentioned before that with 15-to-25 BB stacks, I’m looking for spots to reraise all-in over open-raises from loose players. With a stack size of 18 BBs, my decision is almost always to reraise or fold preflop.

To find out if a reshove wins chips in the long run, I have to do some simple math. I need to estimate his hypothetical opening range and with which hands he would call my reshove.

Seat 6 opens to slightly more than two times the BB, a “standard” raise size with these effective stacks. This indicates that Seat 6 has some clue as to what he’s doing and is probably opening the button with a fairly wide range. Most tight-aggressive players open this button around 30 percent of the time, especially with such a large ante in the middle. I would guess his calling range is something like deuces plus, A-5 suited plus, K-J suited plus, A-8 offsuit plus, and K-Q, which normally constitutes 15.5 percent of total hands. But since I have an ace, I can only get called by 12.7 percent of total hands. This alone shows the value of the ace. Actually, I think this range is probably a little too loose and that he may call with a narrower range of hands. The tighter his calling range, the better a play the resteal becomes. If Seat 6 calls 42 percent of the time and folds 58 percent of the time, I have 38 percent equity against that calling range.

With those hypothetical figures in mind, let’s do the math.

I win 640,000 * 58 percent of the time (.58) = 371,200
I lose 2,337,895 * 26 percent of the time (.42 × .62) = -608,787
I win 2,652,895 * 16 percent of the time (.42 × .38) = 423,402

To find out how many chips I make on average, I add these three figures together since they represent 100 percent of the possibilities. I make approximately 185,815 chips on average if all of my assumptions are correct, making this a very profitable reshove. If Seat 6 is frequently opening pots, as the setup suggests, then this reshove becomes even more profitable.

That being said, I play much tighter at final tables because of the Independent Chip Model (ICM). Since I don’t have the payout figures, I can’t do an ICM calculation, but I think this shove is too profitable against most players to pass up. Also, ICM is much more important when it pertains to calling all-ins than it is when considering fold equity.

Matthew

Some amateur players are reluctant to make these types of plays because they know they are the underdog when called and they don’t feel like A-6 suited is that strong. It’s true that you will be roughly a 2-to-1 underdog when your opponent calls. However, these same players forget that the most likely result (anywhere from about 50-to-70 percent of the time, depending on the opponent) is a 25 percent increase in their stack size! Even when called, you will double up about 1 in 3 times. It is the combination of fold equity and hand equity that makes these types of plays profitable.

In the actual hand, the hero three-bet to 1,120,000, and the villain folded. ♠

Matthew is the owner of Dimat Enterprises, “Publishing Today’s Best Poker Books”. Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time Volume III is available at pokerbooks.InternetTexasHoldem.com in both print and e-book format. You may also try our new iPad app for free, Poker Coach Pro, based on content from the Winning Poker Tournament series.