A Hand From My 2015 World Series of Poker

The Setting

It is day two of the 2015 World Series of Poker $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship. Limits are 6,000-12,000. We are hand-for-hand on the money bubble with 19 players left. Average stack is 185,000; I have 61,000. A player at another table has just been crippled down to 3,000 and will be all in in the small blind. The other short stacks in the tournament have 25,000, 44,000, and 46,000.

I post the small blind and have 58,000 behind in my stack. The big blind is Brock Parker, who has 40,000 behind. The button, Yegor Tsurikov, has 148,000. The rest of the table folds to him and he raises.

Preflop

I have A-6 offsuit. In a cash game, this is a borderline fold or three-bet spot. A typical player only open-raises on the button with 47 percent of hands and this hand has 50 percent equity against this range. With the discount from the dead small blind and some fold equity on latter streets considered against being out-of-position and with poor reverse-implied odds, it is typically just outside my continuing range.

Now, if the button was a good deal looser that would be a different story. I expected Tsurikov to be raising any two cards here—I certainly would in his position given how often Parker and I were folding in previous orbits. Typical bubble strategy recognizes that risking any chips is not desirable because it puts us at greater risk of bubbling the tournament and it being vital to pass on marginal situations.

However, this situation is anything but marginal. A hand like A-6 offsuit may not look powerful here, as we’ve just acknowledged this being an already borderline situation in a cash game, but villain’s expanded range changes everything. Against any two cards, A-6 offsuit is a 58 percent favorite. With the blinds dead, we are getting 2.33-1 immediately just to call. Getting those kinds of odds to put in money as a favorite is just too profitable a position to fold.

Additionally, our situation is simply not that dire. It’s reasonably likely that the bubble ends on this exact hand, and, even if it doesn’t, we are not in terrible shape. The button cannot eliminate us against our will—if we call here, call down, and lose, we are left with 22,000, with a full orbit before the blinds hit us again. Even though this is less than a meager two bets, the 3,000-chip stack at the other table would only triple up to 9,000. Additionally, there’s no guarantee that the button will fire all streets or that we will even want to call down post-flop.

Three-bet or Call?

Now that’s we’ve decided to play, we need to decide whether to call or reraise. Usually, this is not even a question, as I would only three-bet if I were to continue. The primary reason is that it kicks out the big blind, but also happens to provide post-flop fold equity and disguises my range by not dividing it into cold-calling and reraising hands.

Under these extreme circumstances, a call certainly has merit. The most critical factors are the number of chips I am risking and Parker’s stack in the big blind. Even though he is getting 5-1 closing the action to see a flop, having even fewer chips than me necessitates he play even tighter than I would. From his perspective, my hand may also look fairly strong just to enter the pot.

The other option is to three-bet as normal. In doing so, we open ourselves up to getting four-bet by the the button, which is much more of a disaster than normal because it represents another 12,000 chips of our stack. Now, instead of losing 39,000 in hands where we call down and lose, that number is 51,000 instead. The difference between being left with 22,000 and 9,000 is gigantic when we consider the other short stacks have 25,000, 40,000, and 44,000 and the player facing elimination could be left with 9,000.

Additionally, the pot will be larger, forcing us to battle more post-flop when we really just want to preserve our stack. As if getting four-bet preflop were not bad enough, the button also has the option of just calling our reraise and raising us post-flop. One way to mitigate this problem is to proceed in three-betting here, but decline our option to continuation bet the flop or turn. The problem with this strategy is that we may be passing up the opportunity of taking the pot down immediately on those streets.

I’ve listed many considerations for a deceivingly simple spot—one way to think about this situation is to just consider the break-even point of the big blind’s stack where I am indifferent between calling or reraising. If Parker had 20,000, where he’s folding almost all hands preflop (and doesn’t even put a lethal dent into our stack even if we double him up), calling is certainly superior. With 60,000, it’s probably better just to revert to three-betting (or folding). At this 40,000-chip stack, it’s not as clear.

I called. Parker gave me a perplexed look and folded.

Post-flop

Flop: A Q 4

I check-called. This is pretty much the flop we are looking for. Even though we are way ahead of our opponent’s range, there is little reason to check-raise. Doing so loses more bets the times we are behind and may actually win less when we are ahead, as our opponents can immediately give up on his bluffs instead of continuing to barrel with them.

Turn 5

Check-check. Our opponent declined to barrel. Given how strong our preflop range should be because of the bubble situation, he has correctly identified that our range contains a lot of aces that we are not planning on folding.

River 8

This exact situation doesn’t come up much, so it’s difficult for me to evaluate whether this should be a value-bet. Our hand is pretty much what it looks like. The only bluffs we could have are missed spades we elected to call preflop, such as J 10. We just aren’t getting called very often. Getting raised is also unlikely, but we’re not happy about having to call one. It is not common that a player gives up his bluffs on the turn, but turns around and decides to bluff-raise the river.

It went check-check. I rolled over the winner and the bubble was broken, as the micro stack on the other table was eliminated.

Post-hand

Many players focus too hard on cashing tournaments, passing up incredibly profitable spots to ensure they do so. At the other extreme, there was a time when it became vogue for some to claim all they cared about was winning the tournament. If you are trying to maximize the amount of money you win from a tournament, you often aren’t strictly trying to do either. You are neither trying to win every chip on the table, nor are you playing only to cash. You’re trying to do both and a lot of situations force you to juggle the two competing forces.

When I was starting to think about these ideas more seriously I remember being told, “You silly kids need to stop trying to win everything. Try to get like third place instead.” Thinking like this certainly doesn’t preclude you from taking the tournament down – I held these thoughts squarely in focus as I won this one. ♠

Ben Yu discovered poker while at Stanford University where he developed his prowess for mixed games. He has lived for the WSOP ever since 2010 when he broke out with a 2nd place finish in the World Series of Poker $1500 limit holdem shootout. His poker-induced adventures have included living abroad in Rosarito, Mexico and Toronto, Canada to continue playing online and traveling the European Poker Tour circuit to in search of the most delicious schnitzels and pierogies.