Winning Hands: Excerpt 6

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In 2019, I published FossilMan’s Winning Tournament Strategies, a 42-chapter book covering all of the basic concepts behind being a winning tournament player, as well as many of the more advanced strategies. This book could be compared to the lecture portion of my seminars. I have been working on a second book, however, and thought it should more resemble the live hand labs.

For this book, I will go through several dozen hands I have played and break down each decision along the way. Although not yet finished, I thought it would be fun to provide excerpts of some of those hands here for Card Player readers.

This hand came from my winning run in the 2004 WSOP main event.

It is day 4, blinds are at 2,000-4,000 with a 500 ante. I am the big stack at the table, and have more than 350,000. I open in middle position with a raise to 11,000 holding 5 5.

It folds to John Esposito in late position, a very tough, solid, and aggressive player, who goes all-in for 51,000 with A K. Everyone else folds, I call, and win the flip to bust John in 108th place.

This hand is just a pot odds decision. It will cost me another 40,000 to call, and the pot is 72,000. This means I must win 40 out of 112 times, or 36% of the time to break even.

How do I estimate if I will win this often? This is where you use a tool like PokerStove to calculate how often your hand will win against the range of hands you think your opponent is holding. In this case, if his range is only the top 10% of all hands, our small pair will win over 40% of the time. In order for our equity to drop below 36%, his range would have to be limited to hands in the top 6%.

If I thought he was a super-tight player, I should fold. But he is smart enough to know my opening range, as the chip leader, is fairly wide. So he knows I have lots of hands that will fold to this shove, even getting this price.

As such, his range almost certainly incudes a lot more hands than just the top 6%. Given his demeanor and body language, I also felt that he wanted me to fold. If my read is correct, this means I can take the top couple of hands out of his range, that is, aces and kings. If my live read is accurate, then even if he only plays hands in the top 5%, minus aces and kings, then I still have more than 36% equity.

Of course, I cannot know these numbers with absolute certainty at the table. However, after running simulations like this on PokerStove many thousands of times over the years, I am able to estimate the results, for almost any comparison, with a fairly high degree of accuracy. As such, in the moment, I will put my opponent on a range, and estimate how much equity my hand has against that range. If it is more than the cutoff number (36% in this case), then it is usually correct to call.

The other important factor to keep in mind is ICM. Here we are in the money, so ICM is always a factor. However, in this hand, it does not end up having a significant impact. We are down to 108 players, but the next pay jump is not until we get to 81 players. And it is not a huge pay jump, as you win $20,000 now, and a pay raise to $25,000 at 81 players. Given this, he isn’t likely to be playing extra tight in order to ladder up, so ICM considerations don’t impact his range. And those same considerations have a negligible impact on my decision as well.

ICM is of greatest importance at two times. First, when you are not yet in the money but getting very close. If this hand had occurred on or close to the bubble, the 40,000 chips I am risking to make this call are worth a lot more, per chip, than the 72,000 chips I can win. Also, John’s range is a lot more likely to be limited to premium hands, since he is shoving into the chip leader. In that scenario, my “tell” is also of less value. He might be kind of hoping I fold, even if he has a monster, not wanting to risk taking a bad beat on the bubble.

The other time ICM becomes very important is when you get very close to, or are playing at, the final table. At this point there are pay jumps for each position you advance. As such, there is always some value to avoiding risk, letting other players bust one another, and move you up the pay scale. There are also intermediate bubbles, such as going from 82 to 81 players in this event. Often the pay jumps for these intermediate bubbles are not that large, and therefore the associated ICM does not have much impact on your decisions. However, it is always a factor throughout the tournament. Just a much larger factor at some times than others.

Have fun, and play smart! ♠

Greg Raymer is the 2004 World Series of Poker main event champion, winner of numerous major titles, and has more than $7 million in earnings. He is the author of FossilMan’s Winning Tournament Strategies, available from D&B Publishing, Amazon, and other retailers. He is sponsored by Blue Shark Optics, YouStake, and ShareMyPair. To contact Greg please tweet @FossilMan or visit his website.