Gavin Griffin: Poker Questions Asked And Answered

People in the poker community often come up to me and ask about whatever is on their mind. Some of these questions are good questions, and some are bad beat stories in disguise. I’ve been through quite a few things in my poker career and I like to help whenever possible, and in this new Card Player series, I’d like to share my experiences and knowledge. Feel free to ask any poker-related question, and I’ll do my best to answer it in the space below.

Question: Do you think a lot of tournament players are wasting mental energy worrying about who made it through day 1, or the prize pool or other things that might not matter? If so what are some other things they should stop obsessing over? What should they be focusing on instead? – MDK

Gavin: What a good question and one that I bring up to my students quite often. Here are some things that don’t matter:

1. How many chips the chip leader has at the end of day 1. We don’t care how many chips anybody else has, especially someone who isn’t at our table. There are always going to be a few people who run really well on day 1 and most of the people who run really poorly on day 1 will be out. Such are tournaments.

2. The prize pool before you’re near the money. If you’re not in or near the payout zone, it doesn’t really matter what the prize pool is. You just keep making +EV decisions and the prize pool will work itself out.

3. Average stack. This concept might have the biggest discrepancy between how much people worry about it and how much it actually matters. Think about it, what does the stack size of the other 300 people in the room have to do with you in any way? More important is the median stack since the traditional average stack (the mean) is often skewed by several big stacks in the room or many small stacks.

Here are some things that do matter:

1. How many chips you have, at this moment, in relation to the blinds. Here’s a situation where a million isn’t always equal to a million. If you have one million chips and the blinds are 5,000-10,000 you have a different situation than when the blinds are 50,000-100,000.

2. How many chips you have, at this moment, in relation to the others at your table. If you’re the chip leader of the tournament with 125 big blinds but nobody at your table has more than 35 big blinds, than you have 35 big blinds and should play your stack accordingly. Your absolute number of chips only matters if the people you are playing hands with have more chips than you.

If you’re keeping track of these two things and not the things in the first list, you’ll immediately be in a better mindset for tournaments than most poker players today.

Question: Fast structure because tournament starts at 7 pm. 60-100 people. $115 entry of which $25 goes towards bounty and $75 prize pool. You are late to enter and are seated in the big blind first hand. No raise pre-flop, blinds 100-200. Starting stack is 9,000. Flop comes out Q 8 3. UTG+1 bets 500. The hijack shoves all in for approximately 2,500. UTG+1 has you covered. You have Q 2. All in? Call? Fold? – Paul S

This question is especially interesting because we have some extra bounty equity. My first instinct is to go all in but let’s take a look at some math. I think we can reasonably assume that our opponent who has gone all in for 2,500 chips has a range that looks something like 3-3, 8-8, A-X, 10 9, J 10, K J, Q-J, K-Q, and maybe a hand like 9-9.

Let’s also say that our UTG+1 limper only calls our jam with a similar range minus the Q-J, K-Q, 10-10, and non-combo draws but plus a slow-played A-A and K-K. If we’re just against the late position jammer, we have 57.4 percent equity vs the above range and the same equity of that bounty. Clearly we should at least call his jam.

However, if we move all in ourselves, we get lots of folds from UTG+1 and make money there. (I’m not sure how to assess his limping and bet/folding range but I’ll just assume that we get about 90 percent of his hands that bet flop to fold) In which case, we have 31 percent equity in the 8,100 chip main pot when he calls (2,511 or a profit of 11) plus 31 percent equity in the bounty ($7.75) + 57.4 percent equity in the 6,100 main pot when our bettor folds ( 3,501 or a profit of 1,001) plus 57.4 percent equity in the bounty ($14.35) – .1 * our equity in the side pot which is .4575*13,000-6,500= .1(-552)= 55.2. So all of that together means that if we move in we have 1,001+11-55.2 = 956.8 in chip EV by moving all in plus actual bounty equity.

I think it’s pretty clear we shouldn’t fold and I also think that calling presents us with some weird situations on turn and river. In addition, I think jamming on the flop gets him to fold some queens that would strengthen his range against us. It’s clearly a very profitable time to move all in, and what’s more fun than that?

If you have a question for Gavin, send it to [email protected].

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