Poker Strategy With Rep Porter: A WSOP Main Event Hand

I was sitting at the Commerce Casino the other day, playing poker and watching the WSOP main event on TV. Then, this hand comes up three-handed where Josh Beckley raises on the button with A-10 offsuit and Joe McKeehen is the small blind. Right as I was saying, “Joe should be raising here a lot,” McKeehen slid out a three-bet. Then McKeehen’s hand shows up on the screen as 10-8 offsuit and everyone at my table assumed he had stepped in the proverbial “it.” But I said that Beckley might fold here. My table insisted that Beckley should move all in in this spot. The stacks were such that calling or raising without going all-in weren’t realistic options. Then Beckley folded.

So what did McKeehen, Beckley, and I all think that no one else was considering?

Well, McKeehen and I were thinking that this was a great spot to use your Chips as Weapons because Beckley would have to fold a lot of hands. When the pay jumps are discrete, winning chips isn’t worth as much as the cost of losing those same chips. This idea really starts to become prominent in poker tournaments as you reach the last two tables. Often the 16-18th, 13-15th and 10th-12th places all pay the same prize. Then each spot gets more money starting at ninth. So, when you have the ability to “chip up” or move up the pay rung without playing any hands, the value of surviving in a poker tournament goes up. This idea is at its peak when play is three-handed.

McKeehen knows Beckley is a smart young poker player, and that he is familiar with this idea. So he takes advantage of the situation and three-bets. So now Beckley finds himself in a tough spot. At the time, I thought it was a pretty close spot, and I was glad I wasn’t the one who had to make the choice. Doing this kind of complex math at the table is nearly impossible. You just have to already be familiar with the ideas, have some sense of what different situations look like, and then make your best guess. In this case, I wouldn’t have said either choice was bad. I thought it was a very close spot. So in practice, I will often make the choice that supports how I feel about how I am playing and the game flow. When I am comfortable with the situation and my play, I will fold. When I feel less comfortable, I will choose to move in and know that at worst, this is a very close decision.

The other thing I do when this happens to me is I will go home after the tournament and try to recreate the situation in my head and do the math to see what the best choice was.
Let’s look at the math in this case. The blinds were 500,000/1 million with a 150,000 ante. The stacks were: McKeehen-143 million, Beckley – 26.6 million, and Blumenfield – 23 million. Beckley opened to 2.2 million and McKeehen three-bet to 4.8 million. At this point, there is 5.85 million in the middle and Beckley is facing a raise of 2.6 million.

So there are four cases here. Beckley can fold or go all in. If Beckley moves all in, McKeehen can fold, or McKeehen can call, and then either win or lose. So to look at what these cases are, we need to use an Independent Chip Model (ICM) calculator. ICM is a tool for evaluating the dollar value of a chip stack in a tournament. It isn’t a perfect model, but it is the best thing I have seen so far. Let’s make a little table: (I am going to subtract guaranteed third place money)

So the thing that jumps out at me is how little Beckley’s value goes up if he wins the pot. He basically risks 24 million to win 30 million in chips. But in cash value, he is risking $988,000 to win $725,000 ($1.713 million total). So even though he is getting a price of almost 5:4 with his chips, he is laying 4:3 in terms of dollar value.

In reality, if Beckley raises, McKeehen will fold sometimes and call sometimes. So I would guess that McKeehen is raising about half his hands in this spot, and that he is only calling with about 10 percent of the starters if he is reraised. That is a range like 7-7 or better, A-10 offsuit or better, A-8 suited or better, and K-Q. So McKeehen will fold 80 percent of the time, and A-10 will win about 38 percent of the time when McKeehen calls. All of this works out to a cash value of $1.101 million for Beckley.

This is better than folding. If you change the numbers a little, estimating that McKeehen is only reraising with 35 percent of the starters and continuing with 15 percent of the starters, then Beckley’s cash value is $1.024 million. If McKeehen reraised with 25 percent of the hands, and continues with 10 percent, Beckley is worth exactly $988,000. So in reality, it was pretty close situation. Moving all in seems to have the highest dollar value to Beckley. Over the felt, it is a tough spot to be in, which is what makes it a great spot for McKeehen to be using his Chips as Weapons. ♠

Rep Porter is a two-time WSOP bracelet winner and is the lead instructor at ThePokerAcademy.com, whose mission is to help poker players achieve better results through better decisions and that is done by teaching poker in a way that makes learning easy and enjoyable with high quality courses taught by professional players.

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