hold’em tournament four to six hours late, so I’m quite used to a 15BB stack. Liv and I are in agreement that you have play even tighter before the flop with this stack size. The key question is this: is there room to raise before the flop with the intention of folding to a re-raise?
Liv
Yes, you can definitely still raise and fold with this stack (especially if you are following my rule of using small raise sizes!). You should always be looking for good spots to steal the blinds and antes to keep yourself afloat. The biggest difference with a 15BB stack is that you can no longer profitably call preflop raises with Broadway type hands as you could with 20BB (unless you’re in the big blind where it often only costs 1BB to see a flop). Another point is you can widen the range of hands that you 3-bet shove with. This is because the win of approximately 5BB (blinds + antes + the opponent’s raise) is a much bigger percentage increase to your stack than when you had 20BB.Lastly, you are now able to open shove a wider range of hands in late position. For example, it is perfectly profitable to open shove K-Q from the cutoff as opposed to raising with the intention of either calling or folding versus a re-raise (depending on opponent type). Again, this is because winning the blinds + antes is worth so much more to your stack.
Example 1 (15BB)
Phil
In a WSOP event in 2010, I had 26,000 with the blinds at 500/1,000-200. The small blind moved all-in for 14,000, and I looked down at A-10 offsuit. I knew the new school math said I had to call, but a quick glance at the tournament clock told me there were 30 seconds left until a 20 minute break, so I decided to take some extra time and use my best weapon: my reading ability. Thus I started a conversation with my opponent. Without revealing my exact hole cards, I told him that I had a hand that I was supposed to snap call with, and that if he had A-9, he was in bad shape. Then I searched for a reaction that would help me determine the strength of his hand. Was he scared? Was he relieved? After two or three minutes of studying and chatting, he seemed very confident, and it seemed like he was trying to talk me into calling him. My read told me that he had A-Q. Thus I felt like he had me in bad shape and I went with my read and folded. Although he did not show me his hole cards, he was super disappointed and emotional, and I could tell he had me crushed! Also, I was 90% sure that he would have shown me a bluff.In this spot I knew the math, but I wanted to give myself a chance to use some of my “white magic” (reading ability) to get away from a hand that almost no one else could get away from.
Liv
I can’t argue with your reading skills there Phil! However, as you said, without very strong live reads, you have to call. This is because we have to think of the range of hands an average player in the small blind is shoving with 14BB. He’s most likely shoving all A-x, K-10+, K-8s+, most Broadways, a number of suited connectors like 9-8s+ and all pocket pairs. Further, it’s very likely that many of his really strong hands that dominate our A-10, such as A-K, A-Q, 10-10+ are often just raised 2BB-3BB to induce some action from you. Therefore, we are miles ahead of his shoving range and should be happy with our call,
whatever the outcome!
Example 2 (15BB)
David “Doc” Sands – a new school cream of the crop professional poker player – was down to three players in the Los Angeles Poker Classic (LAPC) WPT 2012 against new school top pro Dan Kelly and amateur Sean Jazayeri. Sands was sitting on 8 million, Jazayeri had 7 million, and Kelly had 1.6 million with the blinds at 50,000/100,000 when Doc raised it up to 200,000 with 2-2 on the button. Sean folded and Kelly moved all-in for 1.6 million. Sands says he was raising roughly 90% of the time he had the button – thus he had a loose image and it was easy for opponents to put him on a wide range of hands. Sands reasoned that for an investment of 1.4 million in chips, he could win a 3.3 million pot and thus needed to win the pot 42% of the time to make the call break-even. He further reasoned that if he was 42% versus Kelly’s range, then he should make the call. Sands further reasoned that this was a good opportunity for him to take out a great player and face an amateur heads-up for a WPT title and the $1.3 million first prize. Sands further explained that he would have snap called with 4-4, called fairly quickly with 3-3, but that 2-2 was close. With the added bonus of taking out a great player, Sands opted to make the call. Kelly had K-J, and when Sands’ 2-2 held up, he faced Jazayeri heads-up for the title and the cash.
Phil
I’m not in love with Doc’s call here! That being said, I don’t hate it either. I understand that the reasoning and the logic are pure, but when faced with similar situations in the past, I have usually opted to fold. There are two reasons I would have folded. Firstly, I hate to call off with a hand like 2-2, where the best case scenario is that I have a roughly 50% chance to win the pot. After all, I worked hard for several days to accumulate chips and make it to the final three players. Secondly, rather than call off 1.4 million of my chips off with 2-2, I always feel like a better spot will come along soon. I would rather use my reading abilities to sniff out a spot where I know my opponents are weak. This mindset that I have detailed assumes that I have serious skills and that I possess white magic level reading abilities. So the question for the reader to ponder is this: do I have the same skill set as Phil Hellmuth, or do I hope to have the same skill set soon? If you do not have that skill set, then the call is probably better as there may not be a better spot in the near future. If you hope to reach my skill set level, then keep in mind my reasoning in this hand, and someday soon you may be able to confidently fold in this spot.
Liv
Sadly most of us mortals haven’t got the white magic you speak of Phil, so we have to go on the pure mathematics of the situation. As Doc correctly states, the pot odds require him to call with a hand that has 42% equity versus Kelly’s re-shoving range. Again, we can use one of the equity calculators I mentioned earlier in the chapter to work this out by inputting Kelly’s estimated 3-bet shoving hands. I’ve displayed them in the figure below.
I’ve assumed that he’s 3-bet shoving only a tight range consisting of almost all A-x, all pairs and most of the Broadways. I’ve added K-9 suited to cover the occasional times he chooses to shove a suited K-x or Q-x. Note that I’ve assumed he just defends most of the suited Broadways and connectors such as 8-7s, Q-Js and J-9s because of their playability postflop, so I’ve excluded them.
I then ran the equity calculator and it determined Doc’s 2-2 has 43.12% equity versus this range, making it a slightly favorable call. Remember however that this example is versus a tight range, and that Kelly’s actual range may be a bit wider than this, which makes the call even more favorable. So well done Doc, and yay for math.