Dawns outs (Revised edition)
There’s an interesting hand discussion going on at Dawn Summers’ blog: I had outs.
In a live 2-day tournament and average stacked, she decides to limp QQ UTG to trap a drunk opponent who is in the BB. Then all hell breaks loose, with a short stack and an average stack going all in. The button, the Small Blind and the original mark folds. What to do?
I suggested a fold, as did just about every other commenter. I also misread the numbers by a wide margin and got the sequence of events totally mixed up, which Alceste was kind enough to point out without mocking me. Oh well, my original analysis was only posted to the entire intertubes, so now everyone knows why I’m uh…”running bad”. I guess it’s what you call “slightly embarrassing”.
Here are the real numbers, once again presented to you by PokerStove:
In the Blue Corner, the actual hands: Pound for pound and knowing what we know, Dawn made a terrible preflop fold. (As chance would have it, the case Ace did in fact show up on the Flop).
But we don’t always get to know our opponents hands, so in the Red Corner, I added some range to the two opponents.
The second first opponent backs up his [AQ] with 90K 22K. At this point his M is about 3, so he is desperate. He has limpers ahead of him and bigger stacks behind him, some may call with worse hands. So he does what he has to do.
I decided to put the big stack on a fairly tight range. Tournamentwise, he’s actually average, like Dawn, but in this little microcosmos, he’s the biggest stack.
He does not have to get involved so aggressively unless he sees the situation as profitable. It can only be profitable if he has a reasonable expectation to take the pot, either preflop, or against a single opponent. So he shoves his [TT] to isolate the small stack.
His range may be somewhat tight, but I added [AKs] for the human touch. It’s not an impossible holding in this scenario.
This gives us a fairly different picture: Dawn is not a favorite anymore. In fact she’s a 2:1 dog against two opponents.
In fact, she can’t call here, unless she has [KK+] – that’s the Green Corner of this triangular boxing ring.
At least, that’s what the math says. Like Alceste also pointed out – and I agree – KK may not even be safe to call, if she want’s to be reasonably sure to keep her seat for day 2 of the tournament.
/j.
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Cool! I actually made the same calculation about the bigger stack, that he had to have a really big hand to push with so many people behind including a loosey/drunky in the big blind.
This time he just happened to be at the lower end of his pushing range, but that’s poker for you.
/j.
As told by Dawn that night and reported on IHO, the hands you ran through Pokerstove are a little backwards. The initial pusher is very short and has 22k — not 220k — when he pushes with AQ. The 90k pusher (who barely has Dawn covered), has the TT. Obviously doesn’t affect the winning percentage calculation for each hand but does affect the ICM equity since Dawn is on longer covered by both stacks and the delta between the 22k and 90k stack is sufficiently large to perhaps warrant a separate calculation.
In terms of the above analysis, you probably shouldn’t even be calling with KK in a tournament — no reason to call off your stack on a race with that size stack.
@Alceste
Wow, I was totally backwards there! I read your recap several times, because I did get a tad confused about who had what and why.
Ok, back to the drawing board…My bad!
/j.
Don’t forget that looking at the three hands only gives you the equity in the 72k main pot. There’s also equity in the 128k sidepot, where Dawn is roughly 50% to win against the range of hands you assigned to the 90k push (and a higher percentage against a wider range). Taking the side pot into account, the expected value of a call with these hand ranges is actually positive (+9,000 chips or so), but still not necessarily sufficient to warrant a call (particularly since you know you have 83k after a fold, an EV of 92k with a range from 0k to 200k after a call introduces a lot of variance where you don’t necessarily need it).
@Alceste
They are 50/50 for the sidepot, almost to the decimal, so there’s no real edge. Calling is still the worst play here, for the reasons you just pointed out. I would still fold, for sure.