Artículo sobre torneos . Fold equity

Navegando por las catacumbas de internet he encontrado este artículo que me parece interesante . A destacar que hay que valorar si tenemos "fold equity" , es decir , que probabilidad hay de que nuestro rival tire su mano.

OK, This is a column that I wrote for no particular reason.... Tournament Tactics Hand Values for the Aggressive Player Brandon Adams When I first started playing tournament poker, I tended to bust near the bubble. I would play very tight in the early stages, and then as the blinds and antes rose, I’d wait for good hands and push in. This frequently resulted in me busting with good but not great hands, such as AJo or TT. Busting with a hand like a pair of tens near the bubble, is, in some ways, a respectable thing to do. When your friends ask you how you busted, you can say, “I was short-stacked and I re-raised all-in for twelve big blinds with a pair of tens,” and they will say, “Oh well. You had to push there.” They’d be right, and in my early days I’d take some consolation in their assurances that my bustout was unavoidable, but after awhile, I started to ask myself, “Why’d I only have twelve big blinds at that point?” Watching tournament poker live and on TV, I’d seen players make moves that seemed incomprehensible to me. I’d watch pros re-raise all-in pre-flop with hands like 7d8d or 6c8c, and I’d think to myself, “How could they possibly risk busting out on that hand?” That question, together with the question of why I never had chips near the end of a tournament, led me to discover a critical flaw in my thinking. I realized that most of my thinking about hand values had been influenced by charts in beginner poker books showing the probability of a particular hand, say 10-10, holding up against two random cards. I had neglected to fully consider fold equity and conditional probability. The player who re-raises all-in with 6c8c is, of course, hoping to take the down the pot without a fight. The probability of doing this has to reasonably high for this play to be correct, though perhaps not as high as one might think. Let’s say that blinds are 400-800 with a 100 ante and your stack going into the hand is 11500. You are in the big blind. The button (chip stack=15,000) raises to 2400 and the small blind folds. I would rarely flat call in this scenario, but I’d strongly consider a push. A fold leaves you with 10,600 chips, whereas a successful push will increase your stack to 15,100 (10600+2400+400+800+900antes). The interesting thing is that almost every that the button might raise with in this scenario is a favorite over yours, but, conditional on a call, 6c8c plays reasonably well. An aggressive player might raise from the button 40% of the time in this scenario, but only call your all-in with the 20% of his raising hands. In this case, the EV of an all-in is clearly positive. Eighty percent of the time, you add 4500 to your stack uncontested, and twenty percent of the time you contest a pot of 24100 as 30-70 dog. The EV of the all-in raise is .80*4500-.2(3370)=+2696. You are better off raising than folding in this scenario if your opponent will fold to your raise more than 42.8 of the time. When you play around with the numbers, you quickly learn that in such EV calculations, the probability of your opponent folding is more important than the Probability of your hand holding up given that he calls. For this reason, top players will make a move with any two cards if they have a tell indicating a likely fold. They take some comfort in knowing that even if they’ve completely misread the situation (let’s say they re-raise with 27o and get called), they’ll still have some equity in the hand. Seven-deuce off-suit probably has about a 24% chance of winning against a caller (it’s 31% against two overcards and 12% against overpairs). In tournaments, I consider a move of aggression with every starting hand, no matter how poor, then ask myself the following questions: 1) What range of hands am I representing with a raise? 2) What range of hands will my opponent call me with? 3) Given that he calls, what is my chance of winning? This new framework led me to play more aggressively and it significantly improved my tournament results. The first two questions determine your fold equity. If your fold equity is sufficiently high, then it might be correct to make a move even if your probability of winning conditional on a call is low. The third question tells you how well your hand plays against a call. Conditioning on a call can lead to some weird results. Let’s say that you’re in the big blind. The action folds around to the cutoff seat, a super-aggressive pro who will raise 90% of the time in this spot. The pro raises to three big blinds, and then the button re-raises to nine big blinds. The button is an internet player and you’ve noticed that his hands shake a bit every time he has QQ, KK, or AA. His hands don’t shake, so you put him on a marginal re-raising hand such as AsJs. You have 40BB in your stack (about the same as the pro and the internet player). If I have confidence in my read here, I’ll push in my stack with a hand like 8s9s. That hand will play about the same as a pair of jacks once you condition on a call. You are representing queens, kings, aces, or ace-king. It’s likely that you’ll only be called by the pro if he has QQ, KK, or AA. If he’s a player who will always muck AK here, then 8s9s will play better than JJ. If he’ll sometimes call with AK, then JJ might be marginally better. By the same reasoning, a pair of deuces plays about the same as a pair of jacks in this spot. Obviously, moves of aggression have to be used judiciously. If you’re playing in an $11 re-buy tournament on Pokerstars, then re-raising all-in with 6c8c is probably just another form of tilt; if you do it near the bubble at a $10000 buy-in tournament, then it might well be an intelligent strategy. BA

Destacar el comentario a este post , porque es lo que suele pasar , en un torneo en internet nuestros rivales verán nuestros envites con Ax y mierdas similares :

wow. good stuff This illustrates an important point about how to think about certain specific tournament situations. The 3 bullet points are useful for almost *all* MTT situations, even the donkfest MTTs you usually play online: think about the "fold equity" of your average online MTT fishie: he doesn't throw away very many hands after a 3BB pf raise - only the bad bluffs, and he's calling all-in in the 40 BB situation above with maybe as low as A-x suited. He doesn't even know or care what you are representing, on average. this is why you don't RR all in vs. an average donkey in the early stages of a $10 rebuy trying to take him off it - no fold equity, or close to 0.

Espero que os ayude mucho este artículo. ( Perdonad por el megatocho de post)