Call/Fold here?

[AAroddersAA]

This is a kind of situation I tend to struggle with we have 20 players left an it pays the top 18. Should I call or fold? Why?

PokerStars - $2.28+$0.22|500/1000 NL - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3: http://www.pokertracker.com

MP+1: 13,430.00
CO: 6,503.00
BTN: 6,578.00
SB: 4,321.00
Hero (BB): 10,368.00
UTG: 7,197.00 (17 hands on this player has shoved twice and it got through both times)
UTG+1: 6,658.00
MP: 7,381.00

MP+1 posts ante 100.00, CO posts ante 100.00, BTN posts ante 100.00, SB posts ante 100.00, Hero posts ante 100.00, UTG posts ante 100.00, UTG+1 posts ante 100.00, MP posts ante 100.00, SB posts SB 500.00, Hero posts BB 1,000.00

Pre Flop: (2300.00) Hero has

UTG raises to 7,097.00 and is all-in, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, ?

[Paulie_D]

Call.

He"s in the shove any two range (or at least I would be)....I think you"re probably way ahead of his range here, you might have to dodge a couple of overs but think looks like a godsend to me.

[AMRN]

Depends what the stacks are like on the other tables. If your table is very short compared to the other tables, then it might be a call.... if 10k is reasonably ok compared to other stacks elsewhere, then calling would be ICM suicide. 

It"s unlikely that you are dominating much, so with your hand being somewhere between 18% and 50%, for me it"s a fold. It"s an ideal shoving hand - but a poor calling hand, especially given the proximity of the bubble.

[AAroddersAA]

Depends what the stacks are like on the other tables. If your table is very short compared to the other tables, then it might be a call.... if 10k is reasonably ok compared to other stacks elsewhere, then calling would be ICM suicide. 

It"s unlikely that you are dominating much, so with your hand being somewhere between 18% and 50%, for me it"s a fold. It"s an ideal shoving hand - but a poor calling hand, especially given the proximity of the bubble.

It"s a 180 manner so the average stack would be around 13K at this stage. I think I was 13/20.

Small/Mid pairs are never good calling hands for most of your stack are never good here are they (ie I have about 10BB and have been shoved on by a player who is obviously not shoving ATC)?

What I win is worth a lot less than I lose? Have I got this right? How do I work out the worth of the chips I win against the worth of the chips I lose?

Why is my hand somewhere between 18% and 50% do we think he never has a hand like A4 or A5 in this spot, He could also have an underpair. I actually thought I was slightly ahead of his range? If I am not then it is obviously an easy fold.

[AMRN]

OK - accept that he might have small aces and underpairs in his range.  Lets assume he"s holding something like 22+,A2s+,KJs+,QJs,A2o+,KQo.   Against this range, 77 is 56%.    Can we afford to call knowing that we lose most of our stack 44% of the time, just short of the bubble.

I prefer to fold here, and then shove ATC in the next couple of hands in late position.  Shoving and picking up the blinds and antes carries far more value than calling and hoping to either hit or hold imo.

EDIT: Just ran it through SNGEGT, although had to be creative with player numbers etc to make fit....... from an ICM perspective, it certainly suggests a fold.    Come on Noble - proper ICM calculation needed please.

[TheSnapper]

These icm calcs become really complex with large multiples of players. Trying to be a little creative so I"ll simplify the scenario a little to try and show the difference in your $EV when you win versus when you lose.

My math skills are rudimentary so for ease lets assume the following.......

Each player irrespective of skill or stack size has an equal ( 1/20 or 5%) chance of finishing in each spot.
Though you have the player covered if you lose you dont cash.

Total prizepool is $410.40

Our $ equity is $410.40 * .05 = $20.52

Call and lose our equity is obviously nil

Call and win we now have a 1/19 or 5.3% chance of finishing in each spot.

Our $ equity is $410.40 * .053 = $21.60

essentially we risk $20.52 to gain $1.08.

Bubble factor.

Bubble factor quantifies the extreme effect ICM has on the pot odds required to call correctly.

In this spot our bubble factor ( amount we lose / amount we win ) is $20.52 / $1.08 = 19 HUGE

The pot is laying you 1.5 / 1 so you would in non icm scenarios need to have 40% equity (4/6) to call correctly. To adjust for icm so as a call is correct in tournament equity terms we must multiply odds of winning by our bubble factor.....

Pot odds required = odds of winning multiplied by bubble factor

40/60 or 4/6 * 19 = ~13/1 = we need 90% equity to call

Happy for someone to pick holes in this, I"d rather be corrected than misunderstand this

[AAroddersAA]

Cheers Steve

I understand that this is always going to be an ICM fold and logically I understand why. I just would like to get the maths. This one is probably quite clear I guess but I would really like to be able to understand some closer examples.

I got another one anyway that I will post now.

[Paulie_D]

Actually the numbers above assume that we would be out if we call...which we wouldn"t.

We have the guy covered, don"t we?

I confess I don"t get ICM (I"m a dunce) but doesn"t that factor in?

[AAroddersAA]

Actually the numbers above assume that we would be out if we call...which we wouldn"t.

We have the guy covered, don"t we?

I confess I don"t get ICM (I"m a dunce) but doesn"t that factor in?

I am really bad with ICM, which is kind of the point in the post. It is definitely +cEV to call but may not actually be profitable.

I think in this spot the chip you lose are actually worth more than the chips you win. I just don"t fully understand why, although Brendan"s post is pretty helpful.

[TheSnapper]

Actually the numbers above assume that we would be out if we call...which we wouldn"t.

We have the guy covered, don"t we?

I confess I don"t get ICM (I"m a dunce) but doesn"t that factor in?

That is correct and yes we will cash more than 0% if we call and lose, had to take some factors out so as to get my limited head around it

But I do suspect this effects minimal change to the bottom line.

[Paulie_D]

I think in this spot the chip you lose are actually worth more than the chips you win. I just don"t fully understand why, although Brendan"s post is pretty helpful.

Like I said, I really don"t understand ICM but it seems to me that in this spot a 75% increase in chips is worth potentially considerably more than the $2.50 we have invested or the min-profit of $1 or so.

[noble1]

OK - accept that he might have small aces and underpairs in his range.  Lets assume he"s holding something like 22+,A2s+,KJs+,QJs,A2o+,KQo.   Against this range, 77 is 56%.    Can we afford to call knowing that we lose most of our stack 44% of the time, just short of the bubble.

I prefer to fold here, and then shove ATC in the next couple of hands in late position.  Shoving and picking up the blinds and antes carries far more value than calling and hoping to either hit or hold imo.

EDIT: Just ran it through SNGEGT, although had to be creative with player numbers etc to make fit....... from an ICM perspective, it certainly suggests a fold.    Come on Noble - proper ICM calculation needed please.

http://www.pokericmcalculator.com/icmizer/#default

put in mtt ps 180 man , remaining players, avg stack, total chips, stick in positions, ranges for over calls etc etc and voila.

screenshots in the thread with your results would be nice

helpful ? ?  


edit - http://www.pokericmcalculator.com/en-us/articles/mtt-icm-calculator/

the above article should help also...

[TheSnapper]

http://www.pokericmcalculator.com/icmizer/#default

Anyone else find this crashes?

The easiest to understand ICM explanation I have managed to find, courtesy of top Irish player Dara O" Kearney.

http://dokearney.blogspot.ie/2009/04/theory-posticm-part-1.html

http://dokearney.blogspot.ie/2009/05/theory-posticmbubble-factor-part-2.html

[dwh103]

An ICM calculator for >10 players? Awesome, thanks noble. I hope it"s reliable, will certainly have a play with it., but looks horrible to use

As for this hand. Probably a pass vs an UTG shove on the bubble. This is clearly a cEV spot, but probably -$EV.

Steve - A manual ICM calc for 20 players would be an absolute pig, I don"t know how ICMIZER does it (or not - it crashes for me too). It will have 19! combinations - that"s 19 factorial (1x2x3x4x...18x19), not a typo of 191.

Brendan - your post calculating $ equity isn"t quite right, but the underlying point is (as in you"ll need greater equity to make a call near/on the bubble).

Basically, in this case. Steve"s $ equity is the probability of him finishing in each position multiplied by the payout for each position. ICM always assumes equal skill levels, it"s a calculation based purely on the stack sizes of each player left in the tournament and the payout structure.

So the probability of Steve (we"ll call him player A) winning, or P(A=1st) = his proportion of the chips in play = 10368/270000 = 0.0384 or 3.84%

In $ terms this is 0.0384 x 1st place ($123.19) = $4.73

P(A=2nd) = P(BA) + P(CA) + P(DA) + P(EA) + ... + P(TA)

So simple enough to calculate 1st. But then to calculate Steve coming second, you need the individual probability of each individual winning, and then Steve beating the remainder of the field. So that"s 19 calculations just to get the probability of finishing second. For 3rd that becomes 342 calculations and 5,814 for 4th place, and so on.

Get to the end, add the lot together, and you reach the correct $ equity figure. I once found a pdf doing a manual calculation for 4 players which really helped my understanding. I"ll try and dig it out.

Anyone wants to build a piece of software to do this, please let me know!

[dwh103]

For anyone who wants to understand ICM a little better, and is used to statistics lingo. These are decent articles http://www.pokerjunkie.com/icm-explaining-the-independent-chip-model and http://www.thepokerbank.com/strategy/tournament/icm/how/