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Poker Tournaments: The End Game
Poor thinking players find ways to eliminate themselves in
tournaments (and of course the better players are thinking of ways to do it
too!), but there may be no better "tell" for how good or bad a player is than
when/how he deliberately commits his last chips -- the hand, the attitude, and
the situation. Weaker players often show themselves at the end of tournaments,
where they not only commit chip suicide, but do it muttering the same death
chant... "get full value".
Suppose you are two tables away from making the money, two behind the button
with a weak-ish/mediocre hand like QJ in Holdem, and have one single chip, with
blinds of two-chip/three-chip. Also suppose that you just played an excellent
hand on the button or one behind the button where you took a tough beat to lose
to an all-in player. In other words, you didn't foolishly ante yourself down to
one chip. You didn't cripple yourself. You played fine, but you happen to have
one chip left.
You need more chips, and you need a decent hand quick. You only have a few hands
to look at before having to put your single chip into the big blind. You are
nowhere close to the money so you have to win some hands to get there. Beggars
can't be choosers. You want to play this QJ.
The question is: what situation are you looking for?
First I'll tell you what you are not looking for, which happens to be the
situation most weaker players do look for... two limpers in front of
them, where they can call and get four way action on their money (one chip from
each of the limpers plus one chip each from the two blinds). If a player goes in
here and mutters something about "full value", make a mental note that they
don't have much of a grasp of the game.
That is not to say you should fold here. This is not a very good
scenario, but again, beggars can't be choosers, so committing your one chip here
is probably your best choice. However, the point is, this is not the situation
that you want.
The general situation you want is to go all-in after one single opponent
raises in front of you. What you want is for everyone else to fold in the face
of the raiser. Ideally, you even want the raiser to be an aggressive player who
has a huge stack -- meaning he will be intimidating/difficult person for the
other players to face, and he may in fact be aggressively playing a big stack by
raising with a mediocre (or worse) hand.
Let's compare the two scenarios. In the "full value" one, let's say (very
generously) that you have a 20% chance of winning the pot. You are getting 4-1
on your money, and have a 4-1 chance to win. Given your desperate, "beggars
can't be choosers" circumstance, this is not bad. Twenty percent of the time
you'll have five chips, which is enough that if you win your next hand you'll
have an actual "stack" of chips. You still only have one chip worth of value
though. In a ring game, this would be like a coin flip, but in a tournament,
given the death sentence of losing, coin flip equity has an extra negative
downside.
Much, much better is the scenario where you face only one opponent. Suppose
instead of having an equal hand against four opponents, you are even a 60/40
underdog to that one opponent. This is much better! Here, you will have four
chips two out of five times compared to five chips one out of five times.
Instead of one chip equity, you have the equity of 1.6 chips, and you
literally get the death sentence of elimination half as often. The importance of
this can not be overstated. Having one chip is infinitely better than having no
chips. Your main goal is simply to not go broke. The next goal is to maximize
your expectation. The "full value" play is a dramatically worse on both scores
(even if it is usually better than folding the QJ).
Even when you have a single chip, you can "play a big stack" by piggybacking
onto the play of someone who actually has a big stack!
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