WSOP - 1st hand - all-in pre-flop
I took this from our French poker forum:
Here's the situation. Main Event WSOP, first hand. You have Negreanu, Chan, Helmuth and Harman at your table.
Blinds 25-50
2 unknown move in for 10,000 chips.
You have AJo in the big blind.
Ok easy fold...but when you prepare to muck,
one flash K10s and the other 89s putting you ~38% favorite if you call.
Call or fold?
here is the link to the thread for those that are bilingual:
http://www.princepoker.com/wizforum/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2322&PN=0&TPN=4
I find "Le Prince" advise troubling bust I must say interesting. If anyone bother translate/summarize it. My English is not good enough, it would take me the whole day.
Feel free to explain your decision.
Here's the situation. Main Event WSOP, first hand. You have Negreanu, Chan, Helmuth and Harman at your table.
Blinds 25-50
2 unknown move in for 10,000 chips.
You have AJo in the big blind.
Ok easy fold...but when you prepare to muck,
one flash K10s and the other 89s putting you ~38% favorite if you call.
Call or fold?
here is the link to the thread for those that are bilingual:
http://www.princepoker.com/wizforum/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2322&PN=0&TPN=4
I find "Le Prince" advise troubling bust I must say interesting. If anyone bother translate/summarize it. My English is not good enough, it would take me the whole day.
Feel free to explain your decision.
Comments
This appears to me to be a case of "wait for a bigger edge later on." Yes, my tabke is filled with DANGEROUS opponents, but I'm gone.
Let me pose another WSOP "first hand" question.
First hand. Folded to SB who moves in and you see that he is holding Q-J. You hold A-K. Do you call? This is, I think, more uncertain.
I don't believe that its nescessarily true early in a tournament with deep stacks and it's even MORE true when losing results in a bustout.
This is your typical Sklansky 'Pass up small EV edges early if you think you can get bigger ones down the line'.
But if Howard Lederer was also at my table, I might consider folding. That's just too much easy money out there for me to take in future hands. :cool:
I think if you were going to call in one case but not the other, I think the AK 2-handed example is actually an easier call than the AJ 3-handed case, due to the "chips change value" concept. IMO, the extra 10K with the 3rd player in does not compensate you for the increase in bust-out probability.
ScottyZ
Paul
You can never win a tourney early on but it is easy to lose it!
well 5 days later they argued on the subject for 13 pages...
"Le Prince" even wrote to the the poker community around the world to get more feedback on the situation.
to sum it all, if you're an average player you should call...taking the edge you have now even if it means going broke.
Personally, I think I would be making the "error" of folding...I mean I would want to enjoy my tourney for more than 5 minutes. Even if I know I'm surely gonna be outplayed later....
Here's the questions he sent to various people in the world of poker (hand 1 is from another topic):
taken from: http://www.princepoker.com/wizforum/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2322&PN=1&TPN=10
I thought it was interesting enough to share it...
HAND 1
First hand of the WSOP main event, you hold AA and 7 players in front of you go all-in.
What is your play? And what should an average player do?
HAND 2
First hand of the WSOP main event, two players go all-in in front of you in the BB. You are getting ready to throw your AJo away when all of a sudden, both players flash their cards and you see they hold KTs and 98s. You will win about 38% of the time, getting 2:1 on your money. At the table are also seated Daniel Negreanu, Howard Lederer, Johnny Chan and Jennifer Harman.
What is your play? And what should an average player do?
some answers he got:
VINCE BURGIO - Collaborateur CardPlayer et 5e aux WSOP 1994
"Correct Play, in my opinion for an average player would be to call in hand #1. You win that hand and as even a average player you have a good chance of doing well in the overall tournament. Hand #2 given the table makeup you should, I think, call you are not going to outplay the people at that table. Having $30,000 in the event you win gives you some playing room with all those stars."
LINDA JOHNSON - Collaboratrice CardPlayer et WPT
Hand 1: "This hand has been debated a lot. I recommend that both a skilled and an average player call here. It is a chance to take a huge lead and the aces still are the best hand before the flop. Many of the other players might have each other's cards (KK, KQ, AK, etc) and you still do have the best hand before the flop which could stand up."
Hand 2: "Here I think a very, very skillful player should fold, while a marginal player should call. A marginal player should take more chances and coin flips than a good player needs to take because he will need to accumulate chips to offset the skill level of his opponents."
ANDY BLOCH - Joueur renommé sur le World Poker Tour
Hand 1: "Go all-in. Sure, you could devise a situation where you are an underdog, if there is another player with AA. But this situation is just not going to happen with rational players so putting the players on a hand is impossible."
Hand 2: "Assuming no one else will have an opportunity to call, I call."
BOB CIAFFONE - Auteur de stratégie et 3e aux WSOP en 1988.
Hand 1: "I WOULD GO ALL-IN, BEING AN UNDERDOG TO THE COMBINED FIELD, BUT HAVING PERHAPS A ONE-THIRD CHANCE OF WINNING."
Hand 2: "I CALL WHEN MY ADVANTAGE IS NOT MINISCULE. THIS BAIRLY QUALIFIES."
TOM MCEVOY - Champion WSOP 1983, Auteur de plusieurs livres de stratégie
"I would put my money in with the aces, knowing that they are the best starting hand but will get cracked a fair amount of the time. The reason being is if they win I will have a commanding chip position.
I would also be willing to gamble with the AJ if I knew the other two hands were worse and had a tough table to contend with, because chips are power and winning would give me a much better chance."
ROY COOKE - Collaborateur Senior CardPlayer et Auteur de livres
"I call both situations...As I think an average player should...The opportunity to get a big stack early should not be passed up...Yes, I understand you may go broke...But you have to get the chips in order to win...The fact that good players are at your table makes calling MORE correct in the second example...Assuming the table is not going to be broken down soon you will need to good chip position to avoid being outplayed.... "
BARRY GREENSTEIN - Probablement parmi les top 10 au monde
"Hand 1: Almost everyone should call, unless the field is ridculously weak. Even though some people think a good player should throw away Aces early in a tournament, they don't understand the extra manuevering he can do with those chips. (The people who say that are rarely sucessful tournament players themselves.)
Hand 2: Similar considerations. I wouldn't call with only a slight positive expectation if I think I am much better than the field. If I were not better than the field, I would suggest calling. "
GREG RAYMER - Champion du monde 2004
"As you suggest, the worse you are compared to the field, the more risk you should be willing to take, and vice versa.
In Hand 1, I am all-in there so fast it is sick. No way should anybody in the world pass up this opportunity. Yes, you are going to go broke much more than half the time, but your edge on this call is probably at least 50%, and often a lot more. Same for the average player, only more so.
In Hand 2, it is less clear, because your edge from calling is much smaller. 38% of the time you will have a 3x stack, and 62% of the time you’ll be out. 3 x 38 is 114, and this means your edge is only 14%. However, 14% is really quite good. And, at this table, with the tough lineup, your long-term edge is not going to be 14% unless the other unnamed players are super weak. Thus, I would take this gamble, and so should anybody else."
Rolf Slotboom - Collaborateur CardPlayer
"In both situations I would play. Wile tournament experts may be able to pass up slightly positive EV situations that also carry the risk of busting out, I am not one of them. In situation 1, I don't think there'a any kind of decision: with aces I would go all-in preflop - period. Situation 2 is much closer, but especially when taking into account the table line-up (which means I am definitely *not* the best player in the game), I just could not pass up a +EV situation like this to triple my chips, even though there'a a 62% chance of losing the hand - and thus busting out. But a if you are a good player in relation to the opposition, you should of course fold, as you don't want to risk busting out so early when you can profit from your superior play later on with much less risk."
Mike Caro - Grand Théoricien et Auteur
"In both cases, an average player should call.
In the first case, a truly world-class player should call, because there is an excellent chance that the hand will hold up, despite the likelihood of someone holding AK or even AA. Other high cards are also likely to be duplicated. While you'd expect to get eliminated most of the time right now, the payoff is worth it. I believe a world class player can figure on about three times value for his buy-in and should risk all his chips right away if he can approximately quadruple his holdings.
Here, figure AA will win anywhere from 25 percent of the time to 40 percent of the time, depending on the holdings. Some hands are likely to have zero chance of winning (or nearly so, depending on the suits). A third of the time is a good guess for many scenarios. If the hand survives, the stack grows to eight times the buy-in. That will show a profit expectation greater than what the world-class player had to begin with.
In the second case, a world-class player should fold. He'll get better profit expectation by waiting for superior opportunities, since not all remaining seats are filled with world-class players and since the table may break or players may go broke or be drawn from it to fill other seats.."
Give me a break.
I'm loving the usage of "World Class Player" nowadays.. I think it's a ploy to get inexperienced players (at that level) gambling with coin flips because they get bombarded with this crap from the pros and feel like they should lose anyway.
They sound about right. Mathematically, the call is good (if marginal in case 2), and it also appeals to gamblers. Once you get the math geeks and the gamblers on side, there won't be many dissenting opinions left in any group of poker players. Heck, you get early all-ins on marginal hands all the time in big online tournaments, and some number of those players are going to be at the WSOP.
For me, it'd depend on how I got to the WSOP. If I were at the stage financially where I could count on going back year after year, then I'd be more inclined to call. If I'd got there in some way that I was less likely to duplicate (either by stupidly blowing most of my roll on the entry fee, or by winning a cheap buy-in satellite), I would be more inclined to fold, just because it'd be a shame to spend only five minutes in the main event. A few hours in once the magic has worn off, I'd probably be happy to go all-in.
There is possibly some confusion since what are called Hand 1 and Hand 2 in the OP in this thread are different than the Hands 1 and 2 in the post with comments from players.
The OP in this thread had nothing to do with folding pokcet Aces on WSOP hand number 1. This, I think, would be about the worst mistake in the history of poker regardless of your skill level. No-one outclasses any tournament field to such a degree that they can pass up an all-in call with pocket Aces in preference for playing future hands.
It's amazing how quickly this forum is turning into RGP. Heck, we even have our own version of GCA now, exposing them poker cheats!
ScottyZ
I just hope it was a honest wink
Seriously, the last thing I wanted to do, was to start a 'Ã la RGP' thread.
And for Flint, I think we can rely on the veracity of the answers. I wouldn't have posted them if I though they weren't. Whether they are honest or not....dunno...just ask BBC Z...
I was just questionning my self on the 'survive' aspect of tournaments, pushing small edge or wait for a better spot all that in relative to your level of skill compare to the field, etc, etc...
I'm just asking, I understand the significance of the WSOP, but wouldn't playing them the same way make more sense?
Definately fold to both situations..
as good as your odds are it's still a drawing hand.