Holy fuck.. :) That's impressive.

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I'll have to add the Nth raise trick next time I bluff.

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Great article and quite provocative of course too. I do believe one of the biggest lessons one can learn to improve their tournament play is making big laydowns. Sometimes this even means whe you have been simply out played.

Boubli showed by laying down kings and coming in second he has confidence in his abilities even when the odds were against him with a short stack. Thanks for sharing this article with us!

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Yeah...making the big laydown for me is especially hard because there is no concrete feedback to let you know that you made the right move. Unless your opponent choses to show you his cards.

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For me its more a question of knowing even short stacked I can and have come back to win a couple tournaments. So even if I am wrong and make a big laydown because I strongly sense I don't have the best of it I can often avoid being completely dominated. Then I can wait for a better opportunity when I feel more certain I do have the best of it.

Also I can think a several times when I have just shoved the rest of my chips in when I had a sinking feeling I did not have a good hand and I was right. Now I don't just let myself always think since I am stack committed it is the right thing to go allin...

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The variables involved are:

- how certain am I that he has AA
- what pot odds am I getting if he does
- How much of an advantage do I think I have over the field?
- How much play is there?

At this point in the hand, I'm 99% certain that Howard has AA.

The pot is 10700 and I have to call 2700. That means I need 20.14% pot equity to call. However, if he really does have AA, I only have 18.05%. However, I am *not* going to do the math that precisely over the table... I would just say, "I need about 4:1, and I have about that."

So the interesting question is, "what happens if I fold?" With blinds that small there's still a lot of play left; I'm not going to be forced to gamble for quite a while.

How do I compare to the field? Frankly, if it was me sitting at that table, I'd probably think I was a bit of a dog to the field, and I'd choose to gamble.


But let's rewind. Why did he put in the raise to 4000? Does he think Howard will put in the raise to 1500 and then fold? Hmm, maybe he will. But still... I might just choose to call there and come out firing on any flop that doesn't have an ace on it. There's 3000 in the pot. I can safely bet 1500-2000 and fold to a raise.

And yes, I *have* laid down KK preflop in a nolimit tournament before. Correctly.

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But let's rewind. Why did he put in the raise to 4000? Does he think Howard will put in the raise to 1500 and then fold? Hmm, maybe he will. But still... I might just choose to call there and come out firing on any flop that doesn't have an ace on it. There's 3000 in the pot. I can safely bet 1500-2000 and fold to a raise.

If you chose to play it that way, would you be concerned about getting moved off the pot by a lesser hand?

Let's say you just call the raise to 1500. The flop comes 722. You bet out 1500, and then Howard comes at you big. That's a pretty unscary board, but Howard is playing it big. He might have aces (it's consistent with his previous action, and in this case you have less information than the actual situation since he did not rererereraise pre-flop), but then again, he might have something like QQ, for which I *think* he could have made the raise to 1500 pre-flop. (Probably mucking to an all-in reraise, but planning on playing with a safe flop.) (With this action, I gave Howard position on the flop which is probably incorrect.) You certainly wouldn't want to muck that -- he hasn't demonstrated that he has aces from his pre-flop action -- and he could well be playing an inferior hand on the flop. Or do you agree with that?

Does your hypothetical "bet 1500-2000 and fold to a raise" only hold for scarier flops, like QJT?

For a good poker player (like yourself), holding KK does not mean that you have to play it, but it's still a very powerful holding. If you choose to just call the 1500 pre-flop (which you did not say you would; I realize you just threw it out there as a possibliity), is the intent to not go broke in the event that an ace comes off the deck, or is the intent to make more money from your opponent than you might make by raising the 1500 pre-flop? Or both? Or something else?

I'm glad you went down this line, because I find this more interesting than the original situation which, as you stated, can be distilled down to just a few factors.

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I try to do that sort of thing heads up with kings and I've been able to lay them down a couple of times, but it is the sort of thing that I can only do against the right opponent. It has to be somebody I know will not keep pushing like a jackoff with QQ or AK or anything else. I have to be able to put that read on the person. Then it'll usually play out like this:

I make a standard raise with KK and get reraised. In this place I will always either push all in or make a minimum reraise. The simple reason is that if I am going to have odds to call if I make the minimum reraise then I'll push all in now and be the one with the initiative. If I'm not going to have odds to call if I get reraised all in by AA then I want to know. I'll minimum reraise here and if an opponent then come back swinging again I'll pitch the KK.

Basically I think you have to be able to do this or you have a huge hole in your tournament game that can allow you to be knocked out really easilly with KK in an early round.

Lets say blinds are 5-10 and everybody has T1000. I raise to 30 and get reraised to 100. If I then make it 170 an opponent with anything but aces is going to call me (assuming it is the right kind of opponent of course) and one with aces will definitely reraise...and it'll be a big reraise since he knows that I'm not going to re-reraise him. So I make it 170 and it'll certainly get pumped up to at least 500 at which point I can throw my kings in the muck. If it comes out with a minimum reraise back to me, I'll probably call it, trying to hit a set and being very ready to get away from the hand, but mostly because a minimum reraise there starts to smell less like AA and more like the other KK or more likely QQ being played too agressively.

So I think it was a good laydown, but it would have been a lot better if Boubli had planned ahead and not pumped it as high with his second raise. That would have made things a lot cheaper for him and he could have had the same information.

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I would have shoved all in and gamb00led. All these people leaving messages here sound like they are WAY to conservative... for fuck sakes, you have the second nut, and you are folding?!??! the chances he has AA when you have KK is about 1/220. Play your fucking hands people. There is a good chance he has QQ, or possibly JJ. If he has KK and you shove all in, he might be a pansy like you guys, and fold, meaning you win the pot.

I did this at Brantford, I play KK like AA preflop, 5 betting it, the other guy calls. Good, I know he doesn't have AA. Flop comes with an A, I bet away, reraise him, and he calls, he calls the turn, folds the river showing KK. I say good fold and take the pot. Which could have been half his.

I know there is a difference between tourney and ring games, but if you double your stack at that point, and take out Howard L (AKA Dave Wagner), then you have a huge advantage and a good chance of winning with the big stack, and the bragging rights of tacking out Howard.

P

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I'm not sure whether to take you seriously or not.

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yeah, I'm being serious

pokenum -h ad ac - kh ks
Holdem Hi: 1712304 enumerated boards
cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
Ac Ad 1388072 81.06 317694 18.55 6538 0.38 0.813
Ks Kh 317694 18.55 1388072 81.06 6538 0.38 0.187

so he's better than 4.3:1 to call.

He's got 10700 vs 2700 that's almost 4:1 to call, and there is no way he is 100% certain that Howard has AA.

You guys have no balls playing poker.

and yes, I am being serious.

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Ok, don't get all abusive and stupid.

A lot of people said they would, in fact, put in the chips because of the pot odds being received and the fact that one isn't 100% sure that Howard has aces.

Saying stuff like "play your cards" and "you have the second nuts" is not good guidance and you know it. If you are in fact up against AA, then having KK is no better than JJ. The question is how certain are you that Howard has AA. Yes, you have pot odds even if he does, and that's an argument for calling.

"The chances that he has AA when you have KK is about 1/220" -- c'mon, don't be silly. That's true when the cards are dealt but that's certainly not true given the pre-flop action. I *know* you know that. I know you aren't using that as an argument for why you should play, but why even throw that out there?

If I were playing the $10-$20 game at Brantford, there is no way in heck I'd fold KK pre-flop either. But Howard isn't a schmuck in your $10-$20 game.

I'm not saying this like Howard is some sort of God who must be respected. I'm saying this in the way that Howard plays in the way that Howard plays and isn't going to come at you with all of his chips in that situation with JJ or TT like your schmoes on UB would.

The point isn't whether it's a tournament or a ring game. It basically comes down to the factors that Patti listed above. You may very well want to call, but not simply b/c reasons like "KK is the second nuts" "don't be a wuss" and so on. If you had a $12000 stack before the start of the hand, would you call then? Now you're not getting pot odds. How sure are you that Howard has aces? It sounds like you'd put your chips in. Other people would not. Are they wusses? Maybe some of them are, but some of them are making the right move.

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By the numbers, it appears that Boubli's laydown after Lederer's big reraise is just a hair on the correct side, given that Lederer had the rockets and Boubli the cowboys.

Now it might be that this is happenstance, but I think it teaches an important lesson in how to play aces in no-limit. If Lederer had sized his raises just a little bit smaller proportionally, Boubli's pot odds wouldn't have been anywhere near so close, and his laydown would have been easier.

If it wasn't happenstance, it's a testament to Lederer's skill as a no-limit hold'em player. Pot size manipulation is one of the secret skills of NLHE. I have nothing resembling a full appreciation of it.

To those people who say, "how sure do you have to be" let me propose another situation. You've got 7-2 offsuit, and because your read of the opening raiser is sharp, you *know* she has pocket kings. (Say, it's a decisive raise that you read as aces-or-kings, but there's that little twitch of fear in her eyelid that you know means "I hope no one has aces")

You reraise with your 72o, and your opponent plays back at you. Are you going to put her all-in?

Your read of her doesn't have to be just good, to know she has kings, but great, to know that (a) she will put you on aces, (b) she will realize the pot odds are close but not quite close enough to call aces with kings, and (c) she will lay it down.

All of a sudden, Boubli's fear that Lederer is messing around with him looks a lot smaller, doesn't it?

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I'm so with you on this. Pot-size manipulation is something I am extremely oblivious to much of the time. I know how important it is -- my eyes were really opened from reading Ciaffone and Reuben's Pot-limit and No-limit Poker -- but when I play, I know I don't think nearly enough about stack sizes when I'm making my moves. I'm too pot-size oriented and not enough stack-size oriented. A big big hole in my game.

I think about things when I'm making the last action (e.g. does he have odds to make this call, etc.), but I don't think enough about later streets. For example, if I make this bet here and he calls, how big will the pot be relative to his stack on the next street and will he be able to lay down his hand if these cards fall and I move big?

Poker is so complicated.

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Yes, but your last few chips are worth more than the rest of them. You might be slightly favoured by the pot odds to make a slightly better than marginal call but you still fold because if you have no chips left you are out of the tournament. This is not a cash game and cannot be treated like one no matter how much you may want to.

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Yes, but your last few chips are worth more than the rest of them.

The Boubli-Lederer confrontation was early in the tournament. The nonlinearity of chip value in a tournament becomes significant only as a big increase in payout is getting close. Early in the tournament, the difference in value between the bottom chip in your stack and the top one is not large enough to matter even in close decisions — the margin for error in shoot-from-the-hip oddsmaking is much larger.

(And this leaves out the time-utility factor: it's better to be first to bust out of the tournament than on the bubble, because of the time you get to spend in [presumed] positive-EV ring games.)

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D00D! You can press your kings a lot playing limit. In NL you have to know when you are kicked in the beanbag. And if you are playing a sit-and-go at UB you will get jackoffs playing JJ and such in that spot, but in a real tournament against a real opponent you have to know when you are up against AA and be prepared to exit gracefully.

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I think calling here would be a pretty large error. In no limit hold-em, Pot-Odds shouldn't be the key determining factor in decieding weather or not to play a hand. In a cash ring game, yes absolutly.

In a tournement "you must survive to win". By calling, or by shoving when Boubli made it 4k to go, he is shutting himself out of the event.

Of course I would have pushed them all in when Howard made it 1500 to go, but I'm not as good as I would like to be.

I wish I didn't delete my Live Journal... intresting blog.

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From the context of what you say, I assume when you said "In no limit hold-em, Pot-Odds shouldn't be the key determining factor..." that you really meant "In tournament poker, Pot-Odd shouldn't be..."

Different people feel differently on that topic. You no doubt agree that it's a factor. In my opinions, beginners weigh pot odds too heavily, and among advanced players, many weigh survival too heavily. Yes, you must survive to win, but you must also accumulate chips to win and take calculated risks. If you "give up" too much, you decrease your chances of winning. Many players will decline a small edge to avoid the risk of busting out, but you must accept a small edge if a significant number of chips are already in the pot. (And, in fact, you must accept being an underdog, in cases, if the pot odds are overwhelming.) However, you are right that the correct decision does not directly correspond to pot odds, but how much of a weighing is proper people do not agree on.

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Thank you for the correction. I did mean in a freeze out situation. A fully bankrolled cash ring game is another matter.

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