puckhead23

Blinds 600/1200 with ante

folds to the CO, who raises all-in $15K
Hero has $14,500 in BB with

Considerations: There are 20 left, 18 get paid. CO is tightish (not a rock, but seems selective), and have not seen him get out of line.

Mirage

Tough spot. I was just about to say snap call until I saw your considerations.

I think I still call, but I'm an MTT fish. If he's a good player he'll be doing this wider than it would appear to take advantage of the bubble situation.

What's the payout structure look like?

thebatsman

I auto fold here. Assume you are somewhere between14th and 20th???

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Mirage

What is your minimum holdings to call this?

puckhead23

Payout structure is $23 for 10th-18th ($12 buy in), Final Table payouts get progressively higher: 9th = $30+, 8th=$50, etc. 1st is over $500.

Bats: At the time, I was around 10th place. A bunch of shorties and a few massive stacks.

Mirage

I guess what it boils down to is, if you win the race, how much money you will go on to win on average in both scenarios. If you fold, you are virtually a lock on getting ITM, and sometimes you'll double up a few times, final table and maybe even get top 3, but that will be rare. If you call, for simplicity let's assume you are a flip against his range, 50% of the time you'll bust, but 50% you'll come out with a nice stack that you can use to have a better shot to win this thing. I really don't know how to figure what your $EV will be in both scenarios, but my hunch is that taking the gamble will actually have a slight edge.

It's a shame you're faced with calling instead of shoving first-in.

thebatsman

Q/Q+ for Me

I don't mind pushing with 9/9 but I hate calling with it.

Based a quite a few shorties left I can wait till later (ITM)

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Ugignadl

Good question puck, I like it.

My gut feeling is that you have to call here. But it is borderline for me. I'm calling 99+. I can perhaps see only calling TT+ but really any tighter than that isn't reasonable, at least in my opinion. I'd call with AKo+ as well.

Don't forget Mirage that if you fold, there is no telling how much later the money will be, so you may take a few rounds of blinds before you are ITM. Then you may well have a much smaller stack than the bifurcated case of a double up; it may be more like 30k vs 9k, when you take averages.

Mirage

I agree, I think "virtually a lock" was a little strong. What I mean is that if he blindly folds every hand, he'll make it to the money a great majority of the time, so his EV will be probably in the high teens just based on that, discounting any hot streaks that catapult him to the final table that will obviously add to his long-run EV. If he takes the gamble, he won't be in the money as often, but when he wins the race, he stands to go much further, more often. I think w/ 99 he's got too much of an edge vs. the pusher's range to make folding +$EV. It's obviously +cEV, and I think because we are getting closer to the final table and the payouts are increasing so much, that it's probably narrowly +$EV. But again, I have nothing empirical to back it up.

puckhead23

In reality, I am the "Villain" who pushed from the CO. This hand came up last night while my student was observing me. I commented to her that I felt the call by 99 was bold given how close to the bubble we are, my tight image, and the fact that each of us had about 12 BB left (which is a ton of chips given all the shorties). I didn't see the urgency in calling for one's tourney life close to the bubble (although I'm poooshing that all day long ). She felt a call by 99 is quite justified.

We had an excellent discussion about it, and I told her that you could find good arguments for either action. I wanted her to see both sides of this argument (because I knew I'd get both from all of you), and maybe said in a different way than I would say it. For the record, I rivered the , doubled up, and proceded to finish 2nd.