Bloggers / Matthew Pitt / 01 April 2009 / 1 Comments

One of the most common excuses for a player to call off a portion of their stack with a weak hand is that they were "priced in." Check the chat box when the inevitable happens and the weaker of the two hands prevails to bust out their unfortunate foe and they will always protest they had the correct odds to call, especially at the lower buy in games.

"Now some players would instantly fold their 94s in a heart beat but I mulled things over for a few moments to see if a call could be profitable."

I recently played in a $5.50 No-limit Hold'em tournament with 382 entrants, which I eventually won, but one hand came out that was questioned by some of the table and one of my friends who was railing me and chatting on MSN.

To set the scene we are six handed and are on the final table. The blinds are 4000/8000 with a 1000 running ante, making a preflop pot of 18,000. I am the chip leader with a 207k stack, the next largest stack is 109k and the other four players have between 60k and 66k.

In the hand I looked at my cards to see I had nine-four of diamonds and elected to raise to 21,000 in order to steal the sizeable blinds and antes. In previous hands, a bet of 18-25k had been sufficient to take the pot preflop so I felt no need to alter the bet sizing. One player folds but another shoves all-in for an extra 59,536, causing the blinds to fold.

Now some players would instantly fold their 94s in a heart beat but I mulled things over for a few moments to see if a call could be profitable. The pot after villain shoves was 98,536 and it was only 38,536 to call, giving me 2.56/1 on my money, which in my opinion was plenty odds to call, given that if villain is pushing A7+, KQ+ and any pair, I am only a 67/33 underdog in the hand.

I called and was up against AsQh and after a board of Jh3c9c2c2h saw me eliminate another player and add to my already healthy stack. Even though I won the hand, was a call profitable because results are irrelevant at the end of the day all that is important is that you maximise your expectation in each hand you play.

Some basic mathematics after the game showed that my play call was profitable, albeit extremely slightly. To work this out I had to perform some basic ICM or Independent Chip Modelling. ICM basically works out your equity in the tournament based on your and your opponents chip stacks.

Before the hand I had 14.21% equity and as the hand unfolded this equity could move either way. If I folded to the shove my equity would have been 13.38%, if I had called and won my equity would have risen to 16.03% whilst calling and losing would reduce my equity to 12.10%. Whilst this may seem like gobbledegook it is vital so please bear with me!

Against the range I assigned villain I would win 32.862% of the time and take my equity to 16.03% whilst I would lose 67.138% and drop to 12.10% equity. After some small calculations it appears that calling would give me 13.39% equity whilst folding would be 13.38!

So calling shows a 0.01% in equity so is profitable. The percentage is pointless but if you factor in the fact I would have more than 1.5 times the next stack, had the chance to move up a pay jump by eliminating another player and create an image if a lunatic, I think the call was a pretty good one when all is said and done! Next time you think you were priced in to call, do some maths to see how close or far off you actuallly were.

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