Rebuy Event

The 'second half' of the season is starting up! Well, actually, the last 3/4 of the season is starting up with our Rebuy Event on the 22nd of April.

$20 gets you into the tournament. $1,000 in chips for the $20. Unlimited rebuys are allowed anytime your stack is at or below $2,000. These rebuys are $10 each. A $10 add-on is allowed for all players at the end of the rebuy period (3 rounds of 30 minutes each). You receive $3,000 in chips for this add-on

Blinds will be starting at $25/$25 instead of the usual $25/$50 to allow a bit more play during the rebuy period.

It's time to start paying attention to the standings for the WSOP freeroll! Remember, everybody in the top 12 will be invited, but they will also start with different stack sizes. 13th-30th will play a qualifying tournament for the final 4 spots, but again these 4 spots start with less than the rest of the field (although by no means short-stacked with $10,000 in chips and $25/$50 starting blinds with 30 minute rounds)

'Pot Committed'

We've all heard it many times before. Someone says "I have to call, I'm pot committed". In some situations its fairly obvious, other times it leaves you scratching your head wondering if you should or if someone else should make a call.

I'm going to offer a bit of a different way of looking at the situation in regards to tournament poker.

The standard thought process is the amount of your call into the amount of the pot you can win. In other words, if you have to call $1000 and can win $4000 (without your call included) you have 4-1 odds to call. This comes most typically from cash game situations. In tournament play, this situation may most often come up when a short stack moves all-in and someone is looking to call cold or from the Big Blind, or when someone moves all-in on a reraise to someone who has already raised the pot. Either one of these situations can be before or after the flop. Each situation requires the caller to put the raiser on a range of hands that he either is or is not ahead of. Then he must place a value that he is behind (assuming he most typically calls if he figures he is ahead) and whether or not he should call.

In tournament poker, however, I do not think it's nearly as cut and dry as saying "I have the nut flush draw, so I'm at least only a 2-1 dog, and I'm getting a 3-1 price so I have to call". Another situation would be if you raised with a marginal hand and then a player moved all-in and now you're getting a 2-1 or maybe even 3-1 price, but your read is that you're either a coin flip (1-1) or have high live cards (3-2) and you decide that it would be wise to call because you have the price to call. But this cannot be the deciding factor in whether to call or not.

I believe the ultimate deciding factor is the difference between the amount of chips you will have, in relation to the blinds, after you:

A) Call and Win
B) Fold
C) Call and Lose

If you call and lose the hand and you are left with less than 5x the blinds, it is very, very, difficult to justify a call in any situation no matter what pot odds you are getting. Tournament poker is not a game of small edges. You want to be the aggressor and be getting your chips into the pot when you're a 3-1 favorite to win the hand when you put your chips in the pot. This 75% edge is not necessarily just your chances of winning the hand if its played out though. It is also a 'feel' that each player has when they place a bet and figure their opponent will fold. For example, if you feel you're a 50% favorite to win the hand, but place a bet that you think will get your opponent to fold 50% of the time, that is your 75% edge.
Now, when you are the caller, you have absolutely no fold equity in the pot. You call, you are at the mercy of the cards. If you lose the hand, you are at the mercy of the cards if you are left short-stacked. You no longer have the ability to be an agressor and pick up pots with showdowns. An example of a situation in which I don't think it would be wise to gamble to win a pot with a marginal hand. You raise with QTs - a standard raise of 3 BB, you have a total of 15 BB. You are reraised to 9 BB by someone who moves all-in. If you call, you are left with 6BB, but let's also say that blinds will be moving up very shortly and leaving you with just 5BB. Now you figure you're at worst a 2-1 dog here, very possibly all the way to just a coin flip and if you call and win, you've eliminated an opponent and you have 24 BB. If you fold here, you're left with 12 BB. So, now we have a difference of 24 BB, 12BB, & 6 BB. At almost all stages of the tournament, I don't believe it's a wise choice to make this gamble. In most tournaments - except extremely deepstacked tournaments - 12 BB is at least an average stack at most times and still allows some very good aggression, while leaving yourself with 5-6 BB (the most likely of the scenarios to happen) will leave with nearly nothing to do but risk your entire stack on a marginal hand that a big stack can more easily call.
Obviously there can be situations where you can make this call. If it gets very short-handed at the end of a tournament, blinds will come too quickly around possibly to even leave yourself with 12 BB. Also you cannot consistently raise and then fold when reraised, otherwise you will eventually be looked at as weak and people will start to take advantage of that. But in the vast majority of near-full table situations in tournament poker, you simply cannot risk putting your tournament life at stake for a chance at extra chips that do not greatly improve your chances of winning the tournament.

Now a situation in which you should call. You are in position and raise to 3.5BB and you have 20 BB behind, play is 5 handed. You have QTs. BB moves all-in for another 6 BB. If you call and lose you have 14 BB, your oppenent 19BB. If you fold, you have 20BB and your oppenent has 13BB. If you call and win, you are 4 handed have 33 BB and very possibly a stranglehold at the final table. Now here, the difference between calling and losing and folding is simply very little. You almost can't afford to not make this call with any two cards, much less two cards that are, again, typically no worse than 2-1 and possibly as good as a coin flip. Also, the extra chips you gather by calling and winning do greatly increase your chances of doing well and possibly winning the tournament. Having 50% of the chips with 4 players or having 30% or 22% of the chips with 5 people left is a huge difference. In this situation, the chips are simply to valuable to let them go because even if you lose the hand, you are not crippled.

It's these numbers that you need to look at in tournament poker: What are the chances my opponent folds to my bet? What are my chances of winning if I lose this hand? What are my chances of winning if I win this hand? Looking at these questions rather than cash game pot odds will give a different perspective on your decisions in the future.