POTD #125 Final Table Friday: Can I Fold Aces vs an All-in on the Bubble?

Facing a big bet from Ole Schemion

The first piece of poker software I purchased was SnG Power Tools. It (and I’m going off memory here, so if some of the details are a little hazy, bear with me) allowed you to enter ranges for your opponents, and it would tell you how profitable calling all-in or shoving all-in were. It calculated how much money your call was winning or losing by valuing your stack using Malmuth-Harville ICM. 20 years later, and Malmuth-Harville ICM is still regularly used to model how much a stack is worth at the final table of a tournament. It’s a simple model. ICM assumes if you have 50% of the chips in the tournament, you win the tournament 50% of the time. If you have 5% of the chips, you win the tournament, you guessed it, 5% of the time. In the two decades since, a new model hasn’t really surpassed Malmuth-Harville ICM; Ben Roberts’ ICM is a little better, but the shapes of strategies it suggests are similar to the ones M-H suggests. What has changed is the ability to run ICM sims on bigger game trees. Now instead of running preflop push-fold sims, you can run whole hands that begin with multiple sizings preflop and play flops, turns, and rivers.

While PIO Solver existed in 2016, ICM functionality was not added until later, and the hardware to solve poker hands was more expensive and less powerful. Which meant that even if you wanted to do an analytical deep dive on a hand that took place at a final table, it required using a patchwork, mixed-medium type of solve that would give you a rough idea of what a reasonable strategy should look like.

In October 2016, Run It Once published a video of mine where I showcased this mixed-medium approach. I looked at the ICM value of my hand if I folded the river, called and won, and called and lost, and tried to give my opponent— Ole Schemion making his POTD debut — a range. Then I used ProPokerTools Odds Oracle (one of the great pieces of poker software) to determine if I had enough equity vs. what I perceived Ole’s range to be to call on the river.

In POTD #5, I did a deep dive into a hand I played at the final table of the EPT Monte Carlo €100k Super High Roller. It was the first and only F I’ve given myself at POTD and the most memorable hand I played in the tournament, but there was another equally confounding hand I played on the bubble of the tournament, where I also had a big pair and was faced with a tough river decision on a board that started off ugly for me and continued to get worse.

2016 EPT Monte Carlo Event #16 €100k Super High Roller
25k/50k/5k (SB/BB/ANTE). 9 Handed Final Table, 8 Cash, 250k Starting Stack
Payouts are €237k, €302k, €379k, €485k, €627k, €828k, €1.284M, €1.775M

You can watch my 2016 Run It Once video here, and if you are not a RIO member and would like to be one, you will receive 10% off if you sign up using code: "POTD".

Pokernews Update (Pokernews says he shoves the river, but I’ll defer to my RIO video that says he bets 500k)

Paul Newey (345k) folds, Igor Kurganov (1.225M) folds, Mike McDonald (295k) folds, Ali Reza Fatehi (5.19M), folds, I (1.245M) have A♥️A♦️ in the HJ and make it 125k, Mustapha Kanit (2.195M) folds, Ivan Luca (930k) folds, Stephen Chdiwick (2.77M) folds, Ole Schemion (995k) calls

Flop (320k) 9♠️8♣️5♦️: Ole checks, I bet 105k, Ole calls

Turn (430k) 8♦️: Ole bets 180k, I call

River (890k) T♥️: Ole bets 500k leaving himself 135k, I tank fold, he windmills QTo in my face