[Lottery Larry]

Originally Posted by HomePokerGames Admin

Although I don't particularly disagree. I would think that successful tourney players balance equity vs. staying alive. Although you would have a good chance at going from T10,000 to T100,000, there is also the fact that the chip leader on Day 1 has never won the tournament (I believe). I believe big chip leads in the middle and late end of the tournament are big advantages which allow you to run over other players. But a big chip lead early in the tournament doesn't seem to mean much.

That doesn't mean much. I don't think you can argue that starting with 100k in chips is better than 10k, regardless of how you do later.

That assumes, of course, that one can properly play a big stack, early in the WSOP

In other words, should you look at the risk-adjusted equity (similar to stocks)? What if a good player feels that he could get up to T100,000 without taking that much risk? Could the answer therefore be . . .

- if a player is a +EV player than he should weigh the risk of elimination vs the odds of building up his stake otherwise

- if a player is a -EV player then he should take any positive equity opportunitity he is given

I don't think, imo, that even the best players can ignore the equity value on the presumption that they can do as well later. I say this simply because Phil Ivey has to beat 5500+ in order to even make the money. Therefore, the chance of any player doing so successfully is now so low/unpredictable that you simply cannot afford to pass up so much equity early..... and one could argue that even in the middle rounds, the same thing could be said.

In short, even a +EV player is so -playing EV lifetime (in regards to getting to the last few tables), that their edge won't be able to overcome the random playing odds enough to justify throwing away Aces against several all-in players preflop.


As for 9 all-in players:
I don't have access to a NL simulator that includes betting, so I used Turbo Texas Hold'em for some limit betting simulations.

AA vs 9 random hands (no bet, no fold) was 33%. Against a betting lineup, however, pocket Aces won two-thirds of the time.

AcAd vs. the worse hand distribution I could think of quickly (worst for the Aces, without giving someone else Aces) was the following:

JJ Tc9c 4d4h AsKs Ah3s 3c3d 8h7d 9s8s KdQd

Running that hand distribution, Aces only won 11.5% of the time nofold'em.... but won 60% of the time against the betting lineup.

Of course, I don't think any of us could imagine players so bad that would call all-in on the first hand with 87o, A3o and threes... but to do a lineup of JJ KK QQ TT 99 KK QQ JT AK is both less likely to occur and probably better for the Aces anyway.


I can't think of any hand mix that would get 9 people to call all-in preflop ahead of your Aces, so this is a pointless argument anyway. If it would somehow happen, then based on the 11-15% range of chance of winning, I could advocate folding Aces if you were a top pro.

However, since at most you'd face 3-4 players all-in, I'll try to run that type of simulation some time and see what numbers I get.

Okay, I ran a no fold simulation with Aces vs four hands (KK, QQ, JJ, TT). The Aces won almost 39% of the time, or odds of 1.56:1. For that, you'd get pot odds of 4:1