All righty, I will offer the conclusion and fill in some analysis of each hero decision.
Blinds 15K-30K
Hero 850K
Villain 950K
Hero is dealt and opens for 80k (hero's standard open heads up at this level)
Villain calls and goes to the flop.
Flop (160k in pot):
Villain bets 100k
Hero calls
Turn (360k in pot):
Villain checks
Hero bets 300K
Villain calls
River (960k in pot):
Villain moves all in (370K effective, hero at risk)
Hero tanks, and tanks and is looking desperately for a read. Hero even says his hand out loud in hopes that villain will reveal something. Eventually hero decides to fold. Both players agree to show hands and villain shows....
for only two pair.
Hero wins a little back in the remainder of the level, but after the blinds go to 20K-40K ends up going broke on a pot sized A-hi shove on a paired board and runs into 3 nines to finish second.
UPDATE: I got the stacks mixed up. Hero's on his bike if he's wrong!
Well actually, playing at my house, I don't have to go anywhere
.
But as hero, this was how I thought each decision through at the time.
Preflop, I think villain is at least calling me with 80% of holdings, so opening 66 for value is a pretty obvious proposition. It's not ideal to face a 3 bet, but limping this against an opponent that will call super wide is just weak poker.
Flop, I think given villain rarely checks flops if he gets the first opportunity, villain has at least twice as much air as he does "value" hands given he didn't 3 bet pre. I think all of his value pretty much has to be 9x, and what little 6x I am not blocking. He can surely have some straight draws too, both open-end and gutshot. But it's hard for me to give him overpairs and other sets except for the possible 33. I didn't want to raise the flop given how air-heavy I think villain's range is and I figure I am getting it in on the turn most of the time.
Turn, I am certainly not happy about getting checked to because my goal is still to get all my chips to the middle. However, my stack is almost 2x pot and I would hate to make the bet that makes it possible for villain to fold 9x which is still the only value hand for which I can give credit. So given I am unwilling to shove at this level of an overbet, the only way to eventually get all the money in is to bet something here, and hope to either get check-raised now, or to shove it in on the river. I settled on betting 300K, and after getting called, i am figuring most rivers will lead to a villain check-hero all in line.
This is a bad river and I would have checked it behind if villain checked. However, villain did shove and forced me into the tank. It occurs to me 87 makes a lot of sense here (flop OESD), as does 97. I am the preflop raiser so it's possible he chose to check-call a 9 on the turn given he has to put TT+ in my range. It's also possible he chose to check call 87. I also figured he interprets my turn bet as strength so I don't feel like he is trying to get me to fold. And to his credit, he did not betray his holding to my statement.
The above is the best recollection of my real-time analysis. There are certainly things I would change in retrospect, but I won't bring them up now to avoid biasing the discussion more than I should have.
You can forget all the rest of the hand history at this point.
Anytime you feel a calling is wrong, it's wrong. You might as well say "I know you got me beat, but I'll call". How often does that pan out for the individual saying that?
Well I guess I did fold on a feeling and it didn't pan out.
Is that the right calculation here?
I understand the math only works if you follow it all the time, but when you're talking about the last hand of the tournament, shouldn't it be different?
But once we are HU, I'm under the impression that ICM no longer applies, since each participant has locked up second place money and so are essentially playing for a single prize of first-place-minus-second-place money.
Yes, ICM is no longer relevant, but because the tournament does end if hero calls and loses there is an important consideration different from cash. And it's actually pretty simple. What are my odds of winning the tournament if I fold vs what are the odds this hand is good right now. If I figure I would be overcoming a 5:1 deficit and we were of equal ability, I would assume a 17% or so chance of winning the tournament after the fold. (And I did assume I was somewhat the better player so I might give a bump to 20% or so.) If I have a better chance than that holding the winner right now, I should call. I just didn't think I did, I couldn't see a shove without villain having a straight until I actually saw villain's holding. If I could have put 95o in villains range, I could have made the call.
Please keep the discussion going, as I said before, there are a couple other things I would rethink here.