When To Give Up Value in Poker
When to give up value
Online poker is a huge fish-pool these days. It's a commonly accepted idea that playing positive EV situations is the way to success. Basic poker strategy is most of the time enough to make someone a winner. All right, so all you have to do is bet your AK against the other guy's 7,2o most of the time and you win. Whenever you have the edge, go for it, whenever the other guy has it, withdraw. This is what winning poker is all about. ( well, actually there's a lot more to it, - blinds play, starting hands, betting, rakeback - but still, this above sentence pretty much sums up the core-concept of the game).
How would you feel if I told you that sometimes this is not the way to go? Sometimes you need to give up positive value. Before you start calling me all sorts of names read on and see what I'm taking about.
Let's suppose you're in the late stages of a poker tournament, pretty close to being ITM. Let's say you're holding a pair, ( 3,3) and your opponent has a Q,K. He is the chip leader at your table though, and he suddenly moves all in. You know the pot odds are in your favor, and it might just be a huge move towards you further advancing in the tourney by significantly increasing your bankroll. What do you do? You fold of course. You want to be in the money and you don't want to use up all your resources on a bet like that, even if it does give you positive EV.
The reason is something that is specific to tournaments: bankroll problems. In a poker tourney, you seldom find yourself adequately bankrolled. One of the most important prerequisites of healthy poker play is being adequately bankrolled. Since your bankroll is most of the time not right for the blinds you play at, in tournaments you have to give up “healthy play” and you have to adapt.
This is why larger bankrolls can dominate so well in tournament play. Being adequately bankrolled is of utmost importance in ring games too. The bankroll that you play with alone can determine whether you're a good player or a losing one. It will swallow variance and it will allow you to act on every single positive EV situation that you encounter. At the day's end, doing just that is the very essence of successful poker play. If you only push your positive EV, you can’t lose in the long run.
Just think about the following scenario: in a 2/4 ring game, one of the players has $20 left. The other guy has $500. Our $20 guy has a pretty good hand which gives him marginal positive EV. The $500 fella raises him exactly $20 though. What should he do? Obviously he should fold, leave the table and move on to some smaller blinds table, where his 20 bucks would be closer to a reasonable bankroll.
The reason for all this, is something every gambler needs and wants to avoid at all cost: Gambler's Ruin.
Gamblers Ruin means that you completely bust out without ever getting a second chance for a comeback. Not only do you lose all your money, but you lose the money you would’ve won provided you kept on playing at some level, and you also lose every chance to ever get back into the game. Gambler's Ruin is the ultimate failure. Avoiding it is worth making some decisions which are contrary to basic poker strategy.
Think about the following example: you make it big playing an online casino and walk away with $100.000. From that day on, you’ll be able to pretty much dominate smaller to middle stakes gambling, and who knows, you might end up making another $100.000 on top of the first one, pretty soon. Then a high roller walks up to you and says; "so you say you're a gambler, right? How about a bet? I'll wager $150.000 against your 100 grand on a coin-flip" The odds are obviously favorable, yet you still shouldn't accept the deal.
There's a 50% chance that you’ll bust out completely. You should definitely take the guy up on the offer if you had $300.000 though.
Don’t make the mistake to play online poker without rakeback!
