Why taking the pot down is more important in tournaments
Cash games may be about the biggest pots, but tournaments are about winning the most pots and moving on, says Dara O'Keaney.
How soon does ICM become a thing in tournaments? Well, actually, from the very first hand.
Below we have a 40bb effective pot, UTG has opened, BB has called, the flop is 964 rainbow. On the left is the hand in Chip EV, on the right is the hand at the start of the tournament, with 100% of the field remaining.
No need to scrunch up your eyes, but there are some notable differences in the strategy already. In the ICM example, we see a higher frequency of betting and the overbet size of 125% pot being used, when the largest bet size in Chip EV was 82% pot. The ranges are the same, antes are in both examples, the only difference is the format.
You can never ask a solver directly why it did something, but I think this highlights a fundamental difference between MTTs and cash games. In tournaments, there is much more value in just taking down the pot. In cash games, we want to win the biggest pot, but in MTTs we are happy to take the pot down and move on to the next one.
Chair equity
We overbet in the tournament, which means our value threshold is higher. J9s bets 82% pot in the Chip EV example, but it is rarely overbet in the tournament, because it won't get called by worse. While we need stronger value, the larger bet means we can bluff more, relatively.
Getting folds is a great result for our bluffs, and it's a decent result for our strong, but vulnerable, value hands like overpairs. In a cash game getting sucked out on is not a disaster if we charged the right price, but in a tournament, it may mean elimination.
When ICM is significant, we see bet sizes get large or small, with nothing in the middle. The bets that become smaller also follow this logic. Because Villain folds more frequently, we need to make a smaller bet size to extract value, especially with strong, invulnerable, hands like sets. It is also the cheapest way to bluff. Betting medium achieves very little in this regard.
As my friend Andrew Brokos says, poker tournaments are about chip equity and chair equity. By making bets that are happy to take down the pot often, rather than trying to make the biggest pot possible, we may not improve our chip equity as much, but we certainly improve our chair equity.
Remember the fundamental difference between cash and tournaments. In cash every chip has the same value, so you always try to maximise value. Risking your entire stack to win 10% more is a good proposition if it works more than 91% of the time. In tournaments every chip you add to your stack is worth slightly less than the previous one, so risking your entire stack to win those extra chips may not be worth it even if it’s +Chip EV.
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