Semi-Bluff Shoving: Do You Have Fold Equity?
Covering live poker tournaments for a living affords me the opportunity to see countless thousands of hands played out, many of which offer interesting and potentially valuable insights into how players �� both amateurs and professionals �� play the game. In this ongoing series, I��ll highlight hands I��ve seen at the tournaments I��ve covered and see if we can glean anything useful from them.
The Scene
This week��s hand comes from the Mid-States Poker Tour Tropicana Evansville event that recently took place. It��s another $1,100 buy-in tournament, which drew 251 runners. Of those, just eight players remain. The next elimination pays $7,259, and first place will score $67,746.
The final table has a mix of successful tournament grinders like Alex Yen, Allen ��Chainsaw�� Kessler, and MSPT Team Pro Nick Pupillo, along with a few relatively lesser known local heroes. It��s Level 23 (10,000/20,000/3,000) and Yen has a hammerlock on the table with nearly half of the 5 million chips in play with 2.3 million. Pupillo��s in second with around 800,000, while Mike O��Neill (pictured above) has a bit more than 400,000.
The Action
We picked up the action on a flop of J?5?6?. It was heads up between Pupillo, who started the hand under the gun, and O��Neill, who was in the cutoff.
Pupillo checked, O��Neill bet 50,000, and the MSPT Team Pro fired out a check-raise to 130,000. O��Neill opted to flat-call �� leaving himself 303,000 behind �� and the two saw the 7? hit on the turn. Pupillo bet 154,000, and O��Neill shoved all in.
Pupillo called and showed down 6?6? for second set on the flop. Meanwhile O��Neill had flopped a flush draw with 10?8?, then had turned an open-ended straight draw to go with it. The 2? came off the deck on the river, and O��Neill doubled into second place while Pupillo was left with less than 20 big blinds.
Concept and Analysis
Disregarding preflop action that our intrepid reporter missed, both players see a flop they have to be happy about considering the hands with which they��ve come in. Given the way O��Neill played later in the tournament, his postflop bet was likely for around half of the size of the pot. When Pupillo check-raises, then, O��Neill is still getting a nice price of 80,000 more into a pot of around 280,000, plus he has position, so he calls.
On the turn, when O��Neill picks up the straight draw to go with his flush draw, he opts to semi-bluff shove over Pupillo��s turn bet of 154,000, despite having less than double that in his remaining stack. Pupillo, of course, snap-calls with his set.
Examining O��Neill��s shove, we see that he��s offering Pupillo a fantastic price on a call. The MSPT Team Pro has to put in just 149,000 more into a pot that��s ballooned to more than 600,000. Getting more than 4-to-1 on his money and given the draws on board, there aren��t many hands I can envision Pupillo folding considering he has shown significant strength on the past two streets and the board is draw-heavy.
On the other side of the coin, Pupillo��s bet of 154,000 is giving O��Neill more than 3-to-1 on a call. Since O��Neill has 14 presumed outs against many of Pupillo��s holdings, he��s getting correct odds to call the bet. Even if Pupillo holds the nut flush draw with something like A?K?, O��Neill is less than a 3-to-1 underdog.
In this case, I think it would be better to just call the turn bet despite the strength of O��Neill��s draw. Even if Pupillo doesn��t put another dime in the pot the times O��Neill gets there, the call is still mathematically sound. Plus, O��Neill likely has little if any fold equity given the size of the pot and the way Pupillo has played the hand. There��s no real reason to put the rest of his stack at risk unnecessarily without fold equity when he can just see the river with a call that has positive expected value.
The way it worked out, O��Neill did hit his flush to take down the pot, and he went on to take down the tournament as well.
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