s another key concept: Your opponents aren t always aware of their own images.

The
better players are aware and do adapt to it, but
weaker players simply aren t aware of this concept or don t know how to use it. Once
again, it comes down to your ability to identify your opponents
patterns and tendencies.
For example, let s assume the player on your right has been fairly tight for an ho
ur because of some aggressive players on his right, and is now
left with a medium-to-short stack. The blinds and antes are getting quite high a
nd everyone folds to him on the cutoff for the first time in several
orbits. Your assumption should be that a good player will be raising almost 100%
of his hands in this spot and it s therefore a good spot for you to
3-bet him light. On the other hand, if you think he s a weaker player, you might n
ot want to make that move, because his opening range may be the
same regardless of his position or his image. In other words, you shouldn t try to
overthink or make sophisticated moves against a player who
probably doesn t play at a high enough level to understand what you re doing.
Big Calls and Big Folds
The Importance of Big Calls
The most important aspect of making big calls is the effect on the metagame, tab
le image, and, obviously, gaining chips. However, making a
big call depends on specific spots; in our opinion, you should never try to make
big calls only to build your table image. If the hand is slightly -EV, it s
occasionally OK to consider a big call. Nevertheless, you need to keep in mind t
hat making big calls will definitely increase the variance of your
game, which is not something you should pursue in an effort to build your table
image.
From the metagame perspective, making big calls with marginal or weak hands send
s your opponents a clear message, and they ll probably
avoid floating you with air and trying to outplay you on later streets. Therefor
e, they ll usually tighten their range against you, which is always a good
thing! Making big calls will strengthen your table image and increase your fear
equity. However, keep in mind that only the players at the table
when you made the call will remember it. If a new player comes to the table a fe
w hands after your big call, he may try to bluff you, just like your
previous opponent.
Here are some examples that illustrate image-related hands from ElkY.
Example 1
Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure Hi-Roller 2009
The blinds are 2,000/4,000 with a 500 ante. I have around 145,000; Johan Van Til
has around 120,000. I hold A?6? in the SB.
Johan is a very aggressive Internet player against whom I played many hands when
I won the WPT Fiesta Al Lago the previous October. He s
directly on my left. Since arriving at the table, I ve limped many times with weak
holdings in SB versus BB situations.
Pre-flop, everyone folds to me in the SB and I decide to limp from the SB. I lik
e to mix up my game in this spot for several reasons. First of all,
when out of position, I like to control the pot size. Second, should an ace hit
the flop, my hand would be very well-disguised, because I know that
Johan, with his aggressive style, would expect me to raise with an ace pre-flop.
I call 2,000. Johan raises it to 12,000 total. I call. The flop comes Q?-T?-2?.
I check and Johan checks behind.At this point, I don t think he d check a strong mad
e hand on such a dangerous board. He could be checking
a ten, but I m almost certain he d bet a queen in this spot, knowing that I could tr
y to make a move on this drawy board. Therefore, my read is that
he s either on a draw, trying to control the pot, or holding a medium-strength han
d with good showdown value. I believe he could be holding KJ, J9,
or two small diamond cards. In all three cases, I d be ahead in the hand.
The turn is a 3?. Leading out in this spot wouldn t make much sense. In this kind
of spot, a turn bet doesn t represent many hands. Additionally,
leading out would make me vulnerable to a raise. Johan is a very aggressive play
er and wouldn t hesitate to put me on the spot should he sense
any weakness on my end. Also, he could simply flat-call, which would greatly com
plicate my decision on the river. Lastly, he could just fold to my bet
and Iwouldn t extract any value from my hand. If I follow my read from the flop, c
heck calling seems to be the optimal play.
I check and Johan bets 18,000, which would tend to represent a very strong hand.
However, it doesn t seem consistent with the previous
action. Johan might have made a set on the turn or raised me pre-flop with a hol
ding such as 32, but I don t think either of those is very likely. I call
the 18,000, my plan being to check-call the river, because I believe his intenti
on is to continue bluffing. If he has a ten, or a medium pair such as 99
or 88, then the board is already too dangerous for him to value bet big on the r
iver. If he holds a Q, then he s played it very well. The river s a 5?.
I check as planned and he quickly bets 42,000. Now I have to re-evaluate the han
d. Johan could have A4, making a gutshot straight on the
river. However, his pre-flop raising range is quite wide, and more often he will
have two big cards. My hand is weak, merely ace high, but the board
now contains multiple busted draws, and against each one of those my ace is like
ly good. The only card that would justify a value bet in this spot is
a Q, but I d discarded that possibility in my analysis of the flop play. Furthermo
re, it s crucial for me to take control of the table at this stage of the
tournament. I know how aggressive Johan is and I don t want to let him bully me. O
nly 16 players are left and I know that making a big call would
greatly benefit my table image.
I call, turn over my cards, and Johan instantly throws his cards in the muck! By
following my read throughout the hand, Imade a great call, which
had three major benefits. I now have a lot of chips, my confidence is boosted, a
nd my opponents are scared to play against me. I have just put
myself in a very favorable position to go deep in the tournament.
The Importance of Big Folds
The most important reason for making big folds is to preserve your chip stack. D
epending on the stage and chip stacks during a tournament,
you can sometimes do more and sometimes do less with your chips.
Let s say you re deep into a tournament and you have 50 BB, with the average at 40 B
B. If you get into a situation where you d play a coin flip
for a 50 BB pot, the outcome would leave you with either 75 BB or 25 BB. The dec
ision whether to take the coin flip in this spot is crucial. With 50
BB, you have a lot of fold equity on the majority of your opponents. You can bus
t a lot of the average and short stacks. You also have enough depth
to call some raises in position and try to outplay your opponents on the flop or
later streets, with the option of controlling the pot size, if necessary.
However, should you lose the flip and be left with 25 BB, you have only one more
raise-fold and a round of blinds before you reach the critical stack
size of 20 BB, where your game now revolves around a push-fold strategy. When yo
u thoroughly think through the situation, you can see how taking
that flip with 50 BB greatly increases your tournament variance, and increased v
ariance is something that better players are best served by
avoiding.
Example 2
EPT Deauville 2010
(Note This hand is analyzed mathematically in the Appendix.)
Freddy Deeb has 700,000 in the cutoff and a Romanian player has 500,000 on the b
utton. I m holding TT in the small blind with 1,100,000.
I played with the Romanian on Day 2 and he hadn t gotten out of line, in my opinio
n; I considered him to play fairly conservatively and
straightforward. Freddy Deeb is an intelligent and successful live pro.
Pre-flop play folds to Freddy on the CO, who raises to 40,000. The Romanian on t
he button 3-bets him to 110,000.
I think my TT in the SB is very borderline. Obviously, the Romanian player knows
Freddy is loose and raises a wide range. However, I don t
think he d 3-bet light or with complete air in such a spot. He could have 99, AQ o
r AK, probably AJ or AT suited, maybe KQ suited. In addition,
Freddy could also have a big hand. Therefore, I believe this situation to someti
mes be slightly +EV, but often to be neutral EV. If I 4-bet in this spot,
my opponents will probably fold anything less than JJ+ and AK, but should they h
ave any of those hands, I ll have to call their all-in bet.
In a spot like this, I think protecting my stack is the priority. Indeed, moving
from 1.1 million to 1.6 million in chips when the average is 900,000
won t make such a big difference if I win an all-in pot. On the other hand, should
my stack drop to 600,000, I d have much less depth with which to
work. In addition, making such a fold can be a good move in tournaments where yo
u think you have a big edge on your opponents and you ll be
able to outplay them in better spots. I opted for stack preservation and folded.
We asked Tysen to analyze the math to determine whether ElkY s fold was positive o
r negative EV compared to an alternative line of play of 4-
betting to 250,000. To analyze this, we made the following assumptions:
Opener will open top 25% of hands.
3-bettor will 3-bet with 99+, AQ+, ATs+, KQs (plus 5% as outright bluff, but for
purposes of this analysis we eliminated this).
Opener will shove AK, will shove QQ 75% of time, and JJ 50% of time, and will ot
herwise fold.
If opener folds, 3-bettor will shove JJ+, AK, AQs 75% of time, and TT 75% of tim
e, and will fold otherwise.
If the opener shoves, 3-bettor will still call with KK+.
Without taking into account Independent Chip Model (ICM) considerations, such as
the payouts or average chip stacks, I did this analysis
using raw-chip EV. Given these assumptions, raising to 250k is slightly -EV comp
ared to folding (-15k vs. -8k) the details of this calculation are
found in the Appendix. However, once you add in bubble factors from the tourname
nt payouts, it will only make the EV worse; it could never be
more favorable. Therefore, folding is absolutely better. The main contributing f
actor is that you don t have much fold equity. You take the pot without
a contest only 36% of the time, and when you re called, you re likely behind. I d susp
ect that with bubble factors, folding J