Holding 88 and facing a 23BB squeeze play all in

Thoughts on just jamming over CO raise?

As played? Both options have merit but calling has a big immediate upside.

Ya that is an interesting point. Jamming over the initial raise is an option. I guess I didn't want to risk my whole stack right away with my stack covering 3 other players for their bounties. I'm no expert on bounty theory, so please feel free to comment on whether that is the right or wrong mindset to have there.

Jamming against CO's raise is not good in my opinion. He might call with hands like A9+ because of the bounty situation (though you don't say what your bounty is). He is definitely not folding 99+. In theory he could be calling with 55-77 but that never actually works for me (they never have what I hope they have)

So I like the pre-flop call.

You don't say what the starting stack is in this tourney but in order to know whether its worth calling or not I would double the starting stack (well closer to 2.5x) and add it to the pot total size to see what actual pot odds are.

Given our situation its probably borderline because there are 48 combos of 99+ hands and 48 combos of AJ+ hands. So our odds of winning if we call are roughly 37%. If the starting stacks are 10,000 chips then its a break even situation. But because our odds of winning would be around 37% I probably don't call unless the starting stacks were much higher especially because I think Villain has PP's more than hands like AJ.

Starting stack was 5k chips for this MTT. Can you please let me know how that factors into this scenario?

I think calling the shove when the bounty is that big is fine.

Shoving over the raise is OK too, although I'd prefer that line if the BB didn't have such a big bounty. Here, even as late in the tournament as we are, with the size of the bounty relative to the prize pool, I think you want to encourage BB to enter the pot.

When I do pot odds (or implied odds) I look at how many chips we need to call and how many chips we would win. In a non-bounty situation I just use the given odds. So if we are calling a 1000 chip bet to win 2000 chips we are getting 2:1 odds and to break even we need to win 1 out of 3 times (or 33%)

In a bounty tournament we have to factor in the value of the bounty. In this case we are calling roughly 21,600 chips to win 29,400 chips. The $50 bounty is worth roughly 11,360 chips because the buy in was $22 for 5,000 chips. So we are calling 21,600 chips to win 40,760 chips. We need to win 34.64% of the time to break even. Because we have roughly 37% chance of winning here assuming Villain has a AJ+/99+ range, a call is worth it. If Villain wouldn't do it with AJ then its probably not worth doing. I think there is probably a chance that Villain wouldn't do this all the time with AJ. I also think there is a chance that Villain might do this sometimes with 77 and 66.

I would also factor in that there are 18 places left and I like to go as deep as I can in a tournament so I don't care about laddering up a few places and before this hand we have a below average stack.

In a mystery bounty situation I probably take the total of all remaining bounties and divide it by the number of remaining bounties (# of players left - 1) and use that amount to estimate chips. I also have considered just using the bottom two amounts which take over 80% of all bounties and average them out because winning big bounties is not very likely...

Thanks for providing some math context to this Mr. Rick. I'm somewhat familiar with PKO and bounty math, but only at a beginner level.

I have heard that you want to assign a chip value to the dollar value of the bounties, so you can make your call/fold equity type decisions with your hand. So it makes sense to try and convert that $50 bounty to some sort of chip value.

But I wanted to question whether the value of every $22 of bounty would equal 5,000 in chip value.

Every buy in for this tournament of $22 would be split as follows:

• $2 rake
  
• $10 regular prize pool, with a 5,000 tournament chips (TC).
  
• $10 to the bounty prize pool. $5 of it to be won for eliminating a player. $5 to be added to the eliminator's bounty.
  

So with that break down, it feels like $10 of bounty = 5,000 in TC. So in this case a $50 bounty would equal and extra 5,000 TC x 5 = 25,000 in TC value, which you would add to the pot to make your call/fold decision.

Please feel free to critique my math/logic. I tried Googling converting bounty value to chips just now and it isn't the easiest answer to find, although I'm sure it is out there.

It feels like that winning a 5,000 TC stack and valuing that at $22 is over valuing it, because if I was to eliminate an new player and win his 5k stack, then the value of that stack and his $5 bounty can't be more than the $22 buy in. That 5k TC stack needs to be valued less than the tournament buy in because there is still the additional bounty to be won as well.

So based on that math, if I am giving a correct TC value to the $ value of the bounty, I'd need about 21% equity to call. 21.6k to call, 29.4k in the pot and 25k as the bounty value. In this case, I can see why it would be worth it to call and attack the $50 bounty.

I also found this article on quantifying bounty value. In PKO tournaments, it says the starting value of a bounty is 33% of the starting stack, and then gradually goes up in value as the number of players goes down. I think this value goes up because of the small chance that you win the tournament and are able to win the value of your own bounty, which is not something that can be done in the early and mid stages of the tournment.

https://redchippoker.com/quantifying-the....

I also found a topic of Bounty Factor in PKOs, but that was a bit beyond me to understand. Maybe I'll understand it eventually, but as of right now, I don't.

I'm feeling a bit hung up on this topic and trying to do some research. I've included the bounty and chip amounts from the original hand posted.

PokerStars - 1250/2500 Ante 380 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 13.61 BB (34,024 in chips, $20 bounty)
Hero (SB): 27.27 BB (68,169 in chips, $48.43 bounty)
BB: 23.88 BB (59,712 in chips, $98.75 bounty)
UTG: 55.77 BB (139,418 in chips, $62.50 bounty)
MP: 9.06 BB (22,656 in chips, $36.56 bounty)
CO: 50.32 BB (125,802 in chips, $53.75 bounty)

So in terms of describing the hand, I was viewing the BB all in villains bounty as being approximately $50, because that is what I can win if I eliminate them. However, the actual amount assigned as a bounty is $98.75, or $100 to round off, because half of that would be added to the player who eliminates them. However, I'm not sure if we need to factor this into the calculation, since we are still 16 eliminations away from being able to play for your own bounty heads up.

I have been reading about how the starting stack bounty is worth 1/3 of your starting stack. So if I was to make calculations based on that, then would I be making calculations based on a $50 or a $100 bounty? I would think I'd be focusing more on the $50 because that is what can be won immediately with certainty.

So to give chip value to the $50 bounty to be won, I would take 1/3 x 5,000 TC, = 1,667TC for every $5 bounty amount to be won. $50 bounty to be won = 16,667TC here.

16,667TC is a bit different than the 25,000TC I originally had.

If I increase the value of a bounty to 40% of the starting stack, as per that RedChip poker article that I posted, because we are deeper into the tournament, then the TC value of that $50 bounty to be won is:
5,000 x 40% = 2,000 TC per $5. 20,000 TC is the new chip value for the $50 bounty. This amount is closer to the 25,000 TC that I originally had.

With the $50 bounty having a value of 20k TC or 25k TC, I'd need at least 35.8% equity or 37.0% equity to make the call.

This math of 21% incorrect.

Excellent texts MP

I calculate the bounty based on the overall cost of the tournament in general usually but I see why you want to value it as based on the cost minus the bounty amount. I never subtract out the fee for the tournament (even though it won't show up in the tournament pool).

I do it this way because I am trying to base the $ on how much I spent overall for the tournament. But I can see how that could be considered wrong. I'd be interested to hear from anyone else who does this kind of thing.

Using $50 of the bounty rather than the $100 overall total is correct in my mind because we only get to keep the $50 if we win the hand. Unless we also win the tournament. In this case the value of the bounty is $98.75/2 + ($98.75/2)*(1/18) [instead of 1/18 we could make it 68,169/TotalChipsInPlay but in the moment it would be hard to do without taking out my phone so I would go with 1/18) . Overall it has to be close to $50 though (Its like $52). Moving forward it can matter a lot if there are only 2 or 3 players left because our chance of getting to keep the other half can be high. Even with 5 players left it can be very high especially if there is a chop where everyone gets to keep their bounties...

Your calculation of your own bounty increasing from eliminating players seems correct here. The value is negligible early on and goes up more as you get closer to being the last player left.

As far as a final table chop and keeping your own bounties, in my experience on Pokerstars, any final table deals did not chop up the bounties and only the regular prize pool money. Things may have changed as I have been away from the poker tables for nearly a year, but that was my experience. Bounties were unaffected by dealmaking.

Great responses , especially the math provided. Some conceptual thoughts- since you feel your hand is too good to fold but also barely good enough to call, that signals to me that we made a mistake at the prior decision juncture (when we called) and would benefit from avoiding this situation altogether. This combined with what you said about being below average at the moment to me equates to a relatively easy jam preflop. The fact we cover the BB and his bounty makes this decision even easier, not to mention we are jamming over a big stack LP open which is one of the easiest gaps to attack in poker (meaning the gap between their wide opening range from LP and narrow calling range of our 27bb jam)