Article on Final Table Fold of Kings Preflop

it's just two cards

Here is a sim for that spot. KK are a call, but QQ or AKs would be absolutely terrible.
https://x.com/MTT_Data_Review/status/203...

Come on.

I don't see how you can fold this to this action, though. Juan Pardo made the right fold of KK a couple of years ago, but that literally involved a situation where Jean Noel Thorel shoved out of turn... so Pardo probably would've 5-bet all-in with the KK, but knowing there'd be a 6-bet behind him from one of the businessmen, and knowing JNT didn't even have to wait for him to act to know what he was doing, is a pretty big tell.

(If you forgot, it was at another Triton final table, I think 7-handed. Pardo opens KK I think UTG, Thorel 3-bets AA next to act or one after, Stephen Chidwick cold 4-bets AKs from the SB-- and, aside, Jungleman snap folds JJ from the BB-- and before Pardo can act, JNT shoves.)

Here we have a 9BB shove, a flat, and a reshove for 25BB. I just don't think that's enough to put one of the players on AA.

I would fold AKs in the situation with ICM issues, but not QQ. The software doesn't fully take into account the value of a big stack if you triple up or whatever. Seems like an awful fold of KK. If no one has AA, you have a huge win percentage multiway.

It’s obviously a snap for anyone who’s not a sponsored pro with backers, and has a life partner who’s one of very very few people in the world that might be a better player than they are.

It’s very close otherwise. She’s in the co with nine full orbits left at a full table. If you give utg top 15%, the call & reshove top 5%, with three left to act behind her she’s around 2-1 dog to the field.

I could certainly never fold it but I don’t have multiple nlhe bracelets v 2k+ fields along with a 13th in the me either.

The funniest result irl would’ve been a T instead of a K on the turn.

I get that ICM can get weird at final tables but folding KK pre just feels criminal. You're going to be ahead of the shoving range so often that the times you run into AA don't come close to making up for all the equity you're giving up. Maybe if it's a super satellite with flat payouts I could see it but in a standard MTT nah.

But for real, imagine we KNOW that we’re against let’s say 99, QQ and AK, they show us pre or something. Each one has like 17% + 17+ 30% to beat us, so we’re 65:35 (and close to 70:30 when AK is suited), when chipEV it’s a moist call but ICM?

Here are the results and pay jumps:

1 Ben Tollerene United States $3,766,000
2 Philip Sternheimer United Kingdom $2,535,000
3 Elton Tsang Hong Kong $1,787,000
4 Kristen Foxen Canada $1,449,000
5 Punnat Punsri Thailand $1,146,000
6 Sean Winter United States $870,000
7 Yang Xu China $635,000
8 Tom Fuchs Germany $464,000
9 Felipe Ketzer Brazil $385,000

I don’t know if these pay jumps are standard but 5th is ~3x 9th.

This tournament was on Amazon Prime last night and probably will be repeated the next few days.

I saw prior levels. So in the 40k/80k level at one of the two final tables with like 10 or 12 players left) there was a hand between two young Asian men where EP raises with KK to 160k and the other Asian guy in the SB or BB raises to 500k with AK and then first Asian guy makes it 1,950k, which is a huge overbet, and the other guy goes all in. AK guy had like 2,700,000 and KK guy had like 3,700,000. The guy with KK now tanks. If he calls and loses he would be 2nd short stack at 12 blinds. He takes about a few minutes, maybe longer, and one of the announcers makes the point that if the other guy turns over AA the KK guy is getting the right price to call. Because at roughly 20% it would be about 800,000 to make close to 5,000,000. So the whole point of the ridiculous tank is that KK guy thought there was a very strong chance that the other guy had AA and he didn't want to get crippled. He did call and he did win. The entire time Kristen Foxen who was next to him at the table, watched.

My wife came home at the level before 75k/150k so I missed the Kristen Foxen hand. But later the announcers were talking about it and were saying that it was an ICM thing that they wouldn't have done. If you look at the Foxen hand there are two distinct possibilities. One is that the guy who 3-bet all in has AA and she has like a 20% chance of surviving and the other possibility is that he has AK or QQ/JJ and the original all in guy could have AX/PP(one of which could be AA). So in this case assuming the TT guy who called folds Foxen would have about a 55% chance of winning and basically tripling up and a 45% chance of either being knocked out or having slightly fewer chips. So for Foxen this was an ICM situation like with the Asian guy who had KK at 40k/80k. The third possibility is that the TT guy has AA. Now you might think he would have jammed but he had like 5,000,000 chips and could have been sucking somebody in. Which has happened to me twice at Foxwoods. I went all in both times (once with KK an once with QQ) and the guy who called had AA both times. So in my mind the chances of either of the 2 guys who had more chips than Foxen having AA would likely be about 33% to 40%.

So Foxen was thinking that she probably had about a 40% chance of surviving and from an ICM perspective she decided to fold. Now because its basically a triple up situation for me its an easy call. But I am not an ICM person.

Was it that she played it like a girl? Not in my mind. To me she played it like an ICM junkie.

The irony was that later I am watching again and an Asian guy raises A6s preflop to like 400,000 then a white guy raises to 1,100,000 and another Asian guy with KK doesn't think about it and goes all in for over 2,000,000 chips. A6s guy folds and white guy turns over AA and calls. KK gets knocked out and there is Foxen still in the game...

by deuceblocker m

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2026/03/kristen-foxen-folds-kings-preflop-on-triton-main-event-final-50894.htm

pokernews

Kristen Foxen Folds Kings Preflop on Triton Main Event Final Table

Looks just awful. Played like a girl.

I'd love to play like her. Even for just a moment...

A few things are off here for this hand:

One, in the situation you described, we're over 42%, not 35%. AKo wins a lot less often than 30% because it has little shot of winning if one of the other hands hits a set.

Two, in this particular hand, Elton Tsang is very likely to fold to the rejam and the call-off unless he has KK+. If he has AA, bad luck, but the action so far (as, for example, MTT DB Review has demonstrated) still suggests our calling range should be KK+. That puts even more dead money in the pot and increases our chances of winning the hand.

Three, we're effectively talking about tripling up here with the stacks as they are if we win -- doubling our 2.9M through Philip Sternheimer, picking up the 1.175M from Felipe Ketzer and Tsang, plus the blinds and antes.

Four, Ketzer's range is easily going to be the widest of anyone's in the hand, and so even if we bust to Sternheimer or Tsang, we still are extremely likely to ladder. (I mean, with the hands as they are in this hand, about the only way we lose to Sternheimer and Ketzer doesn't is a JT98x board, or a QQJxx board, or a flush for Kezter and the case jack for Sternheimer.)

Five, against the actual hands we're up against, we are 77% to win the hand. Even if Tsang had called off (which would be horrendous after all this action), we'd be 65%. So 35% isn't even close to the reality of the situation.

Under ICM, we don't want to avoidably flip or get in close spots for a lot of chips. But this is a spot where it's much more likely to be a situation like the one it was in reality vs. the one you described: in part due to Ketzer's wider range, being on 8BB and paying the BB and BB ante next hand; in part due to the fact that, whichever of those three hands Tsang has, he should always fold to the cold reshove and call-off.

Even in a worst-case scenario against Ketzer and Sternheimer-- say, Ketzer has TT and Sternheimer has AKs-- we're still 52% to triple up, and, again knocking out Ketzer gives us a ladder. Passing flips is one thing, passing a spot where you have like an 18% edge in the worst-case non-AA scenario is not. (And, again to drive that home, with the actual hands as they were, Foxen passed up a 77% opportunity to triple up.)

The sim from MTT DB Review says it all - KK is a call but its close enough that the fold isnt as bad as it looks at first glance. The gap between KK (call) and QQ/AKs (clear fold) is actually pretty narrow in these spots. People forget that ICM makes the equity you need to call way higher than in a chip EV spot. Still a call for me but I get why someone would fold if the pay jump is life changing money.

The ICM figures don't take into account the full advantage of a big stack, when you can take advantage of everyone else making tight ICM folds.

Also, it clearly wasn't life changing money for her.

Which of course means ICM is WRONG.

Kristen Foxen is not in a life changing money situation. If I am not mistaken she is married to Alex Foxen the guy who is a big winner at Triton and she has won over $10,000,000.

But here is an article that may have spe...

"Fourth-place finisher Kristen Foxen earned $325,000. The result made her the second woman to earn over $10 million in live tournament cashes. The PokerStake-backed pro is one of the most consistent players in high rollers. Despite that, she came close to capturing her first Triton title before bowing out in a key hand against Liu.

I wondered if many of the Triton players are backed for entry fees. In my mind I was thinking that the backers might pay 80% or 90% of the entry fees and then give back only 20% (or 10%) of the winnings. But if it went in a slightly different direction (like if they only gave back 15%) then the ICM situation becomes extreme for the players.

The other possibility is that the backers make demands on the players in terms of how they handle ICM situations. When I played in Foxwoods tournaments there was a backer there who had enormous influence on how his players handled final table situations (and no I wasn't one of those players...) One guy would get so upset when he folded a hand, and he would show me the hand, and I would ask him why would he fold that hand, and he would tell me he had no choice because of his backer.

This reminds me when Alex Livingston (rumnchess) folded QQ preflop with six players left in the 2019 ME. I was able to discuss the hand with him a few days later and he explained that he had spent time studying this exact ICM spot and, despite my shock, he said was a clear fold.

I would love to see any ICM sims that show KK is a fold in Kristen's spot -- or maybe she simply thought her edge was too big to take the risk against Ax.

My stack would have been in the middle in both situations.

The Livingston QQ example actually helps clarify why KK is still a call here. QQ folds way more cleanly because it's crushed by KK, AA, and AK, so the equity just isn't there. KK only loses to AA and is ahead of basically everything else, so the ICM threshold to call is much more achievable. The edge argument has some validity in theory but you'd need a massive skill advantage to justify folding KK at a final table, and even then most solvers don't support it.

This is clearly an ICM situation for Kristen Foxen. I have seen her on a few final tables in the Triton TV series and she is an absolute ICM junkie. In this spot there are a number of problems but best case she is likely up against Ax and PP and the 4th player folds if she is in. The odds for her to win that would be about 57% and 43% to be knocked out. She did tank fold. The bigger problem for her was that it was possible that the 3-bettor had AA and she would get knocked out 80%+ of the time in that case. The other problem was that if the 4th guy was in with a different PP then she has under a 48% chance to win. She preferred to ladder up.

I forget the exact situation but it was a WSOP Main Event many years ago and I think it was a final table but it could have been close to a final table I also forget the exact action but it involved 3 players. Two of them had KK and one had AA. There were a bunch of raises (by each player) and then an all in followed by another all in and the announcer was saying he thought the last player should fold his KK because he should suspect that one or both of the other guys could have AA. But the player called with his KK...

I played a hand in Prague where a woman opened UTG (she had about 1/4 my stack), then a guy 3-bet, there was a caller, and the guy to my right 4-bet. I looked down at KK and 5-bet jammed. The woman called (quickly) two folds and the guy to my right tanked a little and called with AK. She had AA of course. I was stunned that he called and of course I held against AK and lost to AA and actually gained chips on the hand. We weren't in the money yet, but still.

i remember that exact kk vs kk vs aa situation and couldn't believe the 3rd guy with kk called - thought it was genuinely one of the worst calls i've ever seen before

not that crazy of a fold. The other players played pretty bad imo. KK is a gii but QQ is a fold so it cant be that bad in theory