£11 Bounty Hunter. 7 left, 6 paid. We are at the three-handed table. The villain has a £12.21 bounty on his head. He is 7th of 7, the second shortest stack is on the other table with 7,000 chips.
A min-cash is worth £20.65. You already have £16.68 banked in head-prizes. The villian is a strong aggresive player and has proven to be a tough opponent. He will be well aware of the bubble as we are in H4H play.
The villain open-shoves his 3.75BB stack. You have junk. According to the Nash Equilibrium chart (opitimal HU push/fold ranges that ignore ICM) your hand is a fold.
Do you call or fold? And why?
Player | Action | Cards | Amount | Pot | Balance |
---|
* | Small blind | | 400.00 | 400.00 | 3020.50 |
GaryQQQ | Big blind | | 800.00 | 1200.00 | 28376.00 |
| Your hole cards | | | | |
tantulus50 | Fold | | | | |
* | All-in | | 3020.50 |
Comments
That's what it's worth to us to win, I think.
Part of me thinks that, as long as a particular bounty isn't overwhelmingly more valuable than any other, the cost of losing our chips trying to claim a bounty with an otherwise -EV play would completely offset the value of that bounty... as we can't now use those chips to win a bounty in future.
That would seem to suggest that bounties should make no difference to our decisions and we should make our decisions based on things like cEV and ICM.
Not sure though. Requires more thought, I think.
In this situation we have the villain covered so badly that we're getting 40% ish on the call. We're also looking at a spot to ladder and claim that bounty (whether that makes a difference or not), without really risking much. We probably should assume the villain is actually shoving any two.
40% isn't great with 9-high, but meh. It's not a big mistake to call, either way. Stove will tell you how 93 plays against a range of ATC.
Personally I'd say he's a bit tighter than atc on the stone-cold bubble. If he has utter trash he can see another two hole-cards with 3.25BB on the button, then another two on the big blind if he sees trash again. Meanwhile there's always the chance that AA might run into KK, or something similar, between two other players. He will be aware he has no FE.
I'd say top 60% of hands is more likely, in which case our 93o has 33% equity.
Clearly xxx chips plus a head prize is worth more than xxx chips alone.
Rightly or wrongly my thought process goes something like this;
The head prize is worth £9.15 to us, so that's 91.5% of a £10 buy-in (excluding rake). So you could say the head-prize is worth 91.5% of a 2000 chip starting stack, or 1830 chips.
So now the pot is worth 4220 + 1830 = 6050. Therefore our 2620 call becomes much easier. Getting well over 2/1 we have enough equity to call against a range much tighter than atc.
Am I working this out correctly? I'm not sure that I am. The the reason I posted this simple hand is because I'd like to know the correct mathmatical approach to evaluating these Bounty Hunters spots. Any thoughts gratefully received.
If we don't put those chips into the pot in a -EV situation, they could be more valuable in future, when we find a +cEV spot to put those chips in. That +cEV may well also have a bounty on the line which we can win. In the long-term, that ought to offset the missed bounty chance of the occasions we fold.
I'm not sure if that makes complete sense written down. Sounded good in my head, though.
I'm sure someone out there has written something very convincing making one argument or another on this. None of the arguments I've ever heard have really made me believe that we should consider the bounty as a factor in our decision making.
Another situation which convinces me that it shouldn't be a factor is:
We're second in chips and the big stack shoves on us. We have KK and think we're probably crushing the villain's range.
We can fold and look to claim all the bounties at the table before taking on the big stack. There is no bounty we can win in this hand, after all.
However, if we call and win we don't lose that opportunity to claim those other bounties. We enhance our chances of doing so in the long run, even if we in fact bust in this hand, and we improve our chances of winning tournaments.
Now I'm absolutely certain that didn't make a huge amount of sense. Hope you follow my line of thought, though.
FWIW I feel this is a fold at the moment.
Chip leader was at the other table with around 32K, I was in second in chips, button at my table in third.
There were three stacks at the other table in the 7K to 9K range, the chipleader was using the bubble dynamic to run them over.
I digress, of course, that's not what we are directly talking about here. I fold. I do not take the bounty into consideration because the scores I want will be at the very top of the finishing positions. Bounties will come when they come and until I see the Head prize being worth more than the prize pool prize for the top two spots on a regular basis, I very much doubt I will change that position, feel free to convince me otherwise.
I asked about the other player Gary as I will be planning to get some chip supply in these spots anyway with one of the top stacks. The supply is present, let's leech him.
Final point, I may take a different view if we were a ton deeper, we are not that deep ourselves. Let's look after our stack for the FT and play for the gold medal eh?
We know that the chips we lose are more valuable than the chips we win in an MTT so we need to work out if the bounty on offer compensates enough to allow us to call v ATC here.
Cv = £ value of our stack if we fold
Cvw = £ value of our stack if we call and win
Cvl = £ value of our stack if we call and lose
B = £ value of villains bounty
Eq1 = % equity of our holding v villains percieved range
Eq2 = % equity of villains range v our holding
----
[Cvw+B]*Eq1 + Cvl*Eq2 = X
if X is bigger than Cv then call.
im not 100% sure my maths is right here. maybe some clever bods can tinker with the equations. but the general principal is to compare the ICM EV of each outcome and weight it to how likely that outcome is.
good luck doing that in game lol
In this particular spot my instinct is that this is one of those few situations where the head-prize turns it from a fold (in a freezeout) to a call in a Bounty Hunter.
I posted the hand here because the decision isn't quite as simple as it first appears. The head-prize and ICM both come into the equation. I used the entire timebar and typed into the chatbox 'I reckon I'm priced in with atc' before clicking the call button. FWIW the villain took it well, he said he would have called too.
If this were a freezeout hand all we need to do is estimate his range then we can do the maths. In a Bounty Hunter the head-prize adds another factor. I've yet to see a standard mathematical approach for these bounty shallow call/fold spots. I was hoping to see one in a reply
in monetary terms, the chips you lose are more valuable than the ones you win. so does the bounty compensate? thats the key question and i think the equation above solves it. maybe a genuinley clever person as opposed to a maths newb like myself could make a better job of it, but i think its on the right lines
Just as in Teddy's equation, any way you can add the bounty value to the call simply ignores the possibility of winning other bounties in future. It's not a one time thing. If you fold here, you can still claim the villain's bounty later. You can also use those chips to win other bounties and you're taking a +EV decision towards winning the tournament.
I said earlier I thought it was a call because the small blind could be shoving ATC. As Gary and Tommy have suggested that he probably isn't, then it becomes a fold. The bounty value should be irrelevant... I think.