Farha runs KK into Greenstein's AA on High Stakes Poker - Part 1
An ALL IN Expert Case Study
This infamous hand occurred at the end of the night on Season 1, Episode 5 of HSP. Even if you've seen this hand before you should watch it again before continuing on with the analysis:
The game is eight handed, $300/$600 blinds with a $100 ante (Pot $1,700). Jerry Buss is the first player to act. He folds and so does Daniel Negreneau. Barry Greenstein raises to $2,500 with AA (Pot $4,200). Jen Harmon and Eli Elezra fold. Sammy Farha, playing from the small blind, re-raises (3-bets) to $12,500 (Pot $16,700) with KK. Shawn Sheikhan folds the big blind and the action is back on Barry.
Barry quickly re-raises (4-bets) $50K more (Pot $76,500). Barry started the hand with about $190K, about $10K more than Sammy, so they're each risking a whopping $180K. Sammy is put to a decision for all of his chips -- he has kings... KINGS... should he ever fold? What would you do? What if you had QQ or AK, or 76?
ALL IN Expert Can Help
If you know what type of player your opponent is (tight, maniac, etc) you can use this information to estimate what type of hands he has (his range). ALL IN Expert will then use the pot size, stack sizes, and your opponent's range to show you exactly what you should do in that spot.
Let's see how it might have aided Sammy in this hand:
1. Sammy is deciding whether he should re-raise (5-bet) all in, so we go to Preflop Raise:
2. Next, we enter information about the pot and stack sizes. ALL IN Expert supports simple addition and subtraction so you don't ever have to pull out your calculator. Sammy started with $180K ($180,050 to be exact), already contributed $12,500, and will have to put in $50K more before he can raise the rest of his stack.
3. Finally, Sammy has to estimate Barry's range. Click Create a New Range. This will bring up a separate window for you to estimate Barry's range:
Now, you have to use your judgement to determine what hands belong in Barry's range. Since Barry is a tight-aggressive player, his re-raise (4-bet) range is fairly narrow. However, given Sammy's wide re-raise range, we'll loosen Barry's range some to be: QQ, KK, AA and maybe AKo (offsuit) and maybe AKs (suited). For calculations, 'maybe' means that a hand is half as likely.
4. Finally, we determine what range Barry will call an all in with. Given the strength a re-raise (5-bet) from Sammy would show, I'd say Barry would only call with KK or AA. We create a new range for Barry, calling it 'Barry will call a 5-bet' using those hands, then click Calculate:
That's it! ALL IN Expert will automatically calculate which hands you should go all in with, taking into account everything that you've told it. It will calculate your Expected Value for each of the 169 unique starting hands byfactoring in your fold equity and all in equity, and then display it as a color coded range:
Not only should Sammy go in with KK, he should also go in with 76 suited!
It may surprise you to see how many hands Sammy should go all in with. The reason is because of the ranges we assigned Barry. If we had made Barry's re-raise (4-bet) range narrower, say to QQ, KK, and AA (without AK), there would be less profitable hands that Sammy could go all in with because Barry would be folding less often. With the ranges we assigned, going all in with KK is an easy decision. Hovering over KK shows that it will net Sammy $9,800 in the long run, or about a 20% return on his money. Even for a hand as seemingly weak as A5s, an all in would net Sammy more than $13K in the long run. In this situation, Sammy would prefer to go all in with A5s over KK. From this example, you can also see the power of suited connectors, which fair well against Barry's calling range.
Next, we'll take a closer look at Barry's decision.
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