“The mathematically correct move is not always the best move.”
-Chip Reese
What is unexpected value? Unexpected value is doubling, although you have a positive expected value, as you know that you will get more value in a later poker situation.
Example:
I was playing an unlimited tournament. We were reduced to 18 players and only the final table would be paid. An under the gun player raised the big blind three times. This player was conservative and had not entered many pots. He had more chips than me. Everyone else folded to me on the button.
I had J-J. Everyone’s favorite hand. In this situation BandarQQ Online, if I called, I would be committed to more than half of my stack. If I were to do that, I might as well move everything, right? Of course, since the expected value was good. However, my opponent would not fold due to the size of his stack and I would be at risk for my life in the tournament.
Pocket Jacks will find a card bigger than a Jack on the flop more than 65% of the time. Going to the river, this percentage increases even more.
I did something I would never do. I gave up.
It occurred to me that my unexpected fold value was greater than the expected value that I believed to have at the time.
It ended up being the right thing to do, as I managed to take my low chip stack and finish 4th.
Let’s take this concept a step further:
You need chips to win a tournament and our goal is to win.
The expected value is a solid cash game concept, as it is about how mathematically you will be in the long run.
The expected value is not valid in all tournament decisions because a tournament is a time-limited event and where the value of a chip changes over time.
Another example of unexpected value is a player who sees the size of the pot and decides to place his last chips, since the pot is very large. Well, one of the best tournament players mentioned that he used to make that mistake and get eliminated. Now, he will save those tokens and use them to increase his stack.
Although he did not name this idea, I think it is my concept of unexpected value.
Another example is the way Phil Hellmuth plays unlimited tournaments. Phil made money more often than any other player at these events. One thing I read is that Phil doesn’t always call when he’s tied. I wonder if it’s because of the odds in the situation or because Phil knows he has an advantage in waiting for the right situation to accumulate chips.
One last example is where I took the quote above from the late Chip Reese. He told a story about how he was much better than his opponent, and risked a large percentage of his chips against this man, because he knew he had a small advantage. He was right, but ended up losing his hand. That’s when he said, “Mathematically correct play is not always the best play.” (Does anyone remember the poker book I read this in?)