Coaching Blog

First - I am no expert...but if I may be so bold as to give my analysis if you don't mind.

Your calling ranging must be based on his shoving range. Mathematically, this means you need to estimate his range, the probability of him actually holding cards in that range, and then lastly, you must figure out the equity you have in that range. (Pot odds should be considered, however in this case, odds are almost meaningless because the bet size is so big.)

So here we go...his range and the probabilities of him having those cards, then the probability of you losing/winning, then an EV calculation based on the probabilities (96 is the amount you must call in the calculations below) is shown below for the first few cards he might hold.

I leave the final six calculations for you to do as an exercise. At the end, add up the final numbers and you will see that call is -EV based on the range and the probabilities I have assigned to him holding the hands in this range. Bear in mind, the probabilities I have assigned are subjective. If you have a read that this guy does this LOTS with, say 66 and A7, the you have to adjust the probabilities.

The bottom line is this: you are obviously not going to do this exercise every time a guy shoves 100BBs into your medium pocket pair. But, in general, you can see that calling is generally going to be what you intuitively probably already knew...and that it is a bad call under almost any circumstance with stacks 100BB deep (you're getting slim odds) and no reads.

Yeah, he takes your $4.00, but you stand to lose far more in the long run calling this bet with TT under this particular set of circumstances.

Again, this is my humble opinion. I hope it is of some value. If not, that's ok, toss it in the dumpster.

Good luck.

AA - 30% - 81/19 (96 x .19 - 96 x .81) x 30% = -18.45
KK - 25% - 81/19 (96 x .19 - 96 x .81) x 25% = -14.88
QQ - 16% - 81/19 (96 x .19 - 96 x .81) x 16% = -9.52
JJ - 8% - 82/18 .... -4.91
TT - 0% (it's not really zero, but since you have TT I am saying it is)
99 - 3% - 18/82
88 - 2% - 18/82
22-66 - 1% - 18/82
AK - 15% - 44/56
AQ - 8% - 44/46
AIR - 2% - 87/13

(And for what it's worth, I have made stupid calls like this and I'll be damned if the guy doesn't show up with AA - QQ every time...that is prompted me to study the math.)