NHL Rule 56(d): A game misconduct
penalty, at the discretion of the Referee, shall be imposed
on any player or goalkeeper who is the first to intervene
in an altercation already in progress except when a match
penalty is being imposed in the original altercation.
This penalty is in addition to any other penalty incurred
in the same incident.
This
hockey rule, commonly referred to as “Third Man In,” is
considered a serious offense on the rink. In poker,
there is a similar offense: Overcalling. Overcalling
occurs when there has already been a raise and a call. The
second person that calls the raise is overcalling.
Though it’s not an offense that will require you to spend
time in the penalty box, it could involve a hefty fine,
namely a large stack of chips.
I’ll
use one common scenario to illustrate how overcalling can
be particularly dangerous and, more importantly, unprofitable.
You’re playing in a No Limit Hold’em cash game, and there
has been an all-in bet before the flop and before the action
gets to you, another opponent calls (or reraises all-in).
You have Big Slick (A-K) and go into the tank to decide
what to do.
The
first thing you need to do is determine what types of hands
your opponents might be playing. Here are some possible
situations:
1.
The first raiser is on tilt and/or is an extremely aggressive
raiser. He’s gone all-in several times with sub-par
hands. He could easily have something like J-10
suited. The caller/reraiser is an average player
who tends to overvalue pocket pairs, preferring to go
heads-up all-in before the flop with medium pocket pairs
like 7-7. Depending what suits everyone has (and
whether or not you’re suited), you should expect to win
between 35-40% of the time. This may sound great:
you’re only putting in 33% of the chips and winning more
often than that, so you have a positive expected value.
But before you get too excited, there are a couple of
things to consider: a) Do you want to risk a large
amount of chips when you are only a marginal favorite?,
and b) these hands are probably a best-case scenario.
In other words, it is entirely possible that your opponents
have better hands than these.
2.
Let’s consider that the aggressive raiser on tilt still
has a marginal all-in hand, but it just happens to be
better than J-10. Let’s say that he has A-10 off-suit.
Two things happen: a) Your odds of winning the hand
drop to make your call even less profitable—you
will now win between 34-38% of the time, and b) you are
no longer the favorite to win the hand. The pocket
7’s are now the frontrunner, favored to win nearly half
of the time since one of your Aces is tied up by your
opponent.
3.
Let’s tweak the scenario further to make it look like
an all-in confrontation by two better players. The
original raiser now has A-K and the caller/reraiser has
a bigger pocket pair, something like jacks. This
changes the scenario in three ways: a) The other
A-K has two of your outs, so you are less likely to hit
your hand, b) the jacks are taking up two of your straight
outs, so you are less likely to hit your hand, and c)
even when you do hit your hand, almost all of the time,
you will have to split the pot with the other A-K.
Because of these factors, you are now at a great disadvantage
to the pocket jacks, and you’re expected to win only between
17-22% of the time.
4.
If it turns out that one of your opponents happens to
have pocket aces (which tends to be a hand that people
like to have when they are all-in before the flop), then
you are at an extreme disadvantage, expecting to win around
10% of the time or less.
In
short, overcalling with A-K before the flop is generally
either a marginally profitable or largely unprofitable play,
and thus should be avoided. I understand that, most
of the time, professional poker players make their money
off marginally profitable situations. Their opponents
make slight mistakes and are punished for them. Unfortunately
in this case, the “marginally profitable” situation
is not the situation you will usually find yourself in.
Furthermore, if you apply this concept to a different situation—tournament
play—I believe that most top professionals would agree
that you shouldn’t risk your tournament life on situations
like these if you don’t have to.
Oliver
can be reached at oliver@babblog.com. |
