Negative EV. Way negative...but!

Okay, here's the hand. I'll give the explanation (as cracked out as it is) afterward. Before you even see the hand, though, know that I don't think this would normally be a good play (not right now):

Seat 1: foxy293 (6753 in chips)
Seat 2: hkycrazy (19444 in chips)
Seat 3: glenmawr70 (16275 in chips)
Seat 4: jlukaj (10955 in chips)
Seat 5: suezbhere (18631 in chips)
Seat 6: luke5150 (16730 in chips)
Seat 8: seehound13 (3021 in chips)
foxy293: posts the ante 25
hkycrazy: posts the ante 25
glenmawr70: posts the ante 25
jlukaj: posts the ante 25
suezbhere: posts the ante 25
luke5150: posts the ante 25
seehound13: posts the ante 25
suezbhere: posts small blind 100
luke5150: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to glenmawr70 [Td Jh]
seehound13: folds
foxy293: folds
hkycrazy: folds
glenmawr70: raises 400 to 600
jlukaj: folds
suezbhere: raises 600 to 1200
luke5150: folds
glenmawr70: calls 600
*** FLOP *** [9s Ac 8d]
suezbhere: bets 17406 and is all-in
glenmawr70: calls 15050 and is all-in
*** TURN *** [9s Ac 8d] [5c]
*** RIVER *** [9s Ac 8d 5c] [Th]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
suezbhere: shows [Ad Ks] (a pair of Aces)
glenmawr70: shows [Td Jh] (a pair of Tens)
suezbhere collected 32875 from pot

Okay. Now...I really just wanted to steal the blinds/antes at this point.

Suez was a very aggressive player with his stack oftentimes going all in either pre-flop, or on the flop (when an ace was there). But, this player wasn't that smart. Essentially, his only moves were limp, and all in. That's not too important here.

As expected, he goes all in on the flop. He reraised me with a good hand, however, it was only 600 for about a 2300 pot. Pretty good odds with my JT, as well as tremendous implied odds if I hit the flop pretty hard.

So, he goes all in, and I see that I have an OESD.

My hand stacks up to his if I think he has an ace (I wasn't sure about AK, however, he wasn't the type (from what I'd seen) to reraise with A and a card under T) at around 65-35 (I'm obviously the dog). I express that in terms of pot equity...

As you can see, I'm not completely dominated. I 'expect' to win this about 3 times out of 10, if not 4. But, next, we're going to get into the donkish, cracked out, poorly thought? idea I have on this hand. Even as I write this I almost want to delete it because I know that NO ONE that's a good player would agree with this...

Okay, this was a 4.40 180 man SnG. There were 28 of us left. 18 get paid. My opponent was 2nd in chips, and the chip leader was at another table.

I felt that no one at the table threatened me at all. In fact, the only threat that was there was this opponent and that was because of the size of his stack, and his position.

If I won this pot, I would have pretty much took out the only threat at the table (he would have had ~2200 in chips), and I would have been the chip leader. Here's where the possibly flawed IDEA (I say idea because I'm in no way suggesting that I'll ever do this again) comes into play...

As with any theory or idea, there comes assumptions (yeah, I'm stalling)...

If we think in terms of real dollars instead of chips, and we factor in some expectation we begin to get to my idea. Okay, I feel that I can expect (based on my experiences playing these tournaments) to not only get to the FT, but at least around 5th place which would give me a profit of 40.00 IF I hit this hand. Otherwise, with my chip lead, and the play of the others, I feel I could pick my spots properly, and expect at least 5th. Heck, I've got as far with much less.

Certainly that's an expectation...but, let's just say that hitting that does allow me to get at least 5th (3 tables at the time, and the FT would have been at 300/600 to 400/800 blinds), and I profit 40.00. That's 10x what I invested, yet the hand will hit more than 1 time out of 10. You could then say, in terms of a dollar expectation that this was a good call.

If I were much further out, even if it was for the same amount of chips, it would be much harder to make these assumptions...but, so close to the FT combined with the play in these tournies, and my experience, you could make a case (maybe?) that this was a good call if you run it through a bunch of trials. Otherwise, if I do that same thing 10x, I stand to make a profit.

Wacked out? Or not?

Probably wacked out.