Call or Fold? What GTO Solver Says About Negreanu’s Pocket Tens at the WSOP Online Final Table

This was the $25,000 WSOP Online High Roller Championship, four players left. Blinds were 100,000/200,000 with a 25,000 ante. Stacks: SB (chip leader) 57.1bb, BB (Negreanu) 28bb, CO 11bb, BTN 7.9bb. The chip leader in the small blind shoved all in for 28bb. Negreanu in the big blind snap-called with pocket tens. The chip leader showed 9-8 offsuit and the board ran A-9-6-8-K, giving the shover two pair and eliminating Negreanu in fourth for $415,699.75.

With two much shorter stacks still alive, the tournament's payout jumps make elimination much more costly than the potential upside of doubling. The solver's Bubble Factor quantifies that: Negreanu's Bubble Factor versus the chip leader is 2.8. In plain terms, the money he would lose by busting is 2.8 times the money he'd gain by doubling up. That translates into a +23.7% Risk Premium — he needs roughly 24% more equity than a straight chip-count pot-odds calculation to justify a call.

GTO Wizard's preflop ICM solver finds the SB's shove with 98o to be a profitable play (+$4,380.01 versus a 3.5bb raise at +$4,372.76). For the BB facing that shove, pocket tens fall just inside the solver's calling range at about 2% frequency. The solver's headline conclusion: both players reached strategies that are close to optimal individually — the SB's shove made sense and TT is marginally a call according to the solver.

Why the chip leader often raises instead of always jamming

If you're the short stack (Negreanu's role here), ICM pressure makes you tighten dramatically. Even a strong overpair like TT is marginal when your Bubble Factor and risk premium are this large. If you're the chip leader, using a mix of raises and shoves maximizes long-term $EV by exploiting that ICM pressure.

What this means for live decision-making

• As the shover, mix polar opens and pure shoves to avoid being exploitable and to maximize exploitative profit versus short stacks who must fold marginally.

Bottom line: the solver backs the chip leader's shove and places TT on the razor's edge as a call. Negreanu's snap-call was defensible by solver output but carried substantial ICM risk and therefore was a close, marginal decision rather than a clear mistake.