Room for Error

I was 8-tabling 1/2 NL on Wednesday, something I’ve decided to do for a while because I’ve been running kind of bad and it’s starting to stress me a bit and influence my decision making. Also, I’ve wanted to improve my multi-tabling skills for a while, and I don’t want to dive right into 8 tables of 2/4 or 3/6. So I was looking to play poker without too many tricky decisions and at stakes where the money would not matter too much to me.

The hand itself might be kind of rudimentary, especially at a depth of 100 BB’s, but it addresses a mistake that’s more common with mediumish stacks in tournaments, and it’s a good followup to the last hand I posted. Oh, and I didn’t have many interesting hands from this session, and this one sticks out in my mind for reasons that will become obvious.

Anyway, it’s folded to me with AKo in the CO, and I pot it for $7, which I’ve been doing with probably like 1/4 of my hands. This is tighter than I usually play from this position, but that’s because the guy to my left is kind of maniacal and not allowing me to steal his button very often.

Sure enough, he repots to $24. With a big pot rapidly developing, it’s important to pause to take stock of the situation and think about what you want to happen (when you’re multi-tabling, this may mean timing out on another table, but that’s just a cost of doing business). Against this player from these positions, I was looking to get all of the money in pre-flop.

The next question is how I want to do that. With a hand like AK, you don’t necessarily want to go to showdown, since even significantly worse hands can have significant equity in the pot. This, combined with the fact that they want to “see five cards” often leads players to overbet shove AK rather than risk being lost on a whiffed flop. However, this often allows your opponent to play almost perfectly: he’ll read you for AK, fold hands you dominate, and call with hands that crush you and hands that have 50% equity (ie pocket pairs). He may fold some of his lower pairs, but you’re missing out on too much by not giving him any more rope.

I decided to re-pot it again, to $75. This was definitely an opponent-specific decision, as plenty of players will not be reraising as light as this guy or will be capable of recognizing how strong this play is and throwing away stuff like AQ. Against this particular opponent, though, I wanted to leave room for him to bluff at it again or make a bad call. Although I’m not going to fold anything with $150 and $120 more for me to call pre-flop, maniacs will convince themselves to shove anyway, or will insist on seeing a flop with whatever garbage they reraised.

But didn’t I say I was looking to get it in pre-flop? Yes, but I also want my opponent to make a mistake. When he has the chance to put the last bet in, his range will be wider than when I put the last bet in and he calls, and will include more hands that AK beats.

My opponent just calls the bet. Is this a disaster for me, since the money didn’t go in pre-flop like I wanted? Again, his range is wider calling this bet than it would be if I overbet all in. With $150 in the pot and $120 left in the effective stacks, I’m intending to shove any flop. This is very nearly the equivalent of getting it in pre-flop, since I still see five cards, and although he may fold some hands that I would prefer he call, he may also make some incorrect folds of hands that have more than 44% equity against my AK. He could even fold hands that are ahead if he has, for instance, an underpair to the board. Best of all, when he does fold garbage he would have folded pre-flop anyway, I take three times as much money from him as I would have had I overbet shoved for $200 preflop.

The flop came out 752r, I moved all in, and he unfortunately called with 85o and stacked me. It’s of course very unlikely that he would have called all in with this hand preflop, and it may be tempting to say that my “fancy” play cost me $200 when I could have won $24 instead. However, the fact remains that if he folds the 85, he plays correctly, whereas if he calls and then folds any flop that he misses, he will lose money in the wrong run (not to mention the times that he calls the flop and loses anyway or mistakenly folds the flop).

I realize this hand will look pretty basic to some, but it’s one of the only ones I remember from Wednesday’s session, and I am trying to post a hand from every session.