Episode 23 with Guest Host Leo Wolpert

Leo Wolpert, whom you may remember from Episode 10, is back as a co-host this week. He shares a hand from a recent WSOP circuit event and a story from his friend Jason Somerville’s blog.

Strategy Segment

Leo starts the hand with 10K, everyone else covers. Blinds are 100/200/25. Leo raises to 500 with 88 UTG. The player three seats off the button calls and the big blind calls.

Flop (1825) QJJr Leo bets 800, both call

Turn (4225) QJJTr All check

River (4225) QJJT8 BB checks, Leo bets 2300, one fold, BB raises to 6000, Leo folds.

Book Club

It’s Part II of Ed Miller’s Playing the Player, plus some follow-up from last week’s discussion. Next week will be Part III: Bad Players, and the week after that Ed himself will be on the show to field your questions, so please send them in to podcast@thinkingpoker.net or @ThinkingPoker on Twitter.

Timestamps

0:30 Hello and welcome; updates from Leo
4:50 Amateurish online poker site management
12:20 Strategy: Folding a full house
30:10 Book Club: Part III of Ed Miller’s Playing the Player
1:20:22 Outro

Editor’s note: Easily the most laugh out loud funny episode to date.

Edit: Forgot to include the audio file!

Edit: Wow, extra sloppy this morning! Added the river card to the hand history.

10 thoughts on “Episode 23 with Guest Host Leo Wolpert”

  1. I’m not sure if you changed your technology – I wasn’t able to play this on IE, had to use chrome, when before it was the other way around.

    • I’m impressed you were able to play it at all considering I neglected to include the audio! Sorry about that, it’s there now.

  2. Enjoyable podcast, especially liked the discussion on playing against the lag and calling down out of position. Not something I’ve thought about before, but I have noticed some odd call-down lines in biggish pots the times I’ve played 2/5 and never put it together that this might be the reason.

    On Leo’s hand, I can see his reasoning for betting, even after the tell, but mainly to get the other villain to fold so he can have position the rest of the hand, but the bet didn’t end up accomplishing that task.

    Nate – I agree on “Their Eyes Were Watching God” – great book, had to read that twice in college for classes I took.

  3. Maybe this was in the podcast (there was a 20-30 second period where I was cooking and couldn’t hear) but I think more attention should be paid to the fact that the BB overcalled the flop bet. This is one of the most powerful range definers against all but the best/worst opponents. He has a jack or better virtually 100% of the time (AK would probably fold and its heavily discounted because no 3bet pre), and is never check raising a jack on this river–with the one possible exception being J9, but that is also a terrible check raise.

    Good fold, and a great reminder of both why the category that your hand falls into (e.g. full house) is basically useless and can be counterproductive as well as why 88 on this board has such low equity/playability/reverse implied odds.

    Strongly agree with AB that I am check-giving up in this spot. Yes the board is paired and rainbow but it is not “dry” in the relevant sense because so much of our opponent’s calling ranges have queens and jacks in them, along with straight draws/overs that it will be difficult to play against.

    • Very nice post. I agree that we didn’t pay sufficient attention to the flop overcall, which is indeed an important fact. I’m not sure that it’s a Jack or better “nearly 100%”–AQ and KQ will call preflop and on the flop sometimes, people just make bad calls with other hands sometimes, and he could have an OESD. But I do think the strong flop calling range is a more important part of the river decision than we indicated.

    • Yeah this is an A+ post.

      Upon first listen I was thinking about check-raising the river with the thought that the in position player might turn a decent number of hands into bluffs, in addition to having 9X he could never check back. This would have the benefit of being able to fold cold when the BB springs to life. Also if on the river it goes check check bet fold check-raise, shove, we can probably check-raise fold for value in that case as well v the button. The main problem is that we will lose value to BB’s range of 9X and AJ KJ type hands when ip player checks back. But this post by mwalsh starts to make me wonder how much value there is in that.

  4. This post might confirm my status as a Level 8 Payoff Wizard, or maybe my math is wrong, but I think calling the river raise is profitable.

    Here’s my thoughts:

    There are 20 combos that beat our full house – QQ (3 combos), JJ (1), TT (3), QJ (6), JT (6), and J8 (1). Of these 20 combos, I think only 12 of them are very likely because the villain would most likely raise QQ-JJ-TT pre-flop and fold J8 pre-flop. (He could also flat TT but that doesn’t change the calculation much).

    Since we are getting 3.4 to 1 pot odds on our call (calling 3,700 to win 12,525) we only need 4 villain hand combinations that we beat in order for the call to be profitable.

    What hands could the villain play like this that we beat? I think if he rivers a straight he may check-raise the river for value, since he may discount our flop bet as a continuation bet and may discount our river bet as a value bet with trips or two pair after the turn check-through.

    So the villain just needs a hand with a 9 in it. I submit that he could definitely play T9 this way (12 combos), flopping an open-ended straight draw. Even if he just played T9 suited pre-flop that is enough combos for us to make a profitable call (assuming 12 combos beat us). I would also consider adding in a small percentage of J9 (8 combos) or 99 (6 combos).

    Even if you give the villain credit for all 20 combos that beat us (instead of just 12), we still only need 6 combos that we beat.

    So I think I would call, expect to be beaten more often than not, but still feel like I made the right play. What do you think?

  5. Nate – As you offered in the podcast, I am interested in hearing your quibbles with this part of the book. Thanks.

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