Posts Tagged ‘5-bet’

I started the day with 30K, quickly ran it up to 80K, dropped back down to 40K, ran it up to 130K, dropped down as low as 36K, then quickly ran back up to 140K and finished the day with 127,200.

Despite the swings, it was actually a really boring day. It was a soft starting table, but a couple of people lost their chips early and soon better players had taken their seats. The field is tough enough that it probably was a softer than average table throughout the day, but that doesn’t mean anyone was giving chips away.

I got my first double up early, opening with 22 in early position and getting called by one of the weaker players. I bet-shoved a 2d 7c Tc flop and held vs. ATs. After that I won a small pot raise-calling 44 in the CO vs. a German online player who turned out to have TT but couldn’t win the flip. It was a shame, because we’d been talking and he was the friendliest guy I’d played with all day.

He was soon replaced by Matt Waxman, who proved to be a good player but a much less pleasant table mate.  Read the complete post...

I let a guy get under my skin and tilt me tonight, which I almost never do. We were at a $2/$4 deep-stacked table, and he was just relentlessly aggressive pre-flop, both in and out of position. He was cold 4-betting me, he was 3-betting me, he was 5-betting me, etc. and always with perfect timing. Like I was getting no action on my big hands but getting re-raised constantly when I was at the middle or bottom of my range. Initially I think I was dealing with it well, but he was running well and so sucking out with whatever garbage he’d 3-bet from out of position. Then I made a stupid 6-bet all with A3s and he pretty well owned me by 5-bet-calling 99 for 250BB’s. Then we got into another big pot where he called a 4-bet from out of position with 65s, flopped a flush draw, turned a pair, got it in against my TPTK for 250 BB’s, and sucked out on the river. I swore out loud after that one, which is something I used to do a lot but that I’ve tried to stop doing in the last year.  Read the complete post...

I had a deep run but ultimately a disappointing 15th place finish in last night’s $1000 Super Tuesday tournament on PokerStars, which performance they chronicled on their blog. I say “disappointing” not only because I went from 2/18 to out in 15th but also because I felt like I wasn’t playing all that well in the late game and mostly just accumulated chips through running good on pre-flop all-ins.

The tournament got off to a good start, with me picking up big pots from two different players who frankly played their hands pretty badly:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em Tourney, Big Blind is t40 (9 handed) Hand History converter Courtesy of PokerZion.com

SB (t4191)
BB (t1466)
UTG (t3066)
UTG+1 (t5619)
MP1 (t4260)
MP2 (t6164)
MP3 (t5035)
CO (t4405)
Hero (t6269)

Preflop: Hero is Button with 9h, 7h.
6 folds, Hero raises to t80, SB raises to t200, 1 fold, Hero calls t120.

Flop: (t440) 7c, 9c, 9d (2 players)
SB bets t320, Hero calls t320.

Turn: (t1080) 3d (2 players)
SB bets t600, Hero calls t600.

River: (t2280) 2s (2 players)
SB bets t960, Hero raises to t5149, SB calls t2111 (All-In).

Final Pot: t10500

Results in white below:
SB has 7s Qs (two pair, nines and sevens).
Hero has 9h 7h (full house, nines full of sevens).
Outcome: Hero wins t10500.  Read the complete post...

My post from last night flubbed a simple equation badly enough that I felt the need to scrap it and start over from scratch. I’ve left the old post up for posterity’s sake and so people can see what not to do. Here’s what I should have said:

Blinds are $.50/$1 and effective stacks are $100. Hero opens to $3 with AQs in the CO. An aggressive player on the BTN 3-bets to $10, blinds fold, and action is on Hero. I believe that 4-bet-folding here is a mistake. I also believe that when possible, we should prefer 4-bet-calling to flat-calling if for no other reason than because it is more effective at deterring future 3-bets. The question is “How often does BTN have to be 3-betting before 4-bet-calling becomes better than just flat-calling?”

There are better and more complicated answers to this problem than the one I will find here. You will get a better answer if you can estimate a 5-betting range for Villain and then perform the same calculations that I do here. You will get an even better answer if you come up with an entire 4-betting range for yourself, including both hands that fold to a 5-bet and those that call. As an example, though, we will solve for the minimum 3-betting range such that 4-bet-calling AQs is unexploitable.  Read the complete post...

Edit: As several commenters pointed out, I screwed this up in multiple ways. I’m getting ready to start up a session, but I’ll be making a new post with a corrected equation soon. In the meantime, you can disregard this post unless you’re curious to see whether you can spot the errors (there are hints in the comments section). In my defense, I was addled with fever at the time that I posted this.

One of my students and I were recently discussing a common situation: You open with AQs in the CO and get 3-bet by an aggressive player on the button. Assuming 100 BB stacks, I don’t like any line that results in you folding pre-flop. I think your options are either to 4-bet-call if you think his shoving range will be wide enough or just to call the 3-bet if you think you’d have to fold to a 4-bet.

He then asked me what would be the cut-off, in terms of the BTN’s 3-betting range, for 4-bet-calling vs. just calling the 3-bet and taking a flop. I wasn’t prepared to give an answer off the top of my head, and as I started working it, I figured it would be an interesting blog post.  Read the complete post...

Tournament Statistics

Certainly an above average year in tournaments, with an FTOPS win, a WCOOP final table, a SCOOP final table bubble, and a top 100 finish in the WSOP Main Event. No room to complain about anything here. My true ROI is probably in the neighborhood of 100%, so I ran well above expectation. The high average buy-in and field size indicate that I focused my play on big buy-in events and special huge-field events like the WCOOP, FTOPS, and Sunday tournaments, which was the goal.

ROI: 395.8%

ITM: 17.5%

Average Buy-In: $546

Average Field Size: 2,204

Average Finish: 38.7%

Win Rate: .73 Buy-Ins/Hour

Biggest Win: $2000 FTOPS 2-Day NLHE

Cash Game Statistics

These numbers aren’t as bad as they look. Basically I got creamed in some high stakes heads up games, and those dragged down my overall win rates. Excluding heads up games, I’m up across the board, even in high-stakes games (2.5 BB/100 win rate). Basically I just need to either get better at heads up, stop playing it, or at least practice better game selection.

I’m also a little unhappy with the number of hands played. Because of my nomadic lifestyle, I was on my laptop for most of the year, with just one monitor. Thus I often played just 4 tables at once. It’s been nice getting back on two monitors, and I’m looking forward to getting a lot more hands in for 2011.  Read the complete post...

I had some tough tables in the USA COOP main event, full of aggressive tournament regulars. There was a ton of raising 3-betting, and when one player got disconnected and was not around to defend his blind, sparks really flew. I happened to have the button when the disconnected player was in the big blind, so it fell to me to defend it from everyone who was widening their ranges to attack it.

Here’s a cold 4-bet with air:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 530 Tournament, 500/1000 Blinds (9 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (Button) (t66911)
SB (t62981)
BB (t122036)
UTG (t88774)
UTG+1 (t108993)
MP1 (t104138)
MP2 (t54086)
MP3 (t76446)
CO (t165289)

Hero’s M: 44.61

Preflop: Hero is Button with Q, 7
3 folds, MP2 bets t2599, MP3 raises to t7000, 1 fold, Hero raises to t16666, 4 folds

Total pot: t18099

Results:
Hero didn’t show Q, 7.
Outcome: t18099 returned to Hero

And here’s a real rarity in tournament poker, a 5-bet bluff!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 530 Tournament, 600/1200 Blinds (9 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (Button) (t84958)
SB (t60482)
BB (t113461)
UTG (t108372)
UTG+1 (t112855)
MP1 (t50777)
MP2 (t81694)
MP3 (t70046)
CO (t167009)

Hero’s M: 47.20  Read the complete post...

My latest poker strategy article, Joseph Cheong WSOP Final Table “Blow Up“, has just been published in the December 2010 issue of 2+2 Magazine. It’s an in-depth analysis of the complex factors at play in the infamous A7 vs. QQ hand, many of which have been overlooked by commentary thus far:

Though some have questioned it, Duhamel’s decision to risk his tournament life with QQ seems intuitive enough when we see that Cheong is indeed capable of making a move like this. It was Cheong’s play with Ace-rag that really raised eyebrows. The conventional wisdom has been that this was a “blow up”, a spiraling out of control of the disciplined aggression that had kept Cheong in control of the final table for most of the day.

I am not so quick to agree. I can’t say for certain whether his play was correct, but I can imagine circumstances that would justify it. Whether those circumstances existed I don’t know, because I was not at the table that night, but neither were those rushing to condemn his play. The critiques that I’ve read have generally failed to address the possible justifications for this aggressive move. In short, I’ve concluded that while Cheong’s play certainly looks reckless, we don’t have the information we’d need to judge him definitively.  Read the complete post...