MARIA KONNIKOVA

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Timestamps

0:30 hello
24:19 strategy

Links

Bundyville
Stone Mattress
Underworld

Strategy

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/28666025_17A2638EF1

HH below for those who can’t open Boomplayer.

PokerStars Hand #190740522966: Tournament #2378947329, $500+$500+$50 USD Hold’em No Limit – Level VIII (500/1000) – 2018/09/06 15:38:54 ET
Table ‘2378947329 32’ 8-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: MrSweets28 (151471 in chips, $1000 bounty)
Seat 2: twirlpro (103945 in chips, $500 bounty)
Seat 3: ThePateychuk (33893 in chips, $500 bounty)
Seat 4: flavioreis88 (32690 in chips, $500 bounty)
Seat 5: dlanger610 (21467 in chips, $500 bounty)
Seat 6: foucault82 (106373 in chips, $500 bounty)
Seat 7: gremistaAK (61218 in chips, $500 bounty)
Seat 8: abarone68 (40999 in chips, $750 bounty)
MrSweets28: posts the ante 125
twirlpro: posts the ante 125
ThePateychuk: posts the ante 125
flavioreis88: posts the ante 125
dlanger610: posts the ante 125
foucault82: posts the ante 125
gremistaAK: posts the ante 125
abarone68: posts the ante 125
flavioreis88: posts small blind 500
dlanger610: posts big blind 1000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to foucault82 [Ah Kh]
foucault82: raises 1222 to 2222
gremistaAK: raises 4778 to 7000
abarone68: folds
MrSweets28: raises 9500 to 16500
twirlpro: folds
ThePateychuk: folds
flavioreis88: folds
dlanger610: folds
foucault82: calls 14278
gremistaAK: calls 9500
*** FLOP *** [6c 5c 3s]
foucault82: checks
gremistaAK: checks
MrSweets28: bets 12500
foucault82: calls 12500
gremistaAK: folds
*** TURN *** [6c 5c 3s] [2d]
foucault82: checks
MrSweets28: checks
*** RIVER *** [6c 5c 3s 2d] [6h]
foucault82: bets 77248 and is all-in
MrSweets28: folds
Uncalled bet (77248) returned to foucault82
foucault82 collected 77000 from pot
foucault82: doesn’t show hand
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 77000 | Rake 0
Board [6c 5c 3s 2d 6h]
Seat 1: MrSweets28 folded on the River
Seat 2: twirlpro folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 3: ThePateychuk (button) folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 4: flavioreis88 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: dlanger610 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: foucault82 collected (77000)
Seat 7: gremistaAK folded on the Flop
Seat 8: abarone68 folded before Flop (didn’t bet)

Bloch discussed Full Tilt Poker and Black Friday at length with Diamond Flush Poker. We discussed the subject, and The Lederer Files, with Matt Parvis on Episode 7.

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello & Welcome
11:48 – Strategy
34:40 – Andy Bloch

0:30 Hello & Welcome
54:53 Strategy

Timestamps

0:30 – hello
8:08 – strategy

Strategy Hand 1

Effective stack: 22K

Blinds: 300/600, 100 ante

I was under the gun with pocket tens and raised to 1500. I was called by a guy who looked to be in his mid twenties, an middle aged guy on the button, and an older gentleman directly to my right in the big blind.

Pre-flop Pot: 7300

Flop comes Kd/8h/10h. The bb checks to me and I bet 2500. The two callers fold and the bb calls.

Flop Pot: 12,300

The turn was a 2 of clubs. BB checks, I bet 4500. He calls.

Turn Pot: 21,300

The river was a 9 of diamonds. He thought for about 20 seconds and then bet 5K.

Strategy Hand 2

$2/$5 NL. I open raise in mp to $20 with JdJh. One caller on button.

Flop JcQh2s

I bet $35, he calls.

$111 in pot, turn comes 9c. I bet $65, he raises to $200 total, I call.

$511 in the pot, river is a 5d.

I check. He bets $200.

You can follow Berk on Twitter @BerkBrown, and you can listen to our interview with Andrew Moreno for more details on the coaching/staking arrangement Berk mentions.

Timestamps

0:30 Hello & Welcome
13:53 Strategy
43:44 Berk Brown

Strategy

$.50/$1 NLHE 6-Max

Hero opens to $3 UTG, Villain 1 calls UTG1, Villain 2 calls on Button.

Flop ($10.50) 7h 5h 4s. Hero bets $5, both call.

Turn ($25.50) 8h. Hero checks. Villain 1 bets $1, Villain 2 raises to $15, Hero calls, Villain 1 folds.

River ($56.50) Qs. Hero checks, Villain 2 bets $30.75, Hero?

My new Fundamentals of Game Theory course is a series of lessons to introduce you, step by step, to fundamental game theory concepts and help you apply them to real world poker situations. This course is not about trying to memorize and implement solver solutions in your actual play; it’s about studying solutions in order to learn the core principles of optimal play, so that you can recognize and exploit opponents who play sub-optimally.

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For questions, more information, or to sign up, please comment here or write andrew (at) thinkingpoker (dot) net.

Part One is now live, and the rest should be going up over the course of the next week or so.

If you’re not yet a Tournament Poker Edge member, let this be your impetus to sign up!

The Washington Post ran a story about Jamal shortly after his commutation.

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello & Welcome
5:50 – Strategy
35:35 – Interview: Jamal Hanson

Strategy

This is 2-3 NLH game (9 handed). There is a $6 straddle for this hand. It’s folded to me in middle position and I raise to $17 with the KdQh. The button calls and the straddle calls. Effective stacks are $300.

Flop: KhJc6d

Straddler checks, I bet $30 into the $50 pot. Button calls and the straddler folds.

Turn: KhJc6d 9d

I check The button quickly bets $60 into $110. I call.

River: KhJc6d 9d 10s

Hero?

The great thing about this kind of review is that the hand examples come from the smaller stakes tournaments that most members play, which provides plenty of opportunity to talk about what does and doesn’t work against those kinds of opponents.

If you’re not already a member, this is a great time to sign up and get access to this plus dozens of my other videos and hundreds more from other instructors!

Oh and do check out the KL Cleeton interview if you haven’t already, it’s one of my favorites from this year!t

Saturday started early. Usually I deal with that by late registering, but the 7AM event was a progressive knock-out, and although Stars allows late registration in those, it’s a financial disaster to do so. So I figured I would play that and then see how I felt for the afternoon event.

It got off to a rough start. A guy put in a crazy amount with 22 against my AK, which wasn’t the end of the world since I covered him, but his pair held up so instead of getting his bounty I got short-stacked. I managed to make a recovery though (it’s easy to get your money in good as a short stack in a bounty event, because everyone else has incentive to call you very light) and after this extremely fun hand I had more chips than anyone else in the tournament (also on Boom if you’d rather watch the replay):

PokerStars – 1250/2500 Ante 325 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

MP+2: 69.55 BB (VPIP: 19.40, PFR: 10.61, 3Bet Preflop: 2.86, Hands: 67)
CO: 88.92 BB (VPIP: 13.75, PFR: 7.50, 3Bet Preflop: 2.56, Hands: 81)
BTN: 17.37 BB (VPIP: 17.69, PFR: 4.65, 3Bet Preflop: 3.23, Hands: 131)
SB: 22.61 BB (VPIP: 26.74, PFR: 16.67, 3Bet Preflop: 16.28, Hands: 87)
Hero (BB): 166.42 BB
UTG: 85.05 BB (VPIP: 19.64, PFR: 12.50, 3Bet Preflop: 4.17, Hands: 57)
UTG+1: 54.64 BB (VPIP: 17.95, PFR: 10.26, 3Bet Preflop: 4.35, Hands: 39)
MP: 51.98 BB (VPIP: 31.34, PFR: 19.08, 3Bet Preflop: 9.23, Hands: 136)
MP+1: 129.68 BB (VPIP: 17.61, PFR: 13.81, 3Bet Preflop: 10.48, Hands: 517)

9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.67 BB) Hero has 7c 9d
fold, fold, MP raises to 2.3 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 1.3 BB

Flop : (6.27 BB, 2 players) Ts 9c Th
Hero checks, MP bets 2.32 BB, Hero raises to 5.59 BB, MP calls 3.27 BB

Turn : (17.46 BB, 2 players) 8h
Hero checks, MP bets 6.36 BB, Hero raises to 15.41 BB, MP calls 9.05 BB

River : (48.28 BB, 2 players) 4s
Hero checks, MP bets 28.55 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 28.55 BB

MP shows Js Kc (One Pair, Tens)
(Pre 65%, Flop 38%, Turn 23%)

Hero shows 7c 9d (Two Pair, Tens and Nines)
(Pre 35%, Flop 62%, Turn 77%)

Hero wins 105.38 BB

I’m not too pleased with the hand I busted on. I do think I should have gone broke given how the board ran out, but it would have been better to call the flop and get all in on this turn.

PokerStars – 6000/12000 Ante 1500 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

CO: 6.98 BB (VPIP: 22.16, PFR: 13.23, 3Bet Preflop: 9.18, Hands: 194)
Hero (BTN): 31.1 BB
SB: 75.19 BB (VPIP: 27.27, PFR: 10.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 11)
BB: 135.17 BB (VPIP: 18.84, PFR: 13.43, 3Bet Preflop: 3.85, Hands: 73)
UTG: 165.89 BB (VPIP: 31.67, PFR: 17.65, 3Bet Preflop: 9.09, Hands: 242)
UTG+1: 44.35 BB (VPIP: 19.67, PFR: 14.66, 3Bet Preflop: 10.24, Hands: 606)
MP: 25.96 BB (VPIP: 16.70, PFR: 11.94, 3Bet Preflop: 5.09, Hands: 504)
MP+1: 35.16 BB (VPIP: 21.00, PFR: 16.26, 3Bet Preflop: 10.31, Hands: 501)
MP+2: 37.86 BB (VPIP: 22.22, PFR: 25.00, 3Bet Preflop: 33.33, Hands: 9)

9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.62 BB) Hero has Ac Js
fold, fold, fold, MP+1 raises to 2.4 BB, fold, fold, Hero calls 2.4 BB, fold, BB calls 1.4 BB

Flop : (8.82 BB, 3 players) Tc Jc 9d
BB checks, MP+1 checks, Hero bets 2.65 BB, BB raises to 6.58 BB, fold, Hero raises to 28.58 BB and is all-in, BB calls 21.99 BB

Turn : (65.98 BB, 2 players) 2d

River : (65.98 BB, 2 players) 2c

BB shows 9c Qc (Flush, Queen High)
(Pre 40%, Flop 62%, Turn 43%)

Hero shows Ac Js (Two Pair, Jacks and Twos)
(Pre 60%, Flop 38%, Turn 57%)

BB wins 65.98 BB

I didn’t do anything too interesting in the $215 rebuy, but here’s a hand I screwed up:

PokerStars – 300/600 Ante 75 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

MP: 83.23 BB (VPIP: 33.46, PFR: 20.31, 3Bet Preflop: 6.56, Hands: 267)
CO: 51.64 BB (VPIP: 22.86, PFR: 22.86, 3Bet Preflop: 17.65, Hands: 35)
BTN: 49.94 BB (VPIP: 15.11, PFR: 8.73, 3Bet Preflop: 1.79, Hands: 140)
SB: 79.96 BB (VPIP: 20.26, PFR: 14.66, 3Bet Preflop: 6.86, Hands: 545)
Hero (BB): 96.56 BB
UTG: 37.1 BB (VPIP: 20.21, PFR: 12.43, 3Bet Preflop: 5.75, Hands: 189)

6 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.25 BB) Hero has 7s 8h
fold, fold, fold, fold, SB calls 0.5 BB, Hero raises to 3.7 BB, SB raises to 13 BB, Hero calls 9.3 BB

Flop : (26.75 BB, 2 players) 9d 4d Td
SB bets 12 BB, Hero calls 12 BB

Turn : (50.75 BB, 2 players) 6d
SB checks, Hero checks

River : (50.75 BB, 2 players) 7c
SB bets 15.73 BB, Hero calls 15.73 BB

SB shows Jc Jd (Flush, Jack High)
(Pre 82%, Flop 85%, Turn 100%)

Hero mucks 7s 8h (Straight, Ten High)
(Pre 18%, Flop 15%, Turn 0%)

SB wins 82.22 BB

I think I played the turn right, and maybe the flop? But pre-flop, I probably screwed up twice, and the river should probably be a fold. #TheyAlwaysHaveIt

PokerStars – 500/1000 PL Hi (6 max) – Omaha Hi – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BTN: 48.94 BB (VPIP: 47.62, PFR: 23.81, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 21)
SB: 122.09 BB (VPIP: 23.81, PFR: 9.52, 3Bet Preflop: 10.00, Hands: 21)
Hero (BB): 45.3 BB
UTG: 178.14 BB (VPIP: 33.33, PFR: 9.52, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 21)
MP: 33.32 BB (VPIP: 33.33, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 21)
CO: 215.82 BB (VPIP: 47.62, PFR: 19.05, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 21)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has Js As 4d Qs
fold, fold, CO raises to 3.5 BB, fold, SB calls 3 BB, Hero calls 2.5 BB

Flop : (10.5 BB, 3 players) 4h 9d Tc
SB checks, Hero checks, CO checks

Turn : (10.5 BB, 3 players) 5h
SB checks, Hero bets 10.5 BB, CO calls 10.5 BB, fold

River : (31.5 BB, 2 players) Jd
Hero checks, CO bets 31.5 BB, Hero calls 31.3 BB and is all-in

CO shows Kh 7s Ks 3h (One Pair, Kings)
(Pre 57%, Flop 43%, Turn 68%)

Hero shows Js As 4d Qs (Two Pair, Jacks and Fours)
(Pre 43%, Flop 57%, Turn 33%)

Hero wins 94.1 BB

I made the money, surprising no one more than myself, and ultimately busted with dignity, holding a pair and a wrap against top two pair that turned a boat. I had to run the equity afterwards, but I got it in with about 62%, so can’t feel bad about that:

PokerStars – 8000/16000 PL Hi (6 max) – Omaha Hi – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

MP: 35.37 BB (VPIP: 31.82, PFR: 4.55, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 22)
Hero (CO): 46.58 BB
BTN: 72.41 BB (VPIP: 29.69, PFR: 14.06, 3Bet Preflop: 4.00, Hands: 128)
SB: 40.05 BB (VPIP: 50.00, PFR: 13.33, 3Bet Preflop: 7.69, Hands: 30)
BB: 65.48 BB (VPIP: 30.56, PFR: 17.36, 3Bet Preflop: 1.96, Hands: 147)
UTG: 43.88 BB (VPIP: 42.55, PFR: 21.28, 3Bet Preflop: 5.56, Hands: 47)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 4h 3d 6d 7c
fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.79 BB, BTN calls 2.79 BB, SB calls 2.29 BB, fold

Flop : (9.37 BB, 3 players) 6h 5c Qd
SB checks, Hero bets 6.18 BB, BTN raises to 27.92 BB, fold, Hero raises to 43.79 BB and is all-in, BTN calls 15.86 BB

Turn : (96.94 BB, 2 players) 6c

River : (96.94 BB, 2 players) Ah

Hero shows 4h 3d 6d 7c (Three of a Kind, Sixes)
(Pre 44%, Flop 61%, Turn 0%)

BTN shows Kd As Qs 6s (Full House, Sixes full of Aces)
(Pre 56%, Flop 39%, Turn 100%)

BTN wins 96.94 BB

Although in retrospect maybe this just isn’t a good open from the CO? Like I said, undoubtedly lots of small mistakes.

I got trounced in the $1K in an interesting spot:

PokerStars – 175/350 Ante 45 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BB: 178.74 BB (VPIP: 22.60, PFR: 15.46, 3Bet Preflop: 8.33, Hands: 209)
UTG: 237.43 BB (VPIP: 20.20, PFR: 13.07, 3Bet Preflop: 5.60, Hands: 307)
Hero (UTG+1): 147.77 BB
MP: 121.09 BB (VPIP: 27.81, PFR: 18.67, 3Bet Preflop: 14.07, Hands: 608)
MP+1: 117.71 BB (VPIP: 22.44, PFR: 15.81, 3Bet Preflop: 9.48, Hands: 259)
MP+2: 240.61 BB (VPIP: 9.82, PFR: 5.94, 3Bet Preflop: 1.89, Hands: 226)
CO: 64.04 BB (VPIP: 23.45, PFR: 16.25, 3Bet Preflop: 7.44, Hands: 293)
BTN: 135.27 BB (VPIP: 22.26, PFR: 18.96, 3Bet Preflop: 10.53, Hands: 276)
SB: 141.29 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 13)

9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.66 BB) Hero has Ah 8h
fold, Hero raises to 2.28 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, BTN calls 2.28 BB, SB calls 1.78 BB, BB calls 1.28 BB

Flop : (10.28 BB, 4 players) 8d 2c 7h
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets 6.78 BB, fold, SB raises to 21 BB, fold, Hero calls 14.22 BB

Turn : (52.28 BB, 2 players) 7c
SB bets 35 BB, Hero raises to 124.36 BB and is all-in, SB calls 82.88 BB and is all-in

River : (288.03 BB, 2 players) 6h

SB shows 7s As (Three of a Kind, Sevens)
(Pre 36%, Flop 8%, Turn 95%)

Hero shows Ah 8h (Two Pair, Eights and Sevens)
(Pre 64%, Flop 92%, Turn 5%)

SB wins 288.03 BB

Of course it looks bad that Villain hit a two-outer, but I think he played the hand well, and there are other ways for him to win besides binking. I like my flop defend. It’s a nasty spot, but I think given how often I’ll hold overpairs in this same spot, I should continue with this hand (which blocks 88 and 87s) and mostly dump those.

I thought of the turn as a better card than it probably was. Of course it makes sets/two-pair less likely, but I didn’t really consider that 7x would be a likely flop bluffing hand for Villain because he wants to block 77 and 87s. In retrospect, folding or even calling turn might well be better than sticking it in, even with a bounty on the Villain (which really isn’t likely to come into play, come to think of it).

I had a tricky spot in the $500 that I’m still not sure about:

PokerStars – 400/800 Ante 100 NL (8 max) – Holdem – 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

UTG: 143.26 BB (VPIP: 21.55, PFR: 19.25, 3Bet Preflop: 10.53, Hands: 232)
UTG+1: 49.15 BB (VPIP: 22.62, PFR: 13.41, 3Bet Preflop: 6.06, Hands: 84)
MP: 79.88 BB (VPIP: 19.31, PFR: 15.00, 3Bet Preflop: 6.85, Hands: 668)
Hero (MP+1): 58.58 BB
CO: 62.9 BB (VPIP: 25.84, PFR: 21.32, 3Bet Preflop: 12.16, Hands: 332)
BTN: 86.71 BB (VPIP: 15.91, PFR: 10.13, 3Bet Preflop: 2.21, Hands: 398)
SB: 19.67 BB (VPIP: 21.78, PFR: 16.28, 3Bet Preflop: 9.55, Hands: 487)
BB: 68.82 BB (VPIP: 16.36, PFR: 12.79, 3Bet Preflop: 7.27, Hands: 276)

8 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.5 BB) Hero has 6d 5d
fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.28 BB, fold, fold, fold, BB calls 1.28 BB

Flop : (6.06 BB, 2 players) 4c 7d 9c
BB checks, Hero bets 4 BB, BB raises to 13.61 BB, Hero calls 9.61 BB

Turn : (33.28 BB, 2 players) 9s
BB bets 17 BB, Hero calls 17 BB

River : (67.28 BB, 2 players) Kd
BB bets 35.8 BB and is all-in, fold

BB wins 67.28 BB

It feels bad to call off so much with 6-high, but I still struggle to see a better option. The flop bet and call seem pretty clear-cut. Turn is tricky. Of course I could be in bad shape vs a 9, but I could also be very live against a flush draw, and if Villain doesn’t have the flush draw then I may get the opportunity to rep it if it comes in. I don’t think jamming the turn is any good, but I could certainly be convinced that it’s a fold.

I lost the rest with AK to 99 all in pre, nothing too exciting there.

I considered taking today off, but it’s dreary outside, so I’ll likely play the $215 rebuy.

Links

Twitch
Twitter
Joe Ingram Interview

Timestamps

0:30 – hello
4:45 – KL
62:49 – strat

Timestamps

0:30 – hello
8:29 – strat
46:20 – etay

Strategy

NLHE tournament, 2000/4000 with a 400 ante. I had the big stack at the table, at about 280k or so. The villain in this hand was second in chips with 235k. There were roughly 36 players left, with 32 getting paid.

Action folds to him in the hijack, he makes it 11,500, I have JJ, and make it 30k. All fold back to him, he calls quickly.

Pot is ~69k . He checks blind (he did this a lot). Flop comes 467r. I bet 45K, Villain calls.

Pot ~159k. He checks blind again (less common for him to do this on the turn). Turn is a 2. I check behind.

~159k. River is a 3. He thinks for a couple seconds and shoves for 161k.

Strategy

Hand 1

I’m in MP with 9c9d, a stack of $5.56 and raise to 15c, it folds around to the SB with a stack of $5.96 who 3bet to 35c. It folds back to me and I make an easy call.

** Dealing Flop ** [ 7s, 5s, 6h ] Pot: 0.75c.
Villain bets [ $0.36 USD ]
hero calls [ $0.36 USD ]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 2d ] Pot: $1.47
Villain bets [ $0.70 USD ]
hero calls [ $0.70 USD ]

** Dealing River ** [ Jh ] Pot: $2.87
Villain bets [ $1 USD ]

Hand 2

I had 77 utg and limped.  It limped around all the way to the button who just flatted.

Five players to the flop of k 7 4 rainbow.  I checked checked all the way to button who bet 12. I just called 12.  The cutoff also called.

The turn brings a 6 diamonds.  2 diamonds on the board.

I check.  Check on cutoff and the button bets 35.  I wait 30 seconds and then reraise to 100.

Cutoff hymns and haws and I put him in 75d and he calls after 1 minute or more.  The button calls instantly.

River brings j diamonds.  I check quickly and the c/o quickly moves all in for 210.

The button calls immediately for less – like 60.

Hand 3

1/2 game in Arizona. Hero has $350 effective, and is the big stack at the table. Both usual suspects limp, and hero checks his option from the BB with Ad 6s.

The flop comes all diamonds. T72. I bet $10, and one of the more laggy players three bets me to $25. The other one folds. I call.

Turn is the Jh. I check. Villain leads for $30. I call.

River comes JD, pairing the board but also giving me the nut flush. I lead for $25, Opponent clicks back pretty quickly, making it $50.

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello & Welcome
8:14 – Strategy

Strategy

Hand 1

We’re on the bubble, with 20 players remaining and 18 to be paid. Blinds are 1500/3000, and I raise to 6000 UTG (7-handed) with Tc 8c. The only player at the table to have me covered 3-bets to 12K from HJ, and I call.

Flop (34K) Ks 9h 7h. I check, he bets 15K, I raise to 45K, he calls.

Turn (124K) 4h. I bet 45K, he calls.

River (214K) Qc.

Hand 2

$1/$2 NLHE, seven-handed, $300 effective stacks.

UTG+1 opens to $15. CO and BN call, Hero calls Qh 6h in the BB.

Flop ($55) Q97r. Hero checks, UTG1 bets $20, CO and BN fold, Hero calls.

Turn ($95) 6. Hero bets $35, UTG1 raises to $100, Hero shoves.

Hand 3

$2/$5 Spread Limit O/8 with a $100 Max Bet, 9-handed, $250 effective stacks.

Hero limps AA92 UTG, several calls, Button raises to $40. Folds to Hero…

Fortunately, I managed to win the first few pots of the day, first with an open shove to take the blinds, then with an UTG raise which went uncontested, then calling a shove with AT in the BB to beat A9 from the SB for a full double.

After that, I was back in action. As I mentioned, I ended Day 1 with a major regret from the then-largest pot of the tournament, but I can honestly say that from Day 2 I can think of only very small things I wish I’d done differently. A few hands I’m proud of:

Bluff on the Bubble

We’re on the bubble, with 20 players remaining and 18 to be paid. Blinds are 1500/3000, and I raise to 6000 UTG with Tc 8c. The only player at the table to have me covered 3-bets to 12K (he said later this was a misclick and he meant to make it 17K, which I believe), and I call.

Flop (34K) Ks 9h 7h. I check, he bets 15K, I raise to 45K, he calls.

Turn (124K) 4h. I bet 45K, he calls.

River (214K) Qc. I shove about 120K, he folds AK and asks me to show. I oblige.

Better Bet Sizing Through Tells

Still on the bubble. Blinds 1500/3000. The player in the BB has only about 60K to start the hand. An active recreational player with a big stack raises to 7500 from the HJ. I have him covered and raise to 20K. A very tight player in the SB looks at his cards and instantly jams ~65K. I put him on KK at worst and am ready to fold, but then the original raiser calls, so I decide to see a flop.

Edit: I have 66!

Flop (~215K) 884r. Checks through.

Turn 4. Checks through.

River 6. Bingo. Original raiser checks, and I am trying to think about how much he might call just an Ace. In my head, I settle on a small number, 40K.

As I grab chips, he says “Dammit!” and kinda bangs the table. I know that sounds so blatant that it must be an act, but in the moment it really felt like genuine frustration at the fact that he knew I was about to put him in a tough spot. This suggested to me that he would actually consider calling a larger bet, so I bet 75K. After much agonizing, he called with an Ace. The all in player had AA, so I scooped a big one there.

Bluff Catching at the Final Table

Recent podcast guest Chase Bianchi was at the final table of 10 with me (and recent podcast guest Elena Stover finished 12th).

Blinds are 2500/5000. UTG1 limps, Chase limps in MP3, the SB folds, and I check my option with the mighty 42o.

Flop (22,500) Q54r. Checks to Chase, who bets 12,500. I raise to 30K, UTG1 folds, and Chase calls. Lots of good things can happen when I raise. Although I may well have the best hand (I don’t think Chase needs much at all to stab at this), it benefits a lot from protection. It’s even possible that I can push UTG1 off of a better pocket pair and get called when I’m ahead against Chase, if he has a draw or just a random float.

Turn (82,500) 5. I bet 45K. This is actually a pretty nice card for me. Even though it reduces the combos of sets and two-pair that I could have, I still have all of them in my range, whereas Chase has only an ever-dwindling number of 54, 44, and 55, some of which I block (suits are actually relevant here, as I imagine he might limp 54s but not 54o, but I don’t remember them). I don’t know how much Qx or 4x he’s limping, and the turn makes 5x less likely for him.

He calls. I now think his range consists of 76, Qx, pocket pairs, 54, 55, and 44 (at least some of which may check the flop). My plan is to check-call river if the straight draw misses, as I don’t think he has much incentive to jam a better pair for value.

River (172,500) 2. I check, he jams 98K, I call, and he shows 97s, which quite surprising to me. I don’t recall whether he had a backdoor flush draw on the flop, but he definitely did not have a flush draw on the turn, so I guess he just thought he was going to straight up own me. Whoops!

In addition to giving me a comfortable chip lead at the final table, this call had several good effects. It eliminated one of my toughest opponents, and it sufficiently awed most of the table such that they were not inclined to mess around with me.

The Rest

We got down to five-handed with me, a satellite qualifier, a guy named Steve who knew me from Tournament Poker Edge, a likely pro from Michigan, and a guy named Carlos Chadha – more on him in a moment.

The satellite qualifier was absolutely unwilling to put his chips in without a top 5% hand, pot odds be damned. He eventually even folded his SB, leaving himself with just three ante chips. Amazingly, he kept picking up AQ and winning with it to stay alive. Eventually, he busted in 5th place.

The kid from Michigan seemed good-natured at heart, so maybe he was just a bit tilted, because on this particular evening he was acting like a salty circuity grinder. He was the second shortest stack at the table, which meant he was handcuffed by the presence of the satellite qualifier who just wouldn’t die. He was getting frustrated at the guy’s abject refusal to put money in the pot and started just openly commenting on how bad some of his folds were. I was happy to see him go out in 4th.

As I mentioned, Steve knew me from Tournament Poker Edge. Carlos, as it turned out, knew me from Poker Savvy Plus, a pre-Black Friday training site I worked for for several years. He was old school and, now, a high roller. Literally, a super high roller. This $570 was the smallest live tournament he’d ever deigned to play. But he was in the area, and he’d never won a live tournament, and he really wanted to do so.

Much as I hate to admit it, I doubt I was the best player out of the three of us. Carlos had an aura of confidence and deep thought about him, and I never saw him miss a trick. Actually, that’s not quite true. He once called down with an unimproved K2 vs Steve, only to find that Steve was indeed bluffing… with a better King! But I mean, if the biggest “mistake” you’re making is correctly identifying a bluff and calling down with King-high….

A Hero Check

We passed chips back and forth for over three hours. Really the only interesting pot I was involved in began with me raising the button (sorry, I don’t recall the stakes – couldn’t keep notes well while playing short-handed) with Kd Qd. Carlos called in the SB, and Steve called in the BB.

Flop As Td 6c. Checks around.

Turn Jd. Bingo. Carlos checks, Steve bets 75K, I raise to 175K with about 325K behind, Carlos folds, and Steve calls.

River Tc. Certainly not what I wanted to see. I watched Steve like a hawk as the river card came down, and to his credit, he didn’t give anything away as it fell, nor as he checked. Not a lot of people can so casually react to such a significant card with so much on the line, and it was only for that reason that I even considered betting the river. I just couldn’t figure what he could call with, as I think he would have re-raised pre-flop with AK/AQ, A6 and J6 got counterfeited, and from the way he called the turn I didn’t really think he had a bare Ace. I checked and allowed my pride in finding that check to counteract my disappointment in seeing Steve roll AT for a full house.

The End

I eventually busted Steve when he jammed ATs on the button and I woke up with QQ in the SB. That left me heads up with Carlos with nearly even stacks, something like his 1.1M to my 1M. That was only 20 big blinds, so there wasn’t much room to play.

I was hoping I might at least be the more experienced heads up player, but apparently Carlos was an online heads up pro for a while. He certainly seemed to know what he was going on a 20BB stack, which to be honest that part of my game is not particularly tight. I haven’t put much thought into a button limping range, for instance.

It was over quickly, though. Just a few hands in, he limped the button for 50K, and I, now with an 18BB stack, raised to 175K with A7s. He jammed, I called, and he showed me TT. Although I turned a flush draw, I didn’t get there on the river, and Carlos won his first-ever live poker tournament!

Although A7s is a strong hand with just a single opponent and 18BBs, against a weaker player, I might not force the action pre-flop. Against Carlos, though, I didn’t feel like there was any room to pass on thin edges, so I went for the raise-call. Basically it was just a cooler, which in all likelihood was how the match was going to end one way or the other.

We finished play around 12:30, nearly 12 hours after we started, but there’s no rest for the weary. The $1500 Main Event starts today!

I suspect, though, that even if we were to give the Hero a slightly stronger holding, such as QQ, many people would still be reluctant to shove. Why is this?

I believe the overriding cause to be classic loss aversion: at some level; most human brains are more concerned about not-losing than they are about winning. Even when we can expect to win at a favorable, very profitable frequency, our guts may very well tell us to be careful.

Does that sound like you? Did you find the article helpful? Please let me know in the comments!

And don’t miss Carlos Welch’s great piece on How to Develop and Use Reads!

.Next week, Terrence Chan and Adam Schwartz of the 2+2 Pokercast will play DeepStack. I wanted to share some of my thoughts from the match with both them and the Thinking Poker community anyway, so I figure I might as well just collect my thoughts here.

1. Bet Sizes. I haven’t discussed this with the Computer Poker Research Group, but it seems like there are only a few bet sizes that DeepStack considers for its own actions (though, as I understand it, its ability to respond to diverse bet sizes is one of its chief advances over previous NLHE AIs). For instance, into a pot of 1600, it might bet 800, 1600, or 3200, but it would never choose 2291 as a bet size unless that were its exact stack size.

   This strikes me as the best opportunity to exploit DeepStack, though Terrence and Adam are probably more capable than I of determining how exactly to take advantage of that (it wasn’t something I actively tried to do during my match). Considering the range of bet sizes DeepStack does use, I suspect that generally it doesn’t lose much by not considering “weirder” amounts. However, this might be somewhat more problematic with shallow stacks, where never betting less than half pot (if that is even a constraint) might prevent it from having a bet-folding range at all.

2. Threat of a Check-Raise. These were the spots where I felt I had the most difficulty setting aside my “feel” based on how human opponents tend to play and constructing minimally exploitable ranges. There are a lot of spots where (non-elite) human opponents don’t check-raise often. This is for a variety of reasons: lack of “obvious” bluffing candidates, difficulty of checking a strong hand multiple times, etc. As a result, I think I ended up with betting ranges that were sometimes too depolarized (getting raised off of strong draws or very-possibly-best made hands sucks) or simply too wide.

   Example: There was one hand where I turned 84 into a bluff on AJ2Q4, and it check-raised me with 85o!

3. Board Coverage. Nate and I talked a bit about this on stream. This is something you see when working with solvers as well, and is probably related to (2). There are subtle things that DeepStack seems to do when making what might seem like arbitrary choices about candidates for floating or bluffing on early streets. The end result is a less predictable range on future streets.

   For instance, I know that I want to have some Kx in my three-betting range when deep, and I typically choose some combination of KTs – KAs for this purpose. DeepStack almost certainly does a better job of getting the exact frequency right, but even we miraculously had the same amount of Kx in our three-betting ranges, it probably builds its range by three-betting all combinations of Kxs at relatively low frequencies. This means it ends up connecting with boards like Q74 in three-bet pots in ways that I don’t. Likewise its candidates for peeling or bluff-raising flop can seem surprising when the truth is that the choice is arbitrary in a vacuum but there is incentive to reach turns and rivers with a wider variety of holdings than most humans do. Consequently, it’s harder (though still not impossible) to recognize a particular run out as good or bad for DeepStack based on its play on earlier streets.

4. Surprising Play. DeepStack did more than a few things that surprised us. For the most part, we were willing to believe that it “knew” better and could, after the fact, wrap our heads around why it may have done what it did. But it made one play against me that I have a really hard time believing could possibly be correct.

   At 200/400, I opened to 1200 with QTo, and DeepStack jammed 18,250 effective with 85o. When we’re talking about move all in pre-flop, board coverage isn’t going to be a consideration, and although shoving ranges won’t be strictly linear because there will exist hands where calling > shoving > folding, it’s hard to imagine how folding could ever be correct if shoving 85o is +EV here.

   It’s worth adding here that one feature of an equilibrium strategy is that it will not include “advertising” or “balancing” plays, even at a low-frequency, that have a negative expected value. Now admittedly, DeepStack does not claim to have an equilibrium strategy, but the point is that shoving, even at a low frequency, can’t be justified simply by saying it’s a balancing play. It would have to have EV not less than 0 for shoving to be correct at any non-zero frequency.

Strategy this week comes to us from Nate’s recent play in a Foxwoods $1K!

Links

Coaching Carlos

Tournament Poker Edge

NYC Live Event with Just Hands Poker

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello & Welcome
11:38 – Strategy From Nate at Foxwoods
41:41 – Interview: Angela Bassa

Strategy

Hand 1

Blinds 150/300/25. Effective stacks 30K.

Hero limps QQ UTG, UTG1 raises to 1200, UTG2 calls BB raises it 3800, Hero calls, UTG1 folds, UTG2 calls.

Flop J97tt. BB bets 7K, Hero?

Hand 2

Blinds 600/1200/200. Effective stack 72K.

Villain opens HJ to 2800, Hero calls JTo on CO, Button calls, SB calls.

Flop (11K) 9h 5c 2h. Check, check, Hero bets 5300, folds back to HJ who calls.

Turn (22.5K) 8s. HJ checks, Hero?

If you didn’t donate during the campaign, please enjoy the video and then donate whatever you feel it was worth to you. Thanks!

Edit: Courtesy of Carlos Welch, here are links to the TV footage of the hands we discuss:

Hand 1
https://youtu.be/Cbwe7cP2jQI?t=2393

Hand 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2qhk6Xuq0k

Also please note that there’s a typo in the video for Hand 2. The flop was actually 844 with two diamonds.

Timestamps

0:30 Hello & Welcome
18:29 Strategy
41:25 William Kassouf

Strategy

$2/$5 No-Limit Hold ‘Em

HJ ($2000) opens to $20. Hero ($1200) raises to $40 with Kd Kh. Button ($2000) calls, as does the small blind ($1500).

Flop ($160): 5d 6c 7h. SB checks, HJ checks, Hero bets $60, only SB calls.

Turn ($280): 3d. SB bets $150. Hero calls.

River ($580) 4d. SB bets $425. Hero?

My Day 1A table draw was quite tough, I think, given the field. Not a lot went right for me, and I busted just a few hours in.

Day 1B went much better. My starting table was amazing, I was playing six-handed with five pretty weak players and a stack that was in play from the start of the tournament and whose owner never showed up to claim it. By the end of the day, it was blinded off, contributing probably $500 in equity to me!

Despite getting into a number of good spots, I didn’t come out ahead after the first two hours of play. It was only after two better players showed up at the table that I claimed a few big pots.

I didn’t recognize the player who landed on my immediate left, but he fit the stereotype of a twenty-something grinder. He was kind of reserved and aloof and played as though he thought he everyone else was clueless (which, to be fair, several of the others basically were). This also resulted, however, in him doing some extremely exploitable things against me that cost him two large pots.

In the first, blinds are 100/200, effective stacks 40K, and the BB is the dead stack. UTG is a really obviously amateurish player who fumbles his chips and tries to raise to 300 but has to make it 400 and is blatantly not too strong here. However, I also know that this guy doesn’t like to fold to 3-bets and will even make some wild 4-bets, so I’d rather just call him with my T9dd. Problem is I’ve got this kid on my left who I’m pretty sure is going to 3-bet if I just call. So I figure fine, let him do it, we’ll play poker, and I call. Sure enough the kids makes it 2000, UTG calls, and so do I.

Flop is K32 with one diamond. We check to the kid who bets 3000, UTG folds, and I call. I can’t rep any strong hands yet, as I wouldn’t check-raise if I had a monster, but I still don’t think he has anything, and I’m going to find a bluff somewhere if I don’t pair up.

Turn is a 5, which is great because now I can bet into him, which is what I’d actually want to do with a lot of strong hands to keep from taking a free card with Ax. I bet 4000, and he quickly raises to 12K which is just extremely implausible. I mean, I don’t think he’s playing Kx this way, so either he has two-pair or better (even then I’d expect more of an act) or he’s full of it.

Still, it wasn’t easy to force myself to move in for 35K here. I didn’t relish sticking in 200 BBs with T-high no draw, but I really had a lot of confidence that this was going to work. He tanked for a while, during which I had more trouble than usual keeping a good poker face because I kept thinking about how stupid I was going to feel if he called. He eventually, folded, though, after which I felt like a genius.

A while later, at 300/600, there was now another good player at the table, and he opened to 1500 from UTG2. I just called with JJ in the SB, and kid from before raised to 5500 from the BB. This time I was sure he was strong. He wasn’t going out of his way to pick fights with the two best players at the table, especially when he had the option of just calling and seeing a cheap flop. Still, I wasn’t going to fold Jacks, so I called.

The flop came 983ss. I checked, he bet 7K (half the pot), and I called. The turn was a 5, I checked, and he bet 14K, leaving about 60K behind. There was some chance he was barreling AK, but that seemed unlikely, and he definitely didn’t have worse for value. In all likelihood, Jacks were no good. However, I also didn’t think he would have re-raised any smaller pairs or suited connectors when he could so easily call them, so really he couldn’t have better than one pair, while I had lots of sets, two-pairs, and straights in my range. This actually makes it a pretty bad idea for him to bet the turn, unless he just assumes I’m not capable of bluff raising him, because opening himself up to a bluff raise is a disaster. So, I went for it. Again, he tanked a long time, and this time he folded QQ face up!

I came into Day 2 with about twice the average in chips, but with 40% of the field remaining, we were still a ways from the money. A few hours later, my table broke, and I still had roughly the chips with which I’d started the day.

With blinds of 1500/3000/500, a player in middle position opened to 6500. I raised to 16500 with QQ on the button, and he pretty quickly ripped it in for 140K. I wasn’t thrilled, but I called it off with QQ and lost to AA, busting in about 100th place, with 63 paying. I’m not sure it was a good call – Nate and I discuss it a bit on the upcoming podcast.

The Game: $200 6-max WCOOP Event (Sunday Warm-Up Replacement). Blinds 1600/3200/400. Villain has 145K, Hero has 175K.

Reads/History: Assume each player knows the other to be a successful and experienced tournament player.

Decision Point 1: Villain open-limps As 6d in the small blind.

DP 2: Hero checks Qc Js in the big blind.

Flop (8800 in pot): Kc 8c 3s

DP3: Villain bets 3200.

DP4: Hero calls.

Turn (15200 in pot): Qd.

DP5: Villain bets 7750.

DP6: Hero calls.

River (30700 in pot): 9h

DP 7: Villain bets 22950.

DP8: Hero calls.

Leave a comment about any decision point(s) you find surprising or mistaken, and I’ll share my thoughts later in the week.

One additional note that may be helpful: try to think not just about whether Villain should bluff at all in these spots (he should) or whether Hero should ever call with less than the nuts (he should) but rather whether these specific hands are good for those purposes on each street.

DP1: Uncontroversial.

DP2: Uncontroversial at this stack depth. With deeper stacks, this is a reasonable BB vs BN 3-betting candidate, but with 100BB a 3-bet will just isolate the stronger part of Villain’s range without the opportunity to put pressure on him with draws.

DP3: I don’t see a case for a leading range. This is a really static board, which means protection isn’t much of a concern, and that’s even more true if Villain is going to c-bet too often. Hero probably has more equity on this flop, especially if Villain’s pre-flop range is too wide, but when the pot gets really large, Villain will have a slight range advantage. So, I’m really not looking to force big pots from out of position. I just rarely mind this flop checking through, so I don’t have incentive to develop a leading range.

DP4: Villain’s bet size is large for such a static board. That’s not a big deal in and of itself, but it becomes a problem if he’s also c-betting at a high frequency. For instance, this particular hand probably isn’t a +EV bet if the bet is going to be this large, as he’ll too often be drawing dead against my calling range.

DP5: I don’t think this is close. It’s similar to the question of whether to donk the flop: I don’t have many hands that want to build the pot here. Even with like A8 I can’t really check-raise for value. If I’m going to turn the hand into a bluff, there will be opportunities to do that later. Also, if I check-raise and then turn a flush, I’m not sure that I get to play it like the nuts. Finally, I have showdown value against a too-frequent c-better!

DP6: This seems to be the spot that surprised the most people. At this point I have a really significant equity advantage, especially against someone who c-bets too often. Most of my flop check-call range is going to be flush draws, trips, and pairs. All of those can value/protection bet this turn for a small size and most won’t fold to a bet. The few unpaired hands in my range love having the opportunity to bluff, and even for small sizing, it’s not that easy for Villain to peel here with, say, an underpair to the board. We should not expect him to bluff this card often. Sometimes he’ll value bet worse on the turn and then check back river, which isn’t great for us, and if he bets twice, Hero’s hand is just a bluff-catcher, albeit a profitable one. Forcing him to fold or put money into the pot on this turn card is good for Hero.

As for sizing, my range is quite strong, so as I said, even at this size underpairs or hands like the one he has have a tough decision. Bare flush draws aren’t going to be a big part of his range, and even when they are, it’s not trivial to peel with them, as he’s rarely drawing to nine clean outs.

DP7: I think this is the sort of hand that should be close to indifferent against my bet. The problem is that he’s drawing slim or dead against my value range and my bluffing range has outs. Betting larger would only help make his decisions easy with hands like this.

DP8: This is a tough card to value bet, given how strong my range is and the fact that I block second-best flush draws. There’s more of a case for betting Qs 8s, though even then check-calling could be best. Better to let my blockers work for me, by playing my hand as a bluff-catcher, rather than against me, by playing it as a thin value bet.

Dp9: This may be the result of an Ed Miller pyramid error. In other words, if Villain peels too wide on the turn, then he simply has too many weak hands in his range on the river. Yes, this is the bottom of his range and he’ll rarely win by checking, but if his bottom is too wide, then trying to bluff with all of it will make my bluff-catches very profitable.

DP10: Trivial.

Thanks for playing!

Blinds were still 25/50, and I opened to 150 with Kc Qc in the HJ. The CO, SB, and BB all called.

The flop came 975 with two clubs, and the blinds checked. I certainly wouldn’t just c-bet arbitrarily into three opponents here, but with two overs and a flush draw, it’s an easy bet. I bet 450, and only the CO called.

The 2h turned, and on such a blank card, I think he’s more or less capped out at one pair, maybe TT or JJ at best and almost always weaker than that, so it’s a great spot for me to bombs away. I bet 1500, and he quickly called. The fact that he didn’t even consider raising made me even more certain that the didn’t have two-pair or a set.

So, I didn’t have to sweat a full house on the 9c river. I also didn’t think he’d call the turn with bare flush draws, at least not so quickly, so the only better hands in his range figured to bet Ac 8c and Ac 6c. I expected him to have T9 and 98 more frequently, and be unable to fold trips. I bet 4000, and he called with Ac 8c.

Nothing of great interest happened after that. I got a double up with AQ by convincing my opponent to spaz with 77 on a Q9xxx board.

Once I was down to 20 blinds, I wasn’t getting any shoving spots. Mostly my cards were bad, but also there was a guy with a big stack on my right who’d decided that he should play more than half the hands he was dealt. I’m honestly not sure he was joking/posturing when he wondered out loud whether he should call my 11BB UTG shove blind (I had AJo, and he folded).

A few hands later he opened to 1100 on the button, which it was really hard for me to imagine him folding a button, so I had a pretty easy shove for 5K or so with 22 in the SB. He called with A4o to bust me.

After the tournament I went and hung out with Carlos for a bit at the Tournament Poker Edge booth, then decided to check out the cash game scene at the Rio.

It truly does seem to get worse there every year. Now there are no chip runners (which, I realize, may not be their fault, but it sucks either way), which means that when they open a new game it takes a long time to start because people have to go wait in line at the cage, buy chips, then take them to the table, and of course no one wants to sit at the table waiting for others to show up, and certainly not come over from an already-running game to get the new one started, so it’s just a slow process and I can only imagine that the most impulsive (ie most desirable to have at your table) players are not sticking around for all that.

My first table was pretty boring, everyone seemed decent enough and the average stack was less than $2K, which is quite small for an uncapped $5/$10.

I was about to quit when my table change came through and I landed at a new table where my $6500 made me just the third largest stack! Had there been chip runners, I would have added on, but as it was I decided just to make do with 650 big blinds.

It was a fun game, nobody spewing but nobody playing particularly good deep-stacked poker, and I was winning solidly. Then, literally the hand before I was going to quit:

I open 22 to $40 UTG (believe we were 7-handed at the time), and four people call. The flop comes K72r. I bet $150, and only the button called. I had about $7500 at the time, and she covered me.

The turn was another K. I checked, figuring a check-raise could get more money in against a K and also give her a chance to bluff/protection bet weaker hands. She checked behind.

The river card was something small (not a 2!), and with $500 in the pot, I threw out a $1K chip. Overbetting was not unprecedented for me, and none of those hands had yet gone to showdown.

She asked if that was a $500 chip, the dealer told her it was $1000, and then she nodded and said, “All in.” Faced with calling $6K to win $8500, I really don’t think is a tough fold at all. I’m uncapped, which means I have both nut hands and better bluff-catchers, not that I would expect to see many bluffs here anyway.

Even though that basically wiped out my profit for the night, I quit feeling pretty good about myself. Among other things, I probably would have lost my ass if she’d bet the turn!

For some crazy reason the Monster Stack is not a re-entry, so I’m just going to play cash tonight, probably at Bellagio, and then hit up the $1K Turbo WSOP event tomorrow morning.

This episode is sponsored by Shark Clock and Tournament Poker Edge.

Timestamps

0:30 – hello
6:11 – strategy
50:40 – alex sutherland

Strategy

This week’s strategy discussion uses GTO Range Builder to investigate the hand first discussed in Episode 176.

Books mentioned during the show include Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein and Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.

This episode is sponsored by Shark Clock and Tournament Poker Edge.

Timestamps

0:30 – hello & welcome
12:26 – strategy
38:22 – lukasz grabowski

Strategy

Hero – Ac5c in hijack, 9k stack, blinds at 75/150.
Villain – BB, covers hero

Preflop: fold to hero, hero raises to 400, Villain calls

Flop: Qs 7s 3x (875)
Villain check, Hero bets 500, Villain calls

Turn: 5h (1,875)
check, check

River: Qx (1,875)
Villain bets 2000

Timestamps

0:30 hello and welcome
5:45 strategy
46:24 christian

Strategy

$5/10 at Bellagio

Pre-flop:
UTG+1 raised to $15 (sic). I was hijack $800 stack holding AcQs. I called. Cutoff $2500 stack called. Button $1500 stack called. Small blind folded. Big blind $7000 stack called.

4 callers $75 pot

Flop:
AsKsQx
Checked to me, I bet $50. Villain called. Big blind called. Original raiser folded.

$225 pot

Turn: 7x
big blind checked, I bet $150, villain called and big blind folded.

$525 pot

River Tx:
I checked. Villain shoved.

Plus, in our strategy segment, we discuss playing Kings when that dreaded Ace turns.

Elena plays on PokerStars as “thegroupie”, which is also her Twitter handle. Her blog contains a number of well-written trip reports, plus links to pieces she’s written for the PokerStars blog and Bluff magazine.

Thanks to Dara O’Kearney for suggesting such a great guest!

Timestamps

0:30 H&W
7:41 strat
28:34 interview

Strategy

$1 tournament on PokerStars
150/300/30
Hero has 12K, one V has 8K, other two cover
UTG, U1, and U2 limp, Hero in HJ raises to 1200 with KK, first two call, last one folds
4620 in pot

*** FLOP *** [9d 7c 4c]
slavik199208: checks
glushchenkom: checks
Hero: bets 3000
slavik199208: calls 3000
glushchenkom: calls 3000

*** TURN *** [9d 7c 4c] [Ah]

slavik199208: checks
glushchenkom: checks
Hero: checks

*** RIVER *** [9d 7c 4c Ah] [6s]
slavik199208: checks
glushchenkom: bets 8400
Hero?

Contrary to the fancy image seen here, The Thinking Poker Diaries Volume 8 is actually available only as an e-book. It’s on sale now in the Kindle Store, and EPUB, Kindle, and PDF versions will be available on Nitcast.com shortly.

If you haven’t yet read Volume One, well, there’s no reason you’d have to to make sense of this book, but why haven’t you?!

You can follow Benjamin on Twitter @Reasons14 and watch his instructional videos at Tournament Poker Edge. He recommends reading Sapiens and The Four Hour Work Week and listening to Sigur Rós, Denali, Portishead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Radiohead.

Timestamps

0:30 – hello and welcome
4:33 – PLO8 strategy
28:12 – benjamin reason

Strategy

Three-handed $10/$25/$50 PLO8.

Villain raises from the SB to $175 announcing that he “almost never does this”. I pause, question him, and he states that he raised blind. I don’t know him well enough to know if this is always the truth.

I raise to 550 with A2QQshhd. Button folds and villain makes it 1650.

I called and the flop was K85 rainbow. He quickly bets the pot of $3350 leaving $7000 effective behind.

Collin is also the author or co-author of three poker books (Heads-Up No-Limit Hold ‘Em, Sit-and-Go Strategy, and The Math of Hold ‘Em) as well as co-author, with his wife Katie Dozier, of The Superuser. He produces instructional videos for CardRunners. You can follow him on Twitter @teammoshman.

We’ve also got a special treat for you in the strategy segment. Brian Koppelman, whom we interviewed on Episode 149, is back to talk strategy, specifically how to play against a deep-stacked maniac.

Enjoy!

Timestamps

0:30 H&W
23:58 – BK
39:22 – CM

Assessing Range Advantage

The only information I gave about the SB was that he’s “capable and experienced” and probably has “a similar opinion of me”. This really isn’t enough to make aggressively exploitive assumptions about what his bet “means” (if he’s doing a good job of balancing, it doesn’t mean any single thing) or how he’ll respond to a 3-bet.

Let’s start instead by examining some structural features of the situation, at the time that we see the flop, before there’s any action. I have to agree with Matt that, “I really don’t see him having a wide calling range from the SB. Playing out of position against tough opponents is not very easy, of course, and calling invites a third (also competent) player into the hand, which leads me to believe that he will be heavy on 3betting and folding from this spot.”

This isn’t an exploitive assumption; he’s out of position and closing the action, so he really is constrained. He can’t just decide to call with a bunch of weak hands because that’s his “style”. If he doesn’t have a disproportionate amount of realizable equity, which will usually be the case, his best play is to fold pre-flop. Many of the hands that do have that kind of equity do better by raising pre-flop. If we act too strongly on these assumptions, then we give him incentive to call more weak or strong hands, but still, we should recognize that he’s dealing with some heavy pre-flop constraints.

Likewise, we can recognize that my range can and should be rather wide, again not as a question of style but because with the button and very deep stacks, there are simply a lot of hands where raising is more profitable than folding. And the BB can have a much wider range than the SB, given that he is closing the action and getting a better price.

I suspect that if we were to compare the overall equity of the SB’s range vs. mine, he would be ahead. Even though I have some very strong hands that’s unlikely to call pre-flop, such as AA or K6s, I also hold a lot of weak hands that he’s unlikely to call pre-flop, such as 74s.

On Donking and Raising

This constrains me a bit: I can’t expect to continuation bet profitably with anywhere near 100% of my range, particularly given that there is also a third player in the pot. So, I will check the flop a significantly non-zero amount of the time, and the SB has many hands like pocket pairs and Ax that are likely best but very vulnerable to free cards. These hands have some interest in donking the flop in order to deny me equity.

However, because his range is, not exactly capped, but weaker at the top end than mine, he’s vulnerable to getting raised by a polarized range. So, his donking range should contain some hands that can profitably continue to a raise, either by calling or three-betting (sometimes for value, sometimes as a bluff).

K6 fares well against those ranges. It figures to be ahead of his calling range (and even ahead of his range for calling down multiple streets), and although it may turn into a bluff catcher if Villain three-bets, it will be a very good bluff-catcher in that it blocks some portion of his value range and has equity against it as well. We may not be rooting for a three-bet, but we shouldn’t be lost about what to do when three-bet, either. I think calling down will yield a profit, even if it’s not the part of the game tree where we’d ideally end up. When we’re holding a 6, though, Villain only has two choices: three-bet rarely, or three-bet a bluff-heavy range. Considering that we’re prepared to call to the river, either is fine.

It’s true that the majority of my continuing range will not benefit from raising, and I’ll respond to his bet far more often by calling than by raising. It’s also true that because my calling range will consist mostly of hands that do not want to play large pots, SB will have some incentive to make large, possibly over-, bets on subsequent streets with a polarized range. This gives me some incentive to just call the flop with very strong hands, which in turn reduces his incentive to employ such a strategy.

These situations usually resolve themselves in a mixed strategy: I should call some hands that are prepared to take a lot of heat, and also raise some such hands. MCG and PokerNoob both do a good job of explaining why K6 is a better candidate for raising than calling.

The Bottom Line

K6 is an extremely strong hand here, so close to the top of Hero’s range that it can happily put in four bets for value and profitably, if begrudgingly, call down five bets as a bluff-catcher. Calling makes it tricky to get that fourth bet in. Sometimes Villain will just check-call down, and we’ll get only three bets (though overbetting might be able to compensate for this). Even if he does bet the turn, as Raffi says, “flatting and potentially raising at a later point makes it really hard to rep a bluff.”

It’s also worth pointing out that, unless Hero’s hand improves, it will not be quite as strong on future streets. Each new card that comes, unless it’s a K or a 6, pushes our hand, as well as our value targets, further from the nuts.

Essentially, this is a hand that benefits from frontloading, and I think raising with it is generally best. You may not be accustomed to thinking about your kicker when you have trips, but when you’re this deep, it matters.

Results and the next decision point are coming in the next post.

Strategy

No Limit Hold’em $0.10/$0.20
Winamax Poker
3 players
Formatted by pokercopilot.com – Mac OS X hand history analysis and tracking

Stacks:
BTN – BTN ($20.72)
SB – Hero ($34.73)
BB – BB ($7.80)

Preflop: ($0.30, 3 players) Hero is SB with Q A
BTN raises to $0.40, Hero raises to $1.60, 1 fold, BTN calls $1.20

Flop: J 8 5 ($3.40, 2 players – BTN: $19.12, Hero: $33.13)
Hero bets $1.80, BTN calls $1.80

Turn: T ($7.00, 2 players – BTN: $17.32, Hero: $31.33)
Hero bets $3.80, BTN calls $3.80

River: 9 ($14.60, 2 players – BTN: $13.52, Hero: $27.53)
Hero bets $4.00, BTN calls $4.00

Total Pot: $22.60
BTN shows A T (One pair : Tens)
Hero shows Q A (Straight Queen high)

Hero wins $21.13

“Poker lingo is full of bluster and bravado. For some, the colorful language and the opportunity to spin dramatic narratives about aggression and courage is an important part of the game’s appeal….

I also suspect, though, that all these macho turns-of-phrase and bellicose metaphors obscure the mathematical side of the game. It often seems to me that players who worry about “defending” their big blind, or getting “bullied”, are more concerned about damage to their ego than to their expected value.”

Of course it’s not just about language; there’s plenty of strategy content as well! Please have a look and let me know what you think. Do you enjoy turning your poker game into a story of bravery and bravado? Do you find these kinds of metaphors particularly helpful or unhelpful?

I primarily review his play at the final three tables of a $10 rebuy tournament, all the way down to heads up. If you need help making or triumphing at a final table – and who doesn’t?! – be sure to take advantage of this FREE video. Or better yet, see how you can have me review one of your hand histories!

The book is available from the Amazon Kindle Store or in EPUB, Kindle, and PDF formats at Nitcast.com.

For every $500 raised, I’m releasing a poker strategy video that’s at least an hour long (and knowing me, they’ll be longer – blame debate again for my motormouth!). Plus, every person who donates at least $10 will be entered in a drawing to win great prizes like a free custom video, a free month at Tournament Poker Edge, a free item from Nitcast.com, and more!

We’re over $1500 already, and I’m working to get these videos out as quickly as I can. The first one, where I basically berate Gareth Chantler for 90 minutes about his play in an Ante Up event, is available now!

I was responsible for one of the eliminations that burst the bubble. Blinds were 5K/10K/500, and the small blind open jammed something like 85K into my big blind, where I held 99. I called and busted him to the delight of my tablemates, some of whom also seemed a bit surprised by my call. Although I wasn’t thrilled, mostly because of how tight I thought he might be shoving on the bubble, I did have him covered with enough left to last me more than an orbit, so I was confident I could fold into the money even if I lost. As it turned out, he had Q2s, which of course if he’s jamming that wide it’s a very profitable call.

I picked up another big pot jamming my 20BBs into a 4x open from UTG and a UTG+1 call. Given that it was a ten-handed table, I expected the original raise to show extreme strength, but I’d also seen enough nitty folds to believe that I might actually get him off of some pairs or even another AK. A player in MP took two minutes to fold his hand because he hadn’t realized the action was on him, and yet somehow this still hadn’t given UTG enough time to think because he then tanked for at least two minutes before I called the clock on him. He ended up showing JJ to the player on his right before folding, and UTG+1 folded as well, so I increased my stack by about 50% without a showdown.

A phrase I hear a lot is “I don’t want to flip at this stage of the tournament.” Well, I don’t want to flip either, but I also don’t want to give away 2.5 BB (a rough estimate of my edge assuming I were to get all in with AK vs a pocket pair in the preceding hand) plus fold equity when I’ve only got 20 to begin with. It never ceases to amaze me how many people enter tournaments, the furthest thing from a sure thing poker has to offer, and proceed to demand near-certainty before they’ll take a significant risk. A lot of run good went into my winning this tournament, but the biggest skill edge I had consisted in the willingness to take these risks as well as the wherewithal to exploit opponents who wouldn’t.

The next time I got AK, I was in the BB. A player in MP opened, I jammed, and he ended up calling it off with KJo (he had me well covered, not that that makes it a good call), and I held.

This all goes to show the importance of having a solid theoretical understanding of concepts like expected value and game theory rather than just playing by feel. I can promise you there were plenty of situations where it felt “icky” to stick my stack in with AK or to min-raise as a bluff off of a 17 BB stack, but I was able to override my natural risk aversion because I understood the math well enough to know that these simply had to be profitable moves.

This also kept me from getting frustrated when these moves didn’t work out. For example, the players on my immediate left were making no secret of the fact that they were just waiting for strong hands and were not going to bluff. Consequently, I was min-raising any two if I got the opportunity to open from the button, even when I only had 14 or 15 BBs. Once, the BB called this raise and bet out on an Ace-high flop that missed me entirely. I folded, and he showed me AQ, which, far from tilting me, made me feel even better about my open with 83o, even though it had cost me about 15% of my stack.

It seemed like what most of these guys wanted was just for everyone to get out of the way so they wouldn’t get drawn out on when they had a monster. I was happy to oblige them in exchange for far more than my share of the pots where no one had much of a hand.

Predictably, the nits on my left were eventually replaced with (slightly) better players, and I did open fold T4o on the button and Q2s in the CO when I had a barely 10 BB stack. That same orbit, I picked up A4o with six players to act behind me. My push/fold game is a little rusty but I believe this is a fold at equilibrium. In this case, though, I believed everyone would be tight enough with their calling to make it a good shove, and it got through.

The very next hand I picked up A5s, which again would most likely be an equilibrium fold now that my stack was larger, but which I think was a clear shove given the opponents. I ended up getting called and sucking out on 77, to the shock of much of the table. I distinctly overheard someone mutter “What is he doing?” The general consensus seemed to be that I was simply reckless, which again reflects completely the wrong approach to late game tournament play, especially in an event as top heavy as this one was. Believe it or not, there were people openly sweating $600 prize increases with thousands already locked up and $125K up top. Short effective stacks make aggressive stealing a high variance proposition, but they don’t make it less correct.

I was also the player to burst the final table bubble, calling a 10BB shove from the SB with 22 and beating her QJs. There was once again some shock expressed at this call, which one onlooker described as “Spartan”.

The Final Table

One of the many ways I ran well was with regard to the seat draw at the final table. Contrary to what I reported on Twitter, I entered as the chip leader. The next biggest stack was clear across the table from me, and the best of my opponents, a guy named Stuart who had I think the fourth largest stack, was on my immediate right. There was an accomplished tournament player with a resteal stack on my immediate left, so that kept me in line initially, but other than that things were laid out pretty ideally for me.

We were required to step away from the final table to use phones, and even when I wasn’t involved in the pot I wanted to pay close attention, so I wasn’t able to take notes as I had during the rest of the tournament. Apologies in advance: details going forward will be a bit more spotty.

That said, I don’t think I contested a single pot in the first orbit and a half, so when the action finally folded to me in the CO, I couldn’t resist opening K5o. The aforementioned player on my left moved all in, and I had to fold. I don’t know what I had, but it was a good spot for him to shove almost anything, so I redoubled my resolve not to get too far out of line pre-flop, especially in obvious spots.

The next pot I opened was with As 9c UTG, once we were nine-handed. I got three calls and a Js 8h 3s flop and checked, fully intending to give up. However, the action checked to an amateur on the button who’d been openly bragging about his big laydowns and overbetting and then showing his big hands. He bet 200K, about the half the pot, and I went into the tank.

I have a habit of always considering my options when the action is on me, even when the right play seems automatic. In doing so, it occurred to me that a small check-raise might garner an absurd amount of respect from this player, even though it would be a strange line inconsistent with how I’d play many if any strong hands. I had him covered and there were several shorter stacks out there. My biggest fear, really, was that one of the other players in the pot would sniff out what I was up to and shove. However, I thought that was probably giving them too much credit, and besides they’d have to sweat the button actually waking up with a hand and busting them, whereas my check-raise could risk very little. I made it 450K, and everyone folded. The button gave me a bit of sweat but ultimately told me he was folding JT.

I was already pulling well ahead of the next biggest stack when I opened QTo in early position, mostly because the same amateur player was in the big blind. The other big stack called on the button, and the BB called as well. The flop came JTT and I bet 200K into 500K. I like this sizing in a vacuum, but for expoitive reasons I think 300K would have been better. Anyway, the button called and the BB folded.

The turn was an 8, and with an SPR of roughly 2, I found myself in an awkward spot. I doubted that I could get two more bets out of worse. I hadn’t observed much of this player’s behavior, but in this tournament in general I’d seen a lot of big “protection” bets from marginal hands that just wanted to take the pot down, so I figured I’d give him a chance to do something like that. I checked, he bet 450K, and I put him all in for about three times that. He tanked for a long time and reluctantly folded.

That gave me a commanding chip lead, close to half the chips in play at an eight-handed table. What set me back was a bad beat from the aforementioned amateur the next time he was in the BB. I opened with AJo, a medium stack called in middle position, and the BB, now short stacked, called. The flop came A96 with two diamonds, and he open shoved for about the size of the pot. Of course I called, and to my surprise, MP called as well.

That worried me a bit, but ultimately I just couldn’t see him playing AQ or AK this way pre-flop, nor two-pair or better on the flop. So, I jammed the turn, and after a long tank he folded what he told me was A6. The BB had a flush draw that got there on the river, so that set me back.

To make matters worse, Stuart, by far the toughest of the remaining players, doubled through the same guy by getting it in 77 vs AA and spiking a 7.

On the plus side, this created a new dynamic. I still had him covered, but he was the second largest stack, and given that he was also the second best player, he had a lot of incentive not to tangle with me. I started leaning hard on his BB.

Somewhere in there, I picked up AA in the SB when someone open shoved in front of me, but the board ran out a straight and I chopped with his AQ. The crowd erupted, but I knew enough to treat this as completely irrelevant. I don’t even consider it bad luck. The action would have gone down exactly the same if he’d had AA and I’d had AQ. If you insist on thinking in terms of luck, you can say that I was lucky to cooler him pre-flop and he was lucky to escape with half. You’re looking for excuses to feel sorry for yourself if consider this an unlucky outcome.

Speaking of luck, I busted the player who’d entered the final table second in chips when I opened KJ and got a QT9 flop. I can’t fault him for jamming over my flop bet with an A5s that flopped a flush draw, but I don’t think calling my pre-flop raise with it was such a good idea.

That left the player on my left as one of the shortest remaining stacks, which actually made it tougher for me to put pressure on him, as he had less to lose. I still planned to jam on him pretty aggressively given the opportunity, but I twice got hands so bad that I had to give him walks. The third time it folded to me in the SB, I jammed about 10BBs with J8o and he woke up with AKo to double through me.

Heads Up

Meanwhile, Stuart was busy winning a flip against one of the weakest remaining players plus a couple of medium-sized pots against me, putting the two of us virtually even. Thankfully, I busted the other two remaining players and entered heads up with something like 60% of the chips in play.

A few people suggested a chop both at the start of the final table and when we got to five- and four-handed, but neither Stuart nor I was interested at the time. First place paid about twice second, a difference of nearly $60,000, and I might have considered chopping a portion of that if Stuart had suggested it. That said, I did expect to have a sizable edge, as even many otherwise good players lack heads up experience, so I wasn’t all that eager to chop. I figured I’d let Stuart be the one to bring it up, as that would give me an edge in negotiating, but he never did.

The match was over almost before it began. On the third hand, I three-bet him with AQs, he jammed K2o, and my hand held up.

I have a bit more to say about the aftermath of victory, but this post is plenty long enough already, so I’ll save that for tomorrow.

Timestamps

0:30 – hello and welcome
15:08 – strategy

Strategy

Hand 1

30/60 Limit Hold ‘Em.

Hero opens K9o from the CO, BB calls.

Flop 884r. Check, bet, raise, call.

Turn 2r. Bet, call.

River J. Bet, call.

Hand 2

Seat 3: NateMeyvis (2336 in chips)
Seat 7: Villain (1416 in chips)
NateMeyvis: posts small blind 5
Villain: posts big blind 10
HOLE CARDS
Dealt to NateMeyvis [Td 8s]
NateMeyvis: raises 15 to 25
Villain: calls 15
FLOP [Kc Qh 5d]
Villain: checks
NateMeyvis: bets 32
Villain: calls 32
TURN [Kc Qh 5d] [Ac]
Villain: checks
NateMeyvis: bets 175
Villain said, “wtf?”
Villain: calls 175
RIVER [Kc Qh 5d Ac] [4d]
Villain: checks
NateMeyvis: checks

Pick up your copy today at www.nitcast.com (you’ll get PDF, EPUB, and Kindle versions) or in the Kindle Store (Kindle version only).

The comments from the pre-flop discussion that I found most interesting were from dullgeek and others who struggled with the problem of how to put money in good once there’s an Ace or King on the board. This is a central dilemma in poker: how do you get paid off when your hand is strong but somewhat obvious (that is, it’s easy to see that there’s an Ace on the flop, and anybody without one will be reluctant to put money in). Of course the same problem occurs when there’s a pair on the board, when you river a flush, etc.

I can think of three answers to this dilemma:

1. Cooler your opponent. If Villain holds KQ or KJ here, we should have no trouble getting the money in. I’m tempted to say there’s no real skill involved here, but that’s not entirely true. If you fail to recognize the strength of your hand and give Villain a chance to put his stack in when he’s coolered, then you’ve made a big mistake. For instance, if Hero checks back the turn and does not shove over a bet on most blank rivers, then you aren’t making the most of a spot where you’re on the right side of a cooler. For the most part, though, coolers are like bad beats: you’ll be on both sides of them over time, and they don’t add or subtract from your theoretical bottom line.

2. Opponent makes a bad call. Plenty of them do. Again the skill is simply in giving them the chance to put the money in. Whether they actually pay you off is beyond your control, but there is also a skill in expanding your value range against these opponents and taking maximum advantage of their errors. In this case we don’t have any read about Villain’s payoff tendencies.

3. Play big pots with a balanced range. This has the potential to pay off in two ways. Many opponents – even, perhaps especially, skilled ones – know or have learned that most people don’t bluff enough in certain spots. If you exhibit this same tendency, even opponents who don’t know you may correctly guess this and make tight folds that successfully exploit you. Correcting your bluffing frequency won’t necessarily help you win more from your big hands, but it will enable you to profit from your opponent’s tight folds without exposing yourself to risk of exploitation. If you’re known or suspected to be capable of playing better than the average bear, then your bluffs may actually be less profitable in this spot (though not money-losing, if you’re balanced) but you’ll win more with your strong hands, again provided that you’re willing to bet them.

That third point is an important one: except in spots where Hero is at a significant range disadvantage, his ability to value bet is limited only by his ability to find hands he’d like to bluff with. Many commenters’ assumption seems to be that because Hero will almost always have a pair on this turn (AK and KQ with a backdoor flush draw being among his weakest flop calls), he therefore can’t have many bluffs and can’t expect to get stacks in with AK.

Realize what you’re saying here, though: AK is extremely close to the top of Hero’s range, so if you aren’t playing this for stacks, you must assume that your opponent will very rarely be willing to put stacks in any hand in his range. With that much fold equity, turning your weakest pairs into bluffs starts to seem appealing. How much showdown value does 77 really have here, especially considering that it can still get bluffed out on the river if you check the turn?

I contend that Hero actually has quite a few hands that would like to bet the turn. The weakest, like 77, have near-zero showdown value. Stronger pairs still have something to gain from protection and may even be able to value bet. Is QQ really going to be behind if a half-pot bet goes in on the turn? And of course the strongest, certainly including AK, want to build a pot and set up a river shove.

Exploitively, if Villain’s range consists only of check-calls and check-folds, Hero may well do best by betting his full range for a small amount. Of course so much betting would give Villain incentive to check-raise both for value and as a bluff, and the equilibrium strategy likely entails a mix of betting and checking. Considering what an important hand AK is for Hero’s range and how static the board is, he’s probably indifferent between betting and checking at equilibrium, checking disproportionately often when he holds at least one heart.

Results

PokerStars – $665+$35|350/700 Ante 85 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BB: 32.41 BB (VPIP: 21.28, PFR: 17.39, 3Bet Preflop: 15.79, Hands: 47)
UTG: 63.83 BB (VPIP: 25.09, PFR: 14.14, 3Bet Preflop: 5.60, Hands: 292)
UTG+1: 22.54 BB (VPIP: 19.23, PFR: 14.56, 3Bet Preflop: 14.29, Hands: 104)
MP: 56.87 BB (VPIP: 25.45, PFR: 22.22, 3Bet Preflop: 13.33, Hands: 56)
MP+1: 26.86 BB (VPIP: 19.21, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 5.26, Hands: 152)
MP+2: 82.3 BB (VPIP: 17.82, PFR: 14.14, 3Bet Preflop: 4.44, Hands: 101)
CO: 25.66 BB (VPIP: 21.43, PFR: 16.06, 3Bet Preflop: 13.33, Hands: 196)
Hero (BTN): 38.02 BB
SB: 25.48 BB (VPIP: 35.58, PFR: 28.62, 3Bet Preflop: 12.80, Hands: 348)

9 players post ante of 0.12 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.59 BB) Hero has Kd Ah
UTG raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 2 BB, fold, fold

Flop : (6.59 BB, 2 players) 5c 4s 5h
UTG bets 3 BB, Hero calls 3 BB

Turn : (12.59 BB, 2 players) Kh
UTG checks, Hero bets 6.3 BB, UTG calls 6.3 BB

River : (25.18 BB, 2 players) 6h
UTG checks, Hero bets 26.6 BB and is all-in, UTG calls 26.6 BB

Hero shows Kd Ah (Two Pair, Kings and Fives)
(Pre 44%, Flop 26%, Turn 95%)

UTG shows Td Th (Two Pair, Tens and Fives)
(Pre 56%, Flop 74%, Turn 5%)

Hero wins 78.38 BB

This river is not quite a blank, but because the important decision about just how big of a pot to try to play is made on the turn, I didn’t think it was worth having a separate discussion about whether to shove the river. If you aren’t going to shove, you might as well check the turn.

This board is static enough that betting the geometric growth of the pot (in other words, the same fraction of the pot on the turn and river) may well be the equilibrium strategy. However, I decided that what I really wanted to do here was bet my full range on the turn, on the assumption that Villain has a more-or-less pure bluff-catching range after his turn check, and then check back the river with hands like JJ or TT that bet for protection/thin value on the turn. Thus, my river range will be much more polarized and therefore make a larger bet than my turn range.

I don’t know what exactly to say about Villain’s call. It’s the sort of hand that should be indifferent at equilibrium. It’s possible that he flipped a coin before calling, and it’s possible that he would have called me with his entire turn range. Against the latter sort of player, you cost yourself a lot by not getting stacks in here.

Either way, the lesson is that you have to give your opponent a chance to pay you off when you have the top of your range. Before you decide that you can’t play for stacks, consider the implications of that assumption for your bluffing strategy. Many players end up missing profitable bluffs because they never ask, “What should my bluffing range look like here?” This mistake can also cause you to miss profitable value bets.

Strategy

Hand 1

2-4 PLO8 on Bovada. 4-handed.

I open to $12 with (AT)J7–I’m using Bill Chen’s notation where suited cards go in parentheses.

Only the BB calls. He’s playing $200ish, and I cover.

Flop KQ8 rainbow. BB checks; I bet half the pot ($13).

Turn pairs the 8 and puts up a flush draw (I have the 7 of the suit). BB checks.

Hand 2

1-2 NLHE 6max on Bovada. I have 220.98 (after posting BB). Folds to button who raises to $6. SB Calls
I raise to $24 (pot) with AA. Button calls

Flop ($54 in pot) Jh Qd 8s
I bet $54 and the button jams and covers me. So $307 in the pot and I have 145 giving me almost exactly 2:1.

Hand 3

PokerStars – $1000+$50|8000/16000 Ante 2000 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

UTG: 61.6 BB (VPIP: 26.46, PFR: 18.59, 3Bet Preflop: 11.72, Hands: 359)
CO: 60.1 BB (VPIP: 40.00, PFR: 27.50, 3Bet Preflop: 15.38, Hands: 40)
BTN: 90.5 BB (VPIP: 19.22, PFR: 15.56, 3Bet Preflop: 6.07, Hands: 591)
SB: 61.46 BB (VPIP: 19.31, PFR: 15.97, 3Bet Preflop: 10.32, Hands: 295)
Hero (BB): 63.17 BB

5 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.13 BB) Hero has 9c Jc
UTG raises to 2.19 BB, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 1.19 BB

Flop : (5.51 BB, 2 players) Jd 3c Ks
Hero checks, UTG bets 2.41 BB, Hero calls 2.41 BB

Turn : (10.33 BB, 2 players) Ac
Hero checks, UTG checks

River : (10.33 BB, 2 players) 7s
Hero checks, UTG bets 4.65 BB, Hero?

This is from the $700 NLHE 1R1A WCOOP event. Blinds are 350/700/85. It’s well after the rebuy period but not particularly close to the bubble. Table is on the tough side, featuring many regs/pros, most notably Eugene Katchalov on my immediate left.

UTG is a regular tournament player. I have him at 25/14 over 300 hands, with a 64% continuation bet.

PokerStars – $665+$35|350/700 Ante 85 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BB: 32.41 BB (VPIP: 21.28, PFR: 17.39, 3Bet Preflop: 15.79, Hands: 47)
UTG: 63.83 BB (VPIP: 25.09, PFR: 14.14, 3Bet Preflop: 5.60, Hands: 292)
UTG+1: 22.54 BB (VPIP: 19.23, PFR: 14.56, 3Bet Preflop: 14.29, Hands: 104)
MP: 56.87 BB (VPIP: 25.45, PFR: 22.22, 3Bet Preflop: 13.33, Hands: 56)
MP+1: 26.86 BB (VPIP: 19.21, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 5.26, Hands: 152)
MP+2: 82.3 BB (VPIP: 17.82, PFR: 14.14, 3Bet Preflop: 4.44, Hands: 101)
CO: 25.66 BB (VPIP: 21.43, PFR: 16.06, 3Bet Preflop: 13.33, Hands: 196)
Hero (BTN): 38.02 BB
SB: 25.48 BB (VPIP: 35.58, PFR: 28.62, 3Bet Preflop: 12.80, Hands: 348)

9 players post ante of 0.12 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.59 BB) Hero has Kd Ah
UTG raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 2 BB, fold, fold. For discussion of the pre-flop action, see this post.

Flop : (6.59 BB, 2 players) 5c 4s 5h
UTG bets 3 BB, Hero calls 3 BB. For discussion of the flop action, see this post.

Turn : (12.59 BB, 2 players) Kh
UTG checks, Hero ?

Post your preferred play here, and I’ll participate in the comments as I’m able and post results on Monday. Be sure to consider your entire range as well as future action when deciding how to proceed!

It seems like everyone recognizes that this hand is too strong to fold. Several commenters assigned ranges to Villain that gave Hero 41% – 47% equity. Even recognizing that Villain may check some hands like AQ that contribute significantly to Hero’s equity, there is nonetheless a lot of value in continuing with this hand.

This is a flop that does little to change pre-flop equities. The player with the range advantage pre-flop carries that advantage forward to this flop. There’s a bit of a shift – pairs go up in value and unpaired hands go down – but the fact that remains that Villain should have more nutted hands in the form of big pocket pairs than the Hero.

Despite the lack of draws, this is also a dynamic flop, because big cards on the turn and/or river have the potential to dramatically change the value of certain hands for better or worse. This means that, at least on certain run outs, Hero’s position will have a lot of value.

These two facts taken together suggest that Hero has little to gain by raising the flop. The stacks are shallow enough that the hands at the top of his range don’t need to raise to get full value. Small pairs have some interest in protection, but raising for this purpose alone also means frequently putting in two bets against a range that crushes them and perhaps even opening themselves up to the occasional bluff. Hero will be able to make better bluffing, value betting, and checking decisions on later streets and probably does best by calling with his entire continuing range and waiting to see how Villain reacts to the turn.

The presence of hands like AK in Hero’s range should help Hero’s pocket pairs get to showdown, as Villain will not be able to barrel indiscriminately on Ace or King turns. Likewise, the presence of pocket pairs helps Hero’s AK get to showdown when ahead, as Villain cannot indiscriminately barrel blank turns.

Turning your hand into a bluff may increase your odds of winning the pot, but that doesn’t make it the highest expected-value option. This wasn’t the ideal flop for AK, nor was an under-the-gun raise the ideal pre-flop action, but learning to make the best of non-ideal situations is an important poker skills, and here that means calling and playing poker on future streets.

The turn card and action will follow in a separate post.

This is from the $700 NLHE 1R1A WCOOP event. Blinds are 350/700/85. It’s well after the rebuy period but not particularly close to the bubble. Table is on the tough side, featuring many regs/pros, most notably Eugene Katchalov on my immediate left.

UTG is a regular tournament player. I have him at 25/14 over 300 hands, with a 64% continuation bet.

PokerStars – $665+$35|350/700 Ante 85 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BB: 32.41 BB (VPIP: 21.28, PFR: 17.39, 3Bet Preflop: 15.79, Hands: 47)
UTG: 63.83 BB (VPIP: 25.09, PFR: 14.14, 3Bet Preflop: 5.60, Hands: 292)
UTG+1: 22.54 BB (VPIP: 19.23, PFR: 14.56, 3Bet Preflop: 14.29, Hands: 104)
MP: 56.87 BB (VPIP: 25.45, PFR: 22.22, 3Bet Preflop: 13.33, Hands: 56)
MP+1: 26.86 BB (VPIP: 19.21, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 5.26, Hands: 152)
MP+2: 82.3 BB (VPIP: 17.82, PFR: 14.14, 3Bet Preflop: 4.44, Hands: 101)
CO: 25.66 BB (VPIP: 21.43, PFR: 16.06, 3Bet Preflop: 13.33, Hands: 196)
Hero (BTN): 38.02 BB
SB: 25.48 BB (VPIP: 35.58, PFR: 28.62, 3Bet Preflop: 12.80, Hands: 348)

9 players post ante of 0.12 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.59 BB) Hero has Kd Ah
UTG raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 2 BB, fold, fold

Flop : (6.59 BB, 2 players) 5c 4s 5h
UTG bets 3 BB, Hero?

Post your preferred play here, and I’ll participate in the comments as I’m able and post results later this week. Be sure to consider your entire range as well as future action when deciding how to proceed!

Don’t forget to watch my guest Twitching on Carlos’ stream today at 4PM eastern! I’ll be playing the Big $162 and something fun on the side, probably PLO8 or Courchevel. The best place to watch is at http://www.multitwitch.tv/thinkingpokerandrew/carloswelch, though you should also subscribe to Carlos’ stream (even if you have no intention of watching, it will help his numbers!).

Timestamps

0:30  Hello and welcome
14:24  Strategy

Flop ($118 in pot after rake) 7h 6d 3s. Action checks to Hero. Hero checks. HJ and Button check. For discussion of the flop action, see this post.

Turn ($118 in pot) 7h 6d 3s 3d. Action checks to Hero. Hero bets $80. HJ and Button fold. SB calls. For discussion of the turn action, see this post.

River ($278 in pot) 5c. SB checks. Hero?

Post your thoughts and reasoning here, and I’ll post my own thoughts and results when WCOOP permits. Remember, if you bet, be sure to discuss sizing and your plan if raised.

Flop ($118 in pot after rake) 7h 6d 3s. Action checks to Hero. Hero checks. Button checks. For discussion of the flop action, see this post.

Turn ($118 in pot) 7h 6d 3s 3d. Action checks to Hero. What’s your play and why?

We’ll discuss it in the comments, and I’ll post my thoughts and action later this week (I fly to Montreal tomorrow, so I may not post until Friday).

Hero is UTG+2 with a $2500 stack, and most of the table covers. Action folds to Hero, who opens to $30 with 8s 7s. The hijack, button, and SB call.  For discussion of the preflop action, see this post.

Flop ($118 in pot after rake) 7h 6d 3s. Action checks to Hero. Now what?

Bet, Check, or Both

Most commenters prefer betting, and I agree that that play has obvious appeal. Hero’s hand has a fair chance of being best, but it’s vulnerable and will be difficult to play on later streets.

The value in betting comes primarily from protection. No one seems to think that better hands will fold to a bet, nor does anyone think Hero will have positive expected value when called. There are worse hands that can call, but most have decent to good equity and may successfully bluff on later streets, and there are certainly better hands out there as well. Hero is relatively live against overpairs, not so much against better top pairs, two-pair, sets, or straights.

One quite interesting thing I’ve learned from working with GTO Range Builder is that, at least in heads up pots, very few hands in either player’s range are played with pure strategies at equilibrium. Sometimes there are hands so weak that they categorically prefer folding or hands so strong that they categorically prefer betting, but most hands in the pre-flop raiser’s range are played with a mix of betting and checking. There are good reasons why Hero is incentivized to have top pair and backdoor draws in his checking range.

There are caveats here. There likely is not an optimal equilbrium in a multiway pot, and concerns about hand protection are magnified (then again, concerns about value-cutting oneself are magnified as well). Nevertheless, betting seems thin enough to me that I think checking is worth considering as well. It should certainly have positive expected value, and I don’t think it would take much to be competitive with betting.

In my experience, most players are way too concerned about making sure they win the pot. Protection is a real consideration here, but it’s not the only consideration. The fact that your hand is vulnerable is not, in and of itself, sufficient reason to bet. There are worse things in poker, especially in a deep stacked cash game, than getting drawn out on.

So What?

OK, so checking might be just as good as betting. It’s probably not a lot better, if it’s better at all. If Hero really is indifferent between betting and checking, what’s wrong with just always betting?

Will Tipton addresses this question in Expert Heads Up NLHE, where he determines that the optimal strategy in many heads up spots involves continuation betting at a much lower frequency that what is commonly seen even in matches between two very good players. His conclusion is that, because Hero is indifferent between betting and checking so many hands at equilibrium, he does not lose money in spots where he bets at a very high frequency. He does, however, open himself up to exploitation when he checks a very narrow and defined range in these same spots. The weakness manifests itself not in the betting range but in the checking range.

Basically, if your opponents expect you to always bet a certain type of hand, that gives you a lot of incentive to check it. There may be some bad turn spots for you, but there should also be some very good ones. If, for instance, a 7 turns and no one expects Hero to have a 7, the implied odds can be quite high.

My suspicion is that many of you almost never check this spot with top pair or better, which makes your checks quite easy to play against and means you may well be leaving money on the table by not taking advantage of profitable situations that arise after checking.

If you accept that you should have a checking range, 8s 7s seems like a logical hand to include. It benefits less from protection than does 88 or 99, and it probably fares less well when called than does A7 (assuming 7x is in people’s ranges, but I think at least for some players hands like T7s and 97s should be out there). There are not as many bad turns as it may seem: 9s and below are all safe-to-good (with the exception of a 6), and spades are all fine as well.

Sizing

More important than the frequency with which you bet is the size of your bet. The bigger you bet, the more polarized you should be. I think it’s quite likely that betting 3/4 pot or more with 7s 6s is -EV, at least relative to checking. A smaller bet can more easily accommodate a merged range that includes hands like 7s 6s that mostly benefit from protection. Hero’s range advantage along with the multiway pot means that even facing a half-pot bet, there really isn’t room for people to get too tricky by floating/raising with bare overcards or something like that.

If you’re going to bet a merged range here, it’s not a disaster, but you absolutely should not be near-potting it. Unfortunately, many people seem to have the opposite idea that betting for protection requires betting big, because you want folds. In fact, the hands you are targeting for folds will probably fold to a small bet anyway, and you should also want to avoid putting in a lot of money against a range you’re behind.

Results and next decision point coming in the next post…

Flop ($118 in pot after rake) 7h 6d 3s. Action checks to Hero. What’s your play and why? Try to think about how you would play various parts of your range on this flop. What would your betting and checking ranges look like? If you bet, what are you hoping will happen? If you check, what are you hoping will happen?

We’ll discuss it in the comments, and I’ll post my thoughts and action tomorrow.

Before you ask, Chad is not taking staking applications at this time. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook though.

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello and welcome
12:16 – Strategy
46:33 – Interview

Strategy

Main V opens for 12 in EP (1100 eff). CO (350) calls. Hero flats with 3c 4c on the button.

Flop (37) Q42r with one club. EP bets 25, CO calls, Hero calls.

Turn (112) 6c. EP bets 60. CO folds, Hero raises to 165, EP calls.

River (442) 9d. EP checks, Hero bets $330

Neil talks to us about this dubious honor as well as the other challenges facing him as an amateur, albeit a serious and accomplished one, among professionals.

You can root for Neil in November when ESPN airs the final table of the WSOP Main Event. If you’re in San Francisco, check out his girlfriend’s store.

Our strategy hand comes to us from the author of A Main Event Rookie Lives the Dream.

Timestamps

:30 – hello and welcome
12:40 – strat
54:30 – interview

Strategy

Blinds 2000/4000/300. UTG2 (80K) limps. Hero has JJ in the HJ and raises to 12,000. BB calls and the limper folds.

Flop (34.5K in pot) Q-6-8r. BB checks, Hero bets 20K, BB calls.

Turn (75K in pot) Q86Jr. BB checks, Hero bets 65K, BB calls.

River (205K)  Q-6-8-J-10. BB shoves 70K.

In this volume, you’ll find essays covering the following topics:

Navigating the Early Stages of a Tournament
Balance
Playing Your Image
Catching Bluffs
(Not) Talking at the Table
The Tournament Mindset

You can buy The Thinking Poker Diaries Volume 5 at www.nitcast.com (you’ll get Kindle, PDF, or EPUB versions) or in Kindle form on Amazon.

You certainly don’t need to have read the earlier volumes to make sense of this one, but if you need to get caught up, the first four books are available as a bundle at a discounted rate!

The 2015 Nitcast Las Vegas Meetup will take place on July 6th, which is Day 1b of the WSOP Main Event. Don’t worry, though! The meetup will start at 10AM, so even if you’re playing that day, you can start off on the right foot by stopping in to say hello. We’ll meet at the Gold Coast bowling alley and will be there until at least Noon, possibly later. If you’re in town, please stop in and see us!

Strategy

I opened 2.5x from the CO with As Tc, a good player in the small blind called, and the big blind folded. Flop came 7s 9h Js. Villan donked about half pot, I raised 3.5x, he folded.

Blinds 100/200 button opened to 450 SB called and I called Ks Ts in the BB. Flop Qs 9d 8d SB checked I bet 900 button folded SB called. Turn 5, SB checks, I bet 1800 with 4500 behind, he folded. Plan was to jam most rivers if he called.

I opened 44 UTG, Button made a small 3bet, I called. Flop K94r I bet 4500 into 6700 he called. Turn was an T, I checked, he jammed his last 15K, I called and beat his KQ.

I open to $30 with Kd Jd in EP. Two players in EP call, and the BB calls.

Flop ($120 in pot) Td 3s 2s BB bets $40, everyone calls

Turn ($280 in pot) 9c BB bets $60, I call, one more call

River ($460 in pot) 6h BB checks, I bet $300, both fold

The table was, perhaps not quite as good as the previous day’s, but pretty spectacular. I made good use of one live tell, but mishandled another.

You Raise, I Call

At the 25/50 level, I looked down at 22 and was reaching for raising chips when I noticed the player on my left loading up. I grabbed just two green chips and called. He raised to 250, and I called. The flop came 843 and we both checked, so I immediately put him on whiffed overcards. The turn brought a 2, and I bet 200. This probably should have been more, but I really didn’t want to let him off the hook if he just had a gutshot, and I thought the smaller size might even keep in a hand like KQ. The river was a 9, I bet 400, and he called so quickly that I regretted not betting more, but at the time it seemed like a reasonable amount to expect an unimproved AQ to call.

Calling Chips

There was another pot where I can’t even remember what I had, but whatever it was, I was betting the river for value. I grabbed two yellow chips, planning to declare, “Twelve hundred”, but as I did so my opponent very clearly grabbed calling chips. I quickly changed course and said, “Fifteen hundred,” but he tanked for a long time before folding. What I should have realized is that he knew I could see him grabbing chips and it was actually a “strong-means-weak” tell meant to deter me from betting.

Blocking Bet?

The two significant pots that I lost were both to that same player.

At 75/150, I opened to 450 with As Kc on the Button, and the BB called. The flop came Ah 8h 3h, and he checked and called 500. He checked and called 1000 on a Qd turn, after a long tank.

The river was the 2h, and he threw out 1000 without much hesitation. At this point I was getting nearly 5:1 and convinced myself he could be block betting a worse Ace, but I don’t think that’s consistent with his thinking so long on the turn. I called, and he showed me 7c 6h.

Lucky Turn

I opened to 400 with ATo at the 100/200 level. Villain called, as did the CO, Button, and BB. I was pretty tempted just to give up, but the Q52 was a little too good, so I bet 700 into 2100. Villain called, and everyone else folded.

I had about a pot-sized bet behind, and was thinking Ks and Js would be great for shoving, but then a 3 popped off and I realized I had more backdoor straight draws than I’d consciously realized (though this was probably part of the reason the flop struck me as too good to give up). I stacked up my chips to jam, and Villain once again reached for his chips. Remembering what this meant the last time, I carried through on my shove, but he practically beat me into the pot. “I got very lucky,” he told me, turning over 33 for a turned set.

“Indeed you did,” I said, a little more snippily than I intended. On to the next one.

Another Lucky Turn

My cash session started off with more of the same. After scoping out five tables at two different venues, I settled into a 5/10 game at Bellagio. There were a few young guys who seemed like serious players, but only one of them seemed to rise above the level of “mediocre reg”, and there were a few soft spots as well.

I limped UTG with 22, two players limped behind, and then one of the seemingly mediocre regs made it $40 on the Button. The seemingly good reg on the BB called. Thinking that the Button would have raised bigger with a premium hand, I re-raised to $160. The action folded to him, and he called quickly. The BB called as well.

The flop came 6c 3c 3s. The BB checked, I bet $200 into a pot of about $500, the Button called with about $500 behind (this is why my flop sizing was small), and the BB folded.

I was ready to be done with it, but the turn was an offsuit Ace. Intriguing. I checked, and Villain checked behind. The river was a Q. I threw five black chips into the pot.

“So sick,” Villain said. “I know you got there. Ugh, I did not want to see a Queen.” Huh, that’s not what I wanted him to be afraid of. “Fuck it, I call,” he said, turning over Ac Kc. I showed him my twos, tossed him $500, and mentally demoted him from “mediocre reg” to “wannabe”.

Bad Donk

I played this one pretty badly to be honest, but because it turns out I was winning until the river, I’m allowed to feel sorry for myself, right?

UTG opened for $30, Wannabe called on the Button, and I called with 43o on the BB.

Flop ($95) 864r. I bet $70, UTG folded, Button quickly called.

Turn ($235) 2. I really need to just cut my losses here, but the gutshot was just too tempting to keep me from firing again. I bet $170, and Button called with no hesitation.

River ($575) A. This is probably a decent card to follow through, but he seemed in no mood to fold, so I finally gave it up. He proudly tabled A5o.

I planned to leave pretty soon and decided not to top my stack off from $1250 to the $1500 cap. Of course a few hands later I flopped the nuts and doubled through someone who probably would have paid off another $250 considering he put me all in for $500 more when I bet $500 on the river.

Pot Odds

I finally got my revenge, plus a good laugh, on what turned out to be my last hand of the session (I was waiting for dealer change because it was a time rake #nitcast). UTG, a weak player who’d been raising too much from all positions, opened for $40. UTG1, who seemed like a good pro, called. I made it $140 with As Js UTG2. Wannabe cold called from the SB, UTG called, and UTG1 called.

Flop ($575) 2s 3c 7h. Checked to me, I bet $300, SB called, the other two folded.

Turn ($1175) Ac. He checked. I briefly considered trying to get my value now, but I actually thought AK was a real possibility for SB, so I decided to check back and fold to a big river bet or value bet if he checked.

River ($1175) 2d. He checked. I thought about betting pot but settled on $700.

Wannabe groaned. “I told myself the bigger you bet, the more I was going to call you. You bet the pot. That means you have either Aces or nothing.” Wow, it was hard to keep a poker face after that little monologue. But he wasn’t done yet. “How much is in the pot?” he asked the dealer.

“I can’t tell you that,” she said.

“You can spread it out, right?” he said. She spread the pot. “Eleven hundred,” he muttered to himself. “That means I only have to be right half the time.” Again, I suppressed a smile. Finally, he gave up the facade and copped to his true logic: “Fuck it, I call.”

The only High buy-in event I played on Saturday was the $2000 Six-Max Progressive Super Knockout Variable Level Times. Say that three times fast. It was basically a turbo with bounties, pretty fun though my bounty was collected in rather gruesome fashion. First off, just because I’ve posted a lot of failed bluffs lately, here’s one that actually worked:

PokerStars – $1000+$1000+$100|40/80 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

Hero (BTN): 71.63 BB
SB: 93.38 BB (VPIP: 39.29, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 28)
BB: 38.31 BB (VPIP: 25.00, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 28)
UTG: 52.94 BB (VPIP: 35.90, PFR: 33.33, 3Bet Preflop: 20.00, Hands: 39)
MP: 79.88 BB (VPIP: 30.77, PFR: 23.08, 3Bet Preflop: 25.00, Hands: 13)
CO: 42.81 BB (VPIP: 28.57, PFR: 21.43, 3Bet Preflop: 6.67, Hands: 28)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 9d Jh
fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.5 BB, SB calls 2 BB, fold

Flop : (6 BB, 2 players) 7c 4h Td
SB bets 3 BB, Hero calls 3 BB

Turn : (12 BB, 2 players) 6c
SB bets 6 BB, Hero raises to 20.5 BB, fold

Hero wins 24 BB

And here’s where the last of my chips ended up:

PokerStars – $1000+$1000+$100|125/250 Ante 30 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

Hero (BB): 15.65 BB
UTG: 30.24 BB (VPIP: 32.31, PFR: 16.92, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 65)
MP: 13.6 BB (VPIP: 38.10, PFR: 33.33, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 21)
CO: 17.02 BB (VPIP: 27.63, PFR: 24.66, 3Bet Preflop: 18.52, Hands: 76)
BTN: 21.04 BB (VPIP: 28.57, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 14.29, Hands: 22)
SB: 48.32 BB (VPIP: 26.15, PFR: 21.54, 3Bet Preflop: 10.00, Hands: 65)

6 players post ante of 0.12 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.22 BB) Hero has Tc 8c
fold, fold, fold, BTN calls 1 BB, fold, Hero checks

Flop : (3.22 BB, 2 players) 6c 9s 7s
Hero bets 2.41 BB, BTN raises to 4.82 BB, Hero raises to 14.53 BB and is all-in, BTN calls 9.7 BB

Turn : (32.28 BB, 2 players) 7h

River : (32.28 BB, 2 players) 9h

Hero shows Tc 8c (Straight, Ten High)
(Pre 34%, Flop 91%, Turn 88%)

BTN shows Th 9c (Full House, Nines full of Sevens)
(Pre 66%, Flop 9%, Turn 13%)

BTN wins 32.28 BB

PokerStars – $2000+$100|1500/3000 Ante 375 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

Hero (MP+2): 21.83 BB
CO: 67.09 BB (VPIP: 27.79, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 10.73, Hands: 403)
BTN: 157.16 BB (VPIP: 10.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 10)
SB: 15.14 BB (VPIP: 30.00, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 25.00, Hands: 10)
BB: 45.85 BB (VPIP: 18.79, PFR: 12.73, 3Bet Preflop: 4.00, Hands: 166)
UTG: 36.72 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 1)
UTG+1: 65.67 BB (VPIP: 50.00, PFR: 33.33, 3Bet Preflop: 16.67, Hands: 12)
MP: 23.49 BB (VPIP: 27.27, PFR: 20.66, 3Bet Preflop: 7.41, Hands: 123)
MP+1: 14.18 BB (VPIP: 23.08, PFR: 22.58, 3Bet Preflop: 4.55, Hands: 65)

9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.63 BB) Hero has Kh Jh
fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.22 BB, CO raises to 5 BB, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 2.78 BB

Flop : (12.63 BB, 2 players) 5h 9s Qs
Hero checks, CO checks

Turn : (12.63 BB, 2 players) Tc
Hero checks, CO checks

River : (12.63 BB, 2 players) 6d
Hero bets 16.71 BB and is all-in, CO calls 16.71 BB

Hero shows Kh Jh (Straight, King High)
(Pre 36%, Flop 30%, Turn 97%)

CO shows Jc Js (One Pair, Jacks)
(Pre 64%, Flop 70%, Turn 3%)

Hero wins 46.04 BB

I saw Kim do a lot of pot control and delayed continuation betting yesterday, so I was ready to check-raise the flop (in part because his betting range is probably more polarized than some people’s) and also the turn. When neither of those things happen, I think he’ll feel obliged to call an overbet with some hands, and because his range is likely capped, it’s a situation where I can and should shove the nuts and some air. I was a bit lucky not just to drill the gutshot but also that he had such a good bluff-catcher.

The next orbit, he did actually catch me in a bluff:

PokerStars – $2000+$100|1500/3000 Ante 375 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

Hero (BB): 45.54 BB
UTG: 44.76 BB (VPIP: 27.70, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 11.17, Hands: 408)
UTG+1: 154.25 BB (VPIP: 13.33, PFR: 6.67, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 15)
MP: 34.93 BB (VPIP: 33.33, PFR: 26.67, 3Bet Preflop: 33.33, Hands: 15)
MP+1: 43.73 BB (VPIP: 18.24, PFR: 12.35, 3Bet Preflop: 3.90, Hands: 171)
MP+2: 21.2 BB (VPIP: 16.67, PFR: 16.67, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 6)
CO: 63.54 BB (VPIP: 35.29, PFR: 23.53, 3Bet Preflop: 12.50, Hands: 17)
BTN: 23.99 BB (VPIP: 26.98, PFR: 20.63, 3Bet Preflop: 7.27, Hands: 128)
SB: 15.18 BB (VPIP: 22.86, PFR: 22.73, 3Bet Preflop: 4.55, Hands: 70)

9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.63 BB) Hero has Jd As
UTG raises to 2.2 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 1.2 BB

Flop : (6.03 BB, 2 players) 5h Td 5d
Hero checks, UTG bets 1.83 BB, Hero calls 1.83 BB

Turn : (9.69 BB, 2 players) Kd
Hero checks, UTG checks

River : (9.69 BB, 2 players) 9c
Hero bets 6.3 BB, UTG calls 6.3 BB

Hero shows Jd As (One Pair, Fives)
(Pre 28%, Flop 12%, Turn 5%)

UTG shows Qd Qc (Two Pair, Queens and Fives)
(Pre 72%, Flop 88%, Turn 95%)

UTG wins 22.28 BB

There may be some runouts where I can just check and try to show my hand down unimproved, but this isn’t one of them. Between the King coming on the turn and his passing up a decent bluffing card, there’s little chance that AJ is good. The flush getting there makes this just about the bottom of my range, and he’s got plenty of underpairs and maybe AQ that will be hard-pressed to call, so I think a bluff is clearly correct. QQ isn’t a hand I’d expect him to fold, especially after he saw me value bet a relatively weak hand in a spot like this yesterday.

I picked up some more chips busting a short stack AK > AJ, then lost JJ < QQ versus another short stack. The only other interesting one that went to the flop was this:

PokerStars – $2000+$100|2000/4000 Ante 500 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

MP+1: 25.39 BB (VPIP: 43.70, PFR: 36.44, 3Bet Preflop: 21.43, Hands: 123)
MP+2: 51.78 BB (VPIP: 26.54, PFR: 12.96, 3Bet Preflop: 7.69, Hands: 162)
CO: 25.98 BB (VPIP: 20.68, PFR: 13.62, 3Bet Preflop: 12.26, Hands: 238)
BTN: 169.98 BB (VPIP: 13.33, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 25.00, Hands: 15)
SB: 75.43 BB (VPIP: 27.63, PFR: 22.37, 3Bet Preflop: 4.35, Hands: 78)
BB: 24.22 BB (VPIP: 18.75, PFR: 9.38, 3Bet Preflop: 4.00, Hands: 64)
Hero (UTG): 23.35 BB
UTG+1: 29.85 BB (VPIP: 40.00, PFR: 26.67, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 15)
MP: 17.51 BB (VPIP: 6.67, PFR: 6.67, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 15)

9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.63 BB) Hero has Kd Ad
Hero raises to 2.22 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, BB calls 1.22 BB

Flop : (6.07 BB, 2 players) 8d 3h 7c
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn : (6.07 BB, 2 players) Js
BB checks, Hero checks

River : (6.07 BB, 2 players) 3d
BB bets 2.81 BB, fold

BB wins 6.07 BB

Villain’s stack size makes betting the flop awkward. Especially as he could shove semi-bluffs, bet-folding causes me to forfeit a lot of equity, but I don’t really want to bet-call either. I tanked a while before folding the river. Yes, he could easily be bluffing, but my entire range can beat a bluff, so I don’t need to call with all of it. I can have some 7s, maybe even some 8s or Js, and 66 and 55 make particularly good bluff-catchers as they block a few of his 7x and 8x combinations. Folding all of my non-pairs might still be a bit exploitable, but especially in a tournament I’m OK with that.

As it happened, Randal Flowers, who eliminated me from the previous 2K event and nearly busted me on the bubble of this one, ended up taking the last of my chips when his AK beat my KK.

The upside was that I got to spend some time outside and take a long walk. I’d planned on having today as a day off, and it felt that way even though it technically wasn’t. Here are some pics from my walk around Stanley Park:

Thanks to everyone who wished me well today or showed up to rail. I start tomorrow at 11AM Pacific playing all three Super Tuesday tournaments, though I’ll probably late register the Low and Medium PLO events at that time as well. I’ll post the new podcast tomorrow morning, but wanted to get this up first as I didn’t want to leave you hanging concerning results.

PokerStars – $2000+$100|40/80 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BTN: 126.5 BB (VPIP: 14.86, PFR: 8.11, 3Bet Preflop: 5.13, Hands: 75)
SB: 133.29 BB (VPIP: 8.11, PFR: 4.05, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 75)
Hero (BB): 101.28 BB
UTG: 94.94 BB (VPIP: 13.70, PFR: 9.59, 3Bet Preflop: 3.57, Hands: 74)
UTG+1: 125 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 4)
MP: 158.91 BB (VPIP: 22.22, PFR: 14.81, 3Bet Preflop: 16.67, Hands: 27)
MP+1: 142.38 BB (VPIP: 22.22, PFR: 18.06, 3Bet Preflop: 8.70, Hands: 74)
MP+2: 151.38 BB (VPIP: 27.27, PFR: 18.18, 3Bet Preflop: 4.35, Hands: 68)
CO: 100.48 BB (VPIP: 16.67, PFR: 12.50, 3Bet Preflop: 4.35, Hands: 49)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has Qd Qc
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, CO raises to 2.5 BB, BTN raises to 7.5 BB, fold, Hero raises to 18.05 BB, fold, BTN raises to 126.5 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 83.23 BB and is all-in

Flop : (205.55 BB, 2 players) 5c 2s 6c

Turn : (205.55 BB, 2 players) 6s

River : (205.55 BB, 2 players) Kc

Hero shows Qd Qc (Two Pair, Queens and Sixes)
(Pre 18%, Flop 9%, Turn 5%)

BTN shows Ac As (Two Pair, Aces and Sixes)
(Pre 82%, Flop 91%, Turn 95%)

BTN wins 205.55 BB

In the afternoon events, I managed to get up stacks in both the $200 and the $2000, though I probably misplayed and got lucky on the first critical hand from the High:

PokerStars – $2000+$100|30/60 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

UTG: 159.08 BB (VPIP: 21.28, PFR: 19.15, 3Bet Preflop: 5.00, Hands: 48)
UTG+1: 130.07 BB (VPIP: 10.42, PFR: 4.17, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 48)
MP: 166.17 BB (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 15.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 20)
MP+1: 166.67 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 2)
MP+2: 165.33 BB (VPIP: 13.64, PFR: 9.09, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 44)
CO: 152.48 BB (VPIP: 20.83, PFR: 16.67, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 48)
BTN: 157.45 BB (VPIP: 19.57, PFR: 13.04, 3Bet Preflop: 4.17, Hands: 48)
SB: 169.05 BB (VPIP: 21.62, PFR: 13.51, 3Bet Preflop: 11.11, Hands: 37)
Hero (BB): 150 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has As Ks
fold, fold, fold, MP+1 raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 9.5 BB, MP+1 calls 6.5 BB

Flop : (19.5 BB, 2 players) Th 7h 5s
Hero checks, MP+1 bets 10.43 BB, Hero calls 10.43 BB

Turn : (40.37 BB, 2 players) Qs
Hero checks, MP+1 bets 28.75 BB, Hero calls 28.75 BB

River : (97.87 BB, 2 players) 8s
Hero checks, MP+1 bets 66.15 BB, Hero raises to 101.32 BB and is all-in, MP+1 calls 35.17 BB

Hero shows As Ks (Flush, Ace High)
(Pre 62%, Flop 41%, Turn 66%)

MP+1 shows Jh 9h (Straight, Queen High)
(Pre 38%, Flop 59%, Turn 34%)

Hero wins 300.5 BB

This is basically just weak-tight play on my part, but my thinking was that Villain wasn’t going to fold better to a turn shove. His sizing meant either a monster or a big draw, not a hand like JT that would fold to a shove. That leaves open the question of what exactly I’m going to do on blank rivers. Calling isn’t beyond me, but I think I’m better off just sticking it on the turn. It turns out I got the gin card on the river, which I want to be sure to acknowledge because I’ve been on the wrong end of some similar spots recently and I want to combat the selective memory of those spots.

For much of the day, I was stuck at a tough but interesting table with several good cash game players, including Dong Kim. That meant a lot more pots than usual were going to flops, as these players preferred to play post-flop rather than get into the pre-flop raising wars in which the tournament pros specialize. I usually prefer the former myself, but sensing less of an edge than usual in that regard, I switched to a strategy of employing larger open raises. That said, I did get in a nice value bet against Kim that, though not really a tough decision, gave me the warm and fuzzies:

PokerStars – $2000+$100|400/800 Ante 100 NL – Holdem – 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

MP+1: 100.43 BB (VPIP: 19.85, PFR: 13.58, 3Bet Preflop: 7.81, Hands: 268)
CO: 30.25 BB (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 15.11, 3Bet Preflop: 4.41, Hands: 141)
BTN: 74.91 BB (VPIP: 30.45, PFR: 23.02, 3Bet Preflop: 13.16, Hands: 266)
SB: 43.76 BB (VPIP: 19.62, PFR: 11.36, 3Bet Preflop: 7.14, Hands: 266)
Hero (BB): 60.52 BB
UTG: 85.96 BB (VPIP: 17.89, PFR: 10.53, 3Bet Preflop: 6.12, Hands: 96)
UTG+1: 40.53 BB (VPIP: 24.43, PFR: 15.33, 3Bet Preflop: 5.88, Hands: 265)
MP: 26.38 BB (VPIP: 32.58, PFR: 17.98, 3Bet Preflop: 3.20, Hands: 267)

8 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.5 BB) Hero has Qs 6s
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to 2.2 BB, fold, Hero calls 1.2 BB

Flop : (5.9 BB, 2 players) Ks Qc 9h
Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn : (5.9 BB, 2 players) 3s
Hero checks, BTN checks

River : (5.9 BB, 2 players) 8h
Hero bets 4.17 BB, BTN calls 4.17 BB

Hero shows Qs 6s (One Pair, Queens)
(Pre 55%, Flop 66%, Turn 86%)

BTN mucks Jc 9c (One Pair, Nines)
(Pre 45%, Flop 34%, Turn 14%)

Hero wins 14.23 BB

The main lesson here is that just because you are value betting a hand that is relatively weak in absolute terms doesn’t mean you should use small sizing. After the flop and turn action, any middle pair is a strong hand, and Kim will feel compelled to pay off even a somewhat large bet with weaker in order to prevent me from bluffing.

That’s not to say I never got outplayed postflop. Here’s one against another heads-up player where I may well have folded the best hand:

PokerStars – $2000+$100|700/1400 Ante 175 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

UTG+1: 28.46 BB (VPIP: 19.06, PFR: 12.58, 3Bet Preflop: 7.19, Hands: 321)
MP: 35.01 BB (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 14.00, 3Bet Preflop: 9.09, Hands: 50)
MP+1: 52.96 BB (VPIP: 28.57, PFR: 28.57, 3Bet Preflop: 33.33, Hands: 7)
MP+2: 65.05 BB (VPIP: 30.09, PFR: 22.33, 3Bet Preflop: 12.59, Hands: 319)
CO: 148.32 BB (VPIP: 26.92, PFR: 19.23, 3Bet Preflop: 16.67, Hands: 26)
Hero (BTN): 54.59 BB
SB: 57.54 BB (VPIP: 20.95, PFR: 11.49, 3Bet Preflop: 7.04, Hands: 149)
BB: 39.88 BB (VPIP: 24.76, PFR: 15.92, 3Bet Preflop: 6.52, Hands: 318)
UTG: 121.86 BB (VPIP: 19.11, PFR: 13.16, 3Bet Preflop: 4.48, Hands: 157)

9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.63 BB) Hero has Ks Kd
fold, fold, fold, MP+1 raises to 2.25 BB, fold, fold, Hero raises to 6.35 BB, fold, fold, MP+1 calls 4.1 BB

Flop : (15.32 BB, 2 players) 5h 9h 3c
MP+1 checks, Hero bets 6.35 BB, MP+1 calls 6.35 BB

Turn : (28.02 BB, 2 players) 7h
MP+1 bets 7.13 BB, Hero calls 7.13 BB

River : (42.28 BB, 2 players) Qs
MP+1 bets 33.01 BB and is all-in, fold

MP+1 wins 42.28 BB

I don’t know that here’s anything I can do but fold my actual hand, but it sucks playing with players good enough to take advantage of spots like this one. With the Kh, I think I would have called.

The nice thing about SCOOP is that, even many hours into a $2K, you do still get some truly weak players, and I managed to double through one of them:

PokerStars – $2000+$100|600/1200 Ante 150 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

MP+1: 36.52 BB (VPIP: 19.74, PFR: 13.03, 3Bet Preflop: 7.43, Hands: 310)
MP+2: 88.66 BB (VPIP: 15.38, PFR: 10.26, 3Bet Preflop: 5.56, Hands: 39)
CO: 33.59 BB (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 4.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 25)
BTN: 73.91 BB (VPIP: 29.87, PFR: 22.48, 3Bet Preflop: 13.08, Hands: 308)
SB: 116.29 BB (VPIP: 26.67, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 16.67, Hands: 15)
Hero (BB): 41.91 BB
UTG: 51.65 BB (VPIP: 19.71, PFR: 10.95, 3Bet Preflop: 6.06, Hands: 138)
UTG+1: 52.29 BB (VPIP: 25.33, PFR: 16.17, 3Bet Preflop: 6.72, Hands: 307)
MP: 147.98 BB (VPIP: 19.86, PFR: 13.48, 3Bet Preflop: 4.84, Hands: 146)

9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.63 BB) Hero has 8d 8s
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, CO raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, Hero calls 2 BB

Flop : (7.63 BB, 2 players) 9h 5h 7d
Hero checks, CO bets 6 BB, Hero raises to 38.78 BB and is all-in, CO calls 24.47 BB and is all-in

Turn : (68.56 BB, 2 players) 9s

River : (68.56 BB, 2 players) Kh

Hero shows 8d 8s (Two Pair, Nines and Eights)
(Pre 67%, Flop 81%, Turn 89%)

CO shows Qc 7c (Two Pair, Nines and Sevens)
(Pre 33%, Flop 19%, Turn 11%)

Hero wins 68.56 BB

Despite all of this, I was whiffing a lot post-flop and Kim had the button when I had the BB so I wasn’t getting any walks easy BB defenses. By the time the bubble rolled around, I had barely 10BBs and was forced to make some tight folds, including AJs facing a raise from a pretty active player.

On the exact bubble, I was dealt JJ in middle position. I think the big jump from no prize to $4000, followed by very gradual prize increases thereafter, would have forced me to fold it if someone had opened in front. It seemed too good not to open jam, though, even on the bubble, so I shipped it. None other than Randal Flowers, who’d busted me in the morning $2K, quickly shoved over the top. I actually said out loud, “Are you FUCKING kidding me?!”, which is quite out of character. Thankfully he “just” had AKs so I had a few heart-stopping seconds to sweat but I did manage the cash.

Once we were in the money I was pretty card dead but won one more flip for my tournament life, which means I’m coming into Day 2 with just over 20 BBs, in 71st place out of 86 remaining players. Play restarts at 11:30 AM Pacific time, and I’ll probably late register the triple stack at that time as well.

Of course you have to accept more of that when you play in tougher tournaments, and yesterday’s 6-max shootout and today’s 4-max both featured tough fields. Furthermore, because they were short-handed, there were a lot more spots where it both my opponent and I began with wide ranges, which introduces more variance and more opportunities for coolers and bluff coolers.

The 4-max met my expectations in the sense that there were a lot of accomplished tournament players, but many of them were (IMO) playing overly aggressive. For whatever reason, even many very good players approach 4-max more aggressively than they do a ring game table in which the first five players have folded, though strategically they ought to be the same (or even a bit tighter in 4-max, during ante levels).

What was frustrating was that players with extremely wide ranges kept making monster hands against me:

PokerStars – $2000+$100|15/30 NL (4 max) – Holdem – 4 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

SB: 170.33 BB (VPIP: 35.71, PFR: 21.43, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 15)
Hero (BB): 157.83 BB
CO: 315.47 BB (VPIP: 41.67, PFR: 33.33, 3Bet Preflop: 33.33, Hands: 13)
BTN: 167.67 BB (VPIP: 66.67, PFR: 33.33, 3Bet Preflop: 50.00, Hands: 3)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has Tc 7s
fold, fold, SB raises to 2.4 BB, Hero calls 1.4 BB

Flop : (4.8 BB, 2 players) 5s 8c 5c
SB bets 2.4 BB, Hero calls 2.4 BB

Turn : (9.6 BB, 2 players) Ts
SB checks, Hero bets 9.6 BB, SB raises to 24 BB, Hero calls 14.4 BB

River : (57.6 BB, 2 players) Ac
SB bets 36 BB, Hero calls 36 BB

SB shows 8s 5d (Full House, Fives full of Eights)
(Pre 37%, Flop 99%, Turn 95%)

Hero mucks Tc 7s (Two Pair, Tens and Fives)
(Pre 63%, Flop 1%, Turn 5%)

SB wins 129.6 BB

My entire play in this hand is premised on the assumption that Villain’s range is wider than it should be, which given that he shows up with 85o seems like a reasonable assumption. So I float the flop with backdoors and, in all likelihood, two live cards.

On the turn, he’s either giving up or bluff-catching (or trapping, though only a very small portion of his range is strong enough for that), which is why I’m going for a big value bet. The raise is worrisome, but my pot-sized bet is a bit “out of rhythm” and may induce some spazziness (as I said, the 4-max was full of over-aggressive play), so I think my hand is too good to fold. The river is not as bad as it looks, because I don’t think Villain will value bet a bare 5, especially not for a big bet, and I can’t imagine Villain taking this line with all of his flush draws on the turn. It may, however, look like a very good card for Villain to fire again if he was bluffing the turn. Believe it or not, I feel pretty good about my line on this one.

I feel a little less good about this next one:

PokerStars – $2000+$100|20/40 NL (4 max) – Holdem – 4 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

CO: 115.55 BB (VPIP: 35.71, PFR: 21.43, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 14)
Hero (BTN): 152.6 BB
SB: 316.28 BB (VPIP: 43.18, PFR: 27.27, 3Bet Preflop: 11.76, Hands: 46)
BB: 149.05 BB (VPIP: 62.86, PFR: 22.86, 3Bet Preflop: 5.88, Hands: 36)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has Ks 8h
fold, Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, BB calls 2 BB

Flop : (6.5 BB, 2 players) 3c 3h 8c
BB checks, Hero bets 3.25 BB, BB raises to 10.5 BB, Hero calls 7.25 BB

Turn : (27.5 BB, 2 players) 4d
BB bets 20 BB, Hero calls 20 BB

River : (67.5 BB, 2 players) 6h
BB bets 47.5 BB, Hero calls 47.5 BB

BB shows Jd 3d (Three of a Kind, Threes)
(Pre 41%, Flop 91%, Turn 95%)

Hero mucks Ks 8h (Two Pair, Eights and Threes)
(Pre 59%, Flop 9%, Turn 5%)

BB wins 162.5 BB

I half-pot my entire range on this flop, which makes this hand quite close to the top. Really, even from the button, I don’t have much 3x in my range. Clubs miss on the turn and Villain may have picked up a gutshot or just be firing again, so I call again. River is where I think a fold is possible. Villain was a weaker player, and although spazzing isn’t out of the question for him, and this probably is one of the best bluff-catchers in my range as it blocks 88 (which, say, KK would not), it might be best just to make an exploitive fold. It definitely “felt” like he had it, though I’m less inclined to rely on that kind of feeling when I’ve been running bad because of “monsters under the bed” syndrome.

This last one is the best example of running into a tough spot because of the field. It was against Andrew “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger:

PokerStars – $2000+$100|25/50 NL (4 max) – Holdem – 4 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BB: 154.36 BB (VPIP: 40.38, PFR: 30.77, 3Bet Preflop: 19.05, Hands: 55)
Hero (CO): 61.64 BB
BTN: 188.34 BB (VPIP: 45.78, PFR: 31.33, 3Bet Preflop: 15.63, Hands: 87)
SB: 182.44 BB (VPIP: 45.95, PFR: 21.62, 3Bet Preflop: 5.71, Hands: 77)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 8s 9s
Hero raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, BB calls 1 BB

Flop : (4.5 BB, 2 players) Qc 4h 7s
BB checks, Hero bets 2.24 BB, BB calls 2.24 BB

Turn : (8.98 BB, 2 players) 5s
BB checks, Hero bets 6.72 BB, BB calls 6.72 BB

River : (22.42 BB, 2 players) 2s
BB checks, Hero bets 16.8 BB, BB raises to 66.64 BB, fold

BB wins 56.02 BB

Against most people I’d consider this a, not exactly easy, but definitely correct fold. I can only beat a bluff, and while two spades makes for a pretty good bluff-catchers, a lot of people are just never bluffing here. Does Lichtenberger fall into that category? I probably shouldn’t assume so. The more I think about it, the more I think my range can include at least sets and 86, so even though this is one of the worst flushes I can have, I might just have to suck it up and call. I want to emphasize, though, that this is only a gross spot because of who the Villain is. I really think it’s a clear fold otherwise, crazy as that may seem.

I busted with AJs vs 99 in the blinds, so I guess I got what I asked for in that regard.

The Variable Level Times was a neat format. Stacks started extremely deep – 25,000 BBs, to be precise – but blinds went up every 3 minutes at first. Over time, the blind increases got less frequent. There was a LOT of craziness in those early levels. People were really not adjusting well to the deep stacks and playing all kinds of junky hands out of position. Unfortunately I didn’t get much opportunity to take advantage, but the mistakes were plain to see.

I made a pretty big fold with a flush in this one as well:

PokerStars – $665+$35|600/1200 Ante 150 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

CO: 28.35 BB (VPIP: 23.53, PFR: 23.53, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 17)
BTN: 74.15 BB (VPIP: 31.62, PFR: 16.24, 3Bet Preflop: 6.52, Hands: 120)
SB: 109.83 BB (VPIP: 35.88, PFR: 23.08, 3Bet Preflop: 15.09, Hands: 132)
BB: 38.83 BB (VPIP: 28.57, PFR: 28.57, 3Bet Preflop: 33.33, Hands: 14)
UTG: 22.73 BB (VPIP: 25.00, PFR: 20.39, 3Bet Preflop: 2.22, Hands: 106)
Hero (MP): 82.32 BB

6 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.25 BB) Hero has Qc Js
fold, Hero raises to 2 BB, CO raises to 4.5 BB, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 2.5 BB

Flop : (11.25 BB, 2 players) Kc Tc 2c
Hero checks, CO checks

Turn : (11.25 BB, 2 players) 7c
Hero checks, CO bets 5.5 BB, Hero calls 5.5 BB

River : (22.25 BB, 2 players) 5h
Hero checks, CO bets 18.23 BB and is all-in, fold

CO wins 22.25 BB

For better or worse, if Villain had bet the flop, we could have gotten all in. His range for 3-betting and then checking the flop has a LOT of Ax in it, though, and not a whole lot else. Among other things, this is a very plausible line for AcK, AcQ, and AcA. If he were going to bluff, I think he’d most likely just bet the flop. This isn’t exactly a fluke turn card. It’s irrelevant that I have the Queen when he shoves. He’s either got the nuts or a bluff, and I’m proud of myself for laying this one down.

I busted this one on a coin flip as well, AK < 77.

I’m not going to skip a Sunday, so I’ll be starting at 8AM Pacific in the Warm-Up. There’s a good chance I’ll take Monday off, though, unless I”m not able to because of a Day Two!

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Timestamps

0:29 Interview: Reid Young
44:38 Strategy: Big Draw in a Multi-way Pot

Strategy

Blinds 100/200
UTG+2 raises to 600, I’m next to act with Ks Qs and call, folds, button calls, SB folds, BB calls.

FLOP: Js 9s: 6s (pot 2500)
BB checks, utg+2 bets 600. I just call, button folds, BB raises to 2500 total, utg+2 tank calls, hero jams for 10,000 total.

Carlos’ “Fight for Poker” video is well worth watching at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRu_8K-zY9c

Timestamps

3:09 – hello and welcome; carlos welch
50:30 – strategy time

Strategy

*** Starting Chips ***
Dealer: 7486
Small Blind: 3831
Big Blind: 4693
UTG: 10095
UTG+1: 4670
UTG+2: 4710
UTG+3: 3164
UTG+4 [ME]: 5777
UTG+5: 5649

*** Hero Cards ***
Hero Cards: Kc,Qc

*** Blinds/Antes ***
Small Blind Posts: 75
Big Blind Posts: 150

*** Hand Action ***
UTG Folds
UTG+1 Folds
UTG+2 Folds
UTG+3 Folds
UTG+4 [ME] Raises 300
UTG+5 Call 300
Dealer Folds
Small Blind Folds
Big Blind Folds

*** Flop ***
Flop: [Jc,2h,5h]

UTG+4 [ME] Bets 412
UTG+5 Raises 999
UTG+4 [ME] All-in 5065
UTG+5 Folds AsTc

I was playing a particularly nitty $5/$10/$20 game where pretty much everyone except me was quite reluctant to lose whatever they had on the table. Naturally, I’d been leaning on them, especially the player on my right, even harder than usual. I’d also been catching kind of well, so there were a few pots where I actually had the goods but didn’t go to showdown,which probably made me seem even more aggressive than I was.

Villain open limps the CO, I limp behind with As 8h on the Button, SB folds, BB completes, and the straddle checks.

Flop ($80 in pot) Qs 8d 3s. Checks to me, I bet $20, BB calls, straddle folds, CO raises to $80, I call, BB folds. This is a tricky spot because although CO’s line is pretty suspect and I block several of the strongest hands he’s representing, it’s also a kinda odd spot for him to bluff. Then again, the underbet can induce some weird stuff, especially in a player who’s already annoyed. Plus backdoor nut draw!

Turn ($260 in pot) 8s. That’s the best card in the deck for me, unless it isn’t. Villain checks, and so do I.

River ($260 in pot) Ts. Villain bets $175. I raise to $375. He seems to waffle between calling and folding, counts at another $200, then suddenly grabs more chips and makes it $700 to go. I try to talk to him a bit, don’t pick up much but he definitely doesn’t seem uncomfortable. I fold.

There’s a lot going for a fold here, especially when you realize that if this is a bluff, it would probably be the first time in this guy’s life that he ever three-bet bluff the river. Then again, I have a tendency to bring that out in people!

I’m fine with folding the As here. But the As with a hugely significant blocker, getting better than 2.5:1? Against a player who is visibly annoyed with me? Think I shoulda called this one, but it’s closer than it seems when you just look at the hand details.

For what it’s worth, I did consider jamming as well, as 33 is the hand I’m most likely to lose to if I call, but Q8 and even QQ aren’t out of the question for Villain, and frankly I don’t think he was in the mood to fold a full house to me.

The hand took a long time on the river, so when it’s over there was a lot of speculation about what we had. Someone claimed we both had nothing, someone else insisted we both had big hands. I said something along the lines of, “I folded a big hand. Not a lot of people are good enough to bluff there,” but that didn’t get any kind of reaction from Villain. I have to imagine he would have been sorely tempted to show a bluff at that point (he still had his cards), but he also didn’t muck and then insist he was bluffing, which would be a plausible reaction if he weren’t bluffing, so who’s to say?

If I could have my cards back, I’d call. You?

[E]ven though position is important, and the stacks are deep enough to make 74s less ghastly than if we were 100BBs or shallower, there just aren’t enough reasons to play it. Furthermore, our image is bluffy, and that’s going to make it hard to barrel through this hand if we flop a draw/some equity and miss on the river and have to make a large bet because we either flatted a 4x pre (or 3-bet to even more) and raised or floated the flop and fired the turn. With a stubborn/bluffy image, I’d rather have a hand that wants the call it’s going to get (because our opponents are keen to look us up) instead of one that wants a fold. Sure, the flip side is with deep stacks if we make a well-concealed monster we’ll get paid off huge, but how often will that happen compared to the regrettable number of times we are forced to play into our own image and bluff?

This wouldn’t be much of a thread if Hero did fold, so I imagine there’s going to be a flat here and a float to take advantage of villain’s c-betting tendencies and predictable play from out of position.

This is me keeping my WYP range balanced. Sometimes – often, actually – you’re just supposed to fold, and I don’t want this feature to send the message that some fancy play is called for every time you pick up a remotely decent looking hand. There’s no further action here, Hero folds pre-flop. Still, there were several comments worth discussing, so let’s get to it.

The Players in the Blinds

Tracy Marrow says, “The description leads me to believe that the blinds will come along if I call, which makes indicates much better odds for our call,” and a few others echoed this argument as well.

I gave HJ a range of all broadways, all pairs, and a few suited connectors and other hands. I gave the blinds pretty loose ranges and subtracted QQ+,AK as likely 3-betting hands (which of course hurts our equity even more than if they call with those hands, though it won’t be reflected in the number shown here). Assuming they call, there will be perhaps $155 in the pot after rake, of which Hero will have contributed a little over 25%. Yet Hero will have just 16.5% equity.

If the blinds fold, Hero will be heads up with $90 in the pot, 44% of which was his. He’ll have 32% equity.

In the former case, Hero is 8.5% shy of the equity he needs to avoid losing equity on the pre-flop call, and in the latter case he is 12% shy. So he does slightly better when the blinds call, but not much. Many players overestimate this effect, but the truth is that although you get better odds in multiway pots, you also need better odds, because it’s harder to win multiway pots.

Implied Odds

Of course there is some post-flop advantage to having position on each of these players, but to some extent their favorite mistakes risk cancelling each other out. Matt Glassman says, “The description of villain immediately had me thinking “Call, float flop, take it on the turn” will happen often enough to make getting involved more profitable than folding.” He’s right that this would be the preferred strategy against the pre-flop raiser, and if we could guarantee we’d be heads up with him, this just might be profitable enough to outperform folding – I’ll come back to this argument.

However, throwing a loose player or two into the mix complicates matters. Villain will probably continuation bet less, which immediately makes floating less profitable, never mind that floating now requires hitting a parlay where neither Villain nor one of the blinds flopped much of a hand. Admittedly, less continuation betting will mean more opportunities to check behind and realize some equity on the turn, but in most cases Hero’s hand will be so weak that even a free turn card won’t be of much value. Basically we’d be calling hoping to flop a weak pair or draw with which we’d still either end up playing passively or making some pretty thin bluffs into multiple players.

The whole “make a big hand and get paid” idea isn’t as easy as it sounds when you have 74s and a 250BB stack. Two small pair is not necessarily going to be a favorite when that much money goes into the pot, nor is trips with a weak kicker. There are a few ways to make two-card straights, and those should be solid money makers, but a flush may not be. If three or four people see the flop, and then a flush card comes on the turn, even loose players know to be wary. I’m not saying you won’t win the pot often, just that you can’t count on winning huge pots terribly often.

Floating In a Heads Up Pot

Even if the two loose players in the blinds fold, Hero still isn’t in a great spot to float with no equity. If Villain c-bets $60 close to 100% on the flop and then checks close to 100% on the turn, Hero will have the opportunity to bet perhaps $100. Let’s break it down:

10% chance Villain bets turn. He always has big hands, and Hero always folds, netting -$100.

30% chance Villain checks turn and calls a bet. Hero’s net is -$200 (perhaps he recoups a bit of this with slightly +EV river barreling).

60% chance Villain checks and folds. Hero nets $110.

.10 * -$100 + .3 * -$200 + .6 * $110 = -$4.

This is an important lesson: even if you know someone will overfold on a later street, you aren’t guaranteed a profit by calling to that point with any two cards just hoping you’ll get the opportunity to exploit it. Sometimes the price you have to pay to find out whether you’ll get a profitable any-two-cards bluff is too high.

Now, if we give Hero some equity in the pot, that can easily swing this to a profitable float. But that will happen only about 1/3 of the time, and even then it won’t be a super-profitable spot, so even the “best case scenario” of seeing the flop heads up with the raiser is not an especially good one.

Three Betting

I like Eddie’s question on this subject: ” If you are 3-betting this hand, what percentage of hands will you then be 3-betting overall?” Many players do respond very badly to three-bets, and if this guy folds way too much pre-flop or on the flop, this might well be a profitable AATC (almost any two cards) spot. I didn’t give you that information, though, and it certainly shouldn’t be profitable to three-bet such weak hands against a player with a relatively strong opening range. In other words, if Villain isn’t making a big mistake in a three-bet pot, then Hero is.

In my opinion, fold > three-bet > call.

The game is $5/$10 with $2500 effective stacks. Hero is widely perceived as tough but a bit too stubborn/bluffy.

HJ is a straight-forward, experienced recreational type. He’s TAG-ish with his pre-flop hand selection, continuation bets too much, and rarely barrels the turn with either a made hand or a bluff. Unless he has a huge hand, he usually c-bets the flop, check-calls or check-folds the turn depending on whether he has anything, and then check-decides on the river . If the turn checks through, he’s capable of both bluffing and value betting rivers.

The blinds are also recreational players, though more loose and passive than HJ. Their standards for calling pre-flop and on the flop are pretty low, but they tighten up a bit as the bets get bigger.

HJ opens for $40. Hero is on the Button with 7d 4d. What’s your play and why? Posts your suggestions in the comments section below. I’ll do my best to respond throughout the week, and I’ll post my own thoughts along with results on Friday.

Applications is a Two Plus Two book par excellence. It’s dense, it’s thorough, it’s mathematically rigorous, and the only thing keeping it from a perfect score is that the writing and editing are sloppy at best and downright confusing at worst. There are dozens of typos, some as significant as a missing “not” which of course completely changes the meaning of the sentence. The subject matter is complicated, and the prose doesn’t do as much as it could to elucidate it. If anything, it serves to make the material seem even more overwhelming, and I can imagine many bookstore browsers getting intimidated.

If you can get past all that, though, you’ll find the most thorough and practical guide there is to playing unexploitable no-limit hold ’em. There are no toy games here; Janda gets right down to business applying game theory concepts to real no-limit hold ’em situations.

His techniques for estimating optimal pre-flop ranges are ingenious, and it only gets better from there. He emphasizes repeatedly that the goal isn’t to construct perfectly balanced ranges – that’s generally beyond human capabilities and in any event the details matter very little at the margins – but rather to build intuition and to recognize spots where you should be bluffing, value betting, calling, or folding more than you currently are.

Perhaps the most eye-opening conclusion for me was that there are many situations where the optimal strategy likely involves multiple bet sizes. Although Janda doesn’t go into a lot of depth on this, it’s certainly inspired me to investigate these situations for myself.

That’s not to say that Janda never goes into any depth. One of the highlights of the book are the hand examples at the end, where builds ranges for both players across multiple decision points in a single hand. His wise decision to shift the focus away from how to play a particular hand and towards building range-based strategies is the best illustration I’ve scene of both how one ought to think about poker and also how, specifically, to do that in a given situation.

This is not a book for the lazy or the close-minded. A quick skimming or surface-level reading won’t do much for you, and unfortunately the prose sometimes gets in the way of understanding already hard-to-grasp concepts. The effort is worth it, though.

We don’t have a P Funk playlist from Shane yet, but we’ll update this post when we get it.

Timestamps

0:30 hello & welcome
7:20 – limit HE strategy
18:27 – Slowplaying Aces
31:05 – Interview: Shane Schleger

Strategy
Poker Stars, $0.91 Buy-in (75/150 blinds) No Limit Hold’em Tournament, 7 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager – The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

CO: 4,083 (27.2 bb)
BTN: 1,375 (9.2 bb)
Hero (SB): 3,290 (21.9 bb)
BB: 5,019 (33.5 bb)
MP1: 2,225 (14.8 bb)
MP2: 2,441 (16.3 bb)
MP3: 3,657 (24.4 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Ad Ac
3 folds, CO raises to 375, BTN folds, Hero raises to 1,000, BB folds, CO calls 625

Flop: (2,150) 4h 3s 3h (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets 1,075, Hero calls 1,075

Turn: (4,300) Qs (2 players)
Hero checks, CO checks

River: (4,300) Ah (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets 2,008 and is all-in, Hero calls 1,215 and is all-in

Timestamps

0:30 hello
6:07 strategy
41:11 Danielle Andersen

Strategy

I have AsKc in SB
Me: $170 in SB
OMR: $500 in MP
Reg: $700 in CO

OMR opens to $15
Reg calls.
I 3B to $45.
Both players call.

Pot $132 (after rake) Flop 2c 4s 8d
I bet $50, OMR folds, Reg calls.

Pot $232. Turn: 2c 4s 8d 3c.

I check, Reg shoves $75

I’m actually a bit dismayed by how many people are hurrying to label this player a fish and assume he’s going to be some huge mark after the flop. In fact, the way I described him was a splashy, “with lots of limping and calling pre-flop followed by lots of checking and folding post-flop.” There’s not tremendous value in dragging him into the pot. In fact, I’d probably rather he folded to the raise, as he’ll be getting 3:1 and closing the action with presumably a very playable hand. Short stacked or no, I’m not going to be looking to my stack in against him whenever I flop top pair.

Reverse Implied Odds?

Pretty much every commenter expressed some discomfort with playing KJo from out of position, and rightfully so. This is a hand I’d usually fold from the BB against a player in this position. My strong suspicion, however, is that he is raising more hands than his position warrants, and this presents an opportunity to exploit him by playing some additional hands myself.

The mere fact that KJ could be behind when it flops top pair does not make it a “reverse implied odds hand,” as Notam calls it. It’s true that it will rarely be more than a bluff-catcher, but top pair with a good kicker is generally a very good bluff-catcher. Calling bets is not generally going to be a money-losing proposition when we flop top pair, despite the presence of dominating hands in Villain’s range, because we know (or are comfotable assuming, anyway) that he will see the flop with an overly wide range. Thus, he will have only two options: rarely bet when a K or J flops, enabling us to get loads of cheap showdowns and only rarely pay off value bets, or bluff a lot at these boards, which means we’ll actually have positive implied odds on such boards. In the event that the board runs out in a way that calling is no longer profitable, we can always fold. There is never a point when we’ll be compelled to make a -EV call.

Let’s not forget that KJ probably dominates some hands in Villain’s range as well. He surely raises QJs, JTs, and KTs in this spot, and possibly some of their offsuit cousins as well.

Three-Betting vs Calling

Cromi007 says, “I like an absurd raise here, something like 200-240+.” There’s a reason why that size is absurd. Although a huge raise will indeed win the pot quite frequently, it needs to win the pot quite frequently, because it risks several times what is in the pot. Even if we take it down 75% of the time, we’ll be in such bad shape when we don’t get folds that it will likely overwhelm that fold equity. Three wins of $60 accompanied by a loss of $200 is not an appealing proposition.

Stuart says, “I don’t mind 3betting small ($90) to take control of the hand and maybe even set up a big 5-bet to win the hand pre.” This raise has the opposite problem. Instead of offering our opponent a lot of trivial folds, it offers him a lot of trivial calls. Three-betting does not magically put you in control of the hand. You’ll still be out of position, there will still be lots of money behind, and unless you have some reason to think Villain will fold excessively much either to the 3-bet or the c-bet (my description of him suggests neither), then there’s no reason to expect this to be a profitable play.

All of the information we’re responding to here is public. In other words, Villain probably realizes that UTG is going to give up too much, and will expect us to realize that as well, and will recognize that we don’t have to have a monster to 3-bet him (or 5-bet him, for that matter). It’s not enough to say, “He’s got a wide range, let’s raise in a really unbalanced way!” There’s plenty of room for him to punish that sort of imbalance, and everything we know about him suggests he’s capable of it.

What’s lacking from all of the comments advocating a three-bet is a justification for why this hand in particular is good for a three-bet. The fact that these arguments could just as well apply to 72o are a strong hint that what they’re proposing is an unbalanced play.

The fact is that KJo will not play well in a 3-bet pot. We don’t want to flop a marginal hand in a 3-bet pot, because in a 3-bet pot we want to be bluffing and value betting. KJo will not often make a good bluffing hand, and it will even more rarely make a good value betting hand. It’s going to flop mostly bluff-catchers, and that means that we want to keep Villain’s range as wide as possible and the pot as small as possible.

All of that said, I don’t think folding is terrible here by any means, especially if you aren’t confident in your post-flop ability. I think, however, that simply calling now and then playing a balanced post-flop strategy will show a profit, which should be a lesson to all those who say, “I don’t need game theory in the games I play.” Playing a bluff-catcher out of position against a wide range is one of the times that I find it most handy to be able to fall back on what I’ve learned about unexploitable play.

Results

I called, and UTG called. As you might have guessed, there’s another decision in this hand, which I’ll present momentarily in a separate post.

Thanks again to everyone who participated!

Hot off the virtual presses, my latest e-book chronicling the 2009 WSOP Main Event is now available in the Amazon Kindle Store or from www.nitcast.com.

2009 wasn’t my best year in the Main Event – in fact it was one of my worst – but understanding the agony of defeat is even more important to appreciating the WSOP experience than is understanding the thrill of victory. As always, I take you inside of my head, to see both the strategy and the emotion, the excitement and the disappointment, the great plays and the mistakes and the we’ll-never-knows.

It’ll set you back less than three bucks, so please check it out and let me know what you think, preferably in the form of an Amazon review. Thanks and enjoy!

Many of you are familiar with my videos on Tournament Poker Edge. Video training sites like TPE offer a tremendous amount of knowledge for a very low price, and I’ve been a member of many over the course of my career.

The real barrier to learning everything you need to know from subscription-based sites isn’t cost, it’s time. There are so many great videos out there that it’s hard to know which ones will best meet your needs, and it’s a real bummer to spend your valuable time watching one that doesn’t address your needs or is just plain bad.

These personalized videos offer the best of both worlds. Like subscription-based sites, they’re a lot cheaper than one-on-one coaching, but they’re a far more efficient use of your time because they are tailored specifically to your needs.

To learn more or to commission a personalized video, please visit https://www.thinkingpoker.net/coaching/poker-coaching-programs/custom-video-review/.

Here’s a full-length sample of what I can offer. It’s an actual video that I created for one of my students. Whether or not you have any interest in commissioning a video for yourself, I hope you’ll find it valuable!

Timestamps

0:30 Interview: Edoardo Riario Sforza
33:43 Strategy: Two tough final table decisions

If you were to draw a picture of the prototypical recreational player, you might well end up with a picture of this guy. He’s a slightly doughy white guy, late 30s or early 40s, wearing sporty clothes and expensive wrap-around sunglasses on his forehead. We played together the night before at $5/$10, and I got the impression that he thought I was a bit of a bully.

The flop comes Qh Qc 8h. I bet $80, and he raises to $180 pretty quickly. It’s very difficult for me to believe he has a hand here. I mean, maybe a small pair or a flush draw or something, but I could definitely see him doing this as just a straight Level Two “I don’t think you have anything so I’m raising” sort of thing. I contemplate three-betting the flop but, given my backdoors, decide to call instead. I can check-shove turns that improve me, and I can bluff some rivers if he checks back (though I may not need to).

The turn is the 3d. I check, and he bets $320, which solidifies my conviction that he’s just trying to push me out of the pot. The trouble is that I have K-high, no draw, and only about $150 to shove over his bet. I shove anyway.

He groans and asks the dealer, “How much more?”

“Not much more,” she says as she reaches for my chips.

What the fuck!? It’s a little tricky to keep a poker face through her unsolicited and inappropriate commentary. Thankfully he finds the fold button anyway.

I’m sorely tempted to show my hand. It’s the rare case where showing something so wild really can influence the dynamic of the whole table. Ultimately I didn’t do it, though, because I could also feel the desire to brag (which I guess I’m giving into anyway by making this blog post) motivating me.

One example, he bet-called 99 vs a huge check-shove on Qh Th 5d and won vs Ah Kh. Exploitively, it may be a correct call because that player probably does have a draw there all the time, but winning in spots like that has definitely emboldened him.

His strategy probably OK against the weaker regs, but I’ve been punishing him for it. That’s not to say I’ve never backed down when he floated or raised me in spots where I suspected he was unbalanced, but but we’ve tangled a fair bit in spots where we both had wide ranges and the money has on balance flown to me.

Hero is in the straddle with about $4800. Action folds to Villain in SB, who opens for $60. BB folds, Hero makes it $160 with Js Ts, Villain calls.

Flop ($323 in pot) Qs 9s 6d. Villain checks, Hero bets $200, Villain raises to $500, Hero?

Please comment below with your thoughts and preferred action. If you want to do anything other than shove, you should also consider your plan should you see the following turn cards:

1) 3s

2) 3h

3) Td

I’ll respond to comments throughout the week and post my own thoughts as well as results on Friday.

“[T]his looks like a textbook example of a “leveling war”, with each player trying to anticipate and stay one step ahead of his opponent’s exploitive strategy. Clearly, Tonking got the upper hand in this case.

That’s not to say that Newhouse was completely misguided to think that a bluff could succeed at an extremely high frequency. It was the final table of poker’s most prestigious tournament, both players had a lot at stake, and he’d already made clear that he did not want to finish in ninth place for a second year in a row. Then again, Tonking may have known and taken all of those factors into consideration.

The point I want to make is that Newhouse did not have to enter into this war at all. When you are genuinely unsure of how your opponent will respond, there are alternatives to taking your best guess. There is more to poker than good reads and “heart”. The fundamental mathematics of the game limit how much you can get away with, at least against a skilled opponent, even when you have the right read and the nerve to act on it.”

I also have an article called “Keep ‘Em Guessing” appearing on Poker News:

“The best guide I’ve found to judging my own play is my opponents’ reactions. If they seem consistently confused about whether to bet or how to respond to my bets, then I’m probably doing something right.”

Hope you enjoy them, please let me know what you think!

Pre-Flop Ranges

Don’t get too bogged down in trying to assign exact ranges to each opponent. It’s mostly guesswork, and I don’t think precision will greatly influence the correct play in most situations anyway. Do recognize, though, that the absence of a four-bet greatly reduces the likelihood of either of these players holding KK, AA, or AK. I’m less comfortable making assumptions about what AQ, QQ, or anything weaker would do, but I’m not too worried about running into an overpair here.

UTG’s range is surely wider than it should be (then again, who knows what a range for limping UTG and then cold calling a 3-bet “should” look like), but it may be stronger than you think. Even loose players usually have some standards for cold calling 3-bets.

I doubt UTG2 has much of a folding range considering the odds he’s getting once the action is back on him.

Hero’s range probably looks stronger than it is, because this was an exploitive three-bet. If it weren’t for the reads and sizing tell Hero acted on, he wouldn’t be three-betting this wide, and presumably the other players don’t recognize those features of the situation and so will give Hero more credit than he deserves. So although Hero may in fact have the most air-heavy range of the three, I still want to play the hand aggressively.

Bet Sizing and Barreling

We’re only on the flop, but with an SPR of less than four, we have to think about whether and how to put stacks into play. There are a lot of arguments for planning to fire multiple barrels at this pot. As I argued above, both Villains likely have a lot of medium strength hands but very few hands they’ll be comfortable playing for stacks. Their ranges consist mostly of good but not great bluff-catchers, and they’re likely to overestimate Hero’s strength. That along with Hero’s backdoor draws all argues for barreling a lot of runouts.

There was a lot of agreement about betting the flop, but not much consensus on sizing. Commenters advocated anywhere from $80 to $140, and a lot of people seemed to be just throwing out a number without a lot of justification for it.

This is why it’s so important to think ahead and think about your entire range. You need to decide whether you’re going to try to bet flop and shove turn with your strongest hands, or whether you’d rather break the betting over three streets. Then you need to construct a bluffing range that at least balances those bets, though in this case I’d want to be weighted towards bluffs anyway.

This is a relatively static flop. A few specific turns will do a lot to improve formerly weak hands, but most of the time the strongest hands on the flop will still be among the strongest hands on the river. That argues for more, smaller bets.

In Mathematics of Poker, Chen and Ankenman demonstrate that in a completely static game with no raising, the optimal strategy is to bet the same fraction of the pot on each street such that your last bet is all-in. Those conditions don’t quite hold here, but they are close enough to make this strategy worth following in my opinion.

I set up a spreadsheet to help me solve this, and it turns that if force ourselves to bet in increments of $5, the closest we can get is to bet $75 on the flop. This assumes we bet and get a single caller, which is a far more likely outcome than getting two calls. If the latter happens, we’ll just cross the bridge when we come to it.

Counter-Arguments

My suspicion is that some people will be uncomfortable with this sizing because it seems small and thus could be perceived as weak. But how, really, can our opponents respond to that? They can either check-raise bluff or they can call light.

We can protect against the possibility of excessive check-raise bluffing simply by having appropriate calling and re-bluffing ranges. It’s not a reason to bluff less often or with a larger size, just a reason to defend more after betting.

As for calling light, I agree that quite possibly neither player will fold a pair or a draw to the flop bet. It’s true that a larger size will get you more folds, but then again it needs to get more folds, because it risks more.

It’s not obvious to me that getting called by 99 on the flop is such a bad thing. Not only does Hero have pretty decent equity against that hand, but it’s a hand that’s not likely to go to the felt unimproved, so as long as aggressive barreling is in the works, Hero may actually prefer for 99 to call rather than fold.

You can hear Andrew and his grandmother talk about her brother on Episode 21.

Be sure to pick up The Thinking Poker Diaries Volume 3 from nitcast.com or in the Amazon Kindle Store.

Strategy Hand 1

Villain raises to $3 from CO, BTN folds, Hero 3 bets to $10 from SB with AQcc, BB folds, Villain calls.

Flop: 7d 7c 8d
Hero bets $12.5 into $20 (after rake). Villain calls.

Turn Qh
Hero checks, Villain bets 24.5 into 43, leaving 64 behind. Hero shoves, Villain folds.

Strategy Hand 2

MP opens to $15, two calls, Hero calls 6c 5c in BB

Flop Ts 7s 4d. Hero bets 40 into 60, original raiser folds, one call, last player folds.

Turn 2s. Hero bets 80 into 140.

River brick. Both players check, Villain shows As 7h.

You’re at a 9-handed $2/$5 NLHE table with $600 effective stacks. UTG is very loose, especially pre-flop, and the whole table is salivating over him. UTG+2 is tight-aggressive bordering on nitty.

UTG limps for $5. UTG+2 raises to $20, and the action folds to Hero in the CO with Qs Ts. Hero raises to $50, UTG waffles a bit and then calls, and UTG+2 quickly puts in another $30.

Flop ($146 in pot after rake) Ks 8d 6d. UTG and UTG +2 both check without much hesitation. $550 remain in the effective stacks. Hero?

Leave a comment below with your thoughts and preferred action. I’ll do my best to respond to comments over the next few days and will post the next decision point next week.

The Case For Folding

This is the least appealing option, and in practice I probably just wouldn’t sit in a game where the conditions that would cauto pse me to fold this would be likely to arise. Against two top-notch opponents, and especially with more tough opponents behind you, I’d fold. Even under these conditions, deeper stacks could compel me to call or three-bet, but with these stacks you need an appreciable post-flop edge that is not merely positional because you figure to be in bad shape against their ranges for entering the pot in such early position. Thankfully, we are not playing against such players, and against weaker opponents this is exactly the sort of hand you want to use to exploit their mistakes.

The Case For Calling

UTG is the mark at the table, and we’d like to play pots with him. Calling gives us the best chance of bringing him along and keeps the stacks nice and deep which maximizes our positional advantage.

Gareth and others make the important point that the risk of a squeeze from someone behind could take a bite out of the profitability of calling, but I agree with Aldune that, “Generally I would never worry about getting squeezed in a 2/5 game. This happens way too infrequently for it to a decisive factor in this hand.” It’s worth asking whether someone behind you will make this play with a good frequency, but the answer will usually be no.

Several commenters shared Piers’ concern that “[the raiser’s] range has us crushed so much of the time you’d have to be concerned about calling his c-bet on a T or Q high flop.” Even if his range really is that strong, though, position can help us to navigate these treacherous waters, though. For instance, if we have a read that UTG2 won’t continuation bet a whiffed Ace-King into multiple callers, then we can fold to a bet even if hit top pair without any redraws, but we can also count on stealing a lot of pots when checked to. Otherwise, it will probably be safe to peel one when we flop top pair and fold to further action from him.

As for UTG, Mh says, ” I expect the loose UTG to check/call the flop most of the time.” This is a common misconception about loose players. A player who sees the flop with an excessively wide and weak range is actually going to check and fold a lot of flops (or, if he doesn’t, he’ll check and fold a lot of turns). Weak pre-flop ranges turn into weak flop ranges, and even if his standards for what counts as a “fit” are on the low side, he’s still going to have a lot of “folds”.

These players actually end up being very good targets for semi-bluffing, because there comes a point where they have to let go of all of those weak hands. Basically, all of their calling ranges are too wide. They call pre-flop and fold flop often. They call pre-flop and flop and fold turn often. They call to the river and then fold often. And, because their pre-flop ranges are so wide, they still have enough weak hands to call three barrels too often. So you can keep firing with your draws, profit from the many weak hands that will fall by the wayside on each street, and also benefit from their willingness to pay off when you complete your draws.

I discuss this concept in greater detail in How To Bluff a Calling Station.

What you cannot afford to do is try to “set mine” with this hand and expect to profit by being loose and passive. In other words, you can’t call, hope to flop two-pair or a draw, fold when you don’t, play passively when you do, and expect to show enough of a profit on the rare occasions that you actually make a strong hand to make up for all those earlier calls from behind. This is the mistake that Ed Miller calls “playing poker like a slot machine”. If you’re going to play this hand, you need to use your position and your draw equity to push your opponents out when the opportunity arises.

The Case For Raising

Given that you’re anticipating some post-flop aggression, it would be great to get the ball rolling pre-flop. After all, by flatting you take most of the strongest pre-flop hands out of your range, and that makes it harder to represent strength later.

As Piers points out, the big drawbacks to 3-betting are the risks of putting in a lot of money against a very strong range and possibly even being blown out by a 4-bet. Several people correctly mention that 4-bets, like squeezes, are rare in these games, and we can probably assume that UTG2 is not going to 4-bet light. It seems, then, that a lot of the risk of 3-betting could be eliminated if we could exclude the top 5% or so of hands from UTG2’s range.

Brian was the only commenter to mention the possibility of sizing tells, but if we have reason to believe that UTG2 would have made a larger raise with his strongest holdings, then this has the potential to swing a call to a 3-bet. Many people assumed that because this player is described as “bordering on nitty” that he must have a big hand. What would you expect such a player to do with 99 or AJ in this spot? Trying to isolate a loose player with a small raise seems in character.

What about if this same player had AA? The best players will keep their pre-flop sizing consistent so as not to give away information like this, but many people will be tempted to make a larger raise. After all, they can expect UTG to come along even for a larger raise, and many of these players hate getting drawn out on or playing multi-way pots when they have big pairs.

If we’re right about UTG2 capping his range with this raise size, then 3-betting and barreling will be extremely profitable. Only low probability events such as someone behind waking up with a monster or someone calling and flopping a monster should keep us from winning this pot.

Bottom Line

I think a lot of people are overestimating the value of a strategy built around making a huge hand and getting paid by UTG (as I argued before, his looseness doesn’t necessarily translate into auto-stacking him; in fact the opposite may well be true) and not appreciating the value of locking up, with a high probability, the $30 that is already in the pot. I even think that there are further implied odds attached to 3-betting, not just because you will occasionally make a strong hand but because you may well make more money from barreling than from getting folds immediately.

With only 120BB stacks, there’s not a need for a large raise. $50 – $55 should be enough to isolate UTG2 (though if UTG wants to cold call that’s fine too) and set you up for more profitable bluffing later should you get called.

A new post is coming shortly for discussion of flop action.

The latest and greatest volume in my Thinking Poker Diaries is now available at nitcast.com or in the Amazon Kindle Store. This third volume in the series follows the same format as the first two, interspersing anecdotes from the tournament with strategy essays that discuss topics that came up during my play. Longer than the first two volumes combined, this one tells the story of my 35th place finish in the 2008 WSOP Main Event. Please check it out and let me know what you think!

Timestamps

:30 – Hello & Welcome; Planning and Goal Setting
34:42 – Strategy

UTG opens to $40, MP calls, I call with 4c 2c in the BB.

Flop ($125 in pot) 9c 5s 3h. I check, UTG bets $75, MP folds, I raise to $275, UTG makes it $640, I call.

Turn ($1405 in pot) 4h. I bet $800, UTG calls.

River ($3005 in pot) As. I shove for ~$3000, UTG calls with 99.

Pre-flop isn’t exactly standard, but MP was the weakest player at the table (overly loose, sizing tells, etc.), and although UTG seemed like a pretty decent player, I knew that he wasn’t one of the best regs, because even though I don’t play at Maryland Live that often I do know who the best pros there are.

I love my hand on this flop. As deep as we are, I’m more excited to have hit this than to have hit bottom set. The only hands I’d rather hold are top set, 76 with a backdoor, or 64 with a backdoor, in that order. This is a very easy check-raise. If you’re not clear on why, put yourself in UTG’s shoes and imagine how you’d feel about playing for stacks with anything less than 55 (which may not even be in his UTG range).

To be honest, I was skeptical of Villain’s three-bet. I’d actually won another pot recently at the must move table (Villain was already in the main game so wasn’t around to see this) by min-4-bet bluffing against another reg in a very similar spot. I can’t see him doing this with the intention to get stacks in unless he has a set or a big draw, and many players won’t take this line with those hands anyway. Because I had such a good draw, though, I decided to peel and pull the trigger on a later street.

The turn is a great card for my purposes, because it completes the most obvious draw. I can’t definitively exclude 76s from Villain’s range, but I had my doubts as to whether he’d open it pre and whether he’d three-bet the flop. I think he should do both, but even many pretty good mid-stakes live pros are too nitty about that sort of thing.

My biggest mistake here is the sizing. I planned to shove any river that didn’t pair the board (maybe not hearts either, just because he might not expect me to jam non-flushes for value although I would), and consequently I should have set up sizing so that I was betting more similar percentages of the pot on both streets. I think $1000 into $1400 on the turn and then $2800 into $3400 on the river would have worked out better.

Frankly, I think his river call is pretty bad. Most of my semi-bluffs have gotten there, and on this run-out I’m not shoving a lower set for value. This is what happens when you just think about “bluffs” generically rather than considering which exact hands your opponent would bluff with.

I was initially excited not only to win the pot but also to have a player sitting two seats to my right who still had me covered! As tempting as the prospect of winning a $20K pot was, he proved pretty nitty and it was getting late, so after an hour of unsuccessfully trying to provoke a confrontation with him, I cashed out and called it a night.

“Antonio Esfandiari, who was providing commentary for ESPN while the hand went down, said “He put his opponent on a hand and played accordingly. That’s how you win at no-limit hold ’em.”

I respectfully disagree. What does it mean to “play accordingly” when you have TT and you put your opponent on QQ?  If you know he will fold, then bluffing would be correct. If you know he won’t fold, then giving up and checking and/or folding would be correct. What if you don’t know what he’ll do?

The fact that Newhouse was attempting to bluff Tonking off of hands barely better than his own, and even moreso the fact that Tonking called, indicate that someone made a theoretical mistake at some point in the hand.”

I not only analyze the hand in depth but also make some broader points about how and when to use game theory in tournament situations where ICM considerations have a huge influence on the correct play. Given the scope of the article, it’s going to be spread over two issues, so the one that’s out now is Part 1.

We’ve also got an extra-long strategy segment about playing post-flop in 3-bet pots.

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello & Welcome
6:47 – Strategy: Playing in 3-Bet Pots
47:33 – Interview: David Einhorn

Strategy

PokerStars Zoom No-Limit Hold’em, $2.00 BB (6 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from http://flopturnriver.com

Hero (Button) ($228.51)
SB ($172.65)
BB ($223.63)
UTG ($215.56)
MP ($206)
CO ($200)

Preflop: Hero is Button with 10, K
2 folds, CO raises to $5, Hero raises to $13, 2 folds, CO calls $8

Flop: ($29) A, 10, Q (2 players)
CO checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($29) J (2 players)
CO bets $18.55, Hero calls $18.55

River: ($66.10) Q (2 players)
CO bets $42.41, Hero raises to $196.96 (All-In), 1 fold

Total pot: $150.92 | Rake: $2.80

Best Strategy

Nate and I talk strategy on just about every episode, but of course the show is at its very best strategy-wise when the game’s top players share their wisdom.

Ben Sulsky – It was a great privilege to talk about game theory (and philosophy) with a player who is blazing new frontiers in poker strategy.

Mike McDonald – Our conversation with Mike was great in a lot of ways, but among other things he was generous enough to share some deep thoughts on tournament strategy, including the underappreciated “hero check”.

Fascinating Stories

My favorite guests are not only great players (sometimes they aren’t players at all) but also fascinating people who open up about their struggles, their successes, and unique poker careers.

John the Lawyer – A long career in big live games, including a lot of private games, is bound to produce some great stories, and John tells them well. If you overlooked this episode because you didn’t recognize the name, go back and listen. There’s some solid strategy discussion in here as well.

Dara O’Kearney – Going pro later in life gave Dara a unique perspective on the poker world, and his Irish blood gives him the ability to share his thoughts with both humor and deep insight into many facets of the game, including staking.

Terrence Chan – Terrence not only shares stories from his poker and mixed martial arts careers but also gives some insight into the state of regulated online poker in Nevada. This interview is particularly interesting in light of what happened with Ultimate Poker just a few months later.

Ari Engel – Ari reveals that the life of the circuit grinder isn’t always a glamorous one. Even one of the most successful player on the WSOP circuit has to live a nitcast-approved lifestyle to keep his dream alive.

Alex Fitzgerald – Alex is brutally honest about the highs and lows of his career, including his struggle with drugs and his new life in Costa Rica.

Just Plain Fun

Nate and I rarely have as much fun as when we get to catch up with some of the great friends we’ve made through the podcast, and when we’re having the most fun, that’s usually when the show is the most fun to listen to.

Live From Las Vegas featuring Carlos Welch – One of the perks of our relationship with PokerNews was the opportunity to record together in person (a rare treat in itself) from the halls of the World Series of Poker. Carlos Welch joins us for this entertaining episode that includes a lot of strategy discussion from non-hold ’em games.

Episode 100 – This is one for the fans. In this double-length episode, two of our most popular guests, Carlos Welch and Gareth Chantler, turn the tables and interview Nate and me about our lives and poker careers.

How to Interpret a Donk Bet

A donk bet is a way for the out of position player to guarantee that money goes into the pot on the current street. It could represent a variety of hands, for a variety of reasons:

1. A monster hand that wants to ensure that the pot grows so that stacks will be accessible on the river.

2. A bluff that wants to prevent Hero from bluffing with better and/or wants to represent a monster hand trying to access stacks on the river. This bet should be followed up sometimes but not always by a river shove. This bet may come from draws or from complete air.

3. A medium-strength hand betting for information/protection/deterring a bluff.

Of these, (3) is not generally a good reason to bet, though there are players who will make this play nonetheless. When all you can beat is a bluff, you shouldn’t want to deter bluffs, and in general you should welcome the opportunity to get closer to showdown without putting more money into the pot. Thus I’m inclined to discount this sort of hand. Hero’s hole cards as well as the pre-flop and flop action also reduce the likelihood of Villain holding hands of this sort (e.g. KTo, K5s).

Villain’s aversion to big pots also suggests that he doesn’t have this kind of hand. This bet basically lays the groundwork for getting stacks in, and we know (well, suspect), that this player doesn’t like getting stacks in with marginal hands.

The fact that Villain is somewhat passive cuts against his making any of these plays, really. Passive players just don’t bet that much, and yet here he is betting. To the extent that his passivity is relevant, it’s because it enables to show up on the turn with some strong hands that more aggressive players might have raised on an earlier street (AA, 33, AK).

Assessing Villain’s Bluffing Range

The most important question is how often Villain might be bluffing here. KQ is admittedly a good bluff-catcher in that it blocks some of Villain’s value hands, including KJ which is probably Villain’s single most likely holding. Not holding a heart and thus not blocking flush draw combinations is also a good argument for bluff-catching.

Villain’s range is not determined solely by a broad description of his playstyle, and certainly not solely by whatever read he may think he has on the Hero. There are, after all, several other players in the hand on many of the occasions when Villain puts money into the pot voluntarily. The action he faces or could potentially face will have the strongest influence on his range, with his tendencies making a difference only at the margins.

Here, Villain has called a pre-flop raise from the worst position at the table, with many players still to act behind him. Looser and more passive players will have wider ranges here than others, but virtually any poker player will have a tigher range in this situation than he would were he closing the action on the button. While I can’t say with certainty whether KJo or AA will be in his range, I am comfortable eliminating K3o and almost certainly K6s as well.

Villain faces a similar problem on the flop, where he again has the worst both relative and absolute position. He simply can’t call without a good pair or draw. A read on his looseness could tell us whether he could have Th 8h or 7d 6d, but there is just no way for him to show up with random airball hands like AJo or Td 9d. This severely limits the number of bluffing candidates available to him even if he decided on the turn that he wanted to bluff. No one is floating from out of position with two live players behind him just because Hero has a vaguely weak/bluffable image.

It’s often said that betting in a spot like this enables Villain to “set his own price” with a draw. That’s true only if Hero does not raise. If he does, then Villain has in fact set himself up to pay an even higher price, or worse to be blown off a lot of equity by a shove. That’s not to say Villain wouldn’t bet a flush draw, only that it might not be the best idea.

There are also some draws, such as the nut flush draw, that could actually have enough equity to call a shove, and that gain more than other draws from seeing the river. Villain’s inclination against big pots with marginal hands again argues against playing those hands this way.

Results

I suspect that folding such a good bluff-catcher could be exploited by a player who bets a lot of draws in this spot, and perhaps even by out of position floats, though the presence of other players in the pot protects against this latter concern. I also suspected, however, that this player wouldn’t do either of those things exploitably often, and also that he wouldn’t build the pot with worse marginal hands than mine. Thus, I folded.

The choice (against this player) is probably quite close between folding immediately or calling and then folding to a shove on any river that doesn’t improve your hand.

What About Raising?

I don’t see much point in raising. Some commenters suggested that this might cause Villain to fold slightly better hands like AK or AA. I think that’s a stretch, and if he doesn’t, then this is definitely a money losing play considering that you’re drawing slim to dead against his calling range.

A smaller raise for information is also not a good idea, because as usual you pay too high a price for that information. Even if Villain responds 100% honestly to a minimum raise, you lose an extra $500 to his value hands relative to calling. Neither folding weaker draws (which will have less than $500 in equity) nor charging another $500 to stronger draws (which will have more than 0% equity and thus lose less than $500 by calling your raise) is enough to offset that loss.

I suspect the real concern motivating this raise is not wanting to get bluffed on the river. Of course this also entails missing out on the opportunity to bluff-catch on the river. Even if you can’t exploit your opponent on the river, all you have to do to keep from losing money is have a balanced calling range. Never mind that this particular opponent might well be exploitable by folding, such that that strategy is better than raising even if an occasional bluff does get through.

You can (and should) follow @kevmath on Twitter. You can (and should) vote for the Thinking Poker Podcast in the 2014 Bluff Reader’s Choice Awards.

Timestamps

:30 Hello & Welcome
8:47 Strategy: On Straddling
30:23 Interview: Kevmath

“The heads-up battle between Martin Jacobson and Felix Stephensen was perhaps the finest culmination to a World Series of Poker Main Event in recent history. In past years, the final showdown frequently occurred between a professional and an amateur player. In such cases, the professional can generally anticipate a large theoretical advantage and thus has a lot of incentive to keep pots small and pass on high-variance plays in order to maximize his chances of realizing that advantage. Such matches tend to look more like a game of cat-and-mouse, and while playing such a style is a skill unto itself, it doesn’t always prove strategically instructive for heads-up play between more evenly matched opponents. Jacobson and Stephensen, however, are both extremely talented professionals, and as a result their heads-up play exhibited many more thin calls, bluffs, and value bets than were seen in past years.

With thanks to Martin Harris of Hard Boiled Poker for compiling a list of the cards held by each player in each hand of the final table, here’s my analysis of some of the trickier decisions faced by Jacobson and Stephensen in the final hands of the 2014 WSOP Main Event”