Posts Tagged ‘full ring’

We slowplayed the flop, we raised an arguably scary turn card, and now it’s time to talk about what to do on the river in this third and final installment of “What’s Your Play? Street-by-Street at the WSOP Main Event”.

It’s early on Day 5 of the WSOP main event. We’re in the shallow money, with 574 players remaining out of 7319, and Hero’s table draw is a great one for such a late day in the tournament, featuring several pretty weak amateurs. Hero (me, in my late twenties with dark sunglasses and no logos on my clothing) begins the hand with a slightly below average stack of 500K. Blinds are at 4K/8K/1K.

One of the weak players, a guy about my age sitting on a stack of about 450K, raises to 20K in first position. I call with 2c 2h in middle position, and a middle-aged player new to the table and sitting on 600K calls in the big blind. The three of us see a 7s 4s 2d flop, and both of my opponents check relatively quickly. I check behind.

The turn is the 3s. BB checks, and UTG bets 25K into the 72K pot. I raise to 90K, the BB folds, and UTG calls. I realize it’s potentially important information, but I’m afraid I don’t remember how quickly he called or in what manner. The river is the 3d. UTG bets 100K into the 250K pot, leaving about 250K behind. Hero has him slightly covered. What’s your play and why?  Read the complete post...

Thanks to everyone who commented on Part Two of this special street-by-street “What’s Your Play?” Like it or not, Hero checked the flop, and now we’re faced with a small bet on a turn card that makes a lot of straights and flushes possible. Because of that, JeanNoel asks, “I am wondering if hero’s big hand on the flop turns into a bluff catcher on the turn?”

It does not. Although quite a few hands are theoretically ahead of Hero’s, this set is very strong nonetheless. No one in the hand, including our Hero, has taken any action to suggest he has much of anything. Consequently, all players can value all holdings more highly than they ordinarily would on a board of this texture. Bottom set may not seem like much with so many straights and flushes possible, but here it is damn near the nuts. Hero should play it as such unless and until an opponent takes some action that drastically contradicts that assumption.

UTG’s flop check and small turn bet strongly discount anything better in his range. Much the same is true with BB’s turn check. He may have checked a strong hand to the pre-flop raiser on the flop, but once the flop checks through, I’d expect him to start building a pot rather than hope that someone else would bet. If he cold 3-bets the turn, my opinion would change and I’d either fold or call planning to fold the river unimproved, but I don’t see that happening very often at all.  Read the complete post...

This week’s “What’s Your Play?” is a little different, in that it’s the second in a series of three posts about the same hand. Rather than asking you to discuss a plan for the entire hand, I’m going to give you the action through the turn and then ask for your thoughts. Of course you may still choose to speak broadly about how possible future action influences your turn decision, but you won’t need to consider every possible river scenario, because next week we’ll find out what exactly happens and discuss that particular situation in-depth. Make sense? Here we go!

It’s early on Day 5 of the WSOP main event. We’re in the shallow money, with 574 players remaining out of 7319, and Hero’s table draw is a great one for such a late day in the tournament, featuring several pretty weak amateurs. Hero (me, in my late twenties with dark sunglasses and no logos on my clothing) begins the hand with a slightly below average stack of 500K. Blinds are at 4K/8K/1K.

One of the weak players, a guy about my age sitting on a stack of about 450K, raises to 20K in first position. I call with 2c 2h in middle position, and a middle-aged player new to the table and sitting on 600K calls in the big blind. The three of us see a 7s 4s 2d flop, and both of my opponents check relatively quickly.  Read the complete post...

Thanks to everyone who commented on Part One of this street-by-street “What’s Your Play?” series. Even if you didn’t, please check out the results of the flop action and feel free to chime in with your opinion on how to play the turn.

To my surprise, responses to this week’s hand were more unanimous than they’ve ever been, and you all wanted to do something other than what I did. I must say, though, that I’m not convinced. I chose to check, and I still believe that’s the best play.

What’s the Value Target?

JeanNoel asks the right question when he says, “What kind of hands will lose a big pot against a set ? I think that if hero doesn’t improve on the river, he will be happy to be called by an overpair, 2 pairs or top pair top kicker. It doesn’t reprent a lot of hands since the board is 7s 4s 2d.”

This is the crux of the problem: both the board and the action so far make it unlikely that anyone has the sort of hand we’d really like him to have, which is two-pair or one strong pair. UTG’s check almost certainly represents weakness – you just don’t see such players randomly checking vulnerable made hands after raising pre-flop, especially not in multi-way pots. In all likelihood he has unpaired overcards, and probably not a good draw, which I’d also expect him to bet. If we were heads up with UTG, I hope that a lot more people would advocate checking.  Read the complete post...

This week’s What’s Your Play? is a little different, in that it’s the first in a series of three posts about the same hand. Rather than asking you to discuss a plan for the entire hand, I’m going to start the discussion with a flop decision. Of course you may still choose to speak broadly about how possible future action influences your flop decision, but you won’t need to consider every possible turn scenario, because next week we’ll find out what exactly happens on the turn and discuss that particular situation in-depth. Make sense? Here we go!

It’s early on Day 5 of the WSOP main event. We’re in the shallow money, with 574 players remaining out of 7319, and Hero’s table draw is a great one for such a late day in the tournament, featuring several pretty weak amateurs. Hero (me, in my late twenties with dark sunglasses and no logos on my clothing) begins the hand with a slightly below average stack of 500K. Blinds are at 4K/8K/1K.

One of the weak players, a guy about my age sitting on a stack of about 450K, raises to 20K in first position. I call with 2c 2h in middle position, and a middle-aged player new to the table and sitting on 600K calls in the big blind. The three of us see a 7s 4s 2d flop, and both of my opponents check relatively quickly. What’s your play and why?  Read the complete post...

Thanks to everyone who commented on What’s Your Plan? Boated Up in a Blind Battle. The most recent comment is also the one that most closely resembles my own opinions, so I’m going to start with what Rant2112 said:

“Most of Villain’s range on the turn consists of bluff catchers and bluffs. We don’t need to worry about optimizing against his value hands anyway because the chips will get in regardless.
Betting the turn, even small IMO, is going to fold out a lot of his bluffs.

Villain’s bluff catchers aren’t super strong. He’s not going to be comfortable paying off two decent-sized bets.

I think checking the turn is best so Villain bluffs more often. He’s going to bluff almost 100% of the time when he has a bluffing hand – he called the flop for a reason.

Against his bluff catchers we can bomb the river and hope to get looked up.

We should also bomb the river when the turn goes check, bet, call because Villain isn’t likely enough to bluff the river. We should just hope he picks up something he’s willing to call with.”  Read the complete post...

Villain is an unknown who seems to play reasonably well. No idea what if anything he knows about Hero (me), but I did have my PokerStars Team Online red spade at the time this hand was played.

For those who have difficulty seeing suits, they’re not terribly relevant here. Hero’s hand is suited but doesn’t even have a backdoor on the flop, and there’s no flush draw possible on the flop but a second spade comes on the turn.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 400/800 Blinds 80 Ante (8 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB (t37804)
UTG (t23094)
UTG+1 (t55662)
MP1 (t53809)
MP2 (t3215)
CO (t24644)
Button (t37332)
Hero (SB) (t23870)

Hero’s M: 12.97

Preflop: Hero is SB with K♣, 5♣
6 folds, Hero bets t2400, BB calls t1600

Flop: (t5440) 6♦, K♥, 6♠ (2 players)
Hero bets t2880, BB calls t2880

Turn: (t11200) K♠ (2 players)

What’s your plan on the turn, and what’s your plan for how to proceed depending on how your opponent responds? Please post your thoughts in the comments section below.

As usual, I’ll leave this post up all week and then give you results and my thoughts on Friday.

This is a guest post from a friend of mine who just won his first live tournament last week. It was a $125 freezeout at Aria. He sent this to me in an e-mail and was gracious enough to permit me to publish it. There’s some interesting stuff in here about what it takes to do well in a small-stakes live tournament, what you can get away with, and what it feels to be really keyed up and in the zone while you’re playing. I think everyone can relate to the feelings of frustration that come from banging your head against the wall in poorly structure tournaments and also the exhilaration of finally taking one down. Of course once you’re capable of calls like this it’s only a matter of time before you win one!

“I was able to build a good stack pretty early on, even before we hit the antes I had about 38k from a 10k stack. I was pretty aggressive and the table never gave me credit for anything. Because of this I was able to get paid when hitting a straight and hitting Aces up vs my opponent’s worst aces up.  Read the complete post...