Posts Tagged ‘semi-bluff’

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...

I’ve now got another video up with Poker School Online, the PokerStars training site. This one focuses on mid-stakes no-limit hold ‘em and specifically on hand reading, so it’s a nice option if the last video I posted was too basic for you. Again, if you like this, please leave a positive comment and give it an appropriate number of stars. If there’s positive feedback, some more videos might start to show up!

PokerStars’ Poker School Online recently released a video that I made for them quite some time ago (as evidenced by my introduction of myself as “one of the newest members of Team Online”). It’s very basic, strategy-wise – I’m playing one table of $.05/$.10 6-max NLHE – but if that’s what you’re looking for, I think you’ll get a lot out of it. It contains clear explanations of important concepts like pre-flop hand selection, semi-bluffing, bet sizing, and building the pot. So far I’ve got a unanimous five stars from five reviews and ten positive comments, so if you like the video, please let PSO know! Who knows? You just might get to see more…

Thanks to everyone who commented on this week’s What’s Your Play, which dealt with playing out of position in a big pot against the chipleader at the final table of a daily live tournament. We’ve already said that it’s best not to end up in this spot by not 3-betting pre-flop, but now that we’re in this situation, let’s talk about how best to proceed.

There are two critical details to take into consideration:

1. The pot is huge. With 122K in there and and 210K left in Hero’s stack, we’re dealing with a Stack-to-Pot ratio of less than 2. Thus, your threshold for getting all-in must be rather low, despite the fact that you’d rather not risk elimination in fourth place.

2. Villain’s range is probably very wide. We know that he’s made some reckless calls before and it’s possible that he’s on “positive tilt”, meaning that he’s convinced he’s got a horseshoe up his ass after running hot so far. The Hero in this hand told me he put Villain on any two when he called the 3-bet. That seems a little extreme to me, but I do think his range is wide. Todd offers a reasonable approximation: ” any pair, any ace, any paint, suited connectors and gappers, and probably some Paint-rag combos as well.”  Read the complete post...

Edit: Hero holds Qh Th. Thanks to Georgios for pointing that rather significant omission!

This is a key hand from the final table of a tournament a friend recently won. It was a $125 freezeout at Aria. Hero is in his late 20′s and has been playing aggressively and well – you can read the trip report linked above if you want a better idea of what exactly his table image might be.

Blinds are 3K/6K/1K, and four players remain in the tournament. I don’t know the exact payout structure, but it’s not particularly top heavy.

The SB is an older gentleman with 110K who is exceedingly tight and cautious. Hero is in the BB with 265K. The CO is a very tight 22-year old with 150K. The BTN is the chipleader with 320K.

Hero and Button have been running over the other two over. The BTN seems generally to be on the reckless side of loose-aggressive. He opens tons of pots and hates to fold. He ran up a huge stack by getting slapped with the deck (he’s shown down Aces four times already at the final table) but has since given away nearly half of that with some questionable calls, including raise-calling 53s against a 110K shove getting nowhere near the appropriate odds.  Read the complete post...

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...

The exciting (?) conclusion of my 2012 PCA Trip Report has just been published in the February issue of 2+2 Magazine. Regular readers of “What’s Your Play?” will recognize a few of the hands, but there’s plenty of new content for everyone, plus it turns out the Mizrachis’ mother is hilarious! Here’s a little taste:

I got off to a good start, calling a raise to 2,200 from a seemingly tight-aggressive player in middle position with AJo in the CO. The big blind called as well, and we saw a K82 rainbow flop.

The pre-flop raiser bet 4,500. Against some players this would be a snap-call with a good Ace-high, but his TAG image gave me pause. I ultimately called because the board was so good for a continuation bet and the odds so tempting, but I didn’t feel great about it. The third player folded.

We both checked an 8 on the turn. The river brought a Q, and he checked again. AJ has considerable showdown value here, but I decided to turn it into a bluff by betting 7,500….

Give it a read and let me know what you think!

Q: My understanding is that I should generally continuation bet a polarized range consisting of both bluffs and strong hands but check medium-strength hands for pot control. Sometimes I have difficulty determining which category my hand falls into. For example, if I raise in middle position, the BB calls, and we see a Ks Jd Ts flop, is JT strong enough to bet? What about As Js?

A: Very good question. As with many tough decisions, this one is easier if you think in terms of not just whether or not to continuation bet with the cards you currently hold but what your plan will be for the entire hand. How you would play other hands in the same spot is also an important consideration.

Let’s start by thinking about JT. Two-pair is a strong hand, even on a flop like this one where it’s nowhere near the nuts. Depending on your opponent and how the board runs out, I can certainly envision scenarios where you’d be looking to bet three times for value.  That’s a reason to bet now, because you can’t bet three streets if you don’t bet the flop.  Read the complete post...