I would probably fold although the pot odds are enticing and your hand (a pair and a draw) superficially seems very strong. This is a super wet board and a good player should not be leading into three opponents without something very substantial. I put him on KQ, AQ and stronger. If you raise all-in, I don’t think he folds much. I also don’t think you have the full 13 outs that a pair-and-an-OESD normally does.

Assuming you call, if your draw comes in, with an ace or a nine, it’s going to be a super-scary board, and it’s going to be tough to get paid off, especially being out of position. On top of that, your opponent will often also have a king, so you may well chop even if your draw comes in – or lose to AK.

Not all pair + draws are created equally. On a board like this, where so many draws are likely, it matters a lot that you have the worst pair and are drawing exclusively to non-nut hands. Out of position in a multi-way pot with action from a good player in early position, you can’t afford to treat this as a strong hand.

Against a range of {TT+,AQs+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,T9s,8d7d,AQo+,KJo+), Hero has about 26% equity. Adding in 99 and AJ, which I think Villain is more likely to check, gets us up to 30%.

Moreover, this flop smacks Villain’s range, and it’s not a board he’s betting light into three players. This means we can’t expect much fold equity by check-raising. Kordolius argues that, “the flop hits our range well too, and in his eyes we may represent better hands than we have.” I struggle to think of any high-equity hands Villain would fold to a check-raise. The fact that this flop hits our perceived range well ought to make Villain less likely to bet hands that can’t stand hear in the first place.  I think getting all-in on the flop would be a big money-loser.

Calling is not much more appealing. The immediate pot odds require Hero to have about 28% equity to call, which as we’ve seen is close. However, as Dangerhorse argues, there are significant reverse implied odds attached to drawing out of position to non-nut hands. With such a transparent draw, Hero can’t count on getting money in as a big favorite when he hits. Villain’s range also includes enough flush draws and high-equity made hands that bluffing diamonds won’t prove overly profitable either. In short, calling the flop would be roughly break-even if we were faced with an all-in bet, but on balance we’re likely to lose more than we make on future streets. Best to get out now.

This raises the question Georgios poses: ”Preflop the odds to call are great (almost 7 to 1) but you never thought to fold? Isn’t [this] a trouble hand vs three player[s,] one of them early pos raiser tourney pro? Isn’t [this] a reverse implied odds hand?”

Yes, which is why we have to proceed carefully post-flop. The nice thing about getting really good pot odds is that you can afford to cherry-pick only the most profitable spots. As long as you’re disciplined enough to get away from a deceptively pretty hand in a spot like this, I think it’s OK to peel pre-flop with what is admittedly a dangerous hand.

Even with this flop, I can imagine some scenarios where I wouldn’t check-fold. If the flop checked around, I’d feel a lot better about putting money into the pot on the majority of turns. I’d also feel better about calling the flop if the last player to act bet at it, rather than the early position raiser. Then of course there are other flops and other scenarios where Hero’s hand would have better equity. It’s just a matter of knowing how often they will come around and comparing that to the price you’re getting to see the flop.

It’s Level 4 of the PCA. Hero is wearing his PokerStars Team Online patch, which in Villain’s eyes probably makes him a cash game grinder with minimal tournament experience. Villain is a young online MTT wizard: highly ranked on Pocket Fives, tons of success, modest live experience but certainly knows what he’s doing in any tournament situation. He’s new to the table in the last hour and neither he nor Hero has done anything remarkable in that time. With the exception of Villain and one other good but short-stacked player on Hero’s left, the table is reasonably soft, certainly above average for the field.

Blinds 100/200/25. Villain (13K) opens to 500 UTG+2. Two of the looser players (16K and 40K)  at the table call, and Hero (35K) calls Kc Ts in the BB.

Flop Qd Jd Th. Hero checks, Villain bets 1450 into pot of 2300, the other two fold, and the action is back on Hero. What’s your plan?

Just to focus the discussion a bit, let’s assume that if you raise, Villain will shove or fold. If you call, talk about how you’d proceed on each of the following turns:

a) 2s

b) Kh

c) Tc

d) Ah

e) 8d

I’ll post my usual thoughts and results when I’m back from the Bahamas, which will likely be around the 13th. I play Day 2 today, so wish me luck!

I played a funny hand against one of them. Blinds were 400/800/100, and I opened to 2000 with K9s in the HJ. He called in the BB and check-called 2400 on a T55r flop. We both checked an 8 turn, then he bet 5600 on a T river. I wasn’t 100% sure he wouldn’t value bet an A, but I doubted it. I did think he was capable of floating out of position, and this was an ideal spot for it. So I called, and he showed A3 and seemed surprised to win the pot. “I was trying to bluff you off a chop” he told me. Lovely.

I’ve got tomorrow off and am looking forward to finally getting outside after spending my first two days here indoors!

I got an IM yesterday from a student who’s worked with me for a few months. He is originally from Paris, and though he now lives in Manhattan, he played this hand at a French casino while visiting his mother for the holidays. It couldn’t be a better example of what I’m trying to help my students achieve, and I am really proud both of this student and of the progress he has made:

[12/22/2011 8:38:16 PM] Student: dedicated a call to you tonight!
[12/22/2011 8:38:44 PM] Foucault: i’m intrigued
[12/22/2011 8:39:02 PM] Student: haha, ok, 6max french tournament.
[12/22/2011 8:39:24 PM] Student: 400/800/75
[12/22/2011 8:39:29 PM] Student: i have 36k
[12/22/2011 8:39:40 PM] Student: huge stack to my right has around 70k
[12/22/2011 8:40:22 PM] Student: the previous hand was me and him BvB and I shoved on his cbet with an open ender. he folded very frustrated saying “next time you’re getting called.”
[12/22/2011 8:40:32 PM] Student: type of guy who if things don’t go his way, you’re a bad player.
[12/22/2011 8:40:49 PM] Student: so the following hand he opens to 2400 in the CO and I have A8ss in the btn.
[12/22/2011 8:41:08 PM] Student: pretty sure that a 3bet would get be very little respect and woudl lack fold euiqty, i decided to flat.
[12/22/2011 8:41:15 PM] Student: flop comes K5K
[12/22/2011 8:41:27 PM] Student: and he bets 1400 into 6000
[12/22/2011 8:42:14 PM] Student: his range in the co is too wide to put him on a K right away but I don’t think raising him here is going to achieve much.
[12/22/2011 8:42:30 PM] Student: and i’m getting obv getting a good price so I peel one.
[12/22/2011 8:42:39 PM] Student: turn a 7d
[12/22/2011 8:43:09 PM] Student: he now bets around 8500 into 9k.
[12/22/2011 8:43:44 PM] Student: i have 30k behind roughly and start to think about his line and how it doesn’t make sense for him to do this with a K.
[12/22/2011 8:44:23 PM] Student: the small bet on flop and huge bet on turn seems fishy so I decide to call assuming i’m good and ready to call or check back a lot of rivers.
[12/22/2011 8:44:52 PM] Student: river 10h and he shoves.
[12/22/2011 8:45:15 PM] Student: i tanked for about 5 mins. eventually deciding that he either had a full house/AK or air.
[12/22/2011 8:45:57 PM] Student: I think he checks all his PP, all his 10 (J10, Q10..etc…)
[12/22/2011 8:46:10 PM] Student: obviously values his K10 but i don’t think that big.
[12/22/2011 8:46:28 PM] Student: and certainly doesn’t value a pair of 7′s or 5′s. not good enough.
[12/22/2011 8:46:53 PM] Student: So I call and he inta mucks.
[12/22/2011 8:47:04 PM] Foucault: did you show?
[12/22/2011 8:47:11 PM] Student: i did
[12/22/2011 8:47:13 PM] Foucault: you have to
[12/22/2011 8:47:14 PM] Foucault: that is so badass
[12/22/2011 8:47:21 PM] Student: i thought he was gonna kill me.
He finished 15th in the tournament after shoving A7 into AQ, which I’m sure was disappointing for him. Still, calls like these are their own reward. You can tell just from this snippet of conversation how sophisticated his thought process was and how excited he was to make the right play when it required something as courageous as calling three barrels for his whole stack with no pair. Hands like these you remember for the rest of your career.

Tres bien!

Most high-volume MTT players are very predictable in the early stages of tournaments. This isn’t so much because they value their survival or because they don’t know how to play deep-stacked but simply because it is more profitable for them to play more games and more or less write off the early stages. They will accumulate a few chips if they get good cards, but if not they will wait until stacks get shorter and the antes kick in. This is where they really shine and where their decisions have a higher impact on their equity, so they choose to focus on tournaments that have already reached this stage and play more straightforwardly in the early levels of their other games.

The simple story to tell here is that Villain raised pre-flop with a solid hand, checked because he had nothing on the flop and didn’t care to fight for a small pot, and then bet once he turned a good hand. Of course if the Ace improved him then KQ is drawing slim. Essentially I agree with NimhofJoy: “It’s not necessarily a board I expect villain to cbet with showdown value (Ax, PPs, 8x, 6x) because it’s so wet he’s going to get ch/r a lot and have to fold. Unless he’s turning a lot of those PPs into bluffs on the turn, what does he have on the turn that he needs to bluff with that he doesn’t just check back again?”

There is also the chance that Villain still has nothing but saw a second check and a good scare card and decided to take a stab at. We can’t be sure, but as John put it,  “Why play oop where your chances of making a mistake are higher than his”. I believe Hero is getting sufficient pot odds to call the turn, but that it’s close enough that his reverse implied odds on the river turn it into a fold. In other words, the mistakes Hero will inevitably make on the river will cost him more equity than calling the turn will gain him.

The bit about getting barely the right pot odds on the turn may surprise some people. As JD says, “my 2 checks showed significant weakness and the ace is a good bluffing card.” This is true, but it’s a good bluffing card for a reason, namely that it hits Villain’s range well. It’s not sufficient simply to demonstrate that Villain may be bluffing; we must estimate his bluffing range and compare it to his value range.

This isn’t easy, and as several commenters pointed out, it entails a lot of assumptions about which we can’t have a high degree of certainty. Then again, making decisions under conditions of uncertainty is what poker is all about, and making your rough guesses slightly less rough can improve your win rate considerably. So let’s give it a go.

We’ll start with his pre-flop opening range. What do we make of his 14% ATS? It suggests that he isn’t opening up too much from late position, but it’s a mistake to take 14% as an exact number. We’re dealing with a small sample, I started by using Poker Stove to see what the top 14% of hands looks like. Then I added a few more that I couldn’t see him open folding, mostly suited connectors and suited Aces. Here’s the rough range I came up for his pre-flop raise: {22+,A2s+,K9s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,98s,87s,76s,65s,54s,ATo+,KJo+,QJo,JTo}. This is nearly 22% of hands, so it may be a little too wide, or maybe Villain has just had a string of bad cards in steal position so far.

I expect him to bet top pair or better on the flop almost always and also to bet his flush draws more often than not. If he does check a flush draw, it’s most likely the nut draw, but I would consider that a non-straightforward play. Taking the nut flush draws out of his turn range makes a noticeable difference in Hero’s equity, so this is an important assumption about which we can’t be sure, but I’m inclined to say he bets them. I also think that he bets gutshots on the flop. Even if he doesn’t c-bet his air, draws make for very good continuation betting hands, and I would consider this the standard way to play them. Strong made hands and any draw sounds about right for a guy with a roughly 40% continuation bet.

I don’t think he’s betting pocket pairs on the turn. There’s a case to be made for it, but it’s surely a trickier and higher variance line than checking it down. Again, that’s not the kind of play I expect to see from this type of player at this stage of the tournament. This leaves his turn betting range at { Aks,AJs-A2s,KJs-K9s,98s,87s,76s,65s,AKo,AJo-ATo,KJo}, less the diamond versions of his suited hands. Some commenters questioned whether he’d bet the weak Aces on the turn, but facing two checks I believe that he would. He can expect to have the best hand, there are a number of draws on the board, and he probably doesn’t expect us to fold a Q.

Against that range, KQ has 38% equity. Hero needs 28% equity to call this bet. That makes it a call, right?

That depends how confident you are in the assumptions I made and how well you feel you can play the river. Personally, I don’t feel comfortable making nearly as many assumptions about his river play as I do about the earlier streets. I don’t have a great answer for how to respond to a bet on virtually any river, and that’s a recipe for getting outplayed. Even with 10% more equity than I think I would need to call the turn, I opted to fold here, because the cost of getting outplayed on the river, either paying off a value bet or folding to a bluff, could easily swamp a small edge in a small pot.

There are only five river cards that I feel I can play better than my opponent with this hand in this position.

On top of it all, there’s the matter of passing up small edges in tournaments, and this is a great example of how to avoid ending up in bad spots in big pots. When possible, anticipate them and get out of the way early.

A few commenters suggested check-raising the turn. I’ll say first that I love the creativity! I think this line has some merit, but I’d want a bit more of a read. I’m reluctant to try to bluff even good players off of top pair, especially when they know that that’s what their hand looks like and that I’m capable of recognizing that. Again, in a tournament, I’m trying to avoid thin/marginal/high variance plays, so I’d want to have a high degree of certainty that he’d actually fold the hands I’d need him to fold.

Takeaway lessons from this week’s hand:

1. Start your hand-reading pre-flop. Didn’t we just talk about this?

2. Think ahead. Even if you can show a small profit now, are you at risk of getting outplayed in a larger pot later?

3. It’s not enough to recognize a good bluffing card, especially not if your opponent knows that it looks like a good bluffing card. You have to put your opponent on a range and figure out what he will bluff and how thin he can value bet.