Posts Tagged ‘tight aggressive’

Thanks again for all the great comments on this week’s What’s Your Plan?. I was a little worried since the question was more open-ended than usual, but once again we had a lot of really though-provoking contributions. I actually write about this hand in some detail in the new issue of Two Plus Two Magazine, so I’m mostly going to refer you to that for my thoughts and address a few of the comments, starting with Prabhat:

“Putting this person on a range is very difficult as a result of his unusual stats. I can’t help but think that if this person really plays 18/17 over an adequate sample size, its virtually impossible that he flat-calls a lot of suited connectors here. If he calls T9s, he also calls JTs and 78s etc, and this already makes his flatting range much wider than 1%. I find it tough to believe that he doesn’t flat anything except from the CO and Button. Accordingly, I will slightly discount the suited connector portion of his range. ”  Read the complete post...

This week I’ve got a slight variation on the usual “What’s Your Play?” Villain is a TAG regular playing 18/17 with an 8% 3-bet over a large sample. He’s a small winner at these stakes but not very tricky or creative, just generally more of a mass multi-tabler than a deep thinker.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $4.00 BB (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

CO ($685.70)
Button ($449)
SB ($402)
BB ($527)
UTG ($400)
Hero (UTG+1) ($434.35)
MP1 ($400)
MP2 ($412)
MP3 ($206.95)

Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with J♠, J♦
1 fold, Hero bets $16, 4 folds, Button calls $16, 2 folds

Flop: ($38) 8♣, Q♠, J♣ (2 players)

Please leave a comment with both what you want to do on the flop and your general plan from there. How will you proceed on club turns/rivers, straightening cards, and blanks (for those who have trouble with the suits, it’s 8c Qs Jc and Hero has Js Jd)? I’ll post results and my thoughts on Thursday.

I’m blown away by the number of responses Monday’s What’s Your Play? post received. It produced some great discussion that was instructive even for me, so a big thanks to all of you who commented. I know I didn’t interact with your comments as much as I usually do, but truthfully you all were doing such a good job of asking and answering your own questions that I didn’t feel it was necessary. Really this sort of reader interaction is a blogger’s dream!

Hero has four real options here, all of which were thoroughly analyzed in the comments: check-raise all-in, bet small to induce a raise, bet 75-125% of pot, or open shove for 200% of pot. I’ll offer my thoughts on each here, but I strongly encourage you to go back and skim the comments if you haven’t, because there’s a lot of good material in there that I’m not going to address specifically.

Bet 75-125% of Pot- As a theoretical matter, I believe that when you have the nuts you should generally take a line that maximizes your chances of playing a large pot, even if this results in winning less from the bottom of your opponent’s range. It’s a fundamental principle of poker: big hand, big pot. For that reason, I don’t like this line. This is a much better card for Hero’s range than for Villain’s and not one on which he’s likely to bluff or bluff-catch aggressively. Even very strong hands like sets may just call a bet of this size, which is of course a disaster for us, so this is my least favorite option.  Read the complete post...

On Monday, I posted a hand from the British Columbia Poker Championship in which I flopped top two pair in a three-way pot but saw heavy action in front me. It solicited a lot of interesting thoughts and comments. I’ll start by telling you what actually happened, and then I’ll get into my thoughts.

There was one detail I changed from the actual hand, and that had to do with the profile of Villain 2. He was actually not quite as good as I made him out to be in my post, which I think makes the hand a lot closer. I ended up cold calling his flop raise. Villain 1 folded, but Villain 2 quickly shoved a 2h turn, and I folded. I’d be more comfortable making this fold against a better hand reader, but I still don’t regret it.

Only a few people suggested exactly this line, but a lot of the commenters picked up on several of the crucial facets of this hand, most importantly that continuing to put money into the pot after V2′s raise is going to look extremely strong.

Those who didn’t pick up on this generally seemed to read too much into my description of V1 as “slightly more LAG”. This is a dangerous mistake, because many players rely on small displays of loose-aggressive behavior causing opponents to assume their ranges are much wider than they actually are in large pots.  Read the complete post...

If you’ve been enjoying my BCPC trip reports, be sure to check out my write-up from the WSOP Europe, now appearing in 2+2 Magazine:

Loose-aggressive play has become so common among the best players that many of them tend to assume that anyone who doesn’t open 50% of hands from the CO can’t be all that good. No American in the tournament is going to be bad, since we all had to travel quite a ways to play, but I think that playing the way I did gave the impression that I was merely competent and perhaps uncomfortable in deep-stacked spots. That’s a fine image to have as long as you know how to exploit it by stealing in spots they don’t expect.

As always, please let me know what you think!

This week’s WYP is inspired by a hand I played on Day 2 of the British Columbia Poker Championship. The table is probably the toughest one in the room, but thankfully there’s only about an hour left in the day. Both Villains are very smart and good players. To the extent that they can be categorized, Villain 1 is slightly more LAG and Villain 2 on the TAG side, but they both play well enough to exploit their images appropriately. They presumably view Hero roughly the same way.

Hero starts the hand with 115K, Villain 2 has 105K, Villain 1 has 150K. Average is about 90K.

Blinds are 1000/2000/200. Villain 1 raises to 5100 UTG, Villain 2 calls in the CO, and Hero overcalls Ah Jd on the Button. Flop is Ac Jh 7s. Villain 1 bets 12K, Villain 2 raises to 25K, what’s your play with top two? Obviously a lot could happen here but please do your best to describe your plan for likely future scenarios depending on what you want to do on the flop.

I’ll leave this open for the week and post results and my thoughts on Friday.

I’ve never really been a grinder, one of those online poker players who plays 10+ tables at once, cursor and attention whizzing from monitor to monitor so quickly that they have only seconds to think about they want to play any given hand. For me, 4 tables is common, and 10 is generally an upper limit. When I get that high, a few of them tend to be tournaments or full ring games where less attention is required. In short, I am not Nanonoko.

It is, however, a skill I’d like to have. I generally tell my students that you need to know their goals in poker before you can decide their playing style. If you are planning on being in the game for a long time to come, then you should focus on getting better rather than maximizing your current hourly rate. That generally means playing fewer tables and thinking through each hand that you play very thoroughly. When you are trying to maximize your short-term income, then it makes sense to focus on playing as many tables as possible, even if you are playing slightly less well and not actively improving.  Read the complete post...

Remember our Sources of Value in a Bet discussion? My latest poker strategy article, Betting For Protection, is now appearing in the January issue of 2+2 Magazine. Here’s a taste of what to expect:

Early in their no-limit hold ‘em careers, many players are overly concerned with protecting their hands. Novice players with top pair commonly obsess over the possibility of a flush draw and often become so single-minded about “charging the draw” that they fail to get value from second-best hands and/or to protect the remainder of their stacks from sets and the like.

After making this mistake for a while, players eventually learn their lesson. Many overcorrect and adopt a new mantra: only bet if you can get a call from a worse hand or a fold from a better one. In other words, many players learn to bet only as either a value bet or as a bluff, leaving behind the concept of protection that cost them so many buy-ins when misapplied.

Yet this too is a mistake. Weak players often misapply the concept with expensive consequences, but that does not make the concept itself invalid.

Please let me know what you think!