MATT MATROS

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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!

Timestamps

0:30 hello
9:35 strat
51:43 extra strat

Strategy

Hand 1 – 3/5 NL

Couple of limps, CO raises to $25, BN calls, Hero calls Ah 6h in the SB, one MP limper calls.

Ac 2h Ks. Checks to CO who bets $55, BN folds, Hero calls, MP calls.

8h ($280 in pot). Checks to CO, CO bets $125, Hero calls, MP calls.

8d ($655 in pot). Checks to CO who bets $285. Hero?

Hand 2 – Tournament, effective stacks 35bb

CO opens 2.5bb, Hero calls 9d 8d in the SB.

9s 5h 4d (8.5b in pot). Checks to CO, who bets 9bb. Hero calls.

5s (26.5bb in pot). Both check.

Js (26.5bb in pot). Check, CO shoves, Hero?

Timestamps

0:30 – hello
34:19 – strat

Strategy

Hand 1

Hand 2

Hero opens to $35 with 8d 7d UTG, called by MP and BB.

Flop ($105) AQ6dd. BB checks, Hero bets $50, BB calls.

Turn ($205) 2c. BB checks, Hero bets $200, B calls.

River ($605) 9h. BB checks, Hero shoves ~$900.

If you aren’t familiar with Carlos, you can hear his full story starting with our first interview on Episode 39. You can follow Carlos on twitter @HipHop101Trivia and watch him stream live on Twitch.

Timestamps

0:30 Carlos Welch
32:40 Carloose Welch (strategy)

Strategy

8-handed NLHE tournament online, blinds 400/800/80. UTG (29K) limps, SB (5K) completes, Hero (35K) raises to 2400 with Ks Jc, UTG calls, SB folds.

Flop (6240) 7c 4s 2d. Hero bets 3120, Villain calls.

Turn (12480) 9s. Hero bets 5240, Villain calls.

River (24960) 8h. Hero shoves 17K effective, Villain folds.

Here’s an interesting one from the $215. I don’t love check-raising bottom two when this deep on a board like this one, because although you benefit a bit from protection you aren’t generally going to end up with a hand that you want to play for four bets. Case in point: by the time we see the river, I’m at the bottom of my range and ready to turn my hand into a bluff, mostly to get Villain off of a Q though perhaps also AA or AJ.

PokerStars – 150/300 Ante 40 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

MP: 168.05 BB (VPIP: 12.50, PFR: 12.50, 3Bet Preflop: 13.33, Hands: 32)
MP+1: 148.96 BB (VPIP: 44.44, PFR: 14.81, 3Bet Preflop: 7.14, Hands: 27)
MP+2: 171.63 BB (VPIP: 21.18, PFR: 13.58, 3Bet Preflop: 5.88, Hands: 86)
CO: 175.34 BB (VPIP: 21.15, PFR: 14.49, 3Bet Preflop: 4.59, Hands: 491)
BTN: 157.53 BB (VPIP: 5.56, PFR: 2.78, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 36)
SB: 140.37 BB (VPIP: 45.85, PFR: 34.51, 3Bet Preflop: 11.24, Hands: 233)
Hero (BB): 114.67 BB
UTG: 201.03 BB (VPIP: 14.29, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 20.00, Hands: 14)
UTG+1: 170.1 BB (VPIP: 25.00, PFR: 25.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 4)

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

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.7 BB) Hero has 8s Jh
fold, fold, fold, fold, MP+2 raises to 2.5 BB, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 1.5 BB

Flop : (6.7 BB, 2 players) Jd Kd 8h
Hero checks, MP+2 bets 3 BB, Hero calls 3 BB

Turn : (12.7 BB, 2 players) Kh
Hero checks, MP+2 checks

River : (12.7 BB, 2 players) Qd
Hero bets 8.38 BB, fold

Hero wins 12.7 BB

This was a gross one from the $530:

PokerStars – 200/400 Ante 50 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

UTG+1: 107.42 BB (VPIP: 19.17, PFR: 14.39, 3Bet Preflop: 7.03, Hands: 433)
MP: 92.68 BB (VPIP: 40.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 15)
MP+1: 171.23 BB (VPIP: 25.00, PFR: 6.25, 3Bet Preflop: 4.35, Hands: 48)
MP+2: 86.44 BB (VPIP: 18.00, PFR: 12.00, 3Bet Preflop: 4.55, Hands: 50)
Hero (CO): 193.65 BB
BTN: 119.7 BB (VPIP: 21.59, PFR: 13.64, 3Bet Preflop: 7.45, Hands: 227)
SB: 119.16 BB (VPIP: 16.67, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 12)
BB: 121.14 BB (VPIP: 26.85, PFR: 20.56, 3Bet Preflop: 6.10, Hands: 217)
UTG: 163.31 BB (VPIP: 31.25, PFR: 16.67, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 48)

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 Jh Js
fold, fold, fold, fold, MP+2 raises to 2.19 BB, Hero raises to 6.45 BB, BTN raises to 15 BB, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 8.55 BB

Flop : (34.81 BB, 2 players) 4s 9d 8d
Hero checks, BTN bets 10.7 BB, Hero calls 10.7 BB

Turn : (56.21 BB, 2 players) Kd
Hero checks, BTN checks

River : (56.21 BB, 2 players) Jc
Hero bets 167.83 BB and is all-in, BTN calls 93.88 BB and is all-in

Hero shows Jh Js (Three of a Kind, Jacks)
(Pre 68%, Flop 53%, Turn 0%)

BTN shows Td Ad (Flush, Ace High)
(Pre 32%, Flop 47%, Turn 100%)

BTN wins 243.97 BB

I can’t fault Villain’s play, it’s just a great spot for him to pressure me pre-flop. It’s possible I’m just supposed to raise again pre-flop; I certainly considered it, but the money behind seemed awkward. I haven’t run in CREV yet but I feel good about the river shove. I doubt Villain will have enough flushes and KK to be able to fold a lot of his AK/AA.

And in a throwback to one of my earliest poker strategy articles, here I am bluffing a calling station:

PokerStars – 200/400 Ante 50 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BTN: 108.05 BB (VPIP: 19.35, PFR: 14.52, 3Bet Preflop: 7.14, Hands: 429)
SB: 116.52 BB (VPIP: 36.36, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 11)
BB: 175.63 BB (VPIP: 22.73, PFR: 6.82, 3Bet Preflop: 5.00, Hands: 44)
UTG: 89.82 BB (VPIP: 17.39, PFR: 13.04, 3Bet Preflop: 5.00, Hands: 46)
Hero (UTG+1): 176.1 BB
MP: 115.08 BB (VPIP: 21.97, PFR: 13.89, 3Bet Preflop: 7.61, Hands: 223)
MP+1: 122.04 BB (VPIP: 12.50, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 8)
MP+2: 121.76 BB (VPIP: 27.36, PFR: 20.95, 3Bet Preflop: 6.17, Hands: 213)
CO: 149.74 BB (VPIP: 29.55, PFR: 13.64, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 44)

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 9c Tc
fold, Hero raises to 2.28 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, SB calls 1.78 BB, BB calls 1.28 BB

Flop : (7.96 BB, 3 players) 8s 2s Jd
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets 5.26 BB, SB calls 5.26 BB, fold

Turn : (18.48 BB, 2 players) 6s
SB checks, Hero bets 9.24 BB, SB calls 9.24 BB

River : (36.96 BB, 2 players) 4s
SB checks, Hero bets 18.48 BB, fold

Hero wins 36.96 BB

Upon our arrival, I got probably my best opportunity ever to use all that French I studied some fifteen years ago. My experience in Montreal (and even in France) was that almost everyone spoke better English than I did French, but our host wasn’t comfortable in English, so she showed us around the house and she and I discussed some logistics in French. Fortunately she was patient and accommodating! To be honest, I don’t know how much the French even mattered, because Emily told me she was able to get the gist of almost everything despite speaking hardly a lick.

I max late registered the $200 Warm-Up shortly after our arrival and promptly ran my 20bb up to a top 10% stack. Then I ran AK into AA for most of my chips and lost the rest with 77 < 99 in a spot where we may have been close enough to the bubble for me to pass on my pair. Oh well.

The $500 6-max Progressive Knock-Out got off to a good start as well, with me collecting a bounty from a guy who just randomly open jammed 30bb UTG with A9o into my JJ. Then there was this hand, not a huge one but one of the more interesting I played yesterday:

PokerStars – 500/1000 Ante 125 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BTN: 58.95 BB (VPIP: 24.65, PFR: 16.59, 3Bet Preflop: 4.35, Hands: 216)
SB: 156.74 BB (VPIP: 26.87, PFR: 18.22, 3Bet Preflop: 7.62, Hands: 524)
BB: 99.7 BB (VPIP: 30.59, PFR: 17.16, 3Bet Preflop: 12.05, Hands: 170)
UTG: 71.55 BB (VPIP: 39.06, PFR: 21.88, 3Bet Preflop: 10.71, Hands: 65)
MP: 41.68 BB (VPIP: 21.04, PFR: 16.61, 3Bet Preflop: 7.93, Hands: 933)
Hero (CO): 90.44 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 2h As
fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.28 BB, BTN calls 2.28 BB, fold, BB calls 1.28 BB

Flop : (8.09 BB, 3 players) 4d 2c Jh
BB checks, Hero bets 2.43 BB, BTN calls 2.43 BB, BB raises to 9.27 BB, Hero raises to 17.98 BB, fold, fold

Hero wins 29.05 BB

I got a bit careless later, though, ultimately getting in too much with A9o on the Button vs a BB squeeze (in my defense, he had a decent bounty!) and then stubbornly refusing to fold Aces that I’d slowplayed pre-flop to a BB who’d pretty obviously flopped trips.

I want to save this hand from the $1K for the next time one of my students tells me he checked after flopping a strong hand because he wanted to induce a bluff:

PokerStars – 125/250 Ante 30 NL – Holdem – 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

SB: 215.8 BB (VPIP: 53.85, PFR: 15.38, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 26)
BB: 179.85 BB (VPIP: 16.02, PFR: 11.52, 3Bet Preflop: 2.82, Hands: 207)
UTG: 204.52 BB (VPIP: 14.11, PFR: 8.02, 3Bet Preflop: 2.53, Hands: 165)
UTG+1: 193.04 BB (VPIP: 24.62, PFR: 17.50, 3Bet Preflop: 5.99, Hands: 535)
Hero (MP): 175.49 BB
MP+1: 207.92 BB (VPIP: 15.82, PFR: 11.95, 3Bet Preflop: 7.65, Hands: 496)
CO: 241.58 BB (VPIP: 26.92, PFR: 15.38, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 26)
BTN: 132.1 BB (VPIP: 38.46, PFR: 15.38, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 26)

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

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.46 BB) Hero has 4d 4c
fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.28 BB, fold, CO calls 2.28 BB, BTN calls 2.28 BB, SB calls 1.78 BB, BB calls 1.28 BB

Flop : (12.36 BB, 5 players) 6c 4h 7d
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets 8.16 BB, fold, BTN raises to 20 BB, fold, fold, Hero calls 11.84 BB

Turn : (52.36 BB, 2 players) 6d
Hero checks, BTN bets 25 BB, Hero calls 25 BB

River : (102.36 BB, 2 players) Qd
Hero checks, BTN bets 84.7 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 84.7 BB

BTN shows Ah Jh (One Pair, Sixes)
(Pre 49%, Flop 4%, Turn 0%)

Hero shows 4d 4c (Full House, Fours full of Sixes)
(Pre 51%, Flop 96%, Turn 100%)

Hero wins 271.77 BB

Villain showed Ah Jh.

I chugged along with a top 15% stack for most of the first six hours before losing a big flip with JJ to AKs. I won a few flips after getting short to stay alive, but eventually lost AJ < QQ to finish off my first day in the WCOOP.

A few mistakes aside (which I don’t want to be too dismissive of – making fewer mistakes is a key tournament skill), I was pleasantly surprised with my play. I’d hardly played at all since WSOP, and although I’ve been studying a lot, there’s always the danger of either being rusty or making mistakes trying to implement new concepts that I’ve only studied in theory. I don’t feel like I feel into either of those traps yesterday, and in fact I was quite pleased with some of the adaptations I made after reading Matt Janda’s new No Limit Hold ‘Em for Advanced Players.

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!

Playing with a short stack can be a good way to learn: it simplifies your decisions, minimizes the magnitude of your mistakes, and helps you focus on fundamentals like pre-flop hand selection and evaluating flop textures. However, it’s important to keep learning as you start playing in deeper games, because strategies that are at least reasonably effective when shallow often become liabilities.

Check out the article, and please let me know whether it’s helpful to you!

Timestamps

0:30 – hello and welcome
19:22 – donk bets with justin

Strategy

Hero (covers) raises to 12 UTG with AcKc
folds to button ($230) calls
BB ($300) calls.

Flop ($33 after rake): 5x7c8c

BB: leads for $20, Hero calls, Button Folds.

Turn (~$70 after rake): Kh

BB leads for $35, Hero calls.

River: (~$145) 2d

BB leads for $75, Hero?

In practice, though, it’s easy to end up doing either too much or too little bluffing, especially on the river. It’s easy to say either, “this is a good card, bombs away” with all of your bluffs, or to say, “eh, I don’t think he’s folding,” and check back all of your bluffs.

That’s all well and good if you’re confident in those reads, but against a tough opponent, it shouldn’t be easy to make such sweeping generalizations. When thinking about which hands to give up with, it’s good to choose candidates that block Villain’s folding range, just as you want to block his calling range when you fire that third barrel. Here, I bet a big draw on the flop and turn, but on the river, I give up, because I expect that much of Villain’s range for calling turn and folding river will consist of pair-plus-draw hands, and my own draws make it hard for him to have those.

PokerStars – $203+$12|250/500 Ante 65 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BTN: 13.38 BB (VPIP: 31.22, PFR: 6.91, 3Bet Preflop: 1.22, Hands: 189)
SB: 134.56 BB (VPIP: 19.00, PFR: 14.51, 3Bet Preflop: 4.65, Hands: 326)
BB: 78.9 BB (VPIP: 21.95, PFR: 15.66, 3Bet Preflop: 2.41, Hands: 205)
Hero (UTG): 86.55 BB
CO: 11.42 BB (VPIP: 17.09, PFR: 9.26, 3Bet Preflop: 2.17, Hands: 118)

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

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.15 BB) Hero has As Ts
Hero raises to 2.28 BB, fold, BTN calls 2.28 BB, SB calls 1.78 BB, BB calls 1.28 BB

Flop : (9.77 BB, 4 players) 3s Qc 9s
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets 4.88 BB, fold, fold, BB calls 4.88 BB

Turn : (19.54 BB, 2 players) Jd
BB checks, Hero bets 11.72 BB, BB calls 11.72 BB

River : (42.98 BB, 2 players) 3c
BB checks, Hero checks

BB shows Kd Qs (Two Pair, Queens and Threes)
(Pre 38%, Flop 56%, Turn 64%)

Hero mucks As Ts (One Pair, Threes)
(Pre 62%, Flop 44%, Turn 36%)

BB wins 42.98 BB

I wanted to share a hand with you from the third event that I played, which was a $700 Progressive Knock-Out. I tried looking at my biggest losses, but they were all-in pre-flop with KK and AK, so nothing too exciting there. Then I switched the column so that biggest wins would be at the top and momentarily confused myself because my biggest win was -80, a pot where I anted and folded. It turns out I didn’t win a single pot the entire tournament! In my defense, I did register quite late and walk into the aforementioned coolers.

Anyway, here’s one from the $200 Rebuy. It’s a good illustration of a common misunderstanding about slowplaying, that it’s somehow about “protecting your range” or some other tepid-sounding cliche that makes it sound like you’re sacrificing present value in the interest of some nebulous future gain.

In fact, playing certain strong hands in a way that’s consistent with how you’ll play weaker hands gives your opponent incentive both to bluff and to value bet thinly. If he acts on that incentive at an appropriate frequency, then you should do about as well as if you’d played your hand faster. And if he decides to go overboard, well…

PokerStars – $200+$15|700/1400 Ante 175 NL – Holdem – 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BB: 20.7 BB (VPIP: 15.76, PFR: 13.33, 3Bet Preflop: 5.54, Hands: 761)
UTG: 98.11 BB (VPIP: 29.25, PFR: 20.57, 3Bet Preflop: 7.50, Hands: 215)
UTG+1: 66.5 BB (VPIP: 20.77, PFR: 16.97, 3Bet Preflop: 7.63, Hands: 574)
MP: 11.13 BB (VPIP: 28.53, PFR: 19.05, 3Bet Preflop: 13.86, Hands: 340)
MP+1: 8.74 BB (VPIP: 26.67, PFR: 22.89, 3Bet Preflop: 8.82, Hands: 90)
CO: 44.64 BB (VPIP: 23.81, PFR: 17.21, 3Bet Preflop: 9.62, Hands: 126)
BTN: 60.7 BB (VPIP: 19.35, PFR: 14.58, 3Bet Preflop: 8.63, Hands: 622)
Hero (SB): 19.4 BB

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

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.5 BB) Hero has Ks Kh
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 0.5 BB, BB raises to 3 BB, Hero calls 2 BB

Flop : (7 BB, 2 players) 7d 2h Kd
Hero checks, BB bets 2.89 BB, Hero calls 2.89 BB

Turn : (12.77 BB, 2 players) 6c
Hero checks, BB bets 5 BB, Hero calls 5 BB

River : (22.77 BB, 2 players) Ah
Hero checks, BB bets 9.69 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 8.39 BB and is all-in

BB shows Js 4h (High Card, Ace)
(Pre 12%, Flop 0%, Turn 0%)

Hero shows Ks Kh (Three of a Kind, Kings)
(Pre 88%, Flop 100%, Turn 100%)

Hero wins 39.55 BB

A lot of people worry about slowplaying in a spot like this because of the flush draw on the flop, but when ranges are sufficiently wide, that’s just not that big of a concern. It’s not like you have to fold a set in a low SPR spot just because a flush gets there, and plenty of times your opponent will be drawing stone dead and even a third diamond comes that might just give him more inducement to bluff.

DP1: A6o is a tough hand to play, even when only a single opponent with a random hand remains. Raising denies the BB some equity and reduces the likelihood that you’ll have to play out of position after the flop, but it also sets you up to get blown out by a 3-bet or to play out of position against a stronger range in a raised pot. With antes in the pot, I think you have too much value to fold, but both calling and raising are reasonable options.

DP2: QJo is generally a good enough hand to raise for value into a small blind limp, especially because most people will raise the hands that dominate you and call some dominated hands. I’m not sure why I didn’t raise at the time, and I probably should have.

DP3: A few commenters seem to suggest that Villain can just bet the flop with any two cards because Hero will often “miss”, and against weaker opponents that may be true. However, better players are aware of the relative difficulty of making a pair and will defend appropriately to a flop bet, including by calling with strong unpaired hands and by bluff-raising. That’s not to say that Villain should never bluff, but he should expect only his better bluffing candidates to be profitable. Turning a hand with this much showdown value into a bluff is a mistake, as it is surely a profitable check and call.

You might object that since I called with worse, we can think of Villain’s bet as a value bet. However, overall he will not be ahead of my calling range, and many of my worse hands (though probably not this one) will often bluff him out on future streets anyway.

DP4: This is a clear call. Villain could easily be bluffing, and I ought to beat all of his bluffs plus have reasonable equity even against many of his value bets. Things get a bit dicier if he’s betting his Aces, but even then I suspect that I have enough equity to call.

As for raising, many of the same arguments apply as with Villain’s limp: the hand has too much value to turn into a bluff, at the moment anyway. On runouts that improve my weaker flop calls, I may end up bluffing with this, as it would then be the bottom of my range.

DP5: Villain’s flop bet, along with this turn card, killed any showdown value his hand had, so now it is a bluffing candidate along with the rest of the air he ought to have bet on the flop. However, Villain ought to have other bluffs with better equity available to him and probably ought to give up on this one.

Essentially, he’s got an Ed Miller pyramid problem here. His flop betting range was too wide, and now on the turn he’s going to hold too many weak hands and will have to get rid of them somehow. He can either keep bluffing, which will make my bluff-catches very profitable, of he can just check and fold, which with this hand at least is the better option.

DP6: An easy call. Villain may not be value betting worse, but even so, I have a very solid bluff-catcher. The hand is too strong to raise as a bluff and not strong enough to raise for value.

DP7: Another pyramid problem. Once again, if Villain is getting to the river with too much air and bluffing with all of it, then my bluff catches will be very profitable. This is certainly a board that favors his range, but that doesn’t mean that he’s guaranteed a profitable bluff when he doesn’t have any blockers to my calling range.

DP8: This is a clear call, though not a super-profitable one (unless Villain is bluffing too much, which this one, in retrospect, seems to have been), as I block JT and KQ or other turned two-pairs. Many players won’t go for a third street of value with top pair, at least not for this size, but even against those who do, I expect this to be a profitable call.

PokerWilo asked about my plan for future streets. While it will depend heavily on the runout, I think there’s an underlying assumption to address here, which is that I need to be able to call future barrels. This would be true if we had reason to believe that Villain would always or usually barrel off after betting the flop, and in retrospect it seems like this one might.

However, that’s not information that I had at the time. All I knew is that Villain might keep betting, and he might not. That means that, no matter the turn card, I need to have some bluff-catchers that fold to further bets and some that do not. That way, I punish (or at least do not reward) both players who give up too often and those who barrel too often. On many turn cards, QJ will be in my folding range, but on this one, it’s in my calling range. In a vacuum, there’s nothing wrong with having a range of hands that will call once and fold to further action – in fact, it’s correct.

Thanks for playing, everyone!

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.

Edit: How did I forget to link Matt’s excellent blog? He writes a lot about poker and his life at thevoicewithin.me.

Timestamps

0:30 – hello & welcome
6:49 – strategy
25:21 – matt berkey

Strategy

This hand is from a WSOPc Main Event and takes place at the 300/600/75 level. I have a stack of about 55,000 and Anthony Gregg covers me.

In this hand we are in the big blind We are holding the ace of spades 10 of diamonds. Anthony great opens with a raise to 1200 utg1 it folds back around to me and I decided to call.

The flop comes 4104 with two spades. I check, he bets 2000, I call.

The turn is the 6d. He bets 3300 and I call.

The river is the 7 of spades, for a final board of 410467. I bet 5500, and to my surprise he shoves!

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.

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!

Timestamps

0:30 – hello
33:24 – interview

Strategy

$5/$5/$10 PLO $1500 effective stacks

Button opens $40, Hero calls Ah Kd 9c 4h in SB, BB calls, straddle calls.

Flop ($160) Ad Qh 4d. Three checks, button bets $120, Hero calls, two folds.

Turn ($400) 6h. Hero checks, Villain bets $340, Hero calls.

River ($1080) Qc. Hero checks, Villain bets $480, Hero?

Gamble Gamble

It worked out well that we were going to skip this week, because I was busy winning the $1000 Battle of the Bay tournament at Lucky Chances last night! This annual event is the premier tournament at what is now my local casino, so although I’ve been playing cash there exclusively, I decided to make an exception for this.

I played Day 1A on Saturday and got off to a very nice start but eventually lost most of my chips with QT vs 99 on a J9x flop. The guy min check-raised the flop, took about forty seconds to call my shove (nitroll, not slowroll), then bragged to the guy sitting next to him that he knew I would shove because I was too aggressive and that’s why he raised me.

A few hands later I shoved my last 4.5 BBs with 73o on the button. This one was debated a bit on Twitter, and I agree that it’s not a shove in a vacuum, but I crunched some numbers on SB/BB calling ranges and feel good about jamming any two there. I beat the BB’s K4s, and he muttered something about “nice catch”, to which I responded, “Is this your first time playing poker, sir?”

This is really out of character for me, and I’m ashamed to tell you about it. In my defense, I wasn’t feeling well, but I also think tournaments, especially live tournaments, bring this out in me. I’m trying to play fewer of them for that reason.

To paraphrase Tommy Angelo, the pleasure/pain ratio is all out of whack in a tournament. I can shrug off a loss of a couple thousand dollars at a $5/$10 game with literally no problem. I’m not just putting on a stoic front, it truly doesn’t affect me, at least not until it happens a few sessions in a row. But there’s something about a tournament, the “one-and-done” nature of it I think, encourages that kind of emotional investment that, at least in my opinion, is really undesirable.

The pleasure I get from playing cash, especially a deep-stacked cash game, is akin to the pleasure of solving a puzzle. I enjoy the challenge of trying to construct the perfect ranges for a given spot, there’s a much stronger correlation (though far from 1:1, of course) between the quality of my decisions and the outcome of a given hand or session, and during and after the experience I feel stimulated intellectually.

The appeal that tournaments hold for me has a lot more in common with gambling. There’s certainly nothing more exciting in poker than getting deep in a big tournament, but ultimately it feels like I’m just chasing a high when I play them. That said, there are some really high-value tournaments out there, too good to pass up, and this was one of them.

Sunday Funday

I was sorely tempted not to re-enter on Sunday. As I mentioned, I was (still am, in fact – staying up late last night didn’t help) under the weather, and the tournament started at 9:30 AM. On top of that, I really had not enjoyed my play on Saturday at all. Ten-handed poker with shallow effective stacks and small antes (e.g. 200/400/25) is almost entirely devoid of strategic depth. It’s mostly just a game of waiting for cards. That’s not to say there’s no edge there, just that the edge doesn’t come from anything interesting. I don’t find it stimulating, I find it annoying and boring, which of course undermines the patience that is paramount in such a structure.

So, I nearly didn’t return on Sunday. One of the factors that put me over the top was that I really wanted to meet Neil Blumenfield, who is apparently a regular at Lucky Chances tournaments though he and I have yet to cross paths in person. He wasn’t there on Saturday, so I figured he would surely play Sunday.

He didn’t, but I did, and first place was a fine consolation prize. I got off to a good start, winning some big pots in the first level and winning a big one with 55 vs AJ and 54 on a J54 flop. I eventually got involved in a three-way all in that ended with my KK losing to QQ, and then it was back to grinding a short stack for me.

For all my disparagement of short-stacked poker, it turns out there are some big edges to be had when your opponents aren’t accustomed or adapting properly to it. The thing about a flagship tournament like this is that it’s a major event for a lot of the people playing it. They either won a satellite or ponied up the $1000 as a one-time splurge, and they’re risk averse in a way that you simply can’t afford to be when you’re grinding a 20BB stack. This enabled me to pick up a few pots I had no business winning and stay afloat despite dry spells and bad beats/coolers.

Triple Barreling Off a 20BB Stack

The best example was towards the end of the day, when our table was eight-handed. Blinds must have been 1200/2400, and the player on my right open limped off of a stack of 55K or so. There was nothing suspicious about this – even at this late stage, plenty of people were limping. I made the questionable decision to limp behind with 8s 7s and 48K in the hijack. I’m still not sure this is good, but I believed I could get away with it because everyone was so passive with regard to raising pre-flop, and I expected a big post-flop edge to compensate for the times I would have to fold to a raise (and, of course, the fact that I was putting in 5% of my stack with 8-high and no chance of winning pre-flop).

The action folded to the SB, who completed. The BB checked, so four of us saw a Qh 7c 3h flop. When everyone checked to me, I bet 4500, about 1/3 of the pot. This was primarily a protection bet, though it was already in the back of my mind that it might also become the first leg of a three barrel bluff.

The small blind and the MP limper both called, and the turn brought an offsuit 9. They checked to me again. In a heads up pot, I would have considered checking and trying to show my hand down, but with two people calling there was little chance my 7 was good. It might sound ridiculous to talk about running someone off of top pair with 20 BB effective stacks, but it seemed very plausible to me at the time. That’s how scared everyone was playing. They were all terrified to slowplay with a flush draw on the board, so their calls could only indicate a lack of confidence or an extremely strong hand, to which my 7 was a significant blocker. I bet 11K, still a small fraction of the pot, but I wanted to be sure to leave myself a meaningful river bet. They both called.

The river was an off-suit A (I would have given up a heart). They both checked, I jammed my last 30K or so, and they both folded. And that’s how you triple barrel off of a 20 BB stack in a multi-way pot.

Another Cheap Steal

The other fun one from Day One began with me opening 22 from the CO. The button and SB called. I don’t remember the level, but there was about 26K in the pot on the flop, which came AJ5. We checked it around. The turn was a 4, and the SB bet 6K, hardly a show of confidence. I also thought it was quite unlikely that the button was slowplaying anything. Everyone had been playing so straight-forwardly that I expected to get way too much credit for a monster, simply because no one else in the tournament seemed willing to take a line like this as a bluff, so I raised to 22K, and they both quickly folded, the SB flashing KJ as he did so.

After that I was card- and spot- dead for the rest of the night and ended up squeaking into the money with 123K and blinds about to go to 5K/10K. That’s not as bad as it sounds, as the average was about 200K, and only 43 players remained, with 40 to be paid. Still, my aspirations for Day 2 were not much higher than surviving the bubble and collecting enough of a prize to cover train fare, meals, and my two buy-ins.

I wasn’t alone in this regard. Another player, who actually had far more chips than I did and ultimately bubbled the final table, opened the pot on one of the last hands of the night. After he won, his wife scolded him from the rail, “Don’t play anything until you’re in the money!”

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

Follow Clayton on Twitter@claytoncomic and learn more about his upcoming shows from his website. His podcast is Broadway Comedy Club Radio.

Timestamps

0:30 Hello and Welcome
34:44 Main Event Strategy

Strategy

Hand 1

Blinds 800/1600/200 effective stack 80K
Hero opens to 3500 with Qd Jd in 3rd position, Button 3bets to 8500, Hero calls

Flop QT7 with one diamond.
Hero checks, Button bets 9500, Hero calls

Turn Ks. Hero checks, Button bets 11,500 into 40,200, Hero calls.

River 9s. Hero checks, Button shoves

Hand 2

Blinds 100/200 effective stack 30K.

Villain opens to 450, one call, Hero raises to 1300 with Jc 8c on the Button, Villain calls, other player folds.

Flop (3200) Ac Jh 7c. Villain checks, Hero bets 1500, Villain raises to 4000, Hero calls.

Turn (11K) 9d. Villain bets 5000, Hero calls.

Rivers (21,300) 8s. Villain bets 7000 into 21000.

Hand  3

Blinds 1K/2K/300 effective stacks 160K. Villain opens to 4K, Hero has QQ in the SB and raises 11K, V raises to 33K.

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).

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.

Pre-Flop

I’m increasingly convinced that this is a fold after all. A very rough estimate is that I have about 15% equity against the Villains’ ranges and need to realize about 80% of that to make money on the call. The fact that I got a well-above-average flop and still can’t find an especially profitable option is telling, as is the fact, pointed out by many, that even if my hand improves the implied odds are not that great.

Results

I’ll start with the results, because my own play is one of the lines I want to consider and dismiss. I raised to $600, Villain 1 called, and Villain 2 folded. The turn was an off-suit J, and we both checked. The river was an offsuit 9, and while I considered shoving, I decided not to do so for exploitive reasons. Villain 1 checked behind and won with QQ.

Bomb the Flop?

While my in-game thought process was admittedly sloppy, I don’t think that, “Someone clearly has top pair or better and they’ve see you bluff before, so don’t ever raise without a set” is the best way to approach the problem either. We’re quite deep, and even for the looser UTG1 player, putting in eleven times the pot with one pair when five people saw the flop is not going to be an automatic decision. If I’m going to raise sets/two pair here, then I should have a bluffing range as well.

It doesn’t necessarily follow that this hand belongs in that range, though. As Jeff G. astutely points out, “Given that hero is calling with 7h2h preflop, I think it’s a safe assumption that hero has every combo of set(9 combos), suited two pair(7), and flush draw(55!! minus any combos we 3bet pre, if any) in his range. So we definitely want to have a check/raise range in this spot however we can easily go overboard if we’re not selective in which draws to use to balance our value hands.”

He argues for using nut flush draws for this purpose, and I think that’s partially right. As deep as we are, nut draws are disproportionately valuable, and the Ace will frequently be live. However, it does block some of the weaker hands in UTG’s range, such as AK and AQ, that he might c-bet even for this sizing into this many people. Getting a fold from him on the flop is one of the best case scenarios, so blocking his most obvious folding hands isn’t great.

You also don’t want your bluffing range to be too dependent on a single card (the Ah, in this case), because a blocker-conscious opponent can use that information to his advantage. In other words, some players are actually savvy enough to call down more often with black Aces than with red Aces because the red Aces block some likely bluffing hands. So, I think there’s a case for raising at least some non-nut draws.

Other good candidates will be gutshots, both with and without flush draws. You have to be especially careful not to go overboard with the bare gutshots, but it’s important to look ahead to the scenario where Hero check-raises and a heart peals off. Many of you correctly anticipate that it will be hard to get paid with a low flush in this scenario, and the corollary to that is that you want to give yourself some bluffs in that scenario, as Matt argues in his very good comment. If your flop raising range is only flush draws and two-pair or better, then what’s your bluffing range on the Qh turn?

The bottom line is that although this is a good spot to raise some big draws, the fact that none of my outs are nutted makes this an unideal candidate for inviting such a large pot, and I have better bluffing candidates. So I want to at least rule out the play that I made, which was raising to $600, as a good option.

Fold the Flop?

Matt also says, “I don’t think folding right away is an option. Running some equities, I think we can expect to have in the neighborhood of 28% equity against both ranges; so although we should expect both Vs to be quite strong I think we most likely have enough immediate equity to continue.”

Chris C, however, argues that, “if we’re calling then we’re calling to improve to the best hand (since I don’t think bluffing is likely to be profitable here). But the strong ranges of the villains (each of which contains sets and lots of better flush draws, all of which leave us in terrible shape) means that we often *can’t* catch up to the better hand, and that we can never be confident about it even when we do. If we end up playing a big pot then we likely lose, and if we hit but then try and keep the pot as small as possible – well, that doesn’t seem too good either.”

I’m on Matt’s side, and I think Chris is conflating some disparate scenarios. Even if Hero has difficulty putting in stacks or even two big bets as a favorite on favorable turns, he should very profitably be able to put in one. That is, if a heart turns, check-calling one bet should be profitable, and calling a second might be a more-or-less neutral-EV proposition (which also means I won’t often face the second – it’s not common that 7h 2h is behind on a heart turn). If the turn is a heart and there is no bet, I can confidently value bet the river.

The prospects are even more favorable on 7 and 2 turns. I can confidently call at least one and often two bets on these turns, can bet the river if the turn checks around, etc. Because of the good immediate odds I’m getting, I don’t need hefty implied odds when I improve. I just need to have the best hand most of the time, which I will. In that case, either I won’t often end up playing a big pot, or I’ll often be ahead when I play a big pot. It can’t be the case that I’ll routinely face multiple big bets after improving my hand and also not be able to call those bets profitably – it just isn’t that easy to be ahead of 72 on a J622 board.

I think there’s a strong case for calling, but there’s one other interesting line that one of you hinted at but no one suggested (nor did it occur to me at the time).

Small Raise?

A big part of the reason why I don’t like bombing the flop is that it sets up an easy and obvious strategy for an opponent holding an overpair or a Jack, which is to call the raise, fold if a heart comes, and call down otherwise. I was somewhat lucky that the turn was a scary enough card for my opponent that he gave me a free river, because I don’t think I could have profitably bet or check-called any turn that didn’t improve my hand. That’s in part because, given how low the SPR was at that point, most players facing a turn bet from a draw-heavy range will correctly shove rather than call if they continue to a bet.

Raising a small amount on the flop in order to deter a turn raise and give me room for a meaningful river shove is an interesting idea, though. Also, as James points out, “Both players calling your raise doesn’t change your equity in the hand (let’s say it’s 40% in the 3-way pot) vs you just calling.” I don’t think this was the point he was getting at, but in fact raising and getting called in two spots is better for me than just calling – I am 40% to win and getting 2:1 on my money. This is the kind of spot that an experienced limit player would probably recognize more quickly, because it’s common to raise hands with less than 50% equity in multiway pots in those games, but it comes up far less often in NLHE. Here, though, if I can’t fold out both players, my next preference is to fold neither. The result I got, and the one I think I’ll commonly get, was the worst.

Leo suggests raising “to something like $420…. The plan is to barrel off here on bricks, targeting overpairs, top pairs, and better flush draws that have paired up.” That would have been an interesting option, and I wish I’d considered it. Maybe next time!

Thanks again everyone.

Villain 2 is loose, especially in small pots. He’s definitely too stubborn post-flop, but that doesn’t mean he shovels three hundred blinds into the pot every time he makes top pair.

Both players have seen me show down some big bluffs, but both have also expressed regret about hands where they’ve stacked off to me as well.

Villain 1 opens $35 UTG, Villain 2 calls UTG1, there are two more calls, and I call 7h 2h in the BB. Just to pre-empt some questions, this isn’t a trivial pre-flop call, and it’s fine to fold here if you aren’t particularly confident in your post-flop game, but it’s a call I’m comfortable making.

Flop ($168 in pot) Jh 6h 2s. I check, Villain 1 bets $135, Villain 2 calls, the other two players fold, and the action is on me.

What’s your play and why? Leave your thoughts and preferred play here, and I’ll do my best to respond throughout the week and post results on Thursday. If you don’t fold, be sure to consider your play on future streets as well, especially if your hand does not improve.

The books mentioned on the show are Poetic Meter & Poetic Form, How to Rap, and Decoded. Alex contributed a chapter to Excelling at No-Limit Hold ‘Em.

Facing a Donk Bet

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.

Making a Donk Bet

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.

Donking a Set

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. In this case I doubt it much mattered what I did, but I think this is an interesting spot to donk bet. The thing is that when he doesn’t have K it’s pretty hard for me to get stacks in if I check. I can’t rep a big draw by check-raising, he’ll check behind a lot of turns if I check-call, etc. I think a donk is quite likely to get called or raised by hands like AQ, AJ, QJ, JT, QQ, JJ, TT. Then even if the turn goes check-check I can still jam the river for pot.

River Bluff

Blinds 500/1000/100. Button opens to 2200, I make it 6000 with KQo, he calls. Flop 952r, I bet 6500 which is about half-pot, he min-raises, I call. Turn is a 4 and checks through. River is an 8, I put him all in for 37K (there’s about 52K in the pot), and he calls with TT and not much hesitation. I was actually surprised he was that strong, and I may well be able to get him off of smaller pairs and/or Ace-high (if he takes this line) often enough for this to be profitable even without him folding TT.

Pre-flop is actually the part I’m most ambivalent about. We’re a bit deep (nearly 60bb) for three-betting KQo. Quite possible it’s better to just call. I like the flop bet, and I like calling flop getting 7:1 (easily the right odds when he has underpairs, especially if he lets me see a free river), and I think KQ is close enough to the bottom of my range to jam as a bluff. Value range is going to be JJ+, sets, and perhaps two-pair if I have them in my preflop range.

I Haz Blocker!

Blinds 800/1600/200. Good player UTG (has been talking to Bryn Kenney about playing EPTs etc) opens to 3200. Weak player on CO calls off of a 35K stack. From some players that would be strength, but from him it’s weakness. I was already thinking this was a good spot to squeeze and then I found dem rockets on the button. I made it 11K, UTG eyed my stack and then called without much deliberation. CO folded.

Flop Kc Qc Th. Not exactly ideal for AA, but I had the Ac. He checked, and I checked back.

Turn 4c. He bet half pot, and I called.

River was an offsuit 7. He bet 32K into 57K.

When I put the details down in black and white like this, it looks like a pretty straight-forward call. The thing is that Villain was shaking as he put the money into the pot and seemed pretty amped up generally, not worried but excited. It was a pretty strong physical tell, and of course in retrospect I wish I’d listened to it. It was just so hard to put him on a flush given that I was looking at the A, the K, and Q, and he’d raise-called from UTG. But, he had the 9c 8c.

Busto

Blinds 1000/2000/300. Same Villain opened to 4000 from the button. SB (same weak player who called in the previous hand) called, and I called 8h 7d from a 40K stack. Flop T64 with two hearts. Checks to Villain, he bets 5800, SB folds, and I jam for a little over pot.

To be honest this might be a little tilty. I mean, it can’t be too bad, but I don’t think how often Villain is bet-folding this texture, he probably checks back a lot of broadway-type hands and any draws that aren’t strong enough to bet-call. Calling could actually be better for me. Board ran out dry and I lost to a set of 4s.

Leo Wolpert, who also cashed this tournament, convinced me to play the Millionaire Maker tomorrow, so that’s where I’ll be at 10AM.

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!

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.

Ruud says, “Generally I find Villain has the goods when he bombs the river like this.”

Pepito agrees, “unless he contemptuously views you as a bad, nitty player, what adept villain expects Kx to fold given that particular run out and action? river looks like soul-owning thin value from AK and/or KQ, or fat value from 2P, straights, and flushes.”

Mike argues exactly the opposite: “if he’s a good player, he will know he can try to rep something strong considering both a flush draw and straight draw got there.”

I think this is as telling a demonstration as you’re going to get of the value of guessing at the meaning of Villain’s bet. A “good player” shouldn’t be so easy to pigeonhole as definitely bluffing or definitely value betting, just as he shouldn’t feel confident about whether or not I’m going to call a river bet, so let’s dig a little deeper.

The Knowns (or Strongly Suspecteds)

1. Villain is raising exploitably many hands pre-flop and consequently will see the flop with an overly wide range. That means he’ll see the flop with a lot of weak hands. As long as we don’t fold exploitably often, he can’t show a profit by bluffing with them, so one way or the other our strongest hands will win the pot on any given run out – either Villain gives up frequently and lets us win at showdown, which also benefits some of our more medium-strength hands that aren’t going to call multiple barrels, or he bluffs frequently, meaning that we win the pot less often when we have the best hand but win larger pots with our bluff-catching range.

2. This is a particularly bad river for our hand and a good one for many of the draws Villain could have.

The Unknowns

1. Villain’s value betting strategy. Would he bet AK or AA for value here? If so, would he use this sizing? Multiple bet sizes, particularly on the river, is not necessarily an exploitable strategy, so let’s not rule out the possibility that this bet is more polarized than a $250 would be, but less polarized than a shove would be.

2. Villain’s turn barreling strategy. Does he bluff only/primarily draws? Because his range is more polarized than mine, he has room to make a larger bet with a range that includes more bluffs, and I think his sizing is likely a mistake on the turn, one that forces him either to give up with a lot of his weak hands or offer me appealing odds to call against a bluff-heavy range.

3. Villain’s river bluffing strategy. There are three options here: (a) He does his best to bet in a balanced way, though the number of bluffs available to him may be limited because of his turn sizing and the exact river card that came; (b) He bluffs too much, which requires him to also have bluffed too much on the turn; (c) A large bet means he is weighted towards value hands, which is a common tendency among non-elite players.

Against strategy (c), we do best by folding. Against (b), we’d prefer to call, and against (a) we’re either close to indifferent or prefer folding, depending on whether his turn bluffing strategy enables him to bluff the river adequately. The fact that we prefer folding in a lot of these hypotheticals does seem to argue for a fold, as does the fact that calling against (b) is probably less good than calling against (c) is bad, because (c) contains few if any bluffs, whereas (b) contains all value hands in addition to a lot of bluffs.

There’s another factor to consider, though. Given that Villain bet the turn and river, it’s somewhat more likely that he is playing overly bluffy strategy (b). In other words, because strategy (b) bets more often than the other strategies do (it’s easier to have air than a strong hand, not to mention that (b) bets both), if we thought that all three strategies were equally likely before we saw any action, seeing two bets should incline us towards calling.

Although Villain seems uncommonly good, there are still more players in the 5/10 NLHE pool who play strategy (c) than those who play (b). Bayes’ Theorem cuts us both ways.

Reading Hero’s Range

Although my pre-flop range is somewhat narrow and well-defined as “too good to fold but not a good candidate for three-betting”, the small bets on the flop and turn mean that I haven’t folded too much of it. Pocket pairs, Kx, AJ, AT, sets, and perhaps some 6x and 7x (though I probably three-bet those pre) all call the flop. The AJ and AT get bluff-raised or ditched on the turn, and sets raise, which means that the pocket pairs and Kx both go to the river. I probably don’t make any flushes or straights on the river.

To make Villain indifferent to bluffing, I’d need to call about half the time. The chance of Villain playing AK or KK this way makes KJ a slightly better bluff-catcher than the pocket pairs, though they really aren’t very different.

I’d much rather have the Js for bluff-catching than the Ks. Some of Villain’s Ks Xs might actually check the turn, so I think the blocking value of Ks is not what it seems.

It’s also possible that this river is so good for Villain’s range that I can’t profitably bluff-catch at all, at least not against this sizing. If his large bet prevents him from balancing with sufficient bluffs, I can exploit him by folding all of my bluff-catchers, which is probably what I should have done. In game, I didn’t appreciate the significance of the small turn bet in terms of potentially limiting Villain’s ability to bluff, especially on this river.

Results

I called. Villain had 98o for a rivered straight, which suggests his pre-flop range was even weaker than I expected.

Seeing that hand makes me like my river call even less, though it also makes me dislike folding pre-flop even more than I already did.

Props to Bryan Gour for considering a raise. I did think about that in game, and I agree that the Ks blocker is perfect for it, but I don’t know that I’d ever raise her for value, so I chose not to do it as a bluff either.

Told Ya So

“This is why I would have raised pre-flop…” To be honest, I was expecting more comments like Zachinacubicle’s than I got.

I’ve already talked about three-betting vs calling pre-flop, and while I’ll admit that as Villain’s pre-flop range gets wider, three-betting gets more appealing, I still prefer calling even knowing that Villain may be raising half the deck. After all, KJo is only a very small favorite against that range, and will not play well out of position. The only reason to three-bet this would be if you expect Villain to fold exploitably often, and that doesn’t seem to be his bag.

It’s important to recognize that this was a really bad river, perhaps the worst in the deck, and Hero still ended up with a close decision. Not all run outs will be this bad, and considering that even a bet on this worst case scenario river produced a close-to-break-even spot for the Hero suggests that this hand is really not so hard to play out of position.

If you are in the “Bah, I don’t care about game theory, people are so easy to exploit!” camp, that’s a fine attitude when it comes to calling or folding the river, at least if you think you have a handle on how Villain can be exploited. But if you’re folding pre-flop because you fear post-flop decisions, then learning to defend your equity by checking and calling in an unexploitable way is valuable for you. Calling and then bluff-catching in a balanced way is simply more profitable than folding pre-flop (and than three-betting pre-flop, unless Villain folds too often).

Contrary to Greg’s assertion, you don’t have to “guess” at Villain’s bluffing frequency. You simply have to call often enough that his bluffing frequency doesn’t matter.

Brian has a slightly different criticism of the call: “You play a limited number of hands live and recreational players make enormous mistakes with deep stacks. Setting up dynamics with almost zero EV vs the best players is a waste of your most precious resource – time playing against the recreational players.”

There’s something to this, but I think the argument cuts both ways. By passing on a profitable call here, you are giving your chief nemesis an opportunity to play against the recreational player, and in fact a very profitable opportunity to exploit that player. Not to mention that calling does still give you a chance to see a flop against that player. This is actually a concept that Nate and I discuss in our WSOP Premium Podcasts.

Edit: I meant to add that it’s quite easy to construct scenarios in three-bet pots that will make you wish you called, much as this particular scenario might make you wish you three-bet. Example: you three-bet pre-flop and get this flop. You either bet and get called, or check and call. On the turn you check and call. You’re in at least as bad of a spot now as I was in this hand, and you’ve put a good deal more money into the pot even before you contemplate calling a river bet.

UTG is a typical splashy recreational player, with lots of limping and calling pre-flop followed by lots of checking and folding post-flop. He has about $800 in his stack.

HJ is the best of the competition by a long shot. He definitely knows how to take advantage of different types of players by isolating, barreling, floating, squeezing, etc., and he’s definitely made some plays like these against me in good spots. I don’t have enough experience with him to say whether he’s actually balancing against me or whether he’s playing more of a Level 2, “This guy opens a lot so I’m just going to three-bet him with any two” sort of strategy. He’s definitely unbalanced, in a good way, against the less tough competition. I’m playing about $2500, and he covers.

UTG limps for $10. Three players fold, then HJ raises to $40. Hero calls from the BB with Ks Jd. UTG calls.

Flop Kc 7s 6d ($118 in pot). Hero checks, UTG checks, HJ bets $65, Hero calls, UTG folds.

Turn 2s ($248 in pot). Hero checks, HJ bets $125, Hero calls.

River Ts ($498 in pot). Hero checks, HJ bets $400, Hero?

I think the flop and turn play is pretty uncontroversial, but if you have questions, I’m happy to address them.

Post your thoughts and preferred action on the river, and I’ll post my own thoughts as well as the results towards the end of next week.

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.

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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.

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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!

The reason I find it interesting is that it reminds me of an important conclusion from Mathematics of Poker that I’d forgotten about entirely until I reread that book. In “Playing Accurately, Part I: Cards Exposed Situations”, Chen and Ankenman demonstrate that there are situations where a player with an obvious (exposed, in their hypothetical) draw actually does better by raising all-in on the flop, knowing he’ll put the rest of his money in from behind (though with sufficient pot odds) rather than calling and giving his opponent the opportunity to bet him out on a blank turn or check-fold when the draw comes in.

Of course there are any number of reasons why that may not be applicable to this hand. It presumes an opponent who will correctly bet the turn when ahead and correctly check-fold when behind. If, as Eddie argues, Villain can be expected to run a big bluff on cards that complete Hero’s draw, then there is more room to outplay him on future streets.

On Calling

I think many commenters are overestimating how easy it will be to outplay Villain on a blank turn, though. Shoving over a turn bet works only if Villain has a lot of air in his range, as he probably isn’t bet-folding a Q or a 9 or a better draw. Calling in hopes of getting there on the river probably requires decent implied odds to be better than getting it in on the flop even if Villain never folds.

I’m not at all sure what would be the best play if Villain checked a blank. I suppose I would opt for a smallish bet of perhaps 1/3 pot, but getting check-shoved is such a disaster that I don’t feel too great about that plan.

I don’t think the best play is particularly clear if the turn is a J or a T, either. Some people seem to want to call down on blank rivers, and I can see why, but Pepito also makes a good point that “villains of these sorts tend to thin hero calling rather than triple barreling with air (particularly in a 3b pot where hero has called a check raise and a second barrel).”

On Shoving

Pepito also asserts that, “shoveling 4.5K into 1.2K pot against a callbox seems terrible– particularly with position.” Having already explained why I don’t see a lot of ways to capitalize on my position, I’ll now address the “callbox” argument.

The tricky thing here is that this hand actually blurs the line between a value bet and a bluff. On the hand, it certainly feels icky to stick in a lot of money with Jack-high against a player who’s shown a willingness to call down extremely light. But what, really, can his looseness do to hurt us?

No one is check-raise-folding the hands that have us in truly bad shape, which would be nut flush draws, two pairs, and sets. I wouldn’t really expect Qx to take this line either – people might check-raise-call it, or they might not check-raise it, but I don’t see it getting check-raise-folded.

So what can Villain’s looseness add to his calling range, and how can that hurt us? All he can do is start calling with really weak hands, and Hero is a pretty big favorite against those, as Sean F. points out. Hero has 63.5% equity against 9d 8d and 76% against 8s 7s.

There’s a lot of talk about not wanting to put your stack in “on a flip”, but that’s a misleading way of framing the situation. What you really need to consider is not just the end result – how much equity do you have when the money goes in – but rather how can your actions manipulate the situation to give you more or less EV.

Regardless of your flop action, there are a lot of scenarios where you end up playing big pots against the top of his range. Against the bottom of his range, you’re a solid favorite, and raising the flop can only lead to good things. Villain can either forfeit a significant amount of equity by folding, or he can put his money in from behind and lose the ability to play well on future streets (he might continue bluffing a spade with air, but will he bet/stack off with 98?).

A lot of the value in calling comes from inducing bluffs. Maybe we get to shove over a bet on a blank turn, and maybe we induce some big bluffs when we hit.

Results

Raising less than all in still leaves open the possibility of inducing a bluff. If Villain check-raises the flop with more than just pairs and draws, then there’s a real chance he’ll four-bet-fold some of that air. He’s shown a propensity for this sort of play in wide range situations before.

That last point was the deciding factor for me. I three-bet the flop $1300, Villain made it $3100, I shoved, and he did some thinking (about what, I’m not sure – whatever it was presumably should have happened before he four-bet) and then called with what turned out to be Ad Kd. That was an outcome I hadn’t anticipated, but again I’m a 65% favorite in the case where Villain decides to make a really loose call, which means that getting it in on the flop is better for me than shoving over the check-raise and having Villain fold (though I would have preferred a fold to the five-bet).

The board ran out blank, and Villain collected a massive pot with Ace-high while the table collectively gawked. I warned you this was a bad beat post!

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.

Timestamps

0:30 – hello & welcome
3:24 – strategy: getting value & showing bluffs
34:54 – interview: carlos in florida

Pre-flop and on the flop, I argued that Hero had the opportunity, thanks to a bet sizing tell, to get more credit than he deserved on a 3-bet/c-bet and consequently could make these plays with a wide range. Essentially picking up on that tell (if it was in fact a tell) bought Hero some extra fold equity pre-flop and on the flop. Now, though, that fold equity may well be used up, and Soner asks a good question: “I am still having a hard time imagining what a tight aggressive and borderline nitty player would raise UTG2 preflop, call a three bet and call a flop continuation bet on a Ks 8d 6d board. This play doesn’t seem tight aggressive at all to me unless he flopped a monster and knows you will three barrel. Also, you mentioned other players will give hero more credit than he deserves. If that is the case, and UTG2 thinks you have a very strong hand what is he calling you with?”

That’s not to say Villain will never fold the turn. There’s a good chance medium pocket pairs like TT are still in range (if they aren’t in the category of hands he’d raise larger) as well as possibly 98s or 87s, and all of these probably fold if they don’t have flush draws. Maybe he’d even fold KJ or KT without a diamond.

Plus, Hero has plenty of flushes in his range that he’d like to bet. All of that argues for having a bluffing range on the turn. The key question, though, is not whether Hero should ever bluff the turn, but whether this particular hand belongs in his betting range or his checking range?

Bryan Gour’s comment raises a lot of good points, but this one in particular is worth noticing: “I expect the top of his range to be check calling and check raising, and all of his 99/TT/QQ with a diamond to have a pretty low calling frequency.” I would go even further and say that, with stacks being what they are, there’s a good chance that Villain’s calling range will be quite narrow, maybe only pairs with flush draws and the occasional slowplayed nuts, and that he’ll usually raise or fold.

The fact that betting so rarely results in Hero seeing the river card suggests that a draw with substantial equity vs Villain’s folding range might not be the best bluffing candidate, because Hero won’t get to realize that equity. Betting a more polarized range of flushes and hands with little to no equity is probably the better strategy.

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 ($151 in pot after rake) Ks 8d 6d. UTG and UTG +2 both check without much hesitation. Hero bets $75, UTG folds, and UTG +2 calls.

Turn ($301 in pot) Jd. UTG2 checks, $475 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 on Monday.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Strategy

UTG+2 limps. Hero raises to $25 with Tc 7c in MP2. SB calls, BB folds, limper calls.

Flop ($80) is Jc 9c X. Two checks, Hero bets $30, SB folds, UTG2 calls.

Turn ($140) Jc 9c X 8h. Check, Hero bets $65, UTG2 raises to $140, Hero calls.

River ($420) Jc 9c X 8h Qx. UTG2 bets $175, Hero calls.

To bask in more of Matt’s podcasting prowess, check out the Interpreter Magazine Podcast that he cohosts. You can also follow Matt on Twitter.

Timestamps

0:30 Hello & Welcome
1:45 Strategy: Deepstacked NLHE for Advanced Players
37:39 Interview:  Matt Sienkiewicz

If you aren’t already a member, please click here to sign up for Tournament Poker Edge.

It’s also worth thinking about why you would or wouldn’t raise a set in this spot. If you believe that raising and then bombing turn and river to get stacks in would drive everyone out way too often, then that might be a reason to slowplay a set, but it’s also a reason to take that line as a bluff. You’ve identified an exploitable tendency, so throw balance to the wind and exploit it!

Likewise, if you’d raise a set because you think, like Stuart, that “dude seems pretty oi with us” (ie “over it”, and presumably willing to stack off much too loosely), then raise the sets but not the really nutty draws (raising a weaker draw could still be correct though).

The Balanced Play

If you really aren’t sure what your opponents will do and want to proceed in a balanced way, I think that’s likely to include raising at least some sets. I’m not prepared to prove this definitively, but my guess is that if we assume no one has KK in his pre-flop range and then want to play an optimal strategy beginning with the flop situation, that’s going to include raising 77 (it’s very possible that 44 and 77 need to be treated separately, as one is the nuts and one is not in this scenario and with an SPR of 25 that may be an important distinction) and an appropriate number of bluffs. Your opponents are forced either to call down an appropriate number of non-nut hands or overfold to your bluffs, and either way you win. So basically I doubt that optimal strategy here involves not having a 3-betting range, and if you’re going to have a 3-betting range than the nuts needs to be in it.

The question of whether 65o is the best balancing candidate is a separate and trickier one. It is not, strictly speaking, the strongest possible draw. That would be 65s with a backdoor flush draw, of which Hero has 4 combos in his range.

However, because Villains have the option to 4-bet the flop, the strongest possible draw may not be the best bluffing candidate. The risk of getting blown off of your equity may make it better to 3-bet weaker draws or maybe even to use 7x as a bluffing hand because it dramatically reduces the number of nut combinations you could run into.

Multiway limped pots aren’t exactly PokerSnowie’s strong suit, but for what it’s worth it suggests a mix of raising and calling with 65o here. Snowie also calls 100% with 77 (though there’s no way to build in to Snowie’s analysis the important bit about no one having KK, and with KK it calls 87% and raises 13%). In fact Snowie’s raising range is only {KK,65s,65o}, none with 100% frequency.

The Exploitive Play

I’m setting that aside as merely an interesting academic exercise, though, because I think that none of these players is likely to be strong enough to go to the felt. Exploitively, I think that running a big bluff with with any of the above (open-enders, gutters, 7x) is certainly going to be profitable, and this may even be an any two cards spot. It doesn’t necessarily follow that raising this exact hand is the best play, as calling could be even more profitable, and I’ll return to that in a moment.

The bottom line is that it’s awfully difficult to flop two-pair or better, and I seriously doubt that anyone is stacking off with less than that. Because this is a limped pot, the SPR is extremely high, and many of these players – not entirely incorrectly – have a “don’t go broke in a limped pot” mentality. To be fair, I wouldn’t bluff-catch all the way to the felt with 74 either, though I’d also try to avoid doing some of the things these Villains have done to cap their ranges.

It’s true that betting into five opponents shows some strength on SB’s part. His sizing argues against his having a monster here, though. This is far more likely to be some sort of probe to see where he’s at, win immediately with something marginal, or set his own price on a draw. Precisely because these games tend to play passively, especially with regard to post-flop raising, I’d expect SB either to check or to bet bigger with a monster hand rather than split the difference with a small bet that’s like to result in no more than $25 per person going into the pot. (Despite what I said about my image, I don’t think anyone is expecting me to go crazy raising a little bet like this in a limped pot, though admittedly it could be a good strategy for enticing me to run a huge bluff).

Much the same applies to MP’s raise. The blinds are likely to call larger raises if they’re going to call at all, so there just isn’t much reason for him to raise only $75 with a set. It’s not going to produce the big pot he would want. More likely he either sees the same opportunity I do to bully these recreational players out of the pot or he’s making a small value/pot control raise with something like KJ.

I’d actually consider BB the player most likely to have a monster. Like many commenters, his instinct might be to slowplay a set. He also has the widest range of anyone for seeing the flop, though, and given the small bet might well be calling with any pair or weak draw, so sets will nonetheless be a very small part of his range.

A raise by me is simply not going to get 4-bet by one-pair hands. Even if someone is sick of me and ready to call me down, he’s going to want to let me keep bluffing, not blow me out. This is the nit’s preferred method of “punishing” an aggressive player. So I’m really not that concerned about getting blown off of my draw by a 4-bet.

The Trouble With Calling

As for whether there are even juicier implied odds attached to calling and trying to draw to the nuts, I think this is the “slot machine” mentality that Ed Miller warns about. You have a less than 16% chance of making the nuts on the next street, and everything I said above about why a bluff will be profitable is also a reason why your implied odds aren’t anywhere close to the full effective stacks. Probably no one has a hand that wants to play for stacks anyway, and if they do then your equity won’t be 100% on the turn.

Furthermore, there’s only one draw on the board, so when you cold call a flop raise and then bomb the turn when that draw gets there, it doesn’t take a genius to guess your hand.

Winning without showdown a high percentage of the time is generally preferable to winning a somewhat larger pot at a much lower frequency.

Finally, the pot that you win by bluffing isn’t guaranteed to be small. Perhaps someone calls the flop and/or turn only to fold later, in which case you win a larger pot anyway. Sometimes they call and you get there and are able to extract more value. Your first thought, when you flop a strong draw, should not be “I hope I get there so I can win a big pot.” It ought to be, “How can I best represent a strong hand and try to win this pot without a showdown?”

If you really think that your opponents will give you more credit for a strong hand if you call than if you raise, then more power to you, go ahead and call. But this means you’ll be bluffing into three people on the next street instead of one, and those three people will be closer to their coveted showdown than when you raise the flop, which should make them less inclined to fold. As John said in response to a comment about MP perceiving a call to be strong, “Doesn’t raising guarantee this and give him a chance to fold at the same time?”

Results

I raised to $200, the blinds folded, and MP called. The turn was a 9, he checked, and I bet $400. He thought for a bit, told me, “I don’t think you needed a miracle turn this time,” and folded.

Nate and Andrew also discuss a hand they played against one another at Red Rock after they both busted the World Series of Poker Main Event.

The fact that Hero has a lot of air in his range for getting to the river because of all of the missed draws is not an argument for never bluffing. It may be an argument for bluffing rarely with small sizing and extremely weak hands, such as this one, simply to deny a showdown to the weakest hands in Villain’s range. It may also be an argument for betting really big, such that it’s hard for Villain to call even if he knows that Hero has a lot of bluff candidates.

I think there are three options to consider given Villain’s likely range:

1. Bet small, anywhere from $50 – $250, targeting missed draws that have not paired the board.

2. Bet a medium amount, $200 – $500, targeting two-pair hands like A9s, 98s, TT, and JJ.

3. Overbet the pot, $500 – $2000, targeting trips.

Exploitively, I like mwalsh’s process for thinking through these options: “we proceed bluffing a higher and higher amount until we reach a category of hand where we do not believe attempting to bluff that category of hands adds marginal value”. If, for instance, we think that Villain will fold to a shove 100% of the time, then we can exploit that by shoving, and even if a small bet is +EV it will not be as +EV as shoving our entire range. Note that in such an extreme case shoving even a Q with a bad kicker could be correct.

Betting Small

This is a case where size matters, because Villain has missed draws that could consider calling a river bet getting a very good price. Many hands in this category will contain an Ace or a King, and I think that betting $50 will not be enough to shake them.

It’s worth thinking about what you’re representing when you make this bet. Hero would presumably raise TT and JJ pre-flop. This leaves the bottom of Hero’s value betting range at 9x (ambitious, but not out of the question considering how much air is in Hero’s range) and Qx (note that Hero’s kicker can’t be too strong here as AQ and probably KQ are raising preflop). The only 9x combos in Hero’s range would also be flush draws, so there aren’t too many of those. Thus, the value hand to balance around for this bet size is really trips with a kicker that can’t expect to be ahead of Villain’s Qx range. More on this in a moment.

Betting Medium

Brian correctly points out that “77-JJ are all pretty heavily discounted from his flop overcall if this is truly a nit”. The other plausible two-pair candidate with be 9x of diamonds, of which Villain can’t have more than a few candidates in his UTG limping range. If you’re going to target just one hand type, it probably isn’t best to pick the one that represents the smallest part of Villain’s range. I’d also wonder, for exploitive reasons, whether Villain is going to fold these hands to any “normal” bet size on one of the best river cards in the deck after coming this far with them.

It’s interesting to note that there’s some overlap between the bet sizes I suggested for the small vs medium bluffs, and that’s because AxTd is not so different from Td9d. There may, then, be a case for trying to find a bet size that targets both of these regions, which would probably be in the $200 – $250 range. This is consistent with how I’d play a Q, and I think it gets enough folds from unpaired hands to show a profit. If Villain chooses to fold any pairs, that’s icing on the cake.

Betting Big

Many commenters seemed not even to consider the possibility of Villain folding trips. With about 4x the pot left in the effective stacks, that’s a mistake. Calling a shove or even a 2xpot bet with AQ is not a trivial decision. As Brian puts it, “Threatening $1000 of his hard, nut peddled dollars should get him thinking pretty quickly.” I suspect that many of you who don’t want to try to bluff him off of trips wouldn’t actually shove $2000 here with sixes full, and you should ask yourself why not.

One of the few cases in no-limit hold ’em that is completely solvable by game theory is when you hold a polarized range in position on the river against a range that consists purely of bluff catchers. The correct play is to shove all of your nuts hands and enough bluffs to make your opponent indifferent to calling.

Say that the pot is $500, Villain has exactly $2000 behind, and we know for a fact that he has KQ. Facing a 4xpot shove, Villain would have to win 44.4% of the time to break even on his calls. Thus, Hero should be bluffing 44.4% of the time that he shoves. If Hero’s value range consists only of flopped sets, that’s six combos, so we need 4.76 bluffs to balance that.

Let’s compare the EV of this strategy to that of a more common strategy, which is to bet a “safe” amount – say $400 – that we’re sure he’ll call with all of our full houses and never bluff. If he really does pay this bet off every single time, then you make $900 with your 6 value hands and lose every time with your 4.76 bluff candidates, so your overall EV with these 10.76 hands is $2400 $5400/10.76 = $501.86.

If we were to shove 4xpot with those same 10.76 combos, then we are indifferent to whether Villain calls always, sometimes, or never. Thus, by assuming that he always folds, we can see that the EV of this strategy is $500, the size of the pot. There is nothing Villain can do to prevent us from stealing the pot with those 4.76 bluff combos, because he’s going to run into our full houses just often enough when he calls.

Although the EV of these strategies is practically identical, the significant thing about the shove is that it’s not at all sensitive to our assumptions about Villain’s play. If it turns out that we’re wrong and Villain does occasionally fold KQ to the $400 bet, then we would have done better by shoving a balanced range.

Of course my example is a little contrived. If you believe you can reliably get a bigger bet than $400 paid off, then the exploitive strategy of only betting big for value will perform better than the GTO shove. I didn’t have that confidence in-game, and I suspect that anyone putting so much confidence in inferences drawn from a paragraph or two explaining some broad dynamics is making a mistake.

The whole thing gets a lot more complicated if we put slowplayed boats into Villain’s range, because at that point we’re no longer shoving into a range of pure bluff-catchers. I do, however, think there’s sufficient reason to rule those out more or less completely. Sets and two-pair are extremely unlikely to overcall on a draw-heavy flop, we’ve seen this Villain fast-play in a questionable spot before, and he probably isn’t limping the Qx combos that would make Queens full anyway.

You can find more discussion of this and more complex situations in The Mathematics of Poker.

Two Bet Sizes

Because an optimal river shove employs only 4.76 bluff combos, Hero probably has enough bluff candidates to balance an additional, smaller bet size. Thus, it may be feasible both to shove the river with full houses and 4.76 bluffs and also to bet something in the $200 – $500 range with the rest of our bluff candidates plus our Qx (to find a GTO size, we’d have to look at the ratio of value to bluff candidates in our range).

The question, then, would be whether 7h 5h belongs in the medium bet or the big bet range. It’s unique among Hero’s bluff candidates not so much because it has about as little showdown value as possible but because it doesn’t contain any diamonds, which are actually pretty significant blockers to his folding range when we make a medium-sized bet. For this reason, I think that this exact hand is better used to balance the medium-sized value bet, and the 4.76 bluffs that get shoved should be chosen from among Hero’s busted diamond draws.

Results

I bet $800, and Villain quickly folded. As argued above, I don’t think there’s a lot of reason for this intermediate bet size. I think in game I was allowing for the possibility that I might occasionally run into a slowplayed full house, but looking at the hand now I really don’t think that’s going to happen. In any event, I think that 7h 5h ought not to be one of the candidates for bluff shoving, so $200 would have been better.

Anyway, first up is Where Do the Weak Hands Go?, a Two Plus Two article that should help you think through situations where your opponent begins with a wide range:

This article will suggest a new way of conceptualizing ranges, one that will be especially useful when dealing with situations where one or more players sees the flop with a very wide range. No matter how coordinated the board, a wide range is going to contain a lot of weak hands. Rather than focusing on the strong hands that this player could hold, ask yourself “What will he do with all of those weak hands?”

This is an important question because in these situations your strategy is likely to revolve around what you think your opponent will do with these weak holdings. When your own hand is weak, you want to find a line that will cause your opponent to fold all of his weak hands. When you have a marginal hand with some showdown value, you want to induce bluffs and be careful that you don’t fold too often, lest you get exploited by a bluffy opponent.

I also had the honor of being the first guest on John Beauprez‘s new podcast Bracelet Hunter. Among other things, we talk about why tournament players should seek understand cash game play and important game theory concepts.

Finally, I was on the Strategy with Kristy podcast talking about slow playing.

This is the final episode of the Thinking Poker Podcast that will appear on this feed. I’ll continue to post announcements of new episodes here, but the only place to hear the show will be on the PokerNews/iBus Media podcast feed. If you haven’t already, please bookmark http://www.pokernews.com/podcast/ or subscribe to the PokerNews feed to ensure you won’t miss future episodes of the show. Thanks!

If you’re not already a member of Tournament Poker Edge, please use my affiliate link to sign up now!

Looking for more WSOP prep? Look no further than the Thinking Poker Premium podcasts, where you can hear Nate (a far more experienced live player) and I discuss tournament strategy generally and the WSOP specifically.

See you in Vegas! (details on that coming soon)

Prior to this hand, I’d really been hammering on the player in the CO. Mostly it was out of the BB, where I basically never folded to his button min-raises, sometimes 3-betting, sometimes calling and getting stubborn post-flop, but definitely not making it easy for him just to raise and take pots from late position.

It’s not that I think the BB’s cold 4-bet is weak exactly, just that there’s a little more room for it to be light than you might otherwise expect. My pre-flop and flop calls seem pretty unambiguous to me.

The turn is where it gets interesting. On the one hand, it’s a dicey spot for him to barrel. On the other hand, I’m getting 4:1, and he’s repping a really narrow range. I don’t see him betting AA here, with or without a heart. Even against that narrow range, I’m drawing pretty live. So basically on the turn I’m worried but don’t think I can fold.

In retrospect, I think that’s a reason to fold the river. Of course he’s still repping a really narrow range, and my hand is a decent bluff-catcher in that I block a couple things like AhQh, QhJh, and KQ that could play this way. However, I probably have enough trips, flushes, and boats in my range that I don’t really need to call with pure bluff-catchers like this.

My thinking is that even though my turn call is actually pretty strong Villain may just desperation shove the river with all his air once he gets that far. Probably that would be more plausible in a random $100 rebuy or something, but not so much in a $2K SCOOP event. Not to mention that I didn’t really think he had that much air in his turn range, though admittedly that was a weak read.

PokerStars – $2000+$100|250/500 Ante 60 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

CO: 67.91 BB
BTN: 59.46 BB
Hero (SB): 113.82 BB
BB: 91.59 BB
UTG: 24.84 BB
MP: 14.75 BB

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

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.22 BB) Hero has Qc Qh
fold, fold, CO raises to 2 BB, fold, Hero raises to 6 BB, BB raises to 14.4 BB, fold, Hero calls 8.4 BB

Flop : (31.52 BB, 2 players) Kc 4h 8h
Hero checks, BB bets 11.11 BB, Hero calls 11.11 BB

Turn : (53.74 BB, 2 players) Kh
Hero checks, BB bets 17.78 BB, Hero calls 17.78 BB

River : (89.29 BB, 2 players) 5d
Hero checks, BB bets 48.19 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 48.19 BB

BB shows Ac Ks (Three of a Kind, Kings) (Pre 43%, Flop 87%, Turn 77%)
Hero shows Qc Qh (Two Pair, Kings and Queens) (Pre 57%, Flop 13%, Turn 23%)
BB wins 185.67 BB

Whereas big bluffs and hero calls offer the dual rewards of feeling like you made a great play and seeing a mountain of chips shipped your way, plus sometimes the oohs and aahs of your tablemates, the rewards of a heroic fold are mostly in your own head.

Yet these are some of the hardest plays to make in poker. Even great players commonly refer to themselves as “stations” and admit to paying off more than they should. If you’d had the discipline to fold every time you had that nagging feeling that you were beat, your bankroll would be a lot fatter than it is today.

Because you aren’t getting the external rewards that come with big bluffs and calls, the key to making better hero folds is to derive satisfaction from the feeling of knowing that you made a great play, which in the end counts for more than winning, losing or the respect of your peers anyway.

For more on folding, there’s my latest Learn.PokerNews article, “How to Make Money With the Worst Hands in Poker“

Proper, winning poker involves a lot of folding. The big pots are few and far between. If the adrenaline spikes of winning and losing is what you’re really after, my honest advice is to head to the pit for some craps or blackjack. Of course the house has an edge in those games, but not as much of an edge as your opponents will have if you get bored and start calling raises with trashy hands in a no-limit hold’em game.

and also “You’re Supposed to Get Bluffed“

There are lots of emasculating metaphors we use for getting bluffed, but the truth is that it’s supposed to happen. Somewhere out there is a poker player who has never folded to a bluff, but he’s probably among the biggest losers in the game. If you never fold to a bluff, then you’re going to end up paying off way too many value bets, and ultimately you’ll lose more money than if you just suck it up and let yourself fold a winner now and again.

Carlos Welch learned this lesson the hard way when he found himself “Hero-Calling Unexpected River Bets“:

When this guy comes out and leads the river, he means business. His range is incredibly strong at this point because the turn and river improved most of the hands I put him on after his flop call. The flush draws got there and the  hands are now trips. Not to mention the fact that a $100 bet in this game is big in an absolute sense. And big bets on the river in small stakes games are usually the gospel.

Carlos also brings us “The Ten Commandments of Online Poker“, featuring gems like “Thou shalt have no other gods before math.”

Last but not least, Nate Meyvis writes about “Checking Flops From Out of Position”:

Sometimes you get called by someone who has position on you. When the stacks are short, moreover, it matters less whether you will occasionally make a great hand. Great hands are great because you will be comfortable taking them to battle in huge pots, but when you’re short-stacked — such as often happens in tournaments — there won’t be any huge pots. In these situations it’s more important who has the better chance of making something decent, and that’s often the caller, not the raiser.

This series is only available to members, so if you haven’t already, you should sign up for Tournament Poker Edge now to get access to all of my videos plus hundreds more.

If these prove popular, we plan to release similar content in the future, so any feedback or suggestions for topics you’d like us to address in the future would be very much appreciated!

The Big News

For those of you who can’t get enough Thinking Poker strategy, now you can get more! We’ve released a series of premium podcasts featuring more than five hours of strategy content relating to tournament poker in general and drawing specifically on examples from the 2013 WSOP Main Event. Whether you’re preparing for the World Series of Poker or another big event yourself or just enjoy hearing stories from the world’s biggest poker tournament, there’s something here for you. You can score your Thinking Poker Premium Podcasts here for just $19 at www.nitcast.com.

Timestamps

:30 – Hello and welcome; Andrew at Lucky Chances; Thinking Poker Premium; Poker’s 1%
25:39 – Strategy from the Mailbag

0:30 hello and welcome; nittin’ ain’t easy
17:27 a message from carlos welch
19:09 ed miller on poker’s 1%

Timestamps

0:30 Hello and welcome; updates from Carlos
29:56 Strategy: bluffing in small stakes games

Each program includes comprehensive worksheets to test your understanding of key concepts from the videos and your ability to apply them in new contexts. There’s plenty for you to work on in between sessions, and we meet only when you’ve made what progress you can independently. Then, you get targeted feedback from me about how well you’re understanding and using your new skills, plus specific advice about what to study next.

The Crushing Live Cash Games program is designed primarily for players struggling to beat the $2/$5 no-limit level and move up to $5/$10, though there’s room to adapt it for people who play higher or lower. It costs $1000 – the price for five hours of custom coaching – and includes seven hours of coaching, three months’ access to my Tournament Poker Edge videos, and a syllabus to guide your independent study between sessions and after the package is complete.

The Dominate Donkaments program is designed primarily for online tournament players, though there’s room to adapt it for those who play live tournaments. As with the other program, sessions are built around specific skills, but these skills are addressed in the context of hand history review from your tournaments. It costs $900 – the price for four and a half hours of custom coaching – and includes six hours of coaching, three months’ access to my Tournament Poker Edge videos, and a syllabus to guide your independent study between sessions and after the package is complete.

I don’t have a lot of recent online cash game experience, and I’m not generally offering coaching for online cash game players right now. If there’s a specific reason why you think I’d be a coach for you anyway, feel free to contact me and we can discuss it further.

If these sound appealing to you, you can follow the links above for more information or to sign up. If you want a better idea of what coaching with me would be like, Andre Coimbra posted some videos of our sessions on YouTube. In addition to being highly educational in their own right, they’re a good example of what you can expect.

You may wish to listen to our first interview with Andre, watch the free coaching videos Andre and Andrew have on YouTube, study push-fold situations with ICMizer, or read Andre’s girlfriend’s blog. And listen to Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast!

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello and Welcome
5:39 – Mailbag: “soft” poker skills
27:01 – Strategy: bluffing the river
45:27 – Interview: Andre Coimbra

Game is $5/$10/$20 NLHE, I have $8K, Villain covers. His pre-flop calling range is like 40% of the deck, less the strongest 5% or so that he’d 3-bet. He knows I’m opening a lot of pots and that I don’t give up easily, so he’s understandably reluctant to give me credit for a hand.

I open to $60 with JTo in the HJ (I had two very tight players sitting to my immediate left so I was opening pretty wide). Button calls, Villain calls in SB, BB folds, straddle calls.

Flop ($240) Jd 3s 4h. Villain bets $125, I call, the rest fold.

Turn ($490) 4s. Villain bets $225, I call.

River ($940) Ad. Villain bets $325, Hero?

Post your thoughts, comments, questions, suggestions, etc. here, and I’ll be back on Friday with results and my own thoughts.

In addition to valuable strategy content, we aim to find unique guests and discuss interesting topics that you won’t hear anywhere else. If you’re new to the show, here are a few of my personal favorite episodes. If you’re a veteran listener, please suggest some of your favorites in the comments!

Best Strategy

Ed Miller – What begins as a discussion of Playing the Player turns into a wide-ranging Q&A session on beating live no-limit hold ’em cash games. Ed’s penchant for explaining high-level concepts in easy-to-understand terms really shines through in this interview.

Olivier Busquet – Even you aren’t a heads up player, you can learn a lot from listening to how one of the best heads-up sit-n-go players in the world stays sharp and works to refine his game. Olivier is remarkably open about his thought process and strategy in the first half of a this two-part interview.

Isaac Haxton – Like Olivier, Ike is remarkably open about how he plays and thinks about poker at the highest stakes. In fact, the two even talk about each other in their respective interviews, making these two episodes fascinating companion pieces.

Fascinating Guests

Shaniac’s Back – Shane Schleger returns to the show to talk about getting out of debt, getting married, getting turned around at the Canadian border, and final tabling the WCOOP Main Event. He does it all with characteristic wit, charm, and humility.

Keone Young – You might know Keone Young as Mister Wu from Deadwood, or as the voice of Storm Shadow from the 1980s GI Joe cartoons, or as Chen Stormstout from World of Warcraft, or from one of the hundreds of roles he’s had in his decades-long acting career. But did you know that he’s also a poker player? Keone shares his fascinating journey from the streets of Honolulu to the movie studios, and poker tables, of California.

Carlos Welch – We first met Carlos in Las Vegas, just days after he’d made the decision to quit his job as a high school math teacher to play poker full-time. The key to his success isn’t crushing at the highest stakes, it’s keeping his expenses to an absolute minimum so that he doesn’t need a lot of money to sustain his lifestyle. His stories of sleeping in his truck in casino parking lots and showering in laundromats are sure to inspire and entertain.

Unique Topics

Ray J – Poker media is full of stories about the people playing at the WSOP, but about the people slinging the cards? Ray J tells about his life as a traveling poker dealer and shares his thoughts about proper procedure and how dealers ought to be trained.

Tubby Boots – There’s not much poker in this episode. Instead, Andrew sits down with his grandmother to talk about her brother, a 400-pound cross-dressing stand-up comedian who loved food, gambling, and life.

Ben Wilinofsky – NeverScaredB brings some high-level strategy to the show when he and Andrew talk about a heads-up match they played as part of the World Championship of Online Poker, but Ben also opens up about his struggle with depression and his Movember campaign to raise money for mental health issues among Canadian men.

Thinking Poker Bookclub

From time to time, we feature poker books on the show. We spend several weeks reading and discussing a book and then bring the author on the show to answer your and our questions.

Jared Tendler on The Mental Game of Poker 2

Tommy Angelo on Elements of Poker

Ed Miller on Playing the Player

Also don’t forget that John will be the guest on this week’s podcast, so you’ll get to hear more about the book and the man behind it soon.

John “KasinoKrime” Beauprez, winner of the 2013 $5000 pot-limit omaha $1500 no-limt hold ’em 6-max WSOP event, will be our guest on Episode 43 of the podcast. In addition to talking to him about his poker career and the excitement of winning his first bracelet, we’ll also talk PLO strategy.

John is the author of PLO QuickPro, a hefty soup-to-nuts strategy book. We considered featuring PLO QuickPro on a month-long bookclub, but ultimately decided against it on the assumption that the $300 price tag would be a barrier to participation for a large percentage of listeners. Instead, John has made one chapter of the book free for readers of this blog to download, and we encourage you to read it before you listen to our interview.

It’s worth noting that although featuring a book or author on the show doesn’t necessarily constitute a recommendation thereof, speaking for myself, I’m nearly finished my first read-through of the book and have found it quite good so far. I’ll be publishing a review in the next week or so.

If you have suggestions for questions either about John or about PLO strategy, please leave them as comments here and we’ll consider them for the show.

Most WSOP events start at either noon or 5, but this one was bumped back to 11AM to free up more tables later in the day. Even so, one of the daily deepstack tournaments was cancelled and the other postponed for hours for lack of tables. When I arrived, the convention center parking lot was slammed, and I joined the mass of humanity surging towards the entrance from either their private vehicle or the steady stream of taxis depositing them at the foot of the red carpet.

I was happy with my starting table. Out of eight opponents (it was a ten-handed tournament, but the seat on my immediate left was unoccupied), only two seemed capable of giving me tough decisions. The only downside was that they were one and two seats to my left. One of them lost a flip to a weaker player and was eliminated early, which was nice. I later realized that the other was Mike Sowers, whom I really should have recognized sooner given that he is a fellow Tournament Poker Edge instructor. Ana Marquez eventually claimed that empty seat on my left, but she was playing pretty tight, and before too long the table broke anyway.

I ran my stack up to about 10K without any big confrontations, then I lost a big pot to a pretty nasty beat. I limped 22 behind an early position limper and got a 552 flop. I called his flop bet and shoved over his turn bet. He called with AA and rivered a 5 for a higher full house. I was proud of myself not only for not reacting externally but for not even really getting upset on the inside. I just shrugged it off and settled in to play some 20 BB poker. That proved boring but quite profitable, and I got up over 30BB without any showdowns.

Because we started with just 4500 chips and blinds were doubling every level, players started dropping quickly. A vacant seat on my left was filled with a very nice Canadian who was a paradigmatic example of the sort of guy you come to the WSOP to play with. On the first hand that he played, he accidentally bet out of turn, confidently declaring, “3000” and throwing his chips eagerly into the pot. When the dealer told him it wasn’t his turn to act, he started stammering and apologizing profusely. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I just… ah… sorry. I get… sorry… I get… ah… nervous, y’know?” If any of you are Pokercast listeners, his accent was even more pronounced version of Mike Johnson’s, which made it that much funnier.

He left the table for a minute, and there was actually speculation as to whether he was putting us on, that’s how over-the-top his nervousness was. Also, he had to ask how antes worked. If he was acting, though, he deserved an Academy Award. “He took second in the PCA High Roller, so he must be doing something right,” I said, which drew a few astonished explanations before the table realized that I was pulling their leg.

A few minutes after the nervous Canadian returned to the seat on my left, Scott Seiver showed up holding a seat card for that same seat. Apparently when the floor seated the Canadian there, they hadn’t given the seat card to the dealer as they were supposed to but instead held on to it and reassigned it to Seiver, so he ended up at another table instead of on my immediate left. Talk about a suckout!

With blinds of 100/200, I opened to 450 with KJo in late middle position. The Canadian on my left called me, and the big blind called. We checked around a QJ6r flop. The turn was a T, and the big blind checked again. Given the lack of action, I was pretty sure my second pair was good, so I bet 650. The Canadian folded, and the big blind called. I decided I could still get value on a river 5, so I bet 1600 out of my 3800 stack, and he called with Q9. That hurt, and I’m conscious that overly thin value betting is sometimes a leak of mine in tournaments, but even in retrospect I like this bet. This and maybe AJ are about the only better hands than mine that I could see him playing this way.

That left me short stacked, which wasn’t the end of the world. A lot of good spots came up, I just never had quite the right cards to take advantage of them, but I could see that the potential was there. For example, the action folded to me on both the button and the CO, where my shoving ranges there would be extremely wide, but I found 62o and 82o respectively.

I lost a flip with 77 against the AKs of an even shorter stack, but it left me with just 3 BBs. Thankfully I was in late position and the ante was just 25, so I had a little room to wait for a hand. I got 99, got it in against three others, and miraculously held up. The next hand I open shoved KTo and lost to AJo.

I think this was pretty typical for a low buy-in WSOP event. There was a bit of play in the beginning, but not a lot of room to recover from early hiccups. I spent much of the tournament short-stacked, and on the whole the experience felt both (theoretically) profitable and boring.

The town of Pagosa Springs is named for the many natural hot springs in the area, and there is a park/spa that channels the water from those springs into something like twenty different baths of varying temperatures. Most range from 90 – 106 degrees Fahrenheit (I was surprised by how noticeable a gradation of two degrees was), but there is one in the 40s. The San Juan River runs through the area as well, and there are multiple places where you can dip yourself in the frigid mountain runoff if you want a contrast to the hot springs.

The self-styled spa wasn’t what we expected, though not necessarily in a bad way. For us out-of-towners, general admission for two plus a locker rental came to nearly $50. Because it’s billed as a “resort and spa” and because of the clientele at other springs we’ve been to, we were expecting a pretty froofy crowd. Thanks to the locals’ discount, though, there was actually a pretty strong working class vibe to the place. Several big families were camped out with coolers and picnic lunches, and there were kids everywhere. We found it fun, but I can imagine some people who were anticipating a relaxing atmosphere being disappointed.

Our skill at chatting with the locals must have been improving, because we got to talking with a rancher who was excited to hear that I was on my way to the World Series of Poker. He told me that  he occasionally played a $20 home game with “too much beer and reefer floating around for anyone to take it seriously.” Unfortunately I didn’t get his full life story, but he dropped some interesting tidbits, such as that he attended medical school in Las Vegas before somehow ending up a rancher.

When we moved on to a different bath, he wished me the best of luck and said he hoped I won a million dollars. “I’d settle for half that,” I told him amicably, but he looked genuinely disappointed in me when I said it.

The “spa” was outside, so we’d already gotten a lot of sun before we began our drive to Durango, which felt a lot longer and hotter than it probably would have otherwise.

Durango is a hub for skiing and mountain biking and also the departure point for a scenic train ride to historic Silverton. Consequently, the town caters heavily to the tastes of affluent vacationers who enjoy the outdoors; multiple cars in the parking lot of our hotel had $10,000 worth of bikes attached to their rooves or hitches. These were the people we were expecting to see at Pagosa Springs.

I tease, but the truth is that this demographic augurs well for us. We ate out – only our fourth time in nine days on the road – at an upscale burrito place  and filled our cooler with veggies and non-meat proteins at “Nature’s Oasis”. We were back amongst our people.

I want to start by highlighting a comment that illustrates why I chose this hand for a WYP post:

“First, if we get check-raised, that’s pretty much an automatic fold (right?). And if we bet, I wouldn’t think there’s anything more than a negligible chance that we can push Villain off of A9/K9/Q9 or better regardless of sizing, so there’s no sense turning our hand into a bluff.

So that means that the calculation is simply weighing (a) how likely Villain calls with worse versus (b) how often we get check-raised, either with trips/2P or a bluff (obviously, it doesn’t matter which). This balance also strikes me as highly interrelated; that is, the less you bet, the more likely you are to get a call from a medium-strength hand, but the more tempting you make it for Villain to c/r bluff with the same hand.

So it may be too passive, but I say check behind. If I’m good, I think I’m pretty happy with two streets of value from my relatively crappy hand in the cutoff, and if I’m beat, I’ve gotten away as cheaply as possible.”

The commenter offers a very good analysis of the situation and how to think about a river bet, but then more or less ignores his own analysis and concludes that we’ve won enough already so let’s just check it down. Ok that summary is a little glib, and I’ll admit to bending his words a bit for my own purposes – apologies for that. But I hope my point is taken: we need to actually do the analysis of which hands will call or raise.

Hero’s Range

A few commenters suggest that Hero has represented a lot of strength, which is true but incomplete. Hero has represented either a lot of strength or a lot of BS, and it’s a lot harder to have the latter than the former. I’m opening something like 30% of hands from this position, and I’m betting most of them on the flop, so my range for getting to the turn is quite wide. Although the deuce isn’t the best barreling card in the world, I’m certainly betting all of my good draws, of which there are many. A few of those hands contain a Q, but that still leaves plenty of air in my range on the river.

Please note that we’re talking here about my actual range, not Villain’s perception of it. If we knew that he would or wouldn’t expect us to bluff here, then we could bet or check accordingly with a thin value hand. If we’re not sure, the correct response is not simply to check behind. The correct response is to value bet the top of our range and balance that with an appropriate number of bluffs. This prevents us from being exploited either by a Villain who folds too often or a Villain who calls too often.

To the extent that I have read here, which many of you correctly point out is rather weak, I think it argues for betting. Villain is likely to hand read well enough to appreciate how wide I’m opening from the cutoff and the logic behind bluff-catching against a polarized range.

Villain’s Range

Even without a read, there are a number of reasons to think that Villain’s range consists mostly of marginal hands he’s aiming to showdown cheaply. He declined to 3-bet preflop, which discounts the biggest pairs. The smaller those pairs get, the more likely he is to be calling them, but even 99 and TT could be 3-bet candidates here. Furthermore, Villain’s failure to check-raise enables us to discount, though not exclude entirely, sets and two-pair (that don’t use the pair on the board). J9 isn’t ahead of 100% of that range, but it’s far enough ahead to merit a bet.

All of the check-calling of large bets also serves to discount hands without showdown value, namely bare draws. Only the most loose-passive players, which we have reason to believe this player is not, are going to show up here with Qs Ts. That means we don’t have to be overly worried about Villain having hit the Q.

It also means we don’t have to fear a check-raise bluff, since Villain won’t have many hands with which he’ll feel he needs to bluff. As Nate puts it,

“Another important point is that it’s not so easy for him to get to the river with a bluffing hand. Check-calling twice with a pure draw would be poor and un-Internet-ish, and if he doesn’t have a pure draw he has something with calling value. So he would have to be turning a value hand / bluff-catcher into a check-raise river bluff. This is uncommon. (I suppose he could have a very big draw that warrants check-calling even the turn, but there aren’t many combinations of this, and one-gappers will sometimes/often fold preflop OOP, depending on the guy.”

In my experience, misplaced fear of a check-raise is the biggest deterrent many players have to value betting the river, so if you were worried about it here, this might be something you should work on.

Results

I bet 150, and Villain called with TT. I regret nothing. You’re supposed to value bet into better hands now and again, and thin value bets make you harder to play against.

Hero is 30, probably gives off that same internet aura. Believe I’d been involved in a pot or two since Villain was at the table but nothing noteworthy other than that he probably wouldn’t assume I’m a nit.

Game is $5/$5 no-limit. Action folded to me in the CO, and I open to $20 with J9o. Villain calls in SB, everyone else folds.

Flop 9d 7s 2s ($40 in pot). Villain checks, Hero bets $30, Villain calls.

Turn 2h ($99 in pot). Villain checks, Hero bets $75, Villain calls.

River Qd ($249 in pot). Villain checks, Hero?

Post your thoughts and comments here, and I’ll be back on Friday with my own.

A lot of people, in the wake of the Boston bombing, seem deeply troubled by the question of “How could someone do something like this?” One thing I’ve learned from poker is that pain makes people do crazy, irrational, sometimes hurtful things, and that doing crazy, irrational, hurtful things is a sure a sign that someone is in pain.

That’s absolutely not to excuse such an atrocity, nor to create any sort of equivalence between the pain that caused the bombing and the pain caused by the bombing. Quite the opposite: what I’ve learned from poker is that you can learn to control the severity of your pain, and that you can learn not to take it out on others or on yourself. For me, “pain” is an answer to the question of “How could someone do this?” that helps me come to terms with the tragedy.

Moreso than usual, I’m curious to hear your thoughts!

Book Club

The book is just a starting point! Ed responds to listener questions and Andrew and Nate’s critiques with some of the best strategy discussion the show has seen to date. Topics include multi-way pots, re-exploiting players trying to exploit you, concealing information from tough opponents, categorizing opponents, and much more! Even if you haven’t read the book, you want to hear this in-depth strategy discussion.

Ed is @EdMillerPoker on Twitter. His self-published books, plus a lot of free strategy content, information about coaching, etc., are available from his website.

Next Month

Next month we’ll be reading Tommy Angelo’s Elements of Poker. In Episode 26, we’ll discuss Part I: Universal Elements, which runs through page 84 of the book.

Timestamps

Tubby Boots was a performer with an ecclectic, eccentric career that spanned four decades. At the height of his popularity he played the biggest hotels in Miami and Las Vegas and released four albums: Tubby Boots Goes Topless (available on YouTube), Out of This World, Songs for Swingers, and Thin May Be In – But Fat’s Where It’s At. You can also see one of his live performances on YouTube.

Tubby’s sister, Sylvia Brokos, has nothing to sell. She does not have a website or a Facebook account, and you can’t follow her on Twitter.

Book Club

Next week, we’ll be discussing the Introduction and Part 1 of Ed Miller’s Playing the Player.

Strategy Segment

HJ opens to 20$. CO three-bets to 55$. Hero 4-bets to $125 with As 3s on the button. HJ snap folds, CO snap calls.

Flop is 8c 7c 2c Pot = ~275$

CO checks, Hero bets $110, CO calls quickly

Turn is 9d Pot = $495

CO checks making eye contact, Hero bets $165, CO calls unhappily.

River is Jc Pot = $825

CO checks quickly. Hero takes 30 seconds and moves all in for $340 effective, covering villain by $20 or so.

6:42 Introducing the Thinking Poker Book Club
9:50 Strategy: a hand from Gareth, currently in Uruguay
32:40 Old podcast episodes now available on iTunes!
33:54 Andrew and his grandmother discuss Tubby Boots

The program is designed for no-limit hold ’em players currently playing at the $1/$2 or $2/$5 level who would like to improve their win-rates and/or move up to bigger games. If you’re already successful at $5/$10 or above, I may be able to help you as well, but we should talk about at first, so email me and then we’ll go from there.

For $900, ordinarily the cost of six hours of coaching, you get seven hours of one-on-one coaching plus some other valuable goodies:

• Free! Diagnostic (1 hour): We begin with a detailed analysis of the game(s) in which you play regularly to determine who plays there, how do they play, who gives you the most trouble, and who makes the biggest mistakes. The session concludes with a discussion of commonly encountered situations designed to assess how you currently think about the game and where you have the most room for improvement.
• Hand Reading (2 hours): Practice my simple but effective hand reading technique and tailor it to the players in your game. Poker is easy when you know what your opponents have!
• Maximizing Value (2 hours): Improve your winrate by raking bigger pots when you have the best hand. Learn how to build big pots when you have the nuts and squeeze extra bets out of thin value hands.
• Attacking Weakness (2 hours): Bluffing is an underappreciated tool in loose games. Contrary to popular wisdom, big bluffs can be extremely profitable in these games. Learn how to analyze your opponents’ mannerisms and betting patterns for weakness and how to push them out of the pot.
• Free! Video Integration: The Crushing Live Cash Games course builds on material presented in my Tournament Poker Edge videos. You get three months of free access to those videos, enabling our sessions to be tightly focused on how to adapt and apply these skills in the games you play.
• Free! Independent Study: After each session, you’ll receive a list of recommended reading, viewing, and exercises to expand your knowledge of the content, apply it at the tables, and prepare for the next session.

If you’d like to sign up or discuss the program and your particular needs further, please get in touch!

Oh and if you’re a tournament player, there’s a discount for you too.

I’ve just published a review of Jonathan Little’s Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker Volume 2. Here’s the synopsis:

The book is subtitled “Stages of the Tournament”, but fewer than half of the book’s 270 pages are dedicated to this topic. Ironically, much of the book addresses topics on which Little is not an expert and on which his advice, though delivered with an air of authority, is founded only upon his own anecdotal experience and perhaps a little research.

What poker content there is is good and may be enough to justify the $27.95 cover price, just don’t buy Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker Volume 2 expecting an entire book full of poker strategy.

You can read my full review or buy Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Vol. 2: Stages of the Tournament

I was wrong on a few details of the Gigabet post I describe in the strategy segment. The Villain was actually Dan Harrington, not Eric Haber, and Gigabet actually bet-folded, not check-folded, the flop. For a great example of thought-provoking Gigabet mysticism, see Theory of Stack Sizes. And for rumors surrounding Gigabet’s hucksterism, see The Demise of Gigabet.

This week in music sees a reprise of Monogold, originally heard on Episode 1.

Ben has a free poker lesson to whomever makes the largest donation through his Movember page. It looks like as of publication time the number to beat is just $200, which is a hell of a deal for poker coaching from a player of Ben’s caliber. I’d love to see one of our listeners bump that bar up to where it belongs for such a great opportunity.

Ben also talked about the You Can Play Project and the great work they are doing to make sports more welcoming to LGBT atheletes.

As I mentioned, Ben also agreed to talk strategy with us, and Nate and I felt that this unique opportunity justified a longer-than-usual strategy segment. Here are some key key timestamps for this nearly two-hour long episode of the Thinking Poker Podcast!

00:15 Introduction and a story from the Borgata Poker Open
14:03 Movember discussion with Ben Wilinofsky
58:39 Discussion of WCOOP heads up match between Andrew Brokos and Ben Wilinofsky
1:54:20 Outro

Musically, we’re re-using the Bubblegum Octopus music from Episode 6 pending a decision what to do going forwards. Changing songs every week is proving burdensome editorially.

Lastly, our apologies for the delay in publishing this. It was a combination of sound editing and my being occupied at the Borgata. Happy Thanksgiving!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 320 Tournament, 15/30 Blinds (6 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t6351)
Hero (BB) (t3555)
UTG (t4362)
MP (t4782)
CO (t5125)
Button (t5922)

Hero’s M: 79.00

Preflop: Hero is BB with 8, 7
2 folds, CO bets t75, 2 folds, Hero calls t45

Flop: (t165) K, 10, A (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets t90, Hero?

What’s your play and why? Please post your comments here, and I’ll be back with my own thoughts on Friday. Obviously a lot could happen, but if you want to do anything besides fold, please give a general idea of your plan (raise once and give up if called, call and check-raise turn, check-raise and barrel non-spade turns and rivers, etc.).

I’m kind of embarrassed to post this, because it’s pretty hokey, but I do think it helped, so maybe it can help you too:

“This is a long and profitable tournament. You are lucky to be playing it. It deserves your best effort and full attention. There is nothing else you would rather be doing than playing this tournament.

There will be many good opportunities. Wait for them. Conserve your chips. Do not invest in questionable situations, and do not wade into murky waters. Do not bet on guesses when there will be time to form better reads.

Take your time. Think before you act, even, especially, when the decision seems trivial. Pay attention to bet timing and sizing. What does he have? When you bluff, what do want him to fold? When you raise, what do you want him to call? Have you considered all of your options?

This is a long and profitable tournament. You are lucky to be playing it. It deserves your best effort and full attention. There is nothing else you would rather be doing than playing this tournament. Play your best.”

I read this to myself before I started playing and during every break. Later in the evening, when the only tables I still had open were the $5K Main Event and the $1K Second Chance, I had this up on my screen as a constant reminder.

The pre-flop action in this tournament was intense from the very beginning. This is an extreme example, but it gives you an idea of how much people were playing back at each other:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 5200 Tournament, 60/120 Blinds 15 Ante (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP1 (t20391)
MP2 (t19448)
MP3 (t37186)
CO (t18108)
Button (t52811)
SB (t10829)
Hero (BB) (t28608)
UTG (t22249)
UTG+1 (t10452)

Hero’s M: 90.82

Preflop: Hero is BB with J, 3
UTG bets t240, 5 folds, Button raises to t389, 2 folds, UTG calls t149

Flop: (t1093) 4, 10, 7 (2 players)
UTG checks, Button bets t511, UTG calls t511

Turn: (t2115) 5 (2 players)
UTG checks, Button bets t1189, UTG raises to t2880, Button raises to t5289, UTG calls t2409

River: (t12693) 3 (2 players)
UTG checks, Button checks

Total pot: t12693

Results:
Button mucked 7, 2 (one pair, sevens).
UTG had 4, 4 (three of a kind, fours).
Outcome: UTG won t12693

For most of the first day, I operated under the assumption that there was a good chance any of my raises would get 3-bet and that any of my 3-bets would get 4-bet. Consequently, I played a snug, boring game and I don’t have a lot of interesting hands to share with you from this tournament.

What was interesting was a song that came on while I was playing. I listened to Spotify pretty much non-stop while I playing the series, and after exhausting a few of their other playlists, I was listening to Pitchfork‘s Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s during the Main Event. One song fades, there are a few seconds of silence, and then I hear,

“Yeah, I’m losing my edge.
I’m losing my edge.
The kids are coming up from behind.
I’m losing my edge.”

This is actually the opening to a song by LCD Soundsystem, but it’s a hell of a thing to hear when you’ve just turned 30 and you don’t play online poker nearly as much as you used to and there are all these guys you’ve never heard of before who all seem to know what they’re doing and it seems like every time you google an opponent’s name the first hit is either High Stakes Database talking about his wins at 50/100 PLO or the PokerStars blog talking about he dominated the final table of a recent Sunday Million or SCOOP tournament.

So I had a good laugh at that but I kept my head down and plugged away. After a few hours of nitting it up and not catching much, I’d blinded down to about 14 BBs. I picked up AKo and ended up chopping with another AKo. Two hands later I open shoved AQs for 15 BBs from the CO. The SB called with KQo to double me up. Two hands after that I doubled again:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 5200 Tournament, 250/500 Blinds 60 Ante (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button (t14879)
SB (t22362)
BB (t23123)
UTG (t22248)
UTG+1 (t96537)
MP1 (t65036)
Hero (MP2) (t15710)
MP3 (t63133)
CO (t18350)

Hero’s M: 12.18

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with K, A
3 folds, Hero bets t1000, 4 folds, BB calls t500

Flop: (t2790) 3, 3, A (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t999, BB calls t999

Turn: (t4788) 7 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t2666, BB calls t2666

River: (t10120) Q (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t10985 (All-In), BB calls t10985

Total pot: t32090

Results:
BB had 5, A (two pair, Aces and threes).
Hero had K, A (two pair, Aces and threes).
Outcome: Hero won t32090

Given the kind of action I was getting despite my nittiness, I felt vindicated in my decision not to get too out of line. Then in the next level:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 5200 Tournament, 300/600 Blinds 70 Ante (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG+1 (t59661)
MP1 (t15965)
MP2 (t30852)
MP3 (t13174)
CO (t98427)
Button (t69983)
Hero (SB) (t43714)
BB (t59207)
UTG (t10126)

Hero’s M: 28.57

Preflop: Hero is SB with J, A
5 folds, CO bets t1200, 1 fold, Hero raises to t3600, BB raises to t7800, 1 fold, Hero raises to t43644 (All-In), BB calls t35844

Flop: (t89118) 8, A, 2 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: (t89118) Q (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t89118) 4 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t89118

Results:
Hero had J, A (one pair, Aces).
BB had 10, 10 (one pair, tens).
Outcome: Hero won t89118

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 5200 Tournament, 350/700 Blinds 85 Ante (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button (t44286)
SB (t18240)
BB (t32885)
UTG (t11119)
UTG+1 (t110948)
MP1 (t81380)
Hero (MP2) (t83778)
MP3 (t21688)
CO (t14290)

Hero’s M: 46.16

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with K, A
3 folds, Hero bets t1400, MP3 calls t1400, 1 fold, Button calls t1400, 1 fold, BB calls t700

Flop: (t6715) 10, 8, K (4 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t3333, MP3 raises to t20203 (All-In), 2 folds, Hero calls t16870

Turn: (t47121) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t47121) 8 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t47121

Results:
Hero had K, A (two pair, Kings and eights).
MP3 had K, Q (two pair, Kings and eights).
Outcome: Hero won t47121

I won a few more medium pots, then went card dead again towards the end of the night, made a few moves that didn’t work out, and ended the day with 20ish BBs, a healthy but not ideal stack. With the bubble approaching, I knew I was going to have to nit it up again the next day, but I was excited just to be there.

It was nearly midnight, so I would have welcomed the chance to hit the hay and rest up for Day 2 of the Main Event. That wasn’t an option, though, because I was still in the $1K Second Chance, and we were getting down to it. This was the only notable hand from that tournament so far:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 1050 Tournament, 100/200 Blinds 25 Ante (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

CO (t19580)
Button (t14087)
SB (t23987)
BB (t16749)
UTG (t37817)
UTG+1 (t16725)
MP1 (t10047)
MP2 (t17606)
Hero (MP3) (t21136)

Hero’s M: 40.26

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with A, K
2 folds, MP1 bets t400, 1 fold, Hero raises to t999, 4 folds, MP1 calls t599

Flop: (t2523) 6, 2, Q (2 players)
MP1 checks, Hero bets t1212, MP1 calls t1212

Turn: (t4947) 6 (2 players)
MP1 checks, Hero bets t1212, MP1 calls t1212

River: (t7371) Q (2 players)
MP1 checks, Hero bets t17688 (All-In), 1 fold

Total pot: t7371

Results:
Hero didn’t show A, K (nothing).
Outcome: Hero won t7371

So I’m chugging along nicely in that tournament, trying just to play well and not think about how tired I’m going to be tomorrow. There was still a thing or two I wanted to do in Montreal – most notably the Latin Quarter, a student hot spot near the Université du Québec à Montréal. Oh well. This was more important.

It’s 2:30 in the morning, and an aggressive player opens the CO. I 3-bet ATo from the SB. He min-4-bets. I go into the tank. Clock is ticking down. I drag the bet slider all the way to the right, take another second to think, and then click “Raise.”

Nothing happens. Then that “Connecting…” bar appears on the screen, and the wireless icon in the bottom right hand corner of my screen is “Looking for signal…”. I stare helplessly, willing the connection to come back. I’ve been playing on this connection for nearly three weeks without the slightest trouble, and it picks now to go out?!

I get down on my hands and knees, unplug the router, wait 60 seconds, replug it. Nothing. Try again with the router and modem. Nothing.

Shit. What are my options? I’m too tired to think clearly. I’m picking up other connections, but they’re all Secure. Blinding off would cost me ten to fifteen thousand dollars in equity. It’s not an option.

I don’t know any of the neighbors. Do I bang on doors in the middle of the night, try to explain the situation, beg for a wireless password? If I could get someone to open the door and listen to me, I could make it worth their while. Offer them enough cash that they’d be glad I woke them up at 2:30 in the morning. How much to offer? $200? $500? It would easily be worth it. But I don’t have that kind of cash, and there’s no ATM around. So then there would be the added complication of getting them to accept an IOU.

I only know one person in Montreal, and though I have Luis’ phone number, I don’t have any way of calling me. Skype was my only phone.

The apartment is just a few blocks from Avenue du Mont-Royal. There are a lot of restaurants and such on that street. I don’t remember seeing any 24-hour places, but I could probably find something eventually. But how long would that take?

I resolved to walk in that direction but also see if I passed anyone on the street who looked like they could be helpful. I wasn’t sure what to expect at this hour, but if I was really lucky maybe I would meet a student on the way home from a late-night study session or something. I grabbed my laptop and stepped out in the Montreal night.

There weren’t many people out, and the first few didn’t look like they had homes, let alone wireless routers. I saw a young couple approaching, but they were so drunk they could barely walk. From the way they were giggling and leaning in to each other, it also seemed like they weren’t going to be wanting company.

Then a cab drove past, and finally I had a plan I felt good about. I walked to the busiest street in the vicinity and hailed a cab. I asked if he know of any place that would have internet at this hour. I was ready to ask in French if necessary, but he understood me. “Probably somewhere on St. Denis,” he told me. The Latin Quarter. I couldn’t help smiling as I hopped in.

Ten minutes later we hit Rue St. Denis, and I spotted an all-night coffee shop and internet cafe almost immediately. “Perfect!” I told him, left him a generous tip, and dashed inside. I bought a stale muffin, got the wireless code, and was back in action less than forty minutes after my disconnection. For all I know, I might have been about to jam into Aces, so it could even have saved me money.

Of course I was getting short, but I doubled almost immediately with TT > AKo. Looking at the hand again, I see know that it was versus the same player who would eliminate me from the Main Event the next day.

Unfortunately I was still frazzled from my little crisis and couldn’t get my head back in the game. I was playing really badly. I made a stupid shove with A7 but sucked out on 77. A few orbits later, we were down to four tables. The button opened for a min-raise. I jammed 20 BBs with T9s in the SB. Assassinato, who was already one of the chip leaders and who went on to chop the tournament, woke up with JJ and that was the end of me. He writes an excellent poker blog, by the way; I suggest you check it out.

I took a cab back home. It was after 4AM, and I was eager to get what rest I could before what I hoped would be another big day. The internet was still out at the apartment, but that was a problem I could solve in the morning.

Flop Action

This was probably a tough hand to analyze for those of you who aren’t accustomed to how wide ranges can be in a heads up match between two appropriately aggressive players. When I min-raise my button and bet half pot on the flop, I can have damn near any two cards.

Think about what that means for Liv’s check-raising range. There are reasons not to play all of these hands this way all of the time, but she could easily check-raise with any pair, any draw, and occasionally even weaker bluffing hands like two overcards with some backdoor draws. As Luis points out, her check-raise is a touch on the large side, which if anything means she might not have those thin value hands like bottom pair or the biggest airballs, but it may mean nothing at all.

Turn Action

Hence my defense with two overs, a gutshot, and position. This is perhaps the weakest hand I would call with, so it’s certainly not good enough to call the turn bet. With better draws, I might choose just to call the turn rather than risk getting 3-bet, so that makes this an ideal candidate for a bluff raise.

I was surprised to see so many people saying my turn raise doesn’t rep much. I don’t know how Liv will read it (and after seeing these comments I’m wondering if she too would expect me to be more polarized), but there are quite a few hands I’d raise here, from nutted hands (sets+) to thin value/protection/blocking raises with top pair good kicker to made hands like bottom/middle pair that I’m mostly turning into a bluff but that could occasionally be called by draws. This is a function of how wide and draw-heavy her range can be for check-raising flop and betting halfish pot on the turn.

Many of you correctly identified her call as the  most important action for defining her range. While she can check-raise flop and bet turn with a wide range, to call a large raise out of position on the turn requires some kind of hand (hence why I like bluff raising: of the many hands she could have when betting the turn, relatively few are good enough to call a raise). A bare draw isn’t going to do it. FelixLeiter puts her on, “too-good-to-fold, too-weak-to-shove made hands, combo draws (pair and FD), and high-card hands,” which sounds about right to me, if by “high-card hands” we’re talking about nut flush draws. I also don’t think it’s out of the question that she slowplays a few monsters, particularly the nuts.

To Bet or Not to Bet?

As huff says, “Villain has made three strong actions. The check raise on the flop could just be a move, but shows strength a higher percentage of the time than check fold, and probably than check call. Then the turn she bets and calls a raise. Almost has to have something strong.” Sounds like a reason not to bet.

But then, she knows that she has shown strength with her turn call, so if I’m betting anyway, doesn’t that mean she should fold one-pair hands? Unless she knows that I know that she knows that she’s shown strength…

This is why we have game theory. Against weaker opponents, you may well be able to win this kind of leveling war and make statements like “He’s always calling,” or, “She’s never calling,” but I wasn’t going to try to do that against Liv Boeree. As the match progressed, I got the sense that she was underestimating me, which helped me be a bit more exploitive in spots like this, but I wasn’t ready to do that in one of our very first hands.

WPS22 nailed it: “I think you always have to strongly consider betting here because you are at the very bottom of your range and have absolutely no showdown value.” Emo Meltdown adds the important fact that, “it’s easier for you to have a 5 in your hand than it is for her.” These are two strong game theoretical arguments in favor of bluffing.

How Much?

The more debatable point is how much to bet. Because my hand is so weak, there’s value in making her fold even the very bottom of her range, hands like nut flush draws that are now just Ace-high. If for some reason she did peel the turn with weaker draws, there’s value in folding a J-, Q- or K-high flush draw as well. Presumably a smaller bet would serve for this purpose.

I agree with $trategem that, “a big bet will make us look more polarized, which means we will rep a thinner value range.” All things being equal, I’d obviously prefer to risk less with my bluff, and here I think a smaller bet also enables me to rep sets and even good two-pairs. My objective was to bet enough to make her fold worse than top pair and at least make her uncomfortable with top pair. Whereas 1/3 pot or even 1/4 pot might be enough to get her off of unpaired hands, I decided that roughly half pot would give me the best bang for my buck.

This is now starting to get into an exploitability argument, but I do also believe that in tournament poker bets that are large relative to Villain’s stack can often get a disproportionate amount of fold equity. A bet of 2222 needs to succeed less than 1/3 of the time to show a profit, yet it threatens nearly half of Liv’s stack. If she folds, she’ll still have over 100 BBs, which is a big deal especially if she believes she has a big edge in the match and wants to keep it low-variance. Calling reduces her to barely 50 BBs, not exactly short, but not nearly as much breathing room. Without the opportunity to reload, bets that are large in absolute terms can feel very threatening.

I bet 2222, and she folded. Thanks to everyone who participated!

I wish I had a specific example of this to give – perhaps the hand below will serve – but I got the distinct impression during our match that Liv was capable of playing extremely well but had for some reason decided to treat me as an unsophisticated opponent. That worked out OK for me. One of the more interesting hands we played is serving as this week’s “What’s Your Play?”. Here’s the one that finished the match:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 700 Tournament, 30/60 Blinds (2 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t3148)
Hero (BB) (t11852)

Hero’s M: 131.69

Preflop: Hero is BB with 8, 9
SB bets t138, Hero calls t78

Flop: (t276) 7, 3, 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, SB bets t151, Hero raises to t444, SB calls t293

Turn: (t1164) 4 (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

River: (t1164) 6 (2 players)
Hero bets t1164, SB raises to t2566 (All-In), Hero calls t1402

Total pot: t6296

Results:
SB had 10, A (straight, seven high).
Hero had 8, 9 (straight, nine high).
Outcome: Hero won t6296

I guess she thought I wouldn’t have potted it with a hand that could beat the board? I considered just shoving the river, which is something I’d often do as a bluff, but I figured I might as well give her room to do something like this, especially since she’d probably jam it in herself if she had an 8.

Round 2: Ben “NeverScaredB” Wilinofsky 

Ben was a harrowing but entertaining opponent. We’ve never met in person but have spoken online a few times and there’s mutual respect between us. He took some really creative lines that forced me to rise to the occasion and think hard about everything I did, even in seemingly trivial spots. It was tough trying to stay one step ahead of him, and each of us got the best of the other in a few big pots.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 700 Tournament, 30/60 Blinds (2 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) (t9757)

BB (t5243)

Hero’s M: 108.41

Preflop: Hero is SB with 5, K

Hero bets t120, BB calls t60

Flop: (t240) 3, 2, 7 (2 players)

BB checks, Hero bets t120, BB calls t120

Turn: (t480) 10 (2 players)

BB checks, Hero checks

River: (t480) K (2 players)

BB checks, Hero bets t333, BB raises to t1425, Hero calls t1092

Total pot: t3330

Results:

Hero mucked 5, K (one pair, Kings).

BB had J, K (one pair, Kings).

Outcome: BB won t3330

Bad call by me. I decided I had to call because a pair of Ks is the top of my range after checking the turn, but as we see here that also means that he can make some thin value bets. Think I need a better kicker to call.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 700 Tournament, 40/80 Blinds (2 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) (t7265)

SB (t7735)

Hero’s M: 60.54

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q, J

SB bets t200, Hero calls t120

Flop: (t400) 4, 9, 5 (2 players)

Hero checks, SB bets t240, Hero raises to t666, SB calls t426

Turn: (t1732) 8 (2 players)

Hero bets t888, SB calls t888

River: (t3508) 7 (2 players)

Hero bets t1666, 1 fold

Total pot: t3508

Results:

Hero didn’t show Q, J (nothing).

Outcome: Hero won t3508

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 700 Tournament, 40/80 Blinds (2 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) (t7405)
SB (t7595)

Hero’s M: 61.71

Preflop: Hero is BB with 4, 4
SB bets t200, Hero calls t120

Flop: (t400) 3, 10, 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

Turn: (t400) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, SB bets t280, Hero raises to t666, SB raises to t1555, Hero calls t889

River: (t3510) K (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

Total pot: t3510

Results:
SB mucked 2, 7 (high card, King).
Hero had 4, 4 (one pair, fours).
Outcome: Hero won t3510

Round 3: Should’ve Been Easier

This guy was by far the weakest of my opponents, and it took me by far the longest to finish him off. That was partly a choice on my part – I felt my edge was large so I played an extremely small-ball game – and partly a function of his style. He was passive and tightish, though he made some good decisions about when not to let go of relatively weak hands. Though he never got up sufficient aggression, he also did a good job of adapting to my adaptations over the course of our three-hour match. Generally I would win a bunch of small pots, lose some medium-sized ones, and we just didn’t play that many big ones. The first one we did play went badly for me:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 700 Tournament, 25/50 Blinds (2 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) (t8248)
SB (t6752)

Hero’s M: 109.97

Preflop: Hero is BB with K, K
SB bets t100, Hero raises to t350, SB calls t250

Flop: (t700) K, 6, J (2 players)
Hero bets t350, SB calls t350

Turn: (t1400) 5 (2 players)
Hero bets t1000, SB calls t1000

River: (t3400) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets t2222, SB raises to t5052 (All-In), Hero folds

Total pot: t7844

Results:
SB didn’t show
Outcome: SB won t7844

Yes, it’s an unlikely backdoor draw, and it was early in the match, but after playing with this guy for as long as I did, I remain confident that I was beat here.

After that it was back to the same MO: win a bunch of small pots, lose a bigger one. Eventually I got it in with 99 vs his AKo preflop and won the flip to get back in the game. Then I won another big one with 99:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 700 Tournament, 125/250 Blinds (2 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) (t5928)
BB (t9072)

Hero’s M: 15.81

Preflop: Hero is SB with 9, 9
Hero bets t500, BB calls t250

Flop: (t1000) 9, 10, 8 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t500, BB calls t500

Turn: (t2000) K (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t1234, BB calls t1234

River: (t4468) K (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t3694 (All-In), BB calls t3694

Total pot: t11856

Results:
Hero had 9, 9 (full house, nines over Kings).
BB had A, A (two pair, Aces and Kings).
Outcome: Hero won t11856

I ground him down some more, then got it in with A4o to his A8o for his last 8 BBs and doubled him up. Finally he jammed A2o over my min-raise with TT and I held to eliminate him.

Round 4: Eugene Katchalov

Since we were the last to finish, my next round started immediately, and I was not pleased to see Eugene Katchalov seated across from me. My game plan against him was completely different. Now I wanted to swing for the fences and force lots of big pots, since I didn’t have any delusions of outplaying him in the small ones. My range for calling a pre-flop min-raise in Round 3 was dramatically from my range in Round 4, partly because I was 3-betting more often but mostly because I was throwing a lot of hands to Eugene that would have turned from out of position against my previous opponent. It didn’t help that I took a sizeable loss on the very first hand we played:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 700 Tournament, 25/50 Blinds (2 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB (t7500)
Hero (SB) (t7500)

Hero’s M: 100.00

Preflop: Hero is SB with 10, 10
Hero bets t100, BB raises to t300, Hero raises to t750, BB calls t450

Flop: (t1500) J, 3, 2 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t666, BB calls t666

Turn: (t2832) 3 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: (t2832) 5 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

Total pot: t2832

Results:
Hero mucked 10, 10 (two pair, tens and threes).
BB had J, A (two pair, Jacks and threes).
Outcome: BB won t2832

I held my own and even managed to claw some chips back from him, though they were hard fought. I managed to get it all in good, but it was more or less a cooler really, and I couldn’t hold:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 700 Tournament, 40/80 Blinds (2 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t7976)
Hero (BB) (t7024)

Hero’s M: 58.53

Preflop: Hero is BB with J, J
SB bets t160, Hero raises to t555, SB calls t395

Flop: (t1110) K, 2, J (2 players)
Hero bets t666, SB raises to t1760, Hero raises to t6469 (All-In), SB calls t4709

Turn: (t14048) 10 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t14048) 4 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t14048

Results:
SB had 8, A (flush, Ace high).
Hero had J, J (three of a kind, Jacks).
Outcome: SB won t14048

This was one of my more painful losses of the series, as it came on the bubble and I’d fought long and hard in a lot of tough matches to get there.

Liv and I have actually played together before, in last year’s WCOOP and in the 2008 WSOP. Although I’m no longer on Team Online, I still have the head-shot-against-black-background avatar, so there’s an outside chance she remembers me, though her appearance is of course far more memorable than my own. In any event nothing particularly memorable happened during those encounters anyway.

I don’t know how many tables she was playing at the time, but Liv didn’t respond to my “Hello, good luck” and smiley emoticon in the chat box, so it’s possible that she’s not paying all that much attention to this match. Or she just thought I was trying to chat her up and wasn’t interested.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 700 Tournament, 25/50 Blinds (2 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB (t7700)
Hero (SB) (t7300)

Hero’s M: 97.33

Preflop: Hero is SB with 8, 10
Hero bets t100, BB calls t50

Flop: (t200) 2, 6, 7 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t100, BB raises to t350, Hero calls t250

Turn: (t900) 3 (2 players)
BB bets t550, Hero raises to t1850, BB calls t1300

River: (t4600) 4 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero?

Do want to take another stab at it? If so, how much do you bet and why? Leave your thoughts and comments here, and I’ll be back on Friday with the results and my own thoughts.

The only WCOOP that I played on Friday was the $200 Rebuy NLHE. I was in for the “minimum”, but that was the only bit of good news. Actually it got off to a really good start, with me winning two big pots with big hands in the first couple of orbits:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 25/50 Blinds 5 Ante (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

CO (t10840)
Button (t9970)
Hero (SB) (t4945)
BB (t4270)
UTG (t4995)
UTG+1 (t4995)
MP1 (t4995)
MP2 (t4995)
MP3 (t4995)

Hero’s M: 41.21

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, K
3 folds, MP2 bets t100, MP3 raises to t250, 2 folds, Hero calls t225, 1 fold, MP2 calls t150

Flop: (t845) 3, A, K (3 players)
Hero checks, MP2 checks, MP3 bets t300, Hero calls t300, MP2 calls t300

Turn: (t1745) K (3 players)
Hero checks, MP2 checks, MP3 checks

River: (t1745) 8 (3 players)
Hero bets t690, MP2 raises to t4440 (All-In), 1 fold, Hero calls t3700 (All-In)

Total pot: t10525

Results:
Hero had A, K (full house, Kings over Aces).
MP2 had K, Q (three of a kind, Kings).
Outcome: Hero won t10525

Note that a flush also came in on the river, so for Villain to jam bare trips into me is an absolute gift.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 25/50 Blinds 5 Ante (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t14758)
BB (t9940)
Hero (UTG) (t15500)
UTG+1 (t4995)
MP1 (t5902)
MP2 (t9900)
MP3 (t4890)
CO (t10025)
Button (t4315)

Hero’s M: 129.17

Preflop: Hero is UTG with K, K
Hero calls t50, 1 fold, MP1 bets t350, 6 folds, Hero calls t300

Flop: (t820) 8, 9, K (2 players)
Hero checks, MP1 checks

Turn: (t820) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets t444, MP1 raises to t1300, Hero calls t856

River: (t3420) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP1 bets t2255, Hero raises to t4510, 1 fold

Total pot: t7930

Results:
Hero didn’t show K, K (nothing).
Outcome: Hero won t7930

I turned around and bluffed off a lot of those chips trying to get a very good player to lay down an overpair:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 30/60 Blinds 5 Ante (8 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG+1 (t15498)
MP1 (t9170)
Hero (MP2) (t19876)
CO (t7666)
Button (t4700)
SB (t4453)
BB (t9590)
UTG (t4167)

Hero’s M: 152.89

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with 8, 8
UTG bets t180, 2 folds, Hero calls t180, 3 folds, BB raises to t475, 1 fold, Hero calls t295

Flop: (t1200) J, Q, 7 (2 players)
BB bets t660, Hero raises to t1666, BB calls t1006

Turn: (t4532) 7 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t1280, BB calls t1280

River: (t7092) 6 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t4000, BB calls t4000

Total pot: t15092

Results:
BB had A, A (two pair, Aces and sevens).
Hero had 8, 8 (two pair, eights and sevens).
Outcome: BB won t15092

It’s not a river call I would have made, but he’s a better player than I am, so I won’t say that he was wrong to make it. In any event I recouped a good 80% of what I lost on that hand when the same Villain called me down light in a similar spot:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 40/80 Blinds 10 Ante (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP2 (t16855)
MP3 (t9985)
Hero (CO) (t11755)
Button (t3237)
BB (t3795)
UTG (t5518)
UTG+1 (t15162)
MP1 (t8163)

Hero’s M: 58.77

Preflop: Hero is CO with 5, A
UTG+1 bets t200, 2 folds, MP3 calls t200, Hero calls t200, Button calls t200, BB calls t160, 1 fold

Flop: (t1160) 5, 2, 10 (5 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 bets t490, 1 fold, Hero calls t490, 2 folds

Turn: (t2140) 8 (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets t1222, UTG+1 calls t1222

River: (t4584) A (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets t3333, UTG+1 calls t3333

Total pot: t11250

Results:
UTG+1 mucked K, A (one pair, Aces).
Hero had 5, A (two pair, Aces and fives).
Outcome: Hero won t11250

I came out of the rebuy period with plenty of chips but ran KK in the SB into AA on the Button for about 65 BBs to make an early departure from the tournament.

The sky threatened rain, so I didn’t plan to do too much with my free afternoon. I grabbed an umbrella and walked a few blocks to a dépanneur that, according to Beeradvocate, offered one of the city’s best selections of local microbrews .

A dépanneur is a convenience store, but most double as liquor stores because until the 1990s they were the only non-government entities permitted to sell alcohol in Quebec. Although you can now buy beer and wine in grocery stores, it seems the best selection is still to be found in the dépanneur, and I had the good luck to live walking distance from one of the very best.

The front room looked like a low-end convenience store, with tightly packed and poorly maintained shelves of overpriced junk food. The back room looked like an upscale wine shop, except that they sold almost exclusively beer. They had literally hundreds of varieties, organized by type, available for individual purchase, and in many cases accompanied by a ranking and/or review clipped from assorted cerevisial publications.  So in one row you’d find all of the stouts, in another all of the wheat beers, etc. This was ideal for my purposes, since I could buy just one of each beer I wanted to try rather than an entire 6-pack.

I’d already done some research, so I beelined for the IPAs. Of the five I wanted to try, I found three. One was sold out, and amazingly there was one they simply didn’t carry. I say “amazingly” because it was hard to imagine them not having a given Quebecois beer, that’s how vast their selection was. I picked out one cold beer for immediate consumption  just based on its packaging and made my way to the cashier in the sensorily dissonant front of the store, where I waited in line between two twitching Charles Manson look-alikes pooling change from their pockets to pay for a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 5/5 Blinds 30 Ante (8 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP1 (t4110)
MP2 (t3122)
CO (t5294)
Button (t7168)
SB (t1982)
BB (t4949)
UTG (t6636)
Hero (UTG+1) (t8508)

Hero’s M: 34.03

Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with 10, 10
UTG bets t111, Hero raises to t333, 5 folds, BB calls t328, UTG calls t222

Flop: (t1244) 10, J, K (3 players)
BB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets t666, BB raises to t1400, 1 fold, Hero calls t734

Turn: (t4044) Q (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: (t4044) 6 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

Total pot: t4044

Results:
BB had J, J (three of a kind, Jacks).
Hero mucked 10, 10 (three of a kind, tens).
Outcome: BB won t4044

I was sorely tempted to turn my hand into a bluff on the turn, which just goes to show that I ought to have folded the flop. His range for cold-calling a 3-bet can’t be that wide, and I seriously doubt he check-raises AK/AA/QQ on this board even if he has them pre-flop.

This next one I think counts as getting rivered even though I was a huge equity dog all the way. I was sure the guy was on a flush draw, so I’m just betting that he either folds it before the river (unlikely) or misses it (likely). The problem, as we see here, is that he can also make a pair. I tried to size my river bet large enough that he might fold a hand like the one he has, but that may have  been a mistake. Possibly a very small bet is best just to get him to fold complete whiffs for very little risk:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 5/5 Blinds 30 Ante (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t4235)
BB (t3002)
UTG (t5879)
UTG+1 (t4940)
MP1 (t7048)
MP2 (t1857)
MP3 (t7135)
CO (t6033)
Hero (Button) (t6640)

Hero’s M: 23.71

Preflop: Hero is Button with 6, 2
1 fold, UTG+1 calls t5, 2 folds, MP3 calls t5, 1 fold, Hero calls t5, SB checks, BB checks

Flop: (t295) 3, 5, K (5 players)
SB checks, BB checks, UTG+1 checks, MP3 bets t50, Hero raises to t333, 3 folds, MP3 calls t283

Turn: (t961) 8 (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets t666, MP3 calls t666

River: (t2293) 10 (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets t888, MP3 calls t888

Total pot: t4069

Results:
Hero had 6, 2 (high card, King).
MP3 had 10, A (one pair, tens).
Outcome: MP3 won t4069

I managed to get the last of my chips in with top pair, top kicker against a bare flush draw, but he got there and ended the tournament for me.

I also played the $500 NLHE Shoot-Out. I was the shortest of the final four players, and the best of my opponents had more chips than the other three of us put together. I managed to hang in there though and eventually the chipleader was out in third and I went to heads up with the lead against one of the other guys.

I came out of the gate aggressive, lost a few small pots and then a somewhat larger one:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 530 Tournament, 150/300 Blinds 35 Ante (2 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB (t26200)
Hero (SB) (t26300)

Hero’s M: 50.58

Preflop: Hero is SB with 3, 4
Hero bets t600, BB calls t300

Flop: (t1270) 10, J, J (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: (t1270) 3 (2 players)
BB bets t615, Hero raises to t1800, BB raises to t3875, Hero calls t2075

River: (t9020) K (2 players)
BB bets t6000, Hero folds

Total pot: t9020

Results:
BB didn’t show
Outcome: BB won t9020

Despite that, I felt like I had a pretty big edge in the match, and we were so deep that there was plenty of time for that to manifest itself. Which means it was probably a bit of a mistake for me to 4-bet call it off with TT pre-flop for 80 BBs. I was generally trying to avoid big pre-flop pots, which meant that I hadn’t done any 4-betting yet and he probably wouldn’t be 5-bet jamming all that light (though he was certainly 3-betting light). It still can’t be that bad to get it in with TT pre-flop, but I think calling the 3-bet to play a little more smallball would have been better. He had QQ and that was that.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 15/30 Blinds (4 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t5010)
Hero (BB) (t4605)
UTG (t4085)
Button (t6010)

Hero’s M: 102.33

Preflop: Hero is BB with 7, 6
UTG bets t75, Button calls t75, 1 fold, Hero calls t45

Flop: (t240) 5, 4, 2 (3 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets t170, 1 fold, Hero raises to t444, UTG calls t274

Turn: (t1128) K (2 players)
Hero bets t666, UTG calls t666

River: (t2460) 7 (2 players)
Hero bets t888, UTG raises to t2900 (All-In), Hero folds

Total pot: t4236

Results:
UTG didn’t show
Outcome: UTG won t4236

I got those chips back from Villain by flopping top pair and getting it in on a 45/55 against his big draw.

Then there was this ugly business. I was going to fold a river that didn’t improve me. Not that this one made a huge difference, but I thought AK could be a possibility for a Villain. Possibly I should have folded anyway.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 15/30 Blinds (4 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG (t3930)
Hero (Button) (t6181)
SB (t3694)
BB (t5905)

Hero’s M: 137.36

Preflop: Hero is Button with 10, K
UTG bets t60, Hero raises to t160, 1 fold, BB raises to t400, 1 fold, Hero calls t240

Flop: (t875) 7, 7, K (2 players)
BB bets t390, Hero calls t390

Turn: (t1655) 6 (2 players)
BB bets t915, Hero calls t915

River: (t3485) 10 (2 players)
BB bets t1815, Hero calls t1815

Total pot: t7115

Results:
Hero mucked 10, K (two pair, Kings and tens).
BB had 7, 8 (three of a kind, sevens).
Outcome: BB won t7115

After a while I got it in on the good side of a 55/45 and won.

My next big loss came on a three-barrel into a hand that I didn’t expect Villain to fold because it was a hand I didn’t expect him to hold. He 3-bet pretty aggressively and also called more hands than your average player out of the small blind, so I misjudged his hand based on the pre-flop action here:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 60/120 Blinds 15 Ante (4 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG (t22704)
Hero (Button) (t5845)
SB (t39034)
BB (t17386)

Hero’s M: 24.35

Preflop: Hero is Button with J, 8
1 fold, Hero bets t240, SB calls t180, BB calls t120

Flop: (t780) 10, Q, Q (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets t444, SB calls t444, 1 fold

Turn: (t1668) 4 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets t888, SB calls t888

River: (t3444) K (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets t1777, SB calls t1777

Total pot: t6998

Results:
Hero had J, 8 (one pair, Queens).
SB had A, A (two pair, Aces and Queens).

Outcome: SB won t6998

I lost the last of my chips ATo < 88, nothing too exciting there.

I finished up early enough in the day that I still had time for some activity. A venue in Old Montreal (the main tourist district) was hosting the World Press Photo Exhibition, a collection of the year’s best journalistic photography. Many of the photos dealt with headline-grabbing issues like the tsunami, the Arab Spring, etc.

These all made for compelling photographs, but the one that grabbed me the mostof a rhinoceros. The demand for rhino tusks is so overwhelming that rangers often remove them pre-emptively to protect them for poachers. The poachers got to this one anyway and cut out the stump of a horn that was starting to grow back. The sad story and the look on the rhino’s face nearly moved me to tears:

In the same space there was also an exhibit of photographs of a huge protest/occasional riot that, unbeknownst to me, took place earlier this year in Montreal. Presumably on the assumption that everyone would know what they were from, the photos weren’t accompanied by any explanatory material.

I had to go home and look up details about “Quebec Spring”, a name which struck me as presumptuous and insulting to those who risked their lives in the “Prague Spring” and “Arab Spring” demonstrations. According to Wikipedia, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against a proposal “to raise university tuition from $2,168 to $3,793 between 2012 and 2017.” As an American whose annual tuition was ten times that, it’s hard for me to sympathize.

I assume there’s some additional political context here that I’m not aware of. Still, the reaction seems extreme to me. The exhibit features photographs of protesters carrying signs about changing the world, and, in one case, shattering the windshield of a police car. I guess that’s just the sort of thing that happens when a few people out of a few hundred thousand get out of hand and not necessarily a reflection on the movement itself, but even after a little research, I had trouble figuring out why this was quite so big a deal as it apparently was.

Probably the most interesting hand I played was this one:

Poker Stars $200+$15 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Tournament – t60/t120 Blinds – 6 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

UTG: t20794 173.28 BBs
MP: t27589 229.91 BBs
CO: t10025 83.54 BBs
BTN: t22487 187.39 BBs
SB: t7280 60.67 BBs
Hero (BB): t11130 92.75 BBs

Pre Flop: (t180) Hero is BB with 2 A 9 7
UTG raises to t300, 4 folds, Hero calls t180

Flop: (t660) K Q 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets t396, Hero raises to t1555, UTG folds

Final Pot: t1452

Hero mucks 2 A 9 7

Hero wins t1452

It’s rare that you can run a pure bluff in PLO8, since it’s so easy for your opponent to have something good enough for at least half the pot. In this case, though, there was no low possible, and this is actually quite a difficult board for an UTG raiser to hit. I could even see him folding top two here, not that he’ll have a hand that good so often. A player almost always has at least two low cards in his hand to open from early position, so the odds of him hitting any particular high card board are not good. This is an especially good candidate because he can’t have much in the way of draws either.

My table draw in the $500 NLHE 6-Max KO WCOOP was brutal. Most of the time, four of my five opponents were either really successful MTTers or people I recognized from 1000NL cash games. In a field with 1500 runners, that’s a nasty, nasty draw. No one was giving any chips away, and I never really got above starting stack. The only real play I made was this one:

Poker Stars $404+$101+$25 No Limit Hold’em Tournament – t15/t30 Blinds – 6 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

SB: t8862 295.40 BBs
BB: t6625 220.83 BBs
UTG: t7500 250 BBs
MP: t8476 282.53 BBs
CO: t7500 250 BBs
Hero (BTN): t6990 233 BBs

Pre Flop: (t45) Hero is BTN with 2 A
3 folds, Hero raises to t60, SB calls t45, BB calls t30

Flop: (t180) K 6 Q (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets t90, SB calls t90, BB calls t90

Turn: (t450) T (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets t350, SB folds, BB calls t350

River: (t1150) 2 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t990, BB folds

Final Pot: t1150
Hero mucks 2 A
Hero wins t1150

I didn’t last too long in this one:

Poker Stars $404+$101+$25 No Limit Hold’em Tournament – t75/t150 Blinds + t20 – 6 players

DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

MP: t14970 M = 43.39
CO: t12940 M = 37.51
BTN: t11049 M = 32.03
SB: t3436 M = 9.96
BB: t10868 M = 31.50
Hero (UTG): t5209 M = 15.10

Pre-Flop: (t345) Hero is UTG with K K
Hero raises to t300, MP calls t300, 4 folds

Flop: (t945) 8 J 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP checks

Turn: (t945) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets t511, Hero raises to t4889 all in, MP calls t4378

River: (t10723) T (2 players – 1 is all in)

Final Pot: t10723
MP shows 9 8 (two pair, Nines and Eights)
Hero shows K K (a pair of Kings)
MP wins t10723

I was hoping to check-raise all-in on the flop. though looking at this hand now, I don’t think that line is quite as good as I did at the time. I remembered the flop being slightly more coordinated than this. When that doesn’t work, though, I do think check-shoving turn is the way to go.

That was my last tournament, and with quite a bit of light left in the day, I decided to head over to one of my favorite places in Montreal, the Jean-Talon Market. It’s a huge market that offers a combination of fresh produce and gourmet foods seven days a week. Having just been to the store, there weren’t any groceries I particularly needed, but you can always find something at Jean-Talon.

I jotted down biking directions, which were actually kind of complicated, and then realized that I needed to get cash. My Canadian bank charges particularly high fees for using non-member ATMs, so I had to add the nearest CIBC ATM, which was about a mile away, to my route as well.

Montreal has the largest bike-sharing program in North America. My first few experiences with it were largely positive. There are stations all over the city and a great network of designated lanes that make commuting by bike very practical even if you don’t own a bike.

Not yesterday. The nearest Bixi station to my apartment had just one bike, which was suspicious. When you pay for your rental, you get a code to unlock a bike of your choosing. The codes are quite simple and I’m certain I entered it correctly, but the station would not release the bike. No big deal, your rental is good for 24 hours, and I knew there was another station on my way.

I walked three blocks in the direction I needed to go anyway, only to find that that station had no bikes at all. Three more blocks and the same story: every bike there was already taken. I had no choice but to continue on my route and keep an eye out for another station. I spotted a huge one with three bikes still remaining. I got a new code, the station released my bike… and my butt and my heart both sank when I hopped onto the seat. The back tire was completely flat. A glance over at the other two bikes revealed that the seat was broken on both.

I finally found a usable bike at the fifth station I passed, by which time I was more than halfway to the ATM.

From there the ride to the ATM was effortless, but then there was the new problem of finding a station at which to leave the bike. To be fair, this was something I could have looked up before leaving, but as it was, I had to ride around for five minutes or so to find a station that was about four blocks from the ATM.

After all that, I no longer felt like trekking out to the market, which was still a few miles away. I had no such difficulties getting home, and other than being hot and sick of walking, I wasn’t bitter. My real goal, after spending the first half of the day in front of the computer, was just to get outside and do something active, which I did.

Besides, I’m not playing until tonight’s 5PM NLHE tournament with 10-minute levels, so I’m off to the market for real this time!

This was my first time flying into Canada, having previously driven across the border. No exaggeration, there were easily 2000 people in line at passport control. This was a good opportunity to practice my patience, which will surely be tested in the coming weeks. I took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and surveyed my surroundings.

We were quite a diverse bunch. They probably just jumped out at me more, but it seemed like I saw a lot more Europeans, Africans, and people from the Caribbean than I did Americans. I suppose that isn’t so surprising, given how much French is spoken in those regions. There were very few Asians in line, which is quite different from what you’d see on the west coast of Canada.

When I finally got to the front of the line, I told the officer that I was here to play poker. He was unfazed, asking only if that was all I would do for three weeks. I smiled, because it probably was, but I told him, “Well I hope to see a bit of the city as well.”

He nodded and handed my passport back to me. “Enjoy your stay.”

Eight dollars bought me a ticket on an express bus from the airport to the UQAM (University of Quebec At Montreal – of course the official name is in French, but the acronym works out the same) Metro station plus a 24-hour public transportation pass. I was going to need that, because a train and another bus still stood between my apartment and me. But first: lunch.

The plaze where the bus dropped me off was crowded with students, businesspeople, and homeless who all seemed quite at ease with each other. An employee of a nearby company emerged from a backdoor to scold another man for urinating on the wall of the building. There were six of those life-sized chess sets, each being studied intently by two players and several more onlookers.

I found a quick-looking Thai place near the Metro station. A man in his mid-twenties stood idly behind the counter, but he adopted a deer-in-headlights look as I approached. A girl no older than 16 rushed over. “Bonjour, hello!” she chirped. She spoke English naturally and comfortably as she took my order, and I imagine she could have done much the same in French. She relayed the order in what I guess was Thai to her co-worker. Such comfort in so many different languages, which is of course common among the children of immigrants, never ceases to amaze me.

Sitting by myself at a table for four, I was hardly alone. Several older Québécois men sat near each other but at separate tables reading La Presse, one of the city’s largest French-language newspapers. Occasionally one would wander over to another’s table to exchange a thought with him, but mostly they read in silence. If I had to describe them in one word, it would be grizzled.

The Metro was crowded, but I was only going one stop. Announcing, “Excusez moi! Désolé!” I shoved my way onto and then back off the car. After a short bus ride, I was through the door a few minutes after four, with enough time to make coffee, set up my computer and external monitor, register for the $1050 NLHE WCOOP, and late register the $215 Triple Stud and the $109 Triple Stud Second Chance.

The one thing I didn’t have time for was grocery shopping, so I had to look up a place to get delivery. The woman who answered the phone spoke English, but the delivery guy didn’t (or wouldn’t, but he was Asian, so not likely to be a militant Québécois), so I had to deal with him in broken French while dashing back and forth between the door and my beeping computer.

Four hours in the $1K produced no hands of note, so here are a few from the Second Chance. I realize that many of you probably don’t play Razz, but it’s quite a simple game and these hands draw on hand reading concepts that are quite applicable in hold ’em, so I encourage you to try to follow along anyway.

Poker Stars $100+$9 Limit Razz Tournament – t120/t240 Limit + t24 – 7 players
Hand History Converter

Seat 2: t4726 M = 13.58
Seat 3: t5418 M = 15.57
Seat 4: t5028 M = 14.45
Seat 5: t4280 M = 12.30
Hero (): t4026 M = 11.57
Seat 7: t7956 M = 22.86
Seat 8: t4186 M = 12.03

3rd Street: (1.4 SB)
Seat 2: xx xx 6____Seat 2 folds
Seat 3: xx xx J____Seat 3 folds
Seat 4: xx xx 9____Seat 4 folds
Seat 5: xx xx 2____Seat 5 folds
Hero: K 3 T___Hero completes___Hero calls
Seat 7: xx xx Q____Seat 7 raises
Seat 8: xx xx K____Seat 8 brings in for $36____Seat 8 folds

4th Street: (5.7 SB) (2 players)
Hero: K 3 T 7___Hero checks___Hero calls
Seat 7: xx xx Q 7____Seat 7 bets

5th Street: (3.85 BB) (2 players)
Hero: K 3 T 7 A___Hero bets
Seat 7: xx xx Q 7 A____Seat 7 calls

6th Street: (5.85 BB) (2 players)
Hero: K 3 T 7 A 2___Hero bets
Seat 7: xx xx Q 7 A T____Seat 7 calls

7th Street: (7.85 BB) (2 players)
Hero: K 3 T 7 A 2 2___Hero checks___Hero calls
Seat 7: xx xx Q 7 A T xx____Seat 7 bets

Final Pot: 9.85 BB
Hero shows K 3 T 7 A 2 2 (Lo: T,7,3,2,A)
Seat 7 shows 7 Q Q 7 A T 5 (Lo: Q,T,7,5,A)
Hero wins 9.85 BB

In retrospect, it seems like Villain probably just got confused about which game we were playing. But I think, not knowing that, the hand is interesting from my perspective.

As you might imagine, (K3)T is a pretty junky Razz hand. But a K and Q showing behind me, it’s an auto-raise because I have the lowest card showing. In other words, I fold (T3)K.

Villain and I had tangled a bit before and he’d showed some awareness of steal dynamics and a willingness to re-raise lighter against late position opens. When he raised I assumed he had two good cards in the hole, something like (23)Q, and knew how wide my range is. Even so, I think a call is better than a raise for him.

If he has that kind of hand, I’m a dog, but I call anyway because, with a Q in the door, his hand is going to be really difficult to play. This is like a float: I’m calling to represent better hole cards than I have, expecting many good opportunities to steal on a later street.

I start betting into him as we both catch well, hoping that he paired – the A in particular is likely to pair him given the hole cards he’d need to raise me legitimately. By 6th street I’m ahead unless he has exactly 23 in the hole, in which case we’re chopping.

That makes the river an easy check-call, since he won’t call with much worse but could bluff a busted draw. Or, he could have misread the game this entire time! Oh well, I’ll take it.

Poker Stars $100+$9 Limit Razz Tournament – t120/t240 Limit + t24 – 7 players
Hand History Converter

Seat 2: t4642 M = 13.34
Seat 3: t5370 M = 15.43
Seat 4: t4980 M = 14.31
Seat 5: t4232 M = 12.16
Hero (): t5466 M = 15.71
Seat 7: t6828 M = 19.62
Seat 8: t4102 M = 11.79

3rd Street: (1.4 SB)
Seat 2: xx xx A____Seat 2 calls
Seat 3: xx xx 6____Seat 3 folds
Seat 4: xx xx 6____Seat 4 folds
Seat 5: xx xx 2____Seat 5 folds
Hero: 5 A 7___Hero brings in for $36
Seat 7: xx xx 3____Seat 7 folds
Seat 8: xx xx 4____Seat 8 folds

4th Street: (2 SB) (2 players)
Seat 2: xx xx A T____Seat 2 bets
Hero: 5 A 7 J___Hero calls

5th Street: (2 BB) (2 players)
Seat 2: xx xx A T 9____Seat 2 bets____Seat 2 calls
Hero: 5 A 7 J 8___Hero raises

6th Street: (6 BB) (2 players)
Seat 2: xx xx A T 9 3____Seat 2 checks
Hero: 5 A 7 J 8 9___Hero checks

7th Street: (6 BB) (2 players)
Seat 2: xx xx A T 9 3 xx____Seat 2 bets
Hero: 5 A 7 J 8 9 5___Hero calls

Final Pot: 8 BB
Seat 2 shows 7 A A T 9 3 K (Lo: T,9,7,3,A)
Hero shows 5 A 7 J 8 9 5 (Lo: 9,8,7,5,A)
Hero wins 8 BB

The fact that Villain open limps third street rather than completing the bet suggests that he has a brick (or at least a semi-brick like a T or 9) in the hole. So even though I catch worse than he does on fourth, I could easily be ahead and if not I still have a decent draw.

Sticking with that read, I raise him on fifth even though his board is stronger than mine. He actually typed something like, “LOL what are you doing” before calling, which suggests that he thought I wasn’t “supposed” to raise showing a J. Note, however, that even he is “supposed” to be ahead, he doesn’t 3-bet me. Even if he does have a made T9, I’m drawing live.

When he catches good on sixth, I’m happy to check behind.

I was probably calling seventh anyway, but he bet so quickly that it was an easy decision. My check on sixth suggests that I’m still trying to improve my hand, so there’s not a lot of reason for him to value bet me thinly. Most likely I’ll either miss and fold or hit and be ahead, so it’s probably better for him to check and call with a smooth 9, which is the best hand he can have if I’m right about his limp. At the very least, he’d have to think about whether to bet it. The quick bet was a dead giveaway that he was bluffing. He made sure to tell me how badly I played it.

These seminars are pre-scheduled, small-group discussions focused on the most common mistakes and skills gaps that I see in my NLHE tournament students. Each two-hour seminar costs $150 per person and is capped at five participants, to enable individualized attention and opportunities for everyone to ask questions and participate in discussions. The content is prepared and the discussion facilitated by me- it’s like an interactive poker video!

Participants will learn how to identify a capped range, how to set-up a multi-barrel bluff, how to choose the best hands for bluffing, and how to size bluffs for maximum profitability. In addition to the seminar itself, all participants receive a syllabus of recommended study materials to help prepare for the session and apply newly acquired skills in their future play.

To register, please e-mail andrew@thinkingpoker.net with subject line “Big Bluffs”. If you have questions, please post them here, as others may be wondering the same things. Also please leave a comment if there’s a topic you’re interested in or a time that would be better for you- there’s plenty of flexibility to accommodate everyone, I just need to know what you want to see in the future!

Despite my early winnings, these recent losses had ground me back down to more or less the 30,000 chips with which I started. I believe in avoiding big confrontations so early in the tournament when possible, but when your opponents are tough, you can’t afford to play scared. You have to be willing to take the appropriate risks. I was, and it ultimately paid off, but I had a few heart-stopping moments along the way.

The first was against my Hawaiian friend. I open raised to 750 holding KQo in the CO, and he reraised from the SB to 2,550. Generally I would consider that a large re-raise and he’d mostly been avoiding confrontation with me, so my first instinct was to fold. However, there was something suspicious about the size of his bet. In the past, his re-raises had been even larger, often as much as 3,000 over a similarly sized raise. I took it as a sign of weakness that he’d chosen to risk less this time.

As always, I’m eager to hear what you think!

I consider the nut flush draw one of the most interesting hands in no-limit hold ’em. Not only is it almost always an excellent semi-bluffing hand, but under the right circumstances it can be quite good at bluff-catching as well, providing resilience on turn and river cards that are usually bad for the rest of your bluff-catching range. With so many options at your disposal, there’s a lot to think about and discuss when you flop the nut flush draw.

I’m about to spew a lot of words here, as is my wont. If you want a brief executive summary, look no further than Greg896’s comment on the Cardplayer blog:

I think we can look at this 2 ways….1) we either have the best hand and want to get more value out of V (Flush draw/Straight draw) by checking and letting him bluff or 2) bluff V off a one pair hand ( his most likely holding IMO)…… I think our best route is to check and reeval based on his sizing etc… If he bets 1/3-1/2 pot Id be more inclined to think he has a pair and try to bluff him, if he bets larger I like calling, as I feel Ace high will be good a decent amount of the time.

Flop

There were a lot of questions and comments about earlier streets, so I’m going to discuss those briefly before moving on to the river situation.

Like many of you, I read the middle position open limper for a wide and weak range. Even so, this flop was so low that I didn’t think it was likely to help him. The BB, on the other hand, could easily have flopped a pair. Limpers will usually stab at the pot when checked to, so check-calling or check-raising the flop would be good options. Looking at the hand now, I think checking planning to raise the limper would have been better since it would give me more information about my opponents’ holdings before I put money in the pot, enable me to win a larger pot when my bluff succeeded, and increases my odds of blowing BB off of a weak pair.

Betting makes sense only if I plan to barrel most turns. No one is folding a pair on the flop, so I need to either bet multiple streets (if I want a chance at beating their pairs) or check-call if I want to focus on beating bluffs.

Turn

It was indeed my plan to barrel, but the deuce wasn’t a good card for it. Just based on the open limp, Villain seemed more like the sort to fold a pair when overcards, no matter how unlikely to pair me, came than to give me credit for a monster because I took a strong line.

I checked intending to make a decision, which is what I ought to have done on the flop. This is an underrated option against weak players, because often their bet sizes reveal a lot about what they have. Especially with a versatile holding like the nut flush draw, you can check and then re-evaluate your options with the benefit of this additional information.

Villain’s bet gives us good odds to call. While there’s a small chance that we’re drawing dead to a full house or quads, there’s also a fair chance we have the best hand (though it won’t always get to showdown) and/or solid implied odds. In my opinion folding to a bet of this size is out of the question. Raising is an option, but I think it’s an unnecessary risk given that we beat a fair bit of what he’ll fold anyway.

Betting the River

I’m not a fan of this, as we beat most hands that fold. This line looks too much like a busted draw and makes it too easy for Villain simply to click call and see showdown for relatively little risk if he’s suspicious, which he probably will be. As Steven7 says, “IMO, your hand appears relatively faceup. In the villians shoes, I’d most definately call any reasonable bet on the river with any 9+ or maybe even 66 or 88. Its possible vil has a worse missed FD, QJs or something and your hand may get shown down with a check behind.”

Check-Folding the River

I was prepared to do this depending on the feel I got from Villain’s bet. Something that felt value-y would probably have made me fold. One point I want to emphasize with this hand is that you shouldn’t take this route automatically simply because your draw missed and you can only beat a bluff. If the odds are right and your Villain has enough bluffs in his range, then calling when you can only beat a bluff is perfectly fine and much better than folding.

Check-Raising the River

Several commenters make a strong case for this play, though I still believe you should remain flexible after checking until you see what your opponent does. As you’ll see, Villain ended up making a large bet which I read as polarizing: he was either bluffing, in which case my hand was almost certainly good, or he had a monster – in his eyes, anyway – that he wasn’t folding. In that case, there’s no sense in check-raising, but against a bet that you believe represents a thin value range, check-raising is well worth consideration.

Check-Calling the River

This is the route I ended up taking, because Villain made such a large bet that I believed his value range would have to be quite narrow. I didn’t know anything about his bluffing tendencies, but I did expect him to get to the river with a lot of air, which is the first step towards bluffing. It turns out I’d misjudged his open-limping range, so he had more value hands than I expected, but I still like my play given the information I had at the time.

Results

PokerStars – $2000+$100|700/1400 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BB: 98,335.00
UTG: 54,778.00
MP: 64,567.00
CO: 92,186.00
BTN: 139,809.00
Hero (SB): 115,612.00

BB posts ante 175.00, UTG posts ante 175.00, MP posts ante 175.00, CO posts ante 175.00, BTN posts ante 175.00, Hero posts ante 175.00, Hero posts SB 700.00, BB posts BB 1,400.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 3150.00) Hero has Ah 6h

fold, MP calls 1,400.00, fold, fold, Hero calls 700.00, BB checks

Flop: (5250.00, 3 players) 2h 3c 9h
Hero bets 3,333.00, fold, MP calls 3,333.00

Turn: (11916.00, 2 players) 2s
Hero checks, MP bets 4,800.00, Hero calls 4,800.00

River: (21516.00, 2 players) 7d
Hero checks, MP bets 14,459.00, Hero calls 14,459.00

MP shows Ac As (Two Pair, Aces and Twos) (Pre 88%, Flop 63%, Turn 80%)
Hero mucks Ah 6h (One Pair, Twos) (Pre 12%, Flop 37%, Turn 20%)
MP wins 50,434.00

Thanks to everyone who participated!

PokerStars – $2000+$100|700/1400 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BB: 98,335.00
UTG: 54,778.00
MP: 64,567.00
CO: 92,186.00
BTN: 139,809.00
Hero (SB): 115,612.00

BB posts ante 175.00, UTG posts ante 175.00, MP posts ante 175.00, CO posts ante 175.00, BTN posts ante 175.00, Hero posts ante 175.00, Hero posts SB 700.00, BB posts BB 1,400.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 3150.00) Hero has Ah 6h

fold, MP calls 1,400.00, fold, fold, Hero calls 700.00, BB checks

Flop: (5250.00, 3 players) 2h 3c 9h
Hero bets 3,333.00, fold, MP calls 3,333.00

Turn: (11916.00, 2 players) 2s
Hero checks, MP bets 4,800.00, Hero calls 4,800.00

River: (21516.00, 2 players) 7d
Hero ?

Post your thoughts, comments, and questions here. I’ll do my best to respond throughout the week and post results on Friday.

PokerStars – $2 NL (6 max) ZOOM – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BTN: $345.74
SB: $314.91
Hero (BB): $258.40
UTG: $269.90
MP: $136.94
CO: $94.00

SB posts SB $1.00, Hero posts BB $2.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $3.00) Hero has Qs Ad

fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to $5.56, fold, Hero raises to $18.00, BTN calls $12.44

Flop: ($37.00, 2 players) 3h 5d 7h
Hero bets $18.00, BTN calls $18.00

Turn: ($73.00, 2 players) 9d
Hero checks, BTN bets $23.86, Hero raises to $88.00, BTN calls $64.14

River: ($249.00, 2 players) Kh
Hero bets $134.40 and is all-in, fold

Hero wins $246.20

I was planning to check-raise the turn even if he’d made a larger bet, though the small bet was encouraging. My plan was to run him off of weak made hands and also extract some value from draws. If he just calls the turn, then I think my hand is actually good enough to check-call a blank river. That’s not to say that I think he’s always on a draw, just that he’d usually check behind a made hand that isn’t good enough to shove over my turn check-raise.

This river, though completing some of his draws, also gives me something to represent. My hand is no longer good enough to check-call, so checking gives him a green light to shove any busted draws he does have. In other words, there’s actually value in shoving into those hands. I also think I can get him off of a lot of one-pair hands, so really I lose only to his rivered flushes. He probably has plenty in his range, but given that I’m shoving barely half-pot, I don’t have to succeed all that often. It’s a spot where the all-in bet probably generated an amount of fold equity disproportionate to its size.