Post Archives Tag: what’s your play

What’s Your Play? Miracle Turn

What's Your Play?Game is $5/$10/$20 no-limit hold ’em, effective stacks are at least $10,000. Villain is extremely nitty, but it’s paying off for him because he keeps coolering people who can’t bring themselves to fold when they’re obviously crushed. He doesn’t seem intimidated by the stakes exactly – he bought in for … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Bad Runout for an Overpair

What's Your Play?The game is $5/$10/$20 no-limit hold ’em, and it’s playing pretty deep. Villain 1 has $8K, Villain 2 has $5K, and I cover both.

Villain 1 is a professional and the toughest of my opponents in this game. He’s far more situationally aware than most and reads hands pretty well. … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Coping With Lead Bets

What's Your Play?I haven’t posted one of these in a while because participation in the last few was kind of lackluster. If you enjoy these sorts of posts, please comment on this one, even if you don’t have anything to say about the hand, just so that I can gauge the level … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Turned an Underfull

What's Your Play?This is another $1/$2 Zoom hand. Villain has TAGgish stats over a small sample, 21/18 with a 3-bet of 11, with all of his 3-bets so far have come from the button or the blinds. Hero’s own stats are actually even tighter than that, though I don’t have any insight … Read full post

What’s Your Plan? Top Pair, Multiway Pot

What's Your Play?This is from the Sunday $500 on PokerStars, a tournament that tends to draw a field of MTT specialists of varying skill. In the first hour, Villain 1, in middle position, has played 16% of his hands, 12% of them as the pre-flop raiser, and mostly in late position. Villain … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Weak Overpair, Four-Bet Pot

What's Your Play?I’ve been playing some small-stakes ZOOM alongside my tournaments whenever I’ve got spare screen space, and this is the most interesting spot I’ve encountered in any of my games in my first two days playing. I had to reformat my database, so I didn’t have a HUD running while I … Read full post

What’s Your Strategy? Overbetting Fiend

It’s level one of a small-field, $555 MTT at the local card room. The field will be extremely soft, re-entries are allowed for the first two hours, and including re-entries there will likely be fewer than 75 total entries.

Hero’s table is currently four handed with six stacks getting blinded … Read full post

Optimal Bluffing Frequency Tentative Results

I’ve been toying around with this situation for a while, and although I want to retain some measure of caution simply because I have a history of making mistakes with this sort of thing, I’m pretty sure I’ve determined that the optimal bluffing frequency for Hero doesn’t change even if … Read full post

What’s Your Play Follow-Up

I know I promised earlier this week that I’d follow-up with more on optimal multi-street bluffing frequency. It proved to be a more thorny problem than I anticipated, and while I still don’t have a definitive answer, you’ll get a chance to hear me discuss the problem with two very … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Worst Card to Bluff

Thanks for all the comments on What’s Your Play? Worst Card to Bluff, and sorry that I’ve been slow in getting this results post up. It’s possibly a result of the fact that I’ve been driving back across the country this week and not online much, and possibly a matter … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Worst Card to Bluff

What's Your Play?This one comes from a $5/$10 no-limit hold ’em game at the Venetian. I’m new to the table, initially bought in for $1000 but relatively quickly decided to load up enough to cover the table. I don’t think I’ve done anything else of note since I’ve been here, but that … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Middle Pair, Coordinated Board

What's Your Play?

Edit: Thanks to ThereYouGoAgain and others who pointed out the errors in my original post. Sorry for the confusion – Villain 1 (the open limper) did overcall the raise, and three of us saw the flop and turn (where pot size was wrong).

This hand comes from a $2/$5 no-limit … Read full post

What’s Your Plan? Medium Pair in 3-Bet Pot

What's Your Play?I’ve got a tough one for you this week. This is one of the trickier spots I’ve been in of late, and I’ll tell you up front that I’m not 100% sure about my play or my plan at multiple points in the hand. So with that said, we’ll zero … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Underrepresented Top Pair

What's Your Play?My main event run came to an end early on Day 3 in unspectacular fashion. I do, however, currently have an above average stack going into the $5000 Venetian Deep Stacks main event. I don’t think any hands from those tournaments are as instructive as this one, though.

This is … Read full post

What’s Your Play? 2B or Not 2B

What's Your Play?I know it’s a little early for a What’s Your Play?, but I decided to publish my report from this tournament elsewhere so this hand is sort of a stand in before I move on to the next one. Patient listeners and those stuck in the driver’s seat of moving … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Flopped Set vs Weak Bet Results

Thanks for all the comments on this week’s What’s Your Play? In this post I’m going to talk a lot about a concept that I call Value Targeting. Hopefully it will make sense just from what I say here, but if you want to learn more about it, you can … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Flopped Set vs Weak Bet

What's Your Play?It’s early in a $1500 WSOP event, and we’re playing 10-handed. Hero has been one of the more active players at the table but hasn’t done anything especially crazy or noteworthy. Villain is a middle-aged white woman, pretty clearly an amateur and seems a little scared/concerned about doing well in … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Kings on an Ace River

What's Your Play?

Edit: Hey look, a mistake in a WYP post! Been a while since that happened… At least this was a minor one. My preflop raise was to 150, and I’ve adjusted pot size to reflect that. Sorry for any confusion.

It’s early in the $2500 Borgata Spring Poker Open Main … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Overpair on Dry Flop

What's Your Play?Playing 10-handed $1/$3 no-limit hold ’em. Villain has roughly $300, Hero covers.

Villain is relatively new to the table, but he’s already complaining, good-naturedly but often, about how he’s getting nothing but bad cards. Before looking at his cards this hand, he said, “I just want to see one card … Read full post

What’s Your Plan? Making Yourself a Target

What's Your Play?

Edit: Just realized the first paragraph of this post disappeared for some reason. Rewriting it now.

In his opinion, Hero hasn’t been that aggressive, but that isn’t how this loose and passive $1/$3 no-limit hold ’em table sees it. I’ve mostly been doing pretty simple stuff, bombing it preflop against … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Min-Raised on the River

What's Your Play?I haven’t posted in a while so I figured I’d go ahead and put up an early WYP.

Villain is a regular but for whatever reason we don’t have a lot of experience playing together. From what little I’ve seen he seems to be mostly loose-passive in small pots but … Read full post

What’s Your Plan? Flopped Straight, Board Pairs on Turn

What's Your Play?The Game: $1/$3/$6 no-limit hold ’em. Plays loose-passive pre-flop but gets progressively more tight-passive as pots get larger.

Villain 1 ($1800): Best of the regulars in this Hero’s opinion. He’s 30ish, seems comfortable playing 200+ BB pots when it’s warranted, capable of bluffing, calling down, and folding in … Read full post

What’s His Hand? Nit vs LAG

What's Your Play?In honor of my first video series at Tournament Poker Edge, here’s a twist on the “What’s Your Play?” theme with an emphasis on hand reading.

Five-handed $5/$5 no-limit hold ’em game. Villain bought in about an hour ago for $500 and is down to about $440. He’s a … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Second Nuts on Four-Flush River

What's Your Play?Live $10/$25 NLHE cash game at the PCA, playing seven-handed at the moment. I haven’t been involved in many pots but may have an aggro image anyway because of a hand that went to showdown where I raised K6s, bet a backdoor flush draw on the flop, barreled a turned … Read full post

What’s Your Plan? A LAG Picks Up a Hand

Edit: Villain is the BB (the $3 blind).What's Your Play?

Ten-handed live $1/$3/$6 game. Hero is the only player at the table with a pre-flop raise percent greater 5 (it’s close to 15). As such, I’m perceived as an insanely aggressive bully even though I’ve mostly shown big hands in big pots … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Straight on Three-Flush River

What's Your Play?Sorry for the delay, new podcast episode should be up tomorrow. Here’s something to keep you busy in the meantime.

Shortly after dinner break at the $2500 Borgata Poker Open, re-entry period is over. Table is reasonably tough for this event, we’re ten-handed with three opponents I consider competent and … Read full post

What’s Your Play? WCOOP Sidepot, Part 1

What's Your Play?This hand is from Sunday’s $530 WCOOP Second Chance tournament. We’re not particularly close to the money. Table isn’t great but the structure is and there is one big soft spot to Hero’s immediate left.

Villain is 17/15 with 10% 3-bet and 29% Attempt to Steal. Strictly speaking he’s not … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Kings Pre-Flop

This hand was submitted to me as a Mailbag question, but after wrestling with it for a while I couldn’t come up with a great answer, so I’m going to crowdsource it. Here’s all the info I have, as provided by the Hero:

Event 1 of a WPT series at … Read full post

What’s Your Play? Busted Draw

This is from one of the early $2000 SCOOP events. Villain is new to the table, but I don’t recognize him, which says something in a $2000 online tournament (though not a lot, since I’m hardly a regular these days).

PokerStars – $2000+$100|700/1400 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 6 … Read full post

What’s Your Plan? Overpair in 3-Way 3-Bet Pot

Edit: I’m such a spazz! Sorry I had JJ. Don’t know why I can never get the details right on these on the first try.

It’s the last hand before dinner break on Day 1 of the $5K main event of the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza. Here’s our cast of … Read full post

“What’s Your Play? WSOP Main Event” River

I’m just going to give the turn action and skip straight to the river. It’s not entirely unworthy of debate, but I do think it’s almost always correct to bet the turn.

Villain (UTG+1, 45K stack) is probably mid-30s, part native Hawaiian and part mountain – he’s a big guy, … Read full post

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