blonde poker forum

£100 live freezeout

12 left

7 paid

blinds 800-1600/200.

average 38,000

Hero 30,000

BB Villain 25,000

All the big stacks on the other table

Hero finds  Aspades 5s in the cut off. Makes it 4,200

BB is a b c tight, very few moves. Good to steal from.

Button, sb pass BB calls, which is rare resistance

pot size 10,400

flop  Ts 6c 5d

check check. (Yes I know, should have c-bet )

turn  5h

check, bet 6,000, call

pot size 22,400

stacks hero just less than 20,000. villain just left than 15,000

river  2d

BB fires quickly for 10,000

Your action is and why?

Crying all.  Can't fold i dont think, so of the two options, neither of which is much different, altough being left with 10k is fairly signifcant to having 5k if we put them all in and lose.

shove into his 34 like i always do

I know he's tight but once tight players are in a hand they can still bluff. Prob looked to him like you were trying to steal off him with the turn bet after u weakly checked the flop.

I would say he doesnt have the straight. If bet v quickly after the river i see this as weakness. trying to represent a big hand. I would just call anyway so u still have 10 behind.

10 behind vs 5 behind is the biggest thing u need to think about here as you just can lay down a monster like this as deep as this. 10 behind and u can still steal alot. many people will be eager to face u with just 5

get it all in.

he should never have 43 here. might have 66 but sigh if he has.

thats what i keep saying  "BASTARDS"

On the basis that it's a cooler if he was always ahead and still pretty cool if the 2 made his hand I can say I would re-raise here 100% of the time.

Also, since the 10K bet on the end looks super strong I'd almost certainly take it as weakness. Leaks, moi ?

I do more jammin here than Bob Marley.

His hand will be a silly bluff a lot but when he does have some sort of hand he doesn't have enough behind to fold. I'm not expecting him to defend 34 and occasionally he can have 66..so be it. I wouldn't even put it past him trapping with a big pair and then thinking this is a value bet.

Basically A5 is hugely ahead of his range and (is so disguised) now I want to get the lot.

absolutely agree

also change title pls you are a mile away from the bubble

Tighty,

I wasn't watching this hand at the time, but if I were you I think I'd flat it.
A push only gets called by 34 (can't see him (or her?) with that).
or 66 (deff chance holding).
or TT (even not beyond realms of possbility, tho I'd expect a re-shove pre).
any bluff folds to your push so no point raising it there.

.....as always in poker, it depends on the player.

Drain.

ithink checking back the flop here is the correct play. Probs get it in on the river.

You don't think a shove gets called by every other 5? Cos it does I promise you.

Def a shove for me. He basically has to have defended with 34 for you to be beat which is unlikely, or have 66, which a fair amount of the time he'd check raise the river with given the slow play up to his point. Agree w/ celtic & greeky...

If villain shows up with 3-4 or 5-x here I would be very surprised, based on your description.

TT is definitely a possibility, but if he's holding that then it's a sick turn for you. 66 less likely, but same outcome.

Rangewise, I'm thinking 88+, Any 2 paint, probably go as low as A10. The only hand you have to worry about is TT, so I shove.

Am I the only person thinking there's a chance villain shows up with something like 87s here?

It's good if we get a bluff to fold when we push because then we don't have to reveal our hand. That extra 5k means we don't need to show the table we raise with A-5, that we didn't c-bet and got lucky, and that we only called 10k when we hit gin. If we get a bluff to fold we look like we played the hand real well. Much better image to carry forward in the game and well worth the 5k imo. Anyway, the way the hand played out we've got no reason to fear a monster so like MC said you can get them in and at least hope for a pot-odds crying call. If you're beat so what.

I think 87 is very possible

So Rich. Wot happened......?
I predict that you cautiously called on the river and lost the hand, to 66 or TT.
D

I called, preferring to have 10k back to shove with if he had the monster which I thought he could have. Got showed 66.

Irrespective of this, and not being results orientated, as others have said I think I should have shoved

+1

Other than the raise pre I don't mind it at all.  Aspades 5s is a horrible hand to play unless it hits big even with position. What do you do here if villain shoves pre? Obv you have to pass. This is not ideal when you've invested nearly 15% of your stack with a hand that you thought was winning until it got looked up.

Your check on the flop is fine. You've not really got anything exciting and c bets are just too obvious. If he raises your c bet what do you do? Do you pass because you think you must be behind or do you shove because you think he's bluffing? I'm guessing you pass thus spewing more chips.

Villains play is awful. Why does he bet 2/3 of his stack on the end? Makes no sense at all and you were right to suspect you were beat.

If he shoves you snap call because it's so much more likely that he's bluffing.

Apart from the raise pre which I don't like I think you played it spot on.

thanks Matt

You highlight an issue I have problems with

We're six handed, as doubleup highlights a way off the bubble, and a bit below average

Can't just sit there and wait for premiums, the stack will get swallowed up. Of course I can resteal/shove light.

However I have to keep active, in position, and try to make progress. Would you be passing A5s in the cut off there?

The bb is tight and makes no moves & we're 6-handed. . Why wouldn't you raise pre? I think the raise is just fine. But if you raise pre because the bb is tight/passive you should really c-bet on a pretty safe flop for the very same reasons you raised pre imo. Raise pre is spot on but don't like the rest :)

Only because of the stacks. You're just inviting a reshove and you haven't got the goods to call.

If the cut off raises in to my big blind at this stage with stacks as they are I'm likely to shove any 2 halfway connected cards or 2 face cards. If you've got a biggy to call then fair enough. If you've got a weak ace maybe as high as A10 I think I can probably get my oppo to pass. A lot of live players also pass small pairs here.

I'd rather wait for someone to try the same raise against me and shove my whole stack in his eye than bluff raise A5 from the cut off.

Against specific oppos it's fine if you're intending to snap a shove but unless you intend to follow through it's just a standard steal attempt. Even if it just gets called you'll find yourself in tough spots without enough chips to try to use your positional advantage over your oppo.

This situation highlights it perfectly. You make a set with a short stack and you don't know where you stand in the hand. How is that possible?

There's not only the BB to consider. There's also the other 1/3 of the table to act behind us.

When the tight BB shows enough interest to call pre the c bet with position is no more than a 'find out where you are' bet. He might be tight but it's unwise to assume he's also crap. When he shoves our c bet with air what do we do?

I assune that because he's tight we pass? Nice way to do 1/3 of our stack.

the bb is described as a tight abc player who makes very few moves. So I reckon it's best to strat against a tight abc player who makes very few moves....not avoid that strat just in case the tight abc player who makes very few moves check raises us all-in with air.

I don't know what the standard is like at Luton but at my casino I'm raising pre all day here.

Yes, they have good stacks for reshoving, but in my experience very few live players actually do this.

Obv if there's people after me who I know are good players, capable of making moves, I'll adjust my play accordingly. But the majority of players in these comps are just bad.

Rather than a reshove, the most common thing I see in this scenario is the big blind will fold and show an ace lol

Matt might hit me but I'm raising the cut off 100% of the time with your hand here

I won't hit you mate. I'll just set the dog on you.

As long as the button, SB and BB do not involve Matt or Nick Hicks im raising to.

Matts right but not sure how many people are good enough to be doing this.

Raise and snap call vs Nick imo.

Matt might have the right strat for a different game. But this isn't a different game. The tight bb smooths with a pair of 6's vs a wide range putting himself in a position where the pot size is equal to half his stack, he's oop, and he hates most flops. That's the sort of guy who's in the bb. This sort of guy will c-fold most flops and hence why the c-bet is fine.

Hadn't we may as well donk shove in to him then?

If we're planning to induce a flat then make him pass a better hand we could do this with atc. If we donk shove at least we have a chance to bink if he finds something to call with. Unless it's AA obv.

Just so you know the reason I pass here isn't because I need a better hand. My raising range from the cut off against a weak tight oppo is pretty much atc. If I make a raise with this hand it isn't necessarily because I think it's going to be ahead by the river, it's because I think he'll pass or if he doesn't I can make him pass later.

Against this weak oppo I would probably have raised him a few times already with much worse than A5

tighty, i think you actually played this hand nigh on perfectly. On the river, i think seeing as you are worried about precisely 66, you need to weighup valueshoving against AA-JJ/A10/random 5 (v few in his range...discount cos of 65 possibility making up chunk of his 5's) to valuetowning yourself against 66 and a very rare 1010 (which im assuming even a tight bb is gonna 3ball). I think shove slightly > call on that basis but i think pre betsizing and flop check are fine v this guy ip. give yourself way more ways to win the hand by checking back imo.

Can you explain that a bit more Alex. It seems to me that the turn dropping a 5 means the flop check in retrospect looks ok...but most of the time it wont come a 5. Let's say it comes a face card and bb leads, what do you do? The stack dynamics mean that ANY bet from bb is gonna be a sizeable % of our stack. How would you answer it? A face card + bet from tight bb prob equals fold...many other turn cards + bet from tight bb prob equals fold. If bb c-raises non 5/A turn it's fold. If bb c-folds turn we make zero extra $ for the flop check. So don't get how flop check gives us WAY more ways to win.

villains range preflop is probably weighted towards something like QJs+/KJo+/A10o+/66+ plus some middling sc's (78s/910s etc). I would guess in reality its probably something like 55-99/A10/AJ/KQ. Basically before betting this flop we need to recognise that in has smacked his range and/or given him a hand he feels happy enough to go with now.

If we bet the flop anything reasonable (6k) into a 10k pot villain is 100% gonna shove all his pairs as he only has 15k back. Then we will then have to call with bottom pair + over plus bdfd getting better than 3:1 even when we know are def crushed. Bet folding would be spew.


Now for the rest of his range.

Villain doesnt make moves. On the turn we have position. On the turn if he checks we can bet with near 100% certainty we are not being bluffed and have the best of it so protect ourselves. Additionally, if the turn comes any card J or higher, we can rep far far more hands and get him to fold all his pp's, which we woulda been unable to on the turn. Also (and i know you will love this), we get to watch villain down 2 streets. Now overtly important but def can be factored in as a small +.

I know im waffling a bit but i think this is exactly the type of spot where we should use position to exploit a predictable player when the pot to stack ratio is small in an endgame mtt. To cbet blindy here is inferior to checking back imo.



disclaimer : i dont play donkaments v often so i could be talking nonsense. awaits response of LL + shreddies.

I tried to like your line Alex, but I don't. First off your strat depends on villain checking to you twice because any bet from him on a non A/5 turn means he wins. And when there's 50% of the guy's stack in the middle I think the temptation for him to go after that money is pretty high so I don't think you can rely on 2 checks. Next, lots of turn cards allow him to improve to a made hand which beat you and/or improve to a semi-bluff hand which mean he can jam and again win the hand. If he doesn't improve, but the turn is a 10 or lower he still c-jams all the pairs he was c-jamming with on the flop so the action doesn't change....it's just a street later.

You've also gotta hope that the turn is the face card you can actually represent. I mean the reason we can feel confident with the trip 5's is we don't think villain believes our representation of the 2nd 5. There will be a lot of turn cards we wont be able to convincingly represent and so what was gonna happen on the flop is still gonna happen anyway. So really your strat is only better if villain checks twice, a face card arrives on the turn that you can realistically represent, that the face card doesn't hit villain even though it is in his range and your bet forces him to fold a better pair. I think checking the flop actually gives villain WAY more ways to win the hand so why not just simplify things by c-betting a perfect flop vs the perfect villain instead.

I agree with Mantis. bet-fold > check-call. We hate bet/folding but this line allows us to take down the pot many more times than a check/call.

you cant bet fold. thats the point im making.

Nice post!

I got that point Alex and I prob agree with it. But that's the worse case scenario and an eventuality that's not very common vs this type of player. So basing my strategy around that outcome doesn't work for me. The most likely scenario is this type of villain c-folds this type of flop imo. So I would prefer to strat for the most likely occurrence. There isn't going to be a perfect line out of this situation and often poker hands wont present one, but I do reckon you're gonna win the 10.5k in the middle many more times than you spew another 20k if you c-bet this guy.

enjoying this mantis. basically, i think villain defines HIS range on the turn if he checks 2 streets oop. Given we cant bet/fold the flop and given this flop has (imo) smacked his range for stacking off, id like to be way more certain before putting anything more into it. FWIW i dont actually think checking back gives us WAY more ways to win the pot anymore, i just think its a better line here, but bet/call isnt terrible. I actually think shoving might be pretty good too.   

Nah, I think we can rule out shoving. We only get called when we're beat. If we're planning on getting our chips in we may as well allow for the admittedly slim possibility of villain c-jamming big Aces we now dominate. After all, the pot is big enough for a spew and the stack sizes are set up nicely for a c-jam (prob why you want to strat against it so bad :)). But there's nothing to say villain has the same awareness or ability to exploit such a chance that you might as villain. No need to give tight abc credit for having such heart imo. I'm less inclined to think the board smacked his stacking range because pushing pre seems more abc with middle pairs. I was surprised villain would smooth with 6-6 vs a wide range and so I reckon he does indeed c-fold lots of flops. Ultimately for your strat to work better we have to count on a 2nd check because all the times villain does bet we can't define his range at all and lose a pretty big pot we could easily have won.

Stack of 30k, 3.6k in the middle.

Shove preflop.

lol!

Agree with all of that. Given SPR, checking flop >> cbetting imo.

Someone needs to spend some time using SNG wizard...

I was gona be the first one to suggest shoving pre but then bottled it.

Shove pre.

We have too many chips to shove pre in the cutoff with this hand

Yeah, but most of the time they can't call imo

Yeah but that's the point, most of the time they can't, but the ratio of times they can call and we are dead is too high in relation to our chip stack with 3 hands to fade.

Can you show me the math on this? Cheers.

You don't really need math to work out pushing isn't any better than standard raising. You never jam any hand of strength into this situation, and so by doing that you expose your weakness to the players behind. We not only bugger up our aspiration to range balance again but we give inferior poker players an invitation to flip their chips with us because of the free information we hand them. Let's just outplay inferior players instead. Standard raising has already forced villain to make one mistake by calling oop with 6-6 despite stuff like SPR's. Checking the flop to combat against the SPR situation you create by betting is only ignoring the free information villain hands you. Playing the SPR's rather than playing the person is a mistake because you assume villain will play perfectly, and he already hasn't.

Pushing against the bb stack is quite close to being inexploitable (altho dont know the chips of btn and sb).  Any hand that calls a push, reraises a standard raise and its quite possible that some hands that wouldn't reraise as well.  I'm also pretty sure that some hands that wouldn't call a push will call to see the flop - whether they make a mistake after that, who knows.

I think it would be a dangerous assumption to assume that a push is always a weak hand.  The whole point of pushing fairly wide is that it's up to the opponent to decide if he wants to risk elimination.  Anyone employing this tactic is usually aware enough to know that their opponents would fairly quickly notice that a normal raise was a good hand and a push was a mediocre hand. 

I agree that it's dangerous to assume a push is always a weak hand. This push isn't just a push though, it's 30k from the cut-off @ 800/1600 into a passive bb. Nobody would do that with a strong hand. You wouldn't get called often enough and you would never encourage this SPR situation that could encourage a villain to shove if you don't standard raise. So I think in terms of playing a tournament it is reasonable to assume hero isn't very strong if he shoves.

I like to think i shove with all of my range (when im slightly lower in chips) in this spot. But the reality is i dont. Think mantis is right in general tbh regarding the majority of players.

It's really difficult to use SNG Wizard with this OP as it's not a SNG but the maths still applies. I fiddled with it as much as I could, and the worst suited Ace it ever told me to shove in this spot was ATs.

harumph young ppl 2day can't do sums and when their glorified calculator doesn't work they are stumped....

Lol, I said it's never a shove, and SNG wizard confirmed this in the formats that I was able to apply it to

How is that being stumped?

If we shove though, we don't have difficult decisions later imo, and we have an Ace, and most of the time they can't call

Did you take into account how incorrect calling ranges will be live?

"Most of the time they can't call", fine it might work most of the time, just not  enough of the time...it's a long term -EV shove as far as I'm concerned. Maybe not by a huge margin, shoving isn't horrible or anything, but definitely not better than the raise we put in in this hand



Surely this decreases the value of shoving, not increases it? As that means we're dominated more often?

He can't do sums so its unlikely ; )

My attempt a sums - (obv risking mockery from MC if they sre wrong)

Hero is behind to 14% of hands

So if his opponents only call when he is behind he will get called 36% of the time (this is hugely unlikely in practice)

If he is called his equity against that range is 37.2%

The pot when called is 55200 of which hero has contributed 26600

So hero wins 64% of 3600 when not called - 2304

When he is called he gets 37.2% of 55200, which is 20534 or a loss of 6066 and this occurs 36% of the time, so a loss of 2184.

So pushing under the conditions above and assuming my sums are right is +ev

Why don't we just open shove every round when we find an Ace in the cut off? I mean most of the time they can't call right? Is this the winning poker we're aspiring to? You need to look at moves in the context of the whole game rather than just whether shoving works in isolation. We don't know the stacks and moods of the players behind us so advocating shoving based on the couple of numbers we do know is maths gone mad imo. I agree players behind will make incorrect calls because poor players do this when they think you're "at it", and you give them a free spin with you. Yeah, we don't face tough decisions later in the hand, but if we think we are better than our rivals tough spots later favour us rather than them. If we have spent time building a solid image (which I assume Tighty has) we trade off that image by getting inferior players to make mistakes when confronted by tough decisions. Hence why 6-6 smooths pre, and hence why he c-folds most flops. If we push, below average bb villain with 6-6 can find a call and we lose, but if he does fold we lose the money he puts in pre before c-folding post. Either way we lose money by pushing vs this player imo.

Dont think so, villain was prob going to donk bet quite a few flops.  I doubt very much that his plan was no set no bet.  You are also making your recurrent error of only considering villains actual holding instead of his range.

Please with the recurrent error dude?? Right from the start of the thread I'm saying the flop is good for the c-bet because I think villain is more likely to have high cards based on the action pre, and will c-fold this board texture. Now that I can see he actually has 6-6 I can apply the same reasoning that his play is leading him to c-fold most flops. Although my strat is LESS viable when he's holding a pair on this type of board. Very different from my strat originating from me knowing he has 6-6. Even if we have no idea what he holds we do know that smoothing without a monster pre is a mistake for him with the SPR. Thus we know he is very capable of making mistakes and hence why c-betting vs this particular villain isn't a mistake for us. We can reach that conclusion without knowing his hand.

LMFAO as live player levels internet kidz.

gl in luton mug :P

 ;hattip;

Cheers Alex

This is correct.