blonde poker forum

Playing PLO live tourney I have c19k which is about average and there are ten players left seven of whom get paid.

Blinds are 300/600

We are playing two tables of five and I pick up Qh, Qs, Th, 9c on the button.

There is one limper who is a young gambly Chinese lad who is nicely chipped up(25/30k) and has me covered and I make it 1800 to go which he calls.

The flop is Qd, Td, 2d and he leads out for the pot, 4800.

Our optimum play is ?

hey ralph,
gd question!
(gurn) fold (& gurn some more)?

I like to flat and see what he does on the turn.

If he bangs the pot again we pass (unless we've paired obv) and if he checks we shove cus he doesn't like his flush as much as he did at first.

5 handed HU I just can't bring myself to be scared of the nut flush.

EDIT: I am obviously gurning throughout as it's a horrible spot.

unlikely for him to lead for pot wth nut flush.....

surely to extract value from his hand he'd bet less or look to check raise a c-bet?

bet looks more like perhaps flopped pair/2 plus draw

?????

What draw?

OK his bet doesn't make loads of sense. Ralph how experienced is this player? Would he overplay a hand that isn't a flush here?

with you having a T in your hand its an easy fold

anyone who folds the flop here is mental imo
why are we giving credit for any made hand betting OOP
why do we just not see that hes chipped up and can be having a stab?
clearly no value in raising, I flat and re-assess on turn but most likely its going in

He didn't seem very experienced at all to me although that was merely an impression that i had formed when he was on my table for about half an hour earlier in the tourney so that made it difficult to narrow his range down.

Easy shove for me.

I think he'll very often take a stab at a scary looking board like this. Once we jam it back up him it's gonna be hard to call with even the second nut flush as he dynamic of the game is gonna be people playing fairly carefully to reach the money.

Flatting is real exploitable and I hate this option.

The other benefit of getting it in now is if he's somehow flopped a set of tens or deuces he may 'gamble' with you and get it in with 2 cards to come, dead.

An inexperienced player limping, calling a raise, then donking the pot into the raiser on a monotone board.

How likely is it that he 'taking a stab'?

He has a made hand almost always, most likely a flush. For all we know he might be worried about a fourth diamond coming.

He seems to love his hand. If we repot, he will usually call. If we flat, he is likely to pot the turn. In the unlikely event that he is 'taking a stab' will he bluff again on the turn? I don't think so.

If you raise the flop you are making a decision to get it all in with top set now. If you started the hand with 19k, then you have 17,200 facing the flop bet. Unless antes are involved his pot-bet would have been for 4500 if you raised to 1800 preflop.

Do you want to risk 17,200 + yr tournament life to win 21,700? Hoping that he has the unlikely underset or that the board will pair? When you hold a ten already? Hell no. Even without factoring in how much yr tournament life is worth you would still be looking for 44% in a spot where the board pairs 33% of the time. If you didn't have the ten it pairs almost 37% of the time.

What if you flat the flop? If the board pairs you will be able to get yr stack in with two half-pot-ish bets on turn and river a lot of the time. In this case you pay 4500 on the flop to win 9000 plus the rest of your stack (17,200). 4,500 to win 26,200. You're looking for an equity of 14.6%, if he always pays you. There are 45 cards we haven't seen. 6 of them pair the board. There is only a 13.3% of filling up on the turn. Our implied odds are not nearly good enough.

If the board doesn't pair, and he bets again, you have to decide whether you want to go all in with top set. By this time there will be 13,500 in the middle and you will have 12,700 behind. When he bets, you will be offered a price of 26,200-12,700, and you will be looking for an equity of 32.6%. The board pairs on the river only 20.5% of the time.

Top set is valuable in this spot against an experienced player with a wide range, where we have fold equity versus some low flushes and may already be ahead. But an inexperienced player usually has a flush, and is usually not folding. We do not have the odds we need to try and fill up, and we have no need to 'gamble'. The optimum strategy is to preserve our stack by folding on the flop.

Now that is what I would call a first-class analysis and if i had been able to read it during the three or four seconds when I was gurning when facing villain's flop-bet I may well not have shoved before the flop predictably bricked out.

I would like to point out that my stack sizes are not exact and there may have been another limper because the bet was definitely 4800 to me and my shove was an extra 11,900 which caused him to tank for a fair while before calling and tabling 9d, 7d which was the pertinent part of his hand.

Hope you asked for his hand to be declared dead as there were two Td s in the deck... ;)

Interesting hand though, as it does highlight that you're playing the player here rather than just the cards.  I would have got it all in, but as I'm no good at omaha that's probably the wrong thing to do :D

Thanks Dan I've edited now.

Please explain running gurning joke

I think it goes back quite some time to the live updates with Danafish and Snoopy when several "gurning" pics were posted and a theme evolved.

Im not sure the hand reveal is the be-all proof that the question requires. Since when has result orientated thinking been the key to making decisions in replicated situations going forward?

I see what you are saying but in all honesty I dont see a fold.

this IMHO is an easy fold in omaha unless you think the other player can fold a non nut flush

If I think I am against a player who can fold a non-nut flush I am re-popping on the flop.

There is a case for folding the flop. Against this opponent I would flat and see the turn. Fold if he leads for the pot into me. Take a free card if it's checked.

I think the stack sizes are key, fold and play with 17k or call and have 12k. The difference between these stacks will not severely affect your tournament chances at this stage. If you peel the turn and it pairs up you will have 27k if he folds and 39k if he doubles you up. I like the sound of 39k here and I am calling the flop.

If I call and he pots the turn into me, I pass and hold on with the 12k for a double through.

'For all we know he might be worried about a 4th diamond coming'.

If he's this retarded then there's just as much chance he'll be willing to draw to two more cards with the bare ace in his hand.

The long run optimum EV play here non opponent specific with these stack sizes is to obv shove everytime. Maximise fold equity and our allin on the flop EV isn't too bad if we get called. That's pretty much the end of it as we don't really know anything about this specific opponent.
I think i like folding better than calling as Cos says it's so exploitable by a thinking opponent. Unless we can be certain oppo switches off all bluffs/non flushes on turns and maybe gives us a free card with weak flushes and is also going to pay us off some of the time when it pairs up calling is just pretty much horrid given stacks.

gd post, certainly more eloquent than me.

But what do you do against an inexperienced opponent?

Almost certainly shove because an inexperienced opponent is very unpredictable, if they don't know what they are doing how are you supposed to??

Sigh...

It often seems that people post a reply without reading the debate that has gone before.

To reiterate:

Inexperienced player              = very very often a flush
Pot odds for pair-up               = very poor
Implied odds for pair-up          = poor
Value of preserving stack        = high

Total                                    = surprisingly clear fold when you break the problem down

Yeah I agree, the European number 1 ranked PLO player is talking shit again.

Thats a bit harsh there's no need to start saying one of the most respected players in the world is 'talking shit'

Sorry Joe.

I read the whole thread still lolling hard at a lot of it. That said everyone has a right to a view, but i think most of your assumptions are wrong.

Please expand - you may not believe it but I actually come on here to learn.

I agree that non opponent specific this should be a shove. A decent player who would exploit a flat is likely to be good enough to lay down a non nut flush so our semi bluff with FE has to be the optimal play.

A "young gambly chinese player" isn't exactly non specific though is he? Can he fold any flush? I doubt it. Can he bluff? Yes of course he can.

If we flat he may decide that he doesn't want a big pot and check giving us a free card if we want it. He might like a gamble but he's probably not so stupid that he bets the pot again with nothing after we've flatted the flop. Therefore if he bets again we can safely assume that he's got the flush.

Against an experienced oppo then we're going to get exploited but against this one I still like to flat.

This.