blonde poker forum

OK, here are two situations where I hold the same hand and on both occasions I get it all in on the flop, for different reasons. Did I do the right thing?

Hand A

A maniac opens for £4 UTG in a 7 handed 50p/£1 game. He could literally have any two cards. He has chips in front of him now but he has called off and bluffed off at least £300 before now.

I am in MP and the guy to my right calls the £4. He has had his KK cracked by the maniac the previous hand and has bought in for £40 and is clearly pissed off.

I have  Ac  Ad , a £100 stack, and decide that the maniac (who has me covered) probably has sod all and that when he calls the guy to my right will shove in his last £40 on tilt and I can re-raise to get rid of the maniac.

I re-raise £12 in an attempt to achieve this scenario. I don't want to re-raise too much, as every time I have done this the maniac has seen sense and folded. Anyway, the maniac calls as expected, but the guy to my right, who clearly doesn't see a good spot with his short stack just calls, leaving him with only £28 behind.

Flop is  5c 5h Kc

Maniac leads out for £12. I am starting to ponder whether he would do this with a five when my chain of thought is interrupted by the guy to my right shoving in his £28. He is probably on a draw or has some kind of King. Maybe he has the 5 but the maniac is more likely to have this. The favourite is the draw. This puts me in an awkward spot however as flatting achieves very little, folding is out of the question and if I raise I will probably have to call a maniac shove.

I decide for better or worse that I have to price out the big draw in case I have it wrong and it is the maniac who has the flush draw, although it is unlikely.

I find myself in a way ahead or way behind scenario and even though I saw the flop in position, the shortie shove has now forced me, I feel at the time, to either commit my stack or pass. I do shove and the maniac calls with  4d 5d, although as he does it he seems to think I have kings full.

Hand B

This time I am in the small blind with  Ahrt Ad. An utg fish raises to £4. Barry Neville flats in the cutoff. Button passes and I re-pop to £20. Barry comments that this a bit steep, to which I hint that my crap position has a lot to do with it.

Fish calls which I wasn't really expecting and now so does Barry, muttering that he has the odds to call. This is debatable however as I have earlier seen him call on the river in a four way pot, capping the action, to hit a gutshot when he was being offered no better than 5 to 1. Anyway, I digress.

Flop is  Jd Ts 8d

Not the best flop. I am in horrid position. There is £60 in the pot and I only have around £90 left. Both of the others have me covered (just). My SPR is 1.5. I start to think what I will do if I bet and get check raised. I will probably commit. If I check and someone leads I will probably check raise. Because I don't have the benefit of position, again, it is commit now or check/pass and I elect to commit. I have a hard time putting Barry on JJ or TT as we were short handed preflop and my £20 looks a lot like AK and I feel he would go with it there and then. I think it more likely he has a smaller pocket pair or suited connectors. I don't know what the fish has but he sees every single flop so it could be seven deuce for all I know.

If anyone has JJ, TT, 88 or J,10 then I have been unlucky I say to myself. With the SPR so low I decide to bang it in and price out the flush and straight draws.

It turns out Barry has JJ and the fish doesn't show, and neither do I when the turn and river blank. I feel Barry's call for £20 is very optimistic even if he says he knows for a fact I had aces or kings. Implied odds just didn't exist as we both had around £120 to start the hand. Anyway, that was not the point of my post.

I have to admit the caveat to my opening question is this:

My thinking has probably been clouded by the fact that I have just finished, a few days before, the book by Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta and some other chap whose name excapes me, called Professional No Limit Hold'em Volume 1, and this book's core subject is stack to pot ratio and how it affects your decision making process post flop.

After these two hands a similar situation came up a day or two later, after I had re-read the book, where I committed post flop with KK on a draw heavy flop but this time I took it down as I actually was up against the big draw rather than the made hand.

I should perhaps add that up to this point I have been running worse than Usain Bolt with a broken leg and that is my lame excuse for any poor play. What I want to do is analyse after the hands whether my thinking was cloudy, downright wrong, or polluted by the downswing I have been enduring.

So, am I looking at results too much, or did reading this book cloud my judgement the next day?

Hand A

Right OK, here goes... I am never EVER folding AA with the Ace of clubs on this flop, to a guy who can be donking out almost all pocket pairs small to medium, all flush draws and any King. I mean WTF how does he find a 5 here when he is obv playing like a LAG who has no clue why he is aggressive. Pretty ul tho nvamind. Only critiscm I would make is your 3bet is too small I'd be making it like £19 to go.

Hand B

OK you should never be open shoving on this flop, Why? because this flop smashes their calling range IMO, I'm thinking JJ, TT, 88 are reaaaaaally likely here, even hands like 7-9s, Q-9s, 99, KQ( which is obv only 6 outs and not 8 ) but KQdd is likely too which we are like a flip against same with like K10dd, Q10dd (which we are a slight dog too) and our hand really has poor equity against these range of hands.

My suggestion would be check-call a flop bet (depending on their bet size if they bet like £40-50 I guess its a sigh fold once this flop comes I'm pretty much done with the hand), if they bet £20-30 re-evaluate on fourth street but I would be folding to any turn bet, Weak play? noway! no1 is bluffin on this board twice (who plays 100nl live) or betting worse than one pair honestly don't get attached to your Aces on 4th street just muck them, obv they might house up on the turn and check (Slowplay) which they will own your life some of the time.. as you will prob end up paying them off on the river, but I wouldn't be falling for that old chestnut either... on this draw-heavy dangerous looking board when all of a sudden they shove the river after the board has paired. But if I'm Barry I'm never folding JJ in his position so I don't think you can criticise his call preflop.

I guess an arguement could be made if it checks to the button and he shoves he could be making a stab at the pot more liberally, I guess if hes fishy pre he can have FD or O/E Aces is prob a call vs this sort of play. If they show up with JT we have 30% equity with aces which is a fair amount given the pot odds I guess

The 1st hand you played fine the second you played really badly.

very good

Think the play in both hands is fine.

You have lost £10+ somewhere here! u had £120 at the start of the hand 3bet to £20 and have £90 left... this makes a difference in the hand. Surely you should have £100 left. Spent on a pint and burger by any chance?! :D

As their is 2 sides to every story I've gone ahead and poker stoved the hand for you...

Fwiw - Say you go ahead and bet the flop £33 into £60 Barry shoves allin for example its £67 to call to win £260.. which is 26% equity which does infact equal a call. AA vs JJ, TT, 88, KQ, JT = 30.9%  equity against this range and I guess you have the backdoor FD... you can't pass if the hand is played in this fashion. But like I said I'm not betting this flop.

Hand B I would prefer to check and see what happens. A shove will kill all the hands that you beat and get action from 2pairs+ and the strongest draws. Like you say Pyso you can't really bet out then fold, given your SPR, but it is possible to check/fold if you think you're way behind. On the other hand a shove = no more pain and you don't have a tough decision later.

Yes a check will give some hands a free card to beat you but thats the least worst option here IMO.

Checking lets you see what the other guys do before you commit any more chips to the pot. If the flop goes check/check/check then you can feel much better about your AA on the turn, because the two pairs and sets will almost always bet that flop. If the flop goes check/bet/raise then you can muck those aces.

Also checking may induce a bet from top pair or worse. If it goes check/check/bet or check/bet/fold then you probably have to shove.

Horrible spot coz of the board and yr position and your SPR. What do you do if it goes check/bet/call? Thats the toughest one. I probably tank-fold depending on players.

Not sure what you mean by 'poor use of SPR' - are you saying that you could have raised more pre to give you an easier decision on the flop?

I honestly dont think getting your stack in with an ace and another ace on ANY flop at the DTD .50/1 is ever -ev in the long run.

Hand one sounds like maniac will easily stack off with K x also just unlucky he had the 5.

Hand two I think Barrys call is pretty standard and he just finds his dream flop to cooler you. I probs prefer a check raise on the flop to get some value from worse but I am never folding on the flop and I dont really want to see a turn with any chips in my control.

I don't know what SPR is but I do know that if it might cause you to fold AA on any flop with only 100bbs you shouldn't be using it.

I really can't see anything that needs analysing here tbh. You've got a really nice hand that just happened to lose.

Move on to the next one.

SPR= Stack to pot ratio.

Www.Twotimesfiftypenceequalsonepound.com

Is it of any use whatsoever when you have an ace.......

.......and another ace?

Yes.  It's basically about pot control.  When you have a hand like AA or KK you obviously have a monster pre-flop and are usually ahead on the flop.  But your hand is unlikely to improve - and so with 100BBs you want to get your chips (and your opponents') in ASAP - ideally pre-flop.  If you have a drawing hand, you're often behind pre-flop and usually on the flop.  In that case you want to consider how much to bet in terms of the size of your stack (or your effective stack compared to the others stacks involved) and how big the pot will get.  If you are deep, you obviously don't want to be donking off your entire stack with one card to come and you haven't hit, when you could have lost far less.  Of course there are loads more factors other than SPR to consider, and most players are aware of it (as I know you are) without knowing that there's a term and a whole book about it.

With AA and 100BBs, it's really a case of trying to get those chips in, and reload if you're beat.

So it's one of those silly things that people use to overcomplicate simple situations?

I thought so.

Thanks for clearing that up.

If your playing 500 bigs deep it might be useful.

You should be able to gauge your bet sizes and pot control with out the use of SPR.

With a raise and a call I think £12 is too small, I prefer to make it £18-22 and obv never thinking about folding AA on that flop.

Hands two is a bad flop but we have A and another A, I commit bet / call.

You might not call it SPR, but that's what you're doing when you're gauging your bet sizes and controlling the pot.  DUCY?


Maybe.  But it can be very useful. An obvious situation is playing AK when you're deep.

No not really mate?

Yeah you are in a way, but your not letting it dictate or cloud your judgement.

It's just one factor to take into account in your decision making.  Ignoring it (you don't have to call it SPR) would be a bad thing.

The more you go on, the more i think about it, and the more irrelevant it becomes.

I think it struggles to become more irrelevant than it ever was. DUCY?

Thanks for the replies.

I kind of knew that Hand A was ok and that I should have check/folded Hand B.

My post really was highlighting the danger of reading poker literature - if I hadn't have read that book my poker knowledge, instincts and experience would have slowed me down on hand B.

Oh well.

spr sounds lika a load of bollocks to me. did someone make it up so they could claim they had some new concept in a book they wrote by any chance?

Meh, it is kind of common sense basically but it does have relevance. Especially when considering bet sizing, which is something a lot of people do extremely badly in poker. In fact the first tell that someone is bad at poker is their bet sizing.

but bet sizing is all it is isn't it?

this is where i was going

if you know how to size your bets then spr is irrelevant whether you have 100 or 500 bigs

i ducy with matts post also

and Pyso i dont think you should be check folding hand B its far to weak/passive you have an overpair ffs you shouldnt be folding light and you dont have enough chips to fold properly

c/f aa?

Hand A: Fine
Hand B: Do`nt f`k with Barry Neville

The amount of counters you bet in relation to the amount of counters you have left, the number of counters in the pot, and the number of counters in your oppos stack is a basic fundamental of poker. See how I used the word counters there to show just how basic?

I would have preffered to have seen the word 'thingies' myself

You need to take into account that some counters count for more.

Do counters count more than thingies count?

SPR is a numerical way to plan out the hand and help with starting hand selection. Different hands play better with certain SPRs. Rather than 'clouding' a players judgment, this simple number (the ratio of the flop-pot to the rest of your stack) provides short cuts, giving you more time to look Barry Neville in the eye and say 'who the fk r u?' to get a read off him.

Hand 1. Horrible rr size. If he folds fine, but also you've made a big reraise before and he folded. He might not this time. £12 is just a ghey size. Put a score in the pot pls and then play the rest of the hand as it was anyway.

Hand 2 - Barry mfkin Neville!

Hand 2 is a gross spot but in this game you're still well ahead of both guys pre calling range and what they are going to get it in with. i.e. you know they are shipping any pair draw and any flush draw so bet/fold cant be an option. C/f is pretty weak and if UTG bets and Barry shoves you can still call proftably but it's close. You lose a bit of value in the long run but meh neither getting it in nor folding is terrible.

Also Barry Neville is really pretty poor, especially given that in this game he doesnt care about stacking light, he is one of those players that in smaller tourneys or cash games just plays bad. The mere fact he said he knew you had AA/KK and still called pre with JJ is so lol when youre 100bb deep. He also lies a lot at the table and still tells bad beat stories. Not a hate on Barry, he's probably a decent guy its just hilarious how much ppl respect him in Notts.