blonde poker forum

Live DTD500 Tournament

£500 entry

150 runners
around 50-60 left, late in day 1a, about 1 hour left.


@ 1k/2k we're playing 100k
Villain covers - John 'skalie' Kalmar
history/ reads - we've never played with John before today but we know of him and that he's been 'around' for a while in the poker world.  We've seen him overplay some hands in some relatively 'standard' spots.. not sure if this is me under-estimating him or that he's so good he was playing a level above, either way he got it in 3 way with 1 out and boomed a big triple up earlier.  Seems a bit of a 'live pro' and as such doesn't like the fold button.


We're in the SB and have the old  Kd Qd, John opens UTG to 5k and gets a caller behind (50+ recreational player), I dont like reraising here and so just call, BB comes along.

I've played very few hands but very aggressive, 3bt/5bting 22 vs AA a few orbits earlier which chopped off my CL and now I'm sat with 100k and avg @ 50-60kish.

We see a flop 4 ways
Pot 22k
FLOP
 Jd Td Jh

checks around....

Pot 22k
TURN
 3d

We lead 10k, BB folds, John calls, btn folds

Pot 32k
RIVER
 4s or other brick

We take a lot of time working out best way to play this, thinking that if we check we miss value from so many hands and rely on him betting his Jx or flushes/ better hands.. (some of which he obv will bet himself) and allow him to get away with QQ+/ Jx or other value hands he doesn't bet.  

So we want to bet, but how much, we have around 95k and the pot is 32k.... our two options as i see it are to bet 10-15k and call a raise up to 50k... or to bet 25-40k and fold to a raise...

I KNOW he should never raise worse, but we should give him some % of  Ad Ts type hands even if it as small as 1-5%.

I decide the best way with our reads on him and that he is less likely to fold than the other 'good' players at the table is that to exploit him we should be betting bigger for value.

I make it 32.6k after a couple of minutes thinking.

He takes 20-30secs fiddling with his call, then says 'raise' and makes it 70k.

Fuck.  

I know I'd already thought about this and as such it should be a snap fold, because that's why we bet so big but I just started to wonder..... "he did overplay those hands.. maybe he's taking off...."

wwyd and why?  comments on all streets welcome..

His smooth call on the turn probably tells the story

If I was to lead out the river & get raised I puke fold too

wow fyl
bet bigger ott like 15k-ish.
river it depends how we perceive hes gonna play Ad - i think it makes up for ~ 20% of his range. doubt hes checking Jx and QQ+ that often otf. if he does, c/shoving starts becoming realllly really good - speshly if hes bluffing Ad
vs a thinking player i q like the idea of the river overbet - i think a bigger sizing would be perceived more bluffy tho.
as played dont see any reason for him to value raise any mediumish hands ala AA, KK or even a low flush for the few % he cbacks OTF vs what looks a perceived polarized range.
so id theoratically f... i dont know mate! :P
although its tough for villain to have Axdd id say we're gonna see JJ and JTs more often than we think. 

...
God if hes bluffing the bare Ad even <20% of the time he has it we're super exploitable .. dunno how often we have JTs, TT, JJ and Axdd. and these hands mite even be = KQdd

Despite your reads on Skalie he is very experienced and despite not being able to write a 3 paragraph post on how linear his 3 to 5 bet range is he CAN read hands, which is why I think you've bet a little too big OTR.

This all being said it's highly likely he has it, pretty sure he has a bluff here in him, but likely just has TT or JJ, with us having both the Kd and the Qd its very unlikely he has a flush (very likely he could open A9/A8 or something suited UTG but prolly doesn't) there is no way he'd raise a smaller flush for value and he'd be pretty likely to c-bet those hands.

I think you have gotten a bit caught up in attempting to exploit here, just bet 21k and give AA ot ATs a kind of easy-ish call imo + defo bet the turn a little bigger and make qq-aa with a blue card pay.

genuine lol

You are always losing here vs Skalie. Always.

On a side note:

This is not true at all. We have all the full houses in our range (apart from the rivered one).

appreciating the comments...

So far no one has even commented on my different options on the river... how often we would do them or why....???


bigger on the turn seems to be across the board.. problem i had with that is I wouldn't put the turn going 3 ways out of the question.. and that makes the river a play for stacks pot with poor visibility and a 'good' hand in a monstrous sized pot.

Skalie's body language at the time was that he was keeping head in his arms chin on the table and making no eye contact and making his face as hard to see as possible.  I really am one for live tells and think they're massively under-estimated but often overused without enough evidence or samples (oh i saw a guy do this once as a bluff so this completely different guy must be the same).

I said I'd love him to tell me a story, I'd like him to even tell me a hand that would be worse and that as a bluff it would be sick.  But i really can't see him having worse here enough for this to be a call.

If we do bet smaller otr, or even consider a check, how much are we calling?

pretty sure I did.

options are in any spot Call, Raise or Fold.

Yes, he might be bluffing some Nth% of the time (pretty unlikely btw) but he rarely HAS the nut flush, and NEVER raises a worse flush so you are beaten, or his has gone of his lid with a bluff of some sort, what hands would he chk the flop and chk/call the turn with that he now would decide to bluff.  Ad Ts  certainly one (would he open ATo utg? not so sure) - but he'll be well aware you CAN have houses in your range so I'm pretty sure he wont go off bluffing with a naked NF blocker here.

He'd never chk a jack on the flop so he can't be bluffing with a JACK (not sure he'd do that for such a small raise) so really he has very few if any hands he can be bluffing with, coupled with the fact he 100% never raises worse for value (and cbets his non nut fush draws OTF a decent % - not that there are all that man. J8 89 78 67 56 79 68 57 but he won't always open these UTG - so highly unlikely he;ll even HAVE these hands by the river yet alone value raise them)

I think this pretty much eliminates Call. (he is never bluffing or Vraising worse)

Raise - the merit to raising would be to make him fold the nut flush. As established the only NF combo's are A9/A8/A7/A6/A2 and he doesn't open all of those all the time UTG, he cbets them most of the time on the flop and he raises them on the river rarely, so the likelihood of him having the nut flush is very small. SO this rules out Raising.

Fold - He would open JTs (2 combos available) JJ, TT from UTG and he would chk them a lot on the flop, he would also play 44 this way (which I think he would open sometimes UTG)  in fact these really are the only combo's of hands that consistently match his line throughout the hand.

Fold, 100% of the time for me. I actually think its way way  closer to a chk back on the river, instead of a bet/call.  But I think he CAN have AA-QQ here some% and maybe a smaller flush (unlikely but not impossible) so I guess betting is ftw. I would have considered checking back though.

Also the river bet is way too big (as I said) you're in a spot where your villain CAN have nutted hands (he checks flop with initative - would usually bet with weak hands - and calls your bet on a quite scary turn card) I would feel when I get to the river I had the best hand  A LOT, but he really doesn't have much of a range that can reasonably call you here on the river, so fair enough to say "lets exploit" but exploit what? you're exploiting yourself by over-betting a weak range off the pot and iso'ing yourself against the (very thin) top of his range (which he will c/r and you have to fold) 18-21k for me OTR.

This discussion would be REALLY interesting if we had 44 lol - as the same thoery applies but we no longer block most legit NF hands (Ak/Aq) so I guess it's a call given the price but interesting to here some thoughts :)

we're oop..

dont think it alters my post much.

Lets not forget this guy was the 4th place winner in the championship of the world...

Ad kd
If he genuinely had kq diamonds they it must have be king of hearts.
Either way nice fold!

Interesting!

Yer promise I had the Kd mate as I was fistpumping the flop, picturing you with AA and I make  Ad turn.

kinda sick if you did have  Ad Kh


Also, as mentioned above... kinda speculative raise otr if you thought you had a flush.......

Thing to remember is that skalie is losing his hair, this always induces people to commit mischief imo

:)

I'm seriously puking in my own mouth.... suprised he even raised what he thought was a flush....

let alone thought he had  Ad Kd....

if i call there and still get AA vs KK next hand... I literally end the day with 450k.

Now that would have been a rungood day.

sick level.

How would you get AA vs KK next hand if you called?

thats what happened.... vs Tom Langley.... coolered the mate I had a % in... - ggggreeeat!

Discussed the hand with a friend and apparently he doesnt like overbetting the river either.
Am I completely off the track for saying that a good player in villain's shoes mite be more likely to call an overbet than a 20k ish bet/I-know-your-range-is-weak-so-i-bet-kinda-smallish-but-i-would-overbet-to-bluff-you-out bet with his bluffcatching range?

I know but if you call history changes. Who knows, cause and effect you might be out if you called with the K high flush

Well you're not really...However what can't lie is the maths/facts and figures. If our iconic villian has KK here, he could much more realistically call 20k than 32.6k as the success rate on the call needs to be lower.  This doesn't mean we should bet big without it and small with it, I think the overbet is generically viewed as stronger in these spots as it's actually often a less appealing buff as once again the success rate on it needs to be much higher. SO really we could bet 18-22k here with our entire range and given that Skalie's "CALLING" range is pretty weak it would work as well as a bluff as a value bet - basically the ultimate aim of any bet should be to put your oppo into a situation where they cannot make a good decision vs you, so when it neither a good call or a good fold with AA here, we win the hand irrespective of who has what and what happens.

Also off topic slightly but in my experience of live poker, the over-bet is generally thought off as very strong, for the simple reason that 85% of the time anyone does it (myself included) it's for value, the reason for this is that in most cases people llook you up more often live so in a lot of spots the best vacuum play is to bet big (obv always a tough strategy to balance over small samples, so no-one does) hence why it's always seen as strong.

:)up

thanks for the answer

yeh i think this stuff is right - im thinking too much theory bulls*** and in practice it gets called more often agree.

and im ALWAYS usually an advocate for betting big as default.

So.

Which villain is lying?

I think it's John. ;p

Think I would fold pre.

Ok, this is kinda important so I hope I can explain it properly. It is about 'right thinking' as much as anything else.

What you are talking about here is the levelling war. And the key point is this:

You cannot successfully engage in a levelling war unless you have some reason to believe you have greater knowledge of the level of your opponent's thoughts than he does of yours.

I can't stress this enough. If you have specific knowledge of your opponent and/or some history then you have some raw data with which you can start to construct thought processes for your opponent. But without this you are just engaged in pure guesswork. And when we make 'clever plays' that are informed by pure guesswork they usually turn out to be FPS and spew.

Maybe this particular villain really will think exactly like you described, and thus will be more likely to call big bets than small bets. But the opposite is just as likely to be true, and he'll call small bets yet fold to big ones. When trying to take advantage of your knowledge of opponents and manipulate them accordingly, your knowledge must be more than just hopes and guesses.

In addition, +1 to what Lil'Dave said in response to the quote above.

Makes a lot of sense.
Thanks for the answers.

Does anyone agree that betting slightly bigger than 21k also stops him 'taking off' more...?

thats definitely another piece of the puzzle to why we bet 32k, it achieves the following
- should get similar value from AA, KK, QQ, Jx, flushes
- shouldnt get raised often as a bluff because overbets are often nutty...
- trying to induce with 10-19k bet won't work enough to make it more profitable than this
- we have a K high flush which is a good hand, we should wager the maximum possible....?

:D

fwiw, john has got the pot size wrong and who was in the hand.

blinds 1200/2400/300, skalie opens to 5k, I flat from MP, a 20 year old kid with a headphone in, not a 50 year old recreational player. (i assume he thought the guy to my left flatted and not me but w/e) both blinds call = 5k x4 + antes = 22700 on the flop (playing 9 handed)

flop is JdTdJh which is checked by all 4 players.

turn baby diamond, cant remember what. john bets 10,200. bb folds, skalie calls, i fold. 22700 + (10,200x2) = 43,100 total pot on the river. Makes a huge difference in regards to johns bet sizing which was 32,600 i believe otr.

river 4s

IMO, i don't think were getting bluff raised otr very often at all. I bet something like 18k and snap fold to a raise (which i dont think is gona happen very often) and when it does come i expect it to be exclusively boats/quads. I feel villians range after checking round flop and calling turn is literally almost all pair based with the occasional AdKx AdQx combo. So i wana extract max value vs all those pairs but try to valuetown the lower pairs 55-88 just thinking were full of BS. (which john never is here, but ive seen some pretty bad calls before myself included)

Im pretty happy with b/f this river if I was the hero in this hand.

thread looked a bit boring so didnt read much of it but I'd probably lead the flop.  As played don't pot the river.  Just bet 24k or something pretty big then fold when he raises.

As it turns out if you bet 32.6k into 41,300 then folded to the river raise then I think you have played the hand near on optimally. Just to reiterate, this is NOT a good spot for someone to be bluffing in, so it is not a good spot for us to be calling in, if he has decided to go mental and bluff in a very bad spot then he's made the mistake making the play, you haven't made a mistake folding. It's a FOLD.

:)up

OH! Looks like we're on page 3 !

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David!

Please desist, we are talking naked aces, not near-naked bodies.

You always see the dirty side of everything don't you teacake? The point of the post was to highlight the fact that Keeley Hazell would have folded Kd Qd and an under-full, she said the worst hand she calls here is prolly TT. I think she is right, maybe if you stopped  gawping at her we could all learn a thing or two.
 

OK, you are prolly right, speshly as it is Miss Hazell, she always has the nuts.

Ffs where was the  Ad /  9d on the turn?! I think you have to stick with your original plan and fold here, can't see you winning enough of the time to make the call.

:D
Golden.

well played sir, good point, well made... Think Keeley's outlook on the hand was perfect and that she would definitely have gotten the truth out of Skalie even if I didn't.

Lil'D - great tekkers itt

Come on John, own up. You went for a thin one with your 73o and you had to tank fold it. Amirite?

As it turns out if you bet 32.6k into 41,300 then folded to the river raise then I think you have played the hand near on optimally. Just to reiterate, this is NOT a good spot for someone to be bluffing in, so it is not a good spot for us to be calling in, if he has decided to go mental and bluff in a very bad spot then he's made the mistake making the play, you haven't made a mistake folding. It's a FOLD.

:)up
[/quote]

nice