Tournament hand of the week: 26th November

[Royal Flush]

Wanted to type a proper reply before I left home this evening but I ran out of time. So in the meantime I will just post to say that I agree with the line rookie takes against a check raise, we still go bust against sets but maxamise the chances he is bluffing. This is a highly important point those of you who said 3 bet AI are missing a lot of value in these spots although I appreciate that most people posting in the thread are unfamiliar with having this table image, except rookie and jim who opt for the flat call.

I will reveal my action later tonight so mad can read it in the morning :-)

[bhoywonder]

im overbetting the pot here

there is roughly 3400 in the pot

im firing 5000 into it rite now


1.you have one pair.....if he has A rag ,he can catch you (with a freak 2 pair )..you may be vulnerable

2. if he has a set,he may and probably will refire back at you...your good enough to lay it down

3.If he has nothing , so be it..were you gonna extract any more with an ace on the flop?

4. your image if u play for value may work against you ( slowplaying )


ermmm if he just flat calls  then I can only say.....errrrr......and leave it up to your hand reading skills to see where  you are


( I havent read the replys yet .I'm about to and am probably well off the mark )

[LuckyLloyd]

im overbetting the pot here

there is roughly 3400 in the pot

im firing 5000 into it rite now


1.you have one pair.....if he has A rag ,he can catch you (with a freak 2 pair )..you may be vulnerable

2. if he has a set,he may and probably will refire back at you...your good enough to lay it down

3.If he has nothing , so be it..were you gonna extract any more with an ace on the flop?

4. your image if u play for value may work against you ( slowplaying )


ermmm if he just flat calls  then I can only say.....errrrr......and leave it up to your hand reading skills to see where  you are


( I havent read the replys yet .I'm about to and am probably well off the mark )

Hi Bhoywonder,

I would suggest the above is quite incorrect and you are possibly applying some flawed thought processes to this hand.

Overbetting the pot is generally incorrect as it makes it near impossible for players to continue against you with worse hands. Remember, if he is on a flushdraw here we would like him in the hand. The entire point of poker is to get the most value from your opponents when you have the best hand; and lose the least when you have the worst hand. The way to do this is to bet enough so that your opponents will call your bet WHILE MAKING A MISTAKE. This isn't terribly easy a lot of the time I will admit - and I remember a time where I was scared to see more cards and wanted to end hands as soon as possible because I was afraid of getting dogged. If we bet 2200 we create the possibility that our opponent decides to continue with a worse one pair hand; continue with a draw; think that we are just continuation betting a missed flop and are weak. As such, we make it possible for our opponent to call a worse hand because they think they are ahead; or raise a worse hand because they think we might fold.

Finally, remember that it is important for us to bet a lot of hands and lead out on this flop some of the time when we don't have TPTK and could not continue to aggression from our opponent. We will need to win pots without good cards and, as such, we need to balance our play and can't just overbet here because we have a strong hand and don't wish to get outdrawn; and bet less or give up the times we have weaker hands. This would make us very predictable and easy to play against. And we would be unlikely to have much success unless we hit lots and lots of good hands and boards.


Now, your other points:

1) If he has a weaker Ace he only has three outs. It is incredibly unlikely that he will outdraw us with only two cards to come. As such, we really want to keep him in the hand. It would be a disaster if we folded him out. So betting about 2 / 3 of the pot is preferable here. Particularly given our aggressive image;

2) It would be very unprofitable for us to bet 5k to win 3.5k with the intention of folding to a further reraise. Yes, if we bet 5k and he goes all in we may very well be facing a set in such a scenario. But there is no reason to think he must have a set given the preflop action. There are many hands in his range here and we need to make the play that is most optimal against ALL of the hands he may be folding. So, making it 5k and folding to a CRAI may save us money against a set. But it loses chips from everything else and will reduce our expectation over time;

3) Yes. Given our aggressive image there is a distinct possibility that he calls a bet or two if he has a weaker Ace; a pocket pair. He will at least call the bet if he has flopped a flushdraw. We can definitely win chips here from weaker hands - and our hand is very strong;

4) If we bet out at this flop for 2200 we aren't slowplaying. We are playing normally for value. We are just keeping our play deceptive and balanced; and helping to widen the range of hands our opponent can reasonably and logically wish to continue with;

I hope this helps. Good luck.

[Royal Flush]

im overbetting the pot here

there is roughly 3400 in the pot

im firing 5000 into it rite now


1.you have one pair.....if he has A rag ,he can catch you (with a freak 2 pair )..you may be vulnerable

2. if he has a set,he may and probably will refire back at you...your good enough to lay it down

3.If he has nothing , so be it..were you gonna extract any more with an ace on the flop?

4. your image if u play for value may work against you ( slowplaying )


ermmm if he just flat calls  then I can only say.....errrrr......and leave it up to your hand reading skills to see where  you are


( I havent read the replys yet .I'm about to and am probably well off the mark )

Hi Bhoywonder,

I would suggest the above is quite incorrect and you are possibly applying some flawed thought processes to this hand.

Overbetting the pot is generally incorrect as it makes it near impossible for players to continue against you with worse hands. Remember, if he is on a flushdraw here we would like him in the hand. The entire point of poker is to get the most value from your opponents when you have the best hand; and lose the least when you have the worst hand. The way to do this is to bet enough so that your opponents will call your bet WHILE MAKING A MISTAKE. This isn't terribly easy a lot of the time I will admit - and I remember a time where I was scared to see more cards and wanted to end hands as soon as possible because I was afraid of getting dogged. If we bet 2200 we create the possibility that our opponent decides to continue with a worse one pair hand; continue with a draw; think that we are just continuation betting a missed flop and are weak. As such, we make it possible for our opponent to call a worse hand because they think they are ahead; or raise a worse hand because they think we might fold.

Finally, remember that it is important for us to bet a lot of hands and lead out on this flop some of the time when we don't have TPTK and could not continue to aggression from our opponent. We will need to win pots without good cards and, as such, we need to balance our play and can't just overbet here because we have a strong hand and don't wish to get outdrawn; and bet less or give up the times we have weaker hands. This would make us very predictable and easy to play against. And we would be unlikely to have much success unless we hit lots and lots of good hands and boards.


Now, your other points:

1) If he has a weaker Ace he only has three outs. It is incredibly unlikely that he will outdraw us with only two cards to come. As such, we really want to keep him in the hand. It would be a disaster if we folded him out. So betting about 2 / 3 of the pot is preferable here. Particularly given our aggressive image;

2) It would be very unprofitable for us to bet 5k to win 3.5k with the intention of folding to a further reraise. Yes, if we bet 5k and he goes all in we may very well be facing a set in such a scenario. But there is no reason to think he must have a set given the preflop action. There are many hands in his range here and we need to make the play that is most optimal against ALL of the hands he may be folding. So, making it 5k and folding to a CRAI may save us money against a set. But it loses chips from everything else and will reduce our expectation over time;

3) Yes. Given our aggressive image there is a distinct possibility that he calls a bet or two if he has a weaker Ace; a pocket pair. He will at least call the bet if he has flopped a flushdraw. We can definitely win chips here from weaker hands - and our hand is very strong;

4) If we bet out at this flop for 2200 we aren't slowplaying. We are playing normally for value. We are just keeping our play deceptive and balanced; and helping to widen the range of hands our opponent can reasonably and logically wish to continue with;

I hope this helps. Good luck.

Bhoy i read your post whilst i was playing in the Brighton festival tonight and was forming a reply in my head whilst in the cash game, only to come on here and find a perfect answer. Lloyd i read your PHA posts during my hiatus and i have to say i don't think as yet i have disagreed with a single point you have made on this board, are you my twin?

[Royal Flush]

So my action.....


I felt that i could well be played back at on this hand, the timing seemed right and the player was very capable. I was also aware i could easily walk into a big hand in this pot, as such i would have a lot of difficulty dealing with a check raise, basically i would have no idea what i was facing either a hand or a move. Given this situation i wanted to try to control the pot, but also still get action for my monster hand. To do this i thought a good line would be checking the flop to further under represent my hand and also keep the pot smaller. This meant i thought i could play the hand without risking all my stack and also yet again increase my opponents bluff potential, a very desirable situation when we have 1 pair!

So when Adam checked i checked behind.


The turn card came 

A perfect card keeping the board near perfect for AK.

Adam sat and thought for about a minute and checked the turn, this time i decided now was the time to give him the potential to hang himself and i fired out 2.8k, he dwelt for another minute and then raised to 7k. Although i was making my play to optimise the chance he plays back at me it is still the first time he has done so all tournament and i am now still stuck with a decision. I was expecting him to pass here nearly all the time. So now the question is fold? (You can obviously guess this is not the line i took by my earlier thought process but it is still a possible course of action. A set is still possible) Call? or Raise?

There are strong arguments for both calling and raising now in this situation as it is not a very common spot, i look forward to reading explanations and arguments for both actions during the course of tomorrow. I wonder if anyone can persuade me to opt now for the opposite option to the one i chose as its a pretty thin decision either way.

[boldie]

nothing changed on the turn. In fact it's even more likely now that he thinks you're at it. Flatcall here (as Rookie suggested on the flop if you had bet and he's check-raised you) and let him hang himself on the river.

[LuckyLloyd]

SICK!!

There are a number of problems with this spot, namely folding to the turn checkraise is a hard thing to do - almost impossible. However, if you call:

- The pot will be 17800 and he will only have 11600 behind meaning you get ~ 2.5 / 1 if (WHEN - if he's good) he shoves the river;

- When you call here you are never floating or drawing and you rarely have better than one pair. Your hand will begin to look exactly like what it is because the maths of the situation will throw your image or previous play out the window. A decent hand reader will realise that your line is now heavily weighted towards AK - AJ;

If you shove now he never calls worse; never folds better.


You see, thing is that this turn checkraise can be a set, a flushdraw or badugi. Our previous play at the table indicates that we  will fire at this turn with basically our whole range if he checks to us. So it's actually a great spot for him:

- If he has air or a flushdraw he can checkraise knowing that it is a horrible spot for us and we can only actually continue most times with the strong part of our range - and definitely expect that he gets plenty of better hands to fold;

- If he has a set he can checkraise knowing that he gets enough money in the pot to set up a very profitable value shove on all rivers. He'll know that we get put in a horrible spot with A10 - AK the times we have it; and if we have air and can't continue he has comfortably extracted an extra bet from us on the turn;

And the best part is that he can shove all of his air, flushdraw, two pair+ hands on the river very profitably. And it really isn't very profitable for us no matter what we do given the price we will be getting on the end.

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All of that said, the above thinking assumes this guy is good. If:

- He's bad enough to do this with a one pair bluff catcher;
- He's bad enough to make this play with a flushdraw and checkfold the river when he misses;
- He's bad enough to do something other than shoving the river with two pair plus after we call the turn;

Then I would feel great about a turn call. The better he is; the wider his range; and the more balanced his play: the more exploitable our position is. And the more I actually would like to fold the turn, making sure we don't show and lie about what we have. Seriously.

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Finally, this spot is ridiculously sick. I mean awful, horrible, throw up sick.

[JungleCat03]

Lloyd, are you my twin?

tut, back two minutes and you're already insulting members of the forum.

As for the turn check raise, you can't really fold this as your hand is so under-represented (unless you have a very strong read on Adam that he has a big hand here.) He is likely to check raise you with a reasonably wide range given your table image.

Whether you call or push all depends how likely he is to fire a 2nd barrel at the river. When you call the turn the pot has got to the stage where it is fairly hard for him to push you off most hands on the river as you clearly have something reasonable so I would lean towards him giving up quite often when his check raise on the turn fails.

As this is the case, I would probably shove the turn now. I guess it might mean he can find a fold with an ace, but I don't think that makes up a big part of his range. Shoving means you either get him to make a bad call with a draw, or fold out those hands that wont pay you off/ bluff that often on the river unless they improve to a winner.

[tikay]

This is all a bit above me, I think in much simpler terms, but it's a fascinating read, & a great insight to how "proper" players play.

But I can't get past Step 1 yet. We made it 1,400 (at 200-400) after URG had already limped. So we underbet this - & we did so, if I understand the thread correctly, deliberately.

In your spot, I'd have either.....

a) Raised "properly" - made it about 2,000, thus asking a decent question & hopefully get a decent clarification of where we are. Maybe we would have been spared these difficult problems on the Turn if we'd bet properly pre-flop?

b) Limped. Now, I can see everyone throwing their arms up in horror at limping, after an UTG Limper, with AK, but it does have it's merits - because it un-nerves HIM, too. AND it helps control the Pot size. And enables me, be it on street 1 or 2, to get away cheaper if it starts to smell sussy.

But over & above all that, I love this notion of the balance between winning a little with low risk, & turning up the Risk-Dial & optimising what we can win. It's a bit advanced, & risky for me - I try to minimise the "gamble" - but that's the beauty of the game, we all run at it from different angles. And get different results. But for me, I just can't consider the notion of deliberately "teasing" my UTG Oppo into the hand when I have AK. I EITHER want to see where we are, OR limit our loss/win by limping, & leaving myself an escape route.

[MKKfish]

i"t is still the first time he has done so all tournament and i am now still stuck with a decision"


Oooh I knew summat was gonna happen lol but this is a particularly brutal position... given your flop check you don't really have that much pain invested in the pot - I give it up here.


TK - when you limp with AK do you bring your own vaseline?

[tikay]

i"t is still the first time he has done so all tournament and i am now still stuck with a decision"


Oooh I knew summat was gonna happen lol but this is a particularly brutal position... given your flop check you don't really have that much pain invested in the pot - I give it up here.


TK - when you limp with AK do you bring your own vaseline?

Early in a Tourney, I almost always limp with AK. It works best for me, I get seriously paid if I hit - nobody expects anyone to limp with AK - and I can get off it cheaply if need be, but later in the Tourney, I bully strongly with it. The dificult part (for me) is the stage where Flushy had it - early to mid-comp. Added to which, I'm not comfortable playing down the streets, whereas Flushy is. So I play it very different, but I still don't like his 1,400 opener, it's neither here nor there.

[AlexMartin]

m8boy has 33.

[Graham C]

I sometimes limp with AK early on in a tournament too. I don't see the need to get too excited when the pots aren't that great and it more than likely won't make a significant difference to me picking up the blinds.

Given the action taken on the flop, I'm not sure how the changes things here.  OK you've been check raised on the turn, but weren't we expecting that on the flop?  It's a 'harmless' card in the structure of the board cards so I don't see how your position can change.  Would the guy not be waiting for you to bet before raising? Wanting to extract more money for his AQ ( )

If you were going to push to a check raise on the flop, I can't see how you can pass now.  There's probably not going to be a  better time to do it, so move all in here.

[MKKfish]

This has to been seen in the context of the tourney....we're not in a $10 mtt fishfest here.

TPTK is just so not what I'm gonna go to town with here. I'm folding and sit with still 33% better than average stack.

[ifm]

This is the reason i checked the flop behind, because i think i'm ahead and i'm trying to induce the bluff.
So this is pretty much where i wanted to be (i woulda reraised if he led the turn) so i can only  shove here and be shown a monster!!
Seriously the point is to show a dislike for the ace on the flop, show weakness to get into this spot.
No point checking the flop if you're not going all the way now.
I still think he has suited connectors, flush draw and gutshot.