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February 20, 2015
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(This is more of a vent. If someone else learns from this, I will be grateful.)
Two hands defined my little one drop experience today. I know I have to learn in order to get better, but it is very disappointing that I can’t pick some of these concepts up as quickly as other things in my life. That said, I can always use humility, so there is that.
The V in these hands is very laggy and has shown down several bluffs but also gotten there several times. To borrow from HOH, the rope-a-dope strategy generally works great, especially when in position because I can keep calling.
In the first hand, I’ve flatted his preflop raise with tens and are heads up going into the flop. The flop is T53 rainbow. He bets, and I call. The river is a deuce and a second diamond. I know I still have the best hand. He bets again, and I raise. I don’t understand why I did this. What am I targeting with a raise, an overpair? He has so much else in his range that he won’t call with.
I thought about this afterward, and I realized that I raised because I was afraid he was going to draw out on me somehow if I called. This is such an elementary mistake. The only river card that would scare me is a 4 (not even a diamond really). So be it. Anyway, I raise the turn, and he folds. But, at least I can recognize this error.
(Hand 1.5, he 3-bet me all in on the turn when I tried to represent top pair. The specifics of this hand would be great to share, but I didn’t remember them. Learning more about bluffs is something I’m going to focus on when I get home, because “being tired of watching him be aggressive at the table” is an insufficient reason to bluff-raise someone. I mean come on.)
Hand 2, now.
Blinds are 150/300/50. I have about 13K. V has about 20K. We are 8-handed. I am UTG with 88, and I raise to 600. He is on the button and thinks I raised to 800, so he “calls.” The guy on my right points out that it counts as a raise so he has to put at least 900, so he does. The blinds fold. I ask the dealer if I can raise, because I thought it would look strong if I asked. (Of course I can raise.) Anyway, I make it 2100, and he calls again.
Pot is 5050. The flop is J9x, and I lead 3100 to continue the line. He tanks and puts me all in.
I tanked for 2 or 3 minutes, and leveled myself into thinking he was trying to bluff me. I called. He had AJo, and I did not improve. I must have looked like Napoleon Dynamite running out of Brasilia after that. So awkward.
If I had folded on the flop I would have still had 27 bigs left in a tournament with 1-hour levels. Instead I call a raise from someone who easily could have AJ, A9, J9+, 97+. It was very disappointing to go 4 hours showing great patience and building a stack (at least till Hand 1.5—I didn’t do much after that because I went card dead) to let it come to this.
I get that I was unlucky he hit a jack on the flop (bet sizing is a fair discussion of course), but when he raised me, that should have allowed me to let the hand go. It even occurred to me at the time, but I just couldn’t convince myself. It was just so easy to say, “call.”
Anyway, the second flight is tomorrow, but with the tough table I had today (regardless of these hands, it was a tough table anyway—the recs have all gone home for the summer it appears), it would be even tougher tomorrow because more pros are out of the main. I’m leaning strongly toward continued study instead of firing another bullet because, even if I can exhibit greater patience (I’ve been doing better and better since I got here with my play), the competition will be even tougher tomorrow.
Like I said, more of a vent. I know these are common problems, and next year I will be that much better. Thanks for reading.
TPE Pro
August 25, 2012
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I think the first hand is absolutely fine – it’s not a bad play to raise the turn on that board when it becomes more dynamic, since there are some river cards which could cost you action (4, 6, A, diamond), and yes, you do get a ton of value from villain’s overpairs.
Just because he’s aggressive you can’t assume that he a) literally can’t ever have a strong hand, and b) he’s always going to bluff the river. It’s much more important to get all of villain’s chips every time he has 55, 33, 22 or JJ+ than it is to get one extra bet on the occasions he has KQ or some other random hand.
Don’t beat yourself up just because he folded. Just take it as an opportunity to recognise that if you really think that raise was so bad because he’s folding so much to it, then next time you can float flop/raise turn as a bluff and profit! Nice hand sir, villain had nothing and couldn’t pay us off this time, no big deal.
Second hand, though…second hand is a bit of a disaster. Why did you decide to make it 2100 when villain is almost guaranteed to call? You mention it looking strong, but what’s the goal here? Get him to fold 99? Get value from 77? Not really sure. It seems much more logical to simply call the 300 with your entire range and then play the flop as if you had raised to 900 and he had called – either that, or make a 4-bet big enough that he’s almost guaranteed to fold his entire range (~3k), or you could even just jam preflop if you think he never flats that spot with a hand that can call it off.
On the flop, J9x is one of the best flops for his flatting preflop range, and 88 is one of the worst bluff hands to use on that flop since you only have two outs to improve to middle set. Your flop bet is also quite big (~2200 would probably accomplish the same thing). Then, when he shoves, let’s imagine that the worst hand in his range is QT or KQ – each of those hands have 10-12 outs against your hand, which means best case scenario you have about 60-65% equity, compared to the worst case scenario of you having about 10% equity or less when you only have two outs.
The real problem with making ‘hero-calls’ on the flop in all-in situations is that your opponent gets to realise their full equity and see both the turn and the river, meaning that if you are ahead, you’re not likely to be very far ahead. In this spot, villain is shoving into your range for 4-betting and betting big on a flop that hits his range – the reason he tanked before shoving was likely because he wasn’t sure he actually ever gets called by worse. Your range includes a lot of QQ+ in that spot and I imagine he was extremely surprised to see 88.
I know people like to talk about patience, but I don’t actually think that’s the issue. I think in most cases, people are impatient because they desire greater control over their results – they think they can just play a hand right now and make more chips, so why would they wait? In this scenario, I think your call was less dictated by patience and more dictated by a desire to overcome the reality that this was simply not a favourable board for your hand and not a favourable spot to call it off, and those are things you don’t control. A lot of spots in poker are not favourable, and that’s okay.
You might have been thinking, “well, this isn’t a great spot, but if I can pick off a bluff here then I might win a big pot 55% of the time”, when in reality the more appropriate thought process might have been, “well, there are a lot of times when this 4-bet pot is going to be a good spot for me against a player like this, but third pair with two outs on a bad board isn’t one of them”.
I recognise there’s very little difference between patience and accepting a lack of control, and that in this case they’re kind of the same. But I think a ton of mistakes in poker come from trying to control the uncontrollable or force a hand in a direction it just won’t go, and this was one of them.
First hand was great though, so one out of two ain’t bad at all. 🙂
February 20, 2015
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Thanks. I’ll be reading your response several times more.
February 5, 2015
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Hey Joel…sorry to hear you had a bad experience…I actually took a pen and paper out as I was playing the other night to write down your hands to see what I thought about it…but I got carried away under my own avalanche of disaster…
Then I thought… Id probably only tell you to do the wrong thing anyway! So it’s no great loss…
But I did read your post and wanted to comment.
It is my daughter’s 8th birthday tonight so I will only do the first hand.
Edit: I just deleted the post i wrote about your first hand, because I got it all wrong lol! I mis-read the order of events.
So just instead take this post as acknowledgement that I was thinking about you at least!
Anyway…cake time!
February 20, 2015
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Today is my cat’s 11th birthday
January 20, 2014
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Hey Joel! Good post. I agree with Matt, I like the first hand. The second hand, not as much. Basically ditto to what Matt said. One thing that has helped me a lot is always thinking of what the villain’s range is. Every time after he does an action, I ask myself the question, “What does this say about his range?” So on the flop of J 9 x, those middling cards there pretty much smack a villain’s button calling range.
December 30, 2015
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Matt already said it all very well but just to add to the point. I think your line on the first hand was great! Reasons to raise the turn:
1. V is showing interest.
2. We are likely still very much ahead.
3. If V is on a draw, he may call whereas on the river he may just give up. If we just call it is in hopes of a river bluff which is not guaranteed at all.
4. If V is not on a draw there are scare cards on the river that could shut down action.
5. If V is strong with an over-pair, 2-pair or under-set, there are scare cards on the river that could shut down action.
6. Protection. I see this used as a dirty word, but it has it’s place and the turn brings several draws. Why let V set the price? Charge’m.
Top-set on a dry board is probably only maxing-out at 2 streets of value a lot of the time, and often not the first two. In this case, you already got 2 streets buy the turn. The check-raise would have made 3, which is awesome. You gave yourself a chance for 3+ streets of value. Plus, if V had JJ+ you gave V an opportunity to spaz out on a wet board to protect his own hand.
There is a place to call and keep in bluffs and worse cards, but I don’t think this was one of them.
Hand #2 is an interesting shove spot. V clearly made a mistaken raise. Shoving could work 2 ways. 1) We win the hand risk-free with a hand that doesn’t flop well (unless we hit a set). 2) Less likely, but it looks like we are taking advantage of a super obvious mistake and we could get looked-up by worse. I was actually in V’s shoes recently and dropped an extra chip in to call by accident (I almost always verbalize my action too, so this was extra frustrating and embarrassing). It folded back around to the big stack who opened and V just shoved and there was nothing I could do about it. I doubt he had JJ+ since it was super obvious I didn’t intend to raise in the first place, severely capping my range, but I’m not risking my tournament life on a hand that I wasn’t even going to raise with. Someone could do this as an angle, but it isn’t above-board and the floorman may get involved and kill the hand. It would be pretty obvious too if the guy “accidentally raised”, called, and then flopped over AA. I’m not sure how all card rooms handle this, and it probably depends on how much is on the line, but it would never be less than a warning, would it? If it is for someone’s tourney life it may be a stack reset and time-out-penalty the first time and disqualify the second?
February 20, 2015
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Thanks for your post. I already am counting down the 11 months till I go back. I appreciate having another angle to view the bustout hand.
I don’t know why I get so worried about looking like an asshole (if I had shoved). The object of the game is to get all the chips. In addition, I was far more likable than he was at that point, so if anything the table would have had a giggle.
There’s something to learn from every experience.
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