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May 16, 2015
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Hi All, First post, please be gentle. I've been playing exclusively in live low-stakes MTTs for a few years (strictly recreationally) but am still very much a newbie and looking to TPE to hopefully bring me to the next level!
I had a hand tonight I was particularly not sure about, so thought I would see if anyone here has any comments.
This is a €50 buy-in tourney with about 40 runners. Starting stacks of 12000. I had what we'll call bad luck a few hands in a row leaving me with about 6500.
Blinds are 100-200, no antes.
Hero is on the button w/ QQ.
UTG calls 200
(1 fold)
UTG+2 calls 200
(3 folds)
Hero raises to 1300, leaving 5200 behind.
SB folds
BB raises to 3000.
Everyone else folds.
1. Hero's raise sizing in the first place?
2. Hero's next move?
I'd love to hear what anyone else has to say about this before offering my own thoughts and what actually happened. Appreciate any insight and patience for a newbie!
April 30, 2015
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A couple of questions from me.
1. What is the villain's stack?
2. Any reads on the villain?
Your raise size to me is a bit bigger than normal, but it tells me you are committing yourself to the pot. The villain might just put you on a hand like JJ and re-raise to put you in a tough spot. I think depending on villain's stack and table image, you are either way ahead of his 3-bet range or marginally ahead. In any case I would assume even a fairly tight player would 3-bet on that spot with JJ+, AK+, which means you are behind AA and KK, and ahead of JJ, QQ(rare) and AK combinations. I would shove here.
May 16, 2015
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Villain definitely had me stacked, I think around 12K. No reads on villain, didn't know him and this was pretty early in the tournament. My vibe was that his reraise was more in the service of isolating me and helping to ensure dead money in the pot – in a fair number of hands previous to this one we had patterns like limp, limp, limp, raise, call, call, call and it's typical in early stages of this tournament that it takes a fair bit of aggression to get passive players to fold out. So I was not seeing his range here as super narrow but I tend to be a little over-optimistic when I pick up a good starting hand!
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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Definitely a shove over the 3bet, all but the tightest players will 3bet at least AK and JJ, and that's all you need in there to make this a profitable spot to get it in.
I think the more interesting question is your original sizing. As others have said, I do think your size makes it tough for you to have anything other than a very strong hand here. That might not matter too much if the limpers are simply way too loose and putting no thought into what you might have when they call your raise, but I suspect this is the reason there's any question in your mind about stacking off with QQ: you know that you've telegraphed a lot of strength with your raise, and now you're worried that someone wants to give you action anyway. The key is to avoid telegraphing that much strength in the first place
May 16, 2015
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Oo, thanks for the response Andrew 
– I'm a big fan of your podcast which is what brought me here in the first place. I guess with this raise I'm shooting for the situation where I can get unambiguously ahead of one villain and get a couple big bets out of him – or everyone folds and I think “I could have made more, but can't complain.” I prefer these type outcomes to winding up with multiple callers and getting a flop with an overcard. Then I will sometimes find myself in the situation I did find myself in, where the only thing left to do is shove and hope for the best.
In this case, villain showed KK and I went home having played about 2 rounds. I think though I want to defend my play, it probably would be better to raise less here. I'm still a little unclear how I get away however; let's say I raise to 700 and villain raises to 2K. Now I call? If so, I have a chance to win if we flop an A, but otherwise seems like the chips are going in with me far behind…
OR maybe the issue here is that I'm focusing on this one situation because it's where I lost the last of my chips; rather than thinking about how to play QQ vs. KK I need to think about how to play QQ here generally.
I'm thinking, given my original raise, is there any chance I should fold to the 3-bet? And I guess the answer is no – and since I shouldn't fold I should probably shove. If I put him on JJ+, AQ+, I'm 49% which is fine. Even if I put him on QQ+, AK I'm still 40%! Guess I'm reiterating your point, Foucault. And in fact, I have seen people fold to the four-bet here; not with KK+ obviously but this means I have at least some fold equity vs. AK.
I will play much weaker pairs like this in this spot as well. I find that many of the guys in this tournament will limp with just about anything when deep stacked but will frequently fold to a single large raise – and if I do get a call and I have 99, I'm often up against some kind of AT+ type hand and can still win the pot a lot of the time. I might prefer to have 99 with these stacks here because if I get 3-bet, I think I can give up without second thoughts. Would love to know if you think any of these thoughts are valid or am I completely off-base here? I'm continuing to watch your videos in order and though this is only the second tourney I've been in since joining TPE, think my game has improved quite a bit.
April 30, 2015
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May be if you took the line of raising lighter, the 3-bet from villain would be lighter as well and you could have called IP and evaluate if A or K hits the board on the flop? I know it is very very difficult to do this live and I am even considering this only after seeing the outcome of the hand.
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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quoirien said:
Oo, thanks for the response Andrew
Thanks! Glad to hear you like the show.
quoirien said:
I guess with this raise I'm shooting for the situation where I can get unambiguously ahead of one villain and get a couple big bets out of him – or everyone folds and I think “I could have made more, but can't complain.” I prefer these type outcomes to winding up with multiple callers and getting a flop with an overcard. Then I will sometimes find myself in the situation I did find myself in, where the only thing left to do is shove and hope for the best.
You can't finetune your outcomes like this. If multiple people call, multiple call. Getting three calls for 1000 is better than getting one call for 1300, even though it means you will win less often postflop. It's certainly better than getting no calls.
Here's how I see the situation: two of your opponents have (presumably) made the mistake of putting money into the pot with a weak range and weak position. Raising your button forces them either to invest even more money in this unappealing situation or forfeit their equity in the pot. Virtually any hand that is at least as good as their limping ranges benefits from this (even if you don't have a range advantage, you'll still have a positional advantage postflop, and your weakest hands will benefit from the fact that your range is uncapped and theirs is not).
The main thing that prevents you from making a huge raise here is the risk of one of the blinds waking up with a big hand and calling or re-raising you. The larger your button raise, the stronger your raising range has to be, which means that if you insist on using a very large size, you are forfeiting the opportunity to make this profitable play with some hands.
Your range should be wide enough that the blinds have some incentive to three-bet you with a wider range than {QQ+,AK} or whatever. The bigger your raise, the stronger you force your range to be, and so the less incentive they have to do this. Of course when they 3-bet it's bad for the worst hands you raise on the button, because they have to fold, but it's good for the best hands. I suppose my point is that QQ really ought to be one of the best hands in your range, rather than the worst.
When you have a hand as strong as Queens, your goal shouldn't be to suss out when someone has Kings so that you can fold, and the reason I'm suggesting a smaller raise isn't to enable you to get away with Queens. Rather, your goal should be to play in such a way that your opponents are incentivized to give you action when you have Queens, and you can feel pretty good about getting three-bet because you know you are at the top of your range.
Of course some opponents simply won't adapt to this and will just 3bet {QQ+,AK}, or even tighter than that, because that's just how they play. If you know you're up against one of those players, then you can consider folding QQ, but it shouldn't be your default. If you do inadvertently run into one of those players when you have QQ, it's just bad luck. They didn't exploit you. Rather, all of those times that you had KTo or A8s or whatever, and they folded AJ to your raise (or even just called), they got exploited.
November 4, 2013
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Without having any more information on reads, but having a LOT of experience playing these exact stake of tournaments, and teaching a few of my friends/ex-girlfriends to beat the piss out of them, I'll keep my thoughts pretty simple.
You are on the right idea with the raise size, but it is too large. We can't go with a standard small raise here, because it will give way too good of a price to the limpers. I'd personally size this at about 800 or 900. I would never consider folding this hand preflop, unless I know the 3b is from a player who only ever 3b's AA.
If your opponents are anything like the ones I used to play with, AJ and as low as like 88 are in their range, which makes QQ so far ahead it would be criminal to fold. Assuming that BB has a really tight range and is aware that you have portrayed a lot of strength preflop here is assuming that BB is competent enough to recognize those things, and my general history with players in daily tournies at this level, is that they aren't.
May 16, 2015
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Thanks for the detailed feedback Foucault! That's really helpful, and makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of where I have to improve has to do with moving out of my comfort zone. For instance, when I flop the nuts, I tend to have a pretty good sense of how to maximize getting a lot of chips in; of course having the nuts makes this a lot easier. So my comfort zone, as probably a lot of beginner players, is squarely getting into situations where I'm totally dominating villain, and get him to begrudgingly call some bets/induce loose raises etc. Whereas I hate being in the situations where I have something like QQ against multiple opponents because it's less obvious what to do. But I probably give up a lot of equity there and with anything the way to improve is find the margins of what you're comfortable with and push them. Noticed this was a consistent theme in your Andre Coimbre training videos.
My “can I get away from QQ” train of thought was silly and I discounted it immediately after writing it; the question clearly isn't how to get away from QQ, there's virtually no range that I can fold to according to the odds… I have the reaction when I see the KK that I should have been able to anticipate it somehow, but high pair over high pair is really just a bad-ish beat I think. With these stacks, I don't think the chips can avoid going in, assuming I do any kind of raise and he does any 3-bet. Another question (if anyone wants to indulge me further) – if I raise 600, villain raises to 1500, limpers fold, and I call (leaving 5K behind) – is there any flop situation I fold? STP ratio is close to 1:1. Do I fold to a shove on AK4? Do I fold to a shove on TT3? I'm guessing the answer is I don't fold – which I guess means the preflop shove is nearly mandatory?
Thanks OneTime too – good thoughts. I think this tournament is extremely beatable. I'm pretty crappy and I think I'm profitable (hard to tell because I play only once a week or so, so it's hard to account for variance!). Generally I get knocked out when I totally spazz, and if I keep my head and play conservatively I often can sail at least some way into the money. But my current project is to really try in earnest to improve. Appreciate your input!
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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Yes to the fold on AK4, no to the fold on TT4. The reason you rarely fold QQ pre-flop is that it is one of your strongest possible hands. When you've called a 3bet and see a TT4 flop, it remains one of your strongest possible hands. When you've called a 3bet and see an AK4 flop, hands like AK/AQ/AJ/KQ have all improved, and QQ is no longer one of your strongest possible hands – it may well be one of your weakest. This, by the way, is one of the reasons it's probably not a good idea to just flat the 3bet pre-flop: whereas QQ is more or less the third nuts preflop, it will rarely be that strong postflop.
November 4, 2013
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It's also really easy to see if the tournament is “beatable”, even if you only play once a week. Start tracking your results. Sure, it's going to take a long time, but after a year if you are seeing profit or losses, you will start to have a good sense.
For the first few years of play, I kept a journal of sorts where I'd talk out how I felt I was doing while playing tournaments. It allowed me to look back over the course of a year and see improvements. It's something I should of never stopped doing, but I did, and now I can't find the motivation to start again.
May 16, 2015
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I do keep a journal, even though I don't review it much, just the process of sitting down and writing my summary of key hands I can remember in that tourney is really helpful. Often just while I'm writing it out I'll realize something I'd overlooked about the hand. I'm a bit paranoid about compulsive gambling, which is why I basically only play in tournaments; if I get knocked out early I just go home early and there's no question of chasing etc. Anyhow – I think it's critical to keep close track of money and keeping a poker diary is a good way of doing it. I record where I play, buy-in/reg, misc. interesting things that happen, observations on other players, and notes on hands – then also running total for YTD.
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