Assuming you’re asking about a professional player with no other source of income – Once you calculate your bankroll requirement you just do with the rest whatever you want.
Bankroll requirements only apply to players who have no other source of income. A person with a job who occasionally sits down with a $200 buy-in has no need to keep a separate bankroll; his BR is effectively infinite and can be replenished at will.
Since you are keeping accurate records, in the event that something short circuits in your head and you decide to quit your job and play poker full time, you will be able to calculate your requirement.
Wow, Turble, you really played with Mason Malmuth? That’s awesome! I have at least two or three of his books in my poker library.
As for pros paying themselves.
Real pros invariably keep records. Once a few thousand hours of play are tracked and analyzed, a pro knows what he makes per hour. Most pay themselves a large fraction of that for each hour that they play. They also maintain a reserve of easily accessible money to serve as buy-ins, with the knowledge that they may lose (due to bad luck) MANY buy-ins before booking a winning session. Some players will earmark or segregate money in various ways. “Regular bankroll”, “tourney bankroll”, “case money”.
Alternatively, a player may draw a weekly or monthly salary from his bankroll, called a “nut”. In either case, the withdrawals will be less than what he wins or expects to win. The accumulation is used to upgrade to larger games, protect against mundane life emergencies or to pay taxes. Yes, some players actually pay taxes, though in the U.S. all are legally required to.
I hope the OP doesn’t mind if I resurrect this thread with an interesting hand I played a few weeks ago. I should say at the outset that I am a strictly social player - I view my poker more as gambling but with slightly better odds than Blackjack, rather than a serious way to make money, as I lack the discipline or inclination to take it seriously. But I have played a fair amount so I would consider my skills about average.
Anyway, this was a live game, blinds £1/£1 (why it wasn’t 1/2 I have no idea - that’s just the way they do it. You can put in a live straddle for £2 but only if you are UTG, so that is commonly done), NLHE, minimum buy-in £40, max buy-in £200, 9 or 10 seats and a house dealer. I think the rake was 5% capped at £6 per hand but I could be wrong - like I said, I’m very much an amateur.
Anyway, I sat down with the maximum and thanks to a combination of hitting a lot of flops and some good reads, worked it up to about £700. I was playing loose-aggressive whereas quite a few people at the table were tight-aggressive, and this was paying off. As has been mentioned up-thread, it was the sort of game where almost any two cards would pay £1 to see a flop, and any kind of nice-looking hand would call a £10 raise to see a flop (I mean with as low as 6-7 suited, or a pair of 5s, things like that - however, this type of hand would then fold to a re-raise pre-flop). This meant that with, say, AA UTG, it was hardly worth raising because if you made it £10 to go, you would get 4-6 callers, and if you made it £20, you would probably get no action. As such the best strategy was probably to flat call in order to keep the pot small, but hope to be able to re-raise pre-flop.
I was seriously considering leaving when the following hand came up. The only other guy at the table with a similar style to my own (who I had never seen play before, but from what I had seen that evening looked a good player with a decent range, good reads, and the ability to lay a good hand down) raised in early-mid position - I think he made it £15 to go. Everyone else folded round to me in the small blind, where I found two black kings. I raised to £50 total, whereupon he made it £150 total. He had started the hand with about £500, by the way.
At this point I was smelling AA. I have in fact laid down KK in a similar spot once before (although that time was different as I was sitting between 2 raisers - one of whom won the pot with his AA). At that time, a few players criticised my move, saying that you can’t lay down KK in a cash game even if you think the other guy has AA, as the implied odds if you hit your set are good enough. Of course, that depends on the stack sizes, but even then I wasn’t convinced of the argument (and I still am not). However, I also knew this guy was capable of pulling a pure bluff at this point, as well as making this move with JJ, QQ, or AK, so I called.
The flop came Axx all clubs, and naturally I checked - though in hindsight, probably too quickly. He immediately raised £250, which left him with only about £100 behind, so at this point he was totally pot-committed. I thought for a long time and called, the turn was a rag, I checked, he went all-in for his last £100 which of course I called (since the pot was laying me about 9-1 by then - naturally I had factored the pot odds in to my previous call on the turn, and they looked just about right to me at the time, if you consider the possiblity that a K could win it for me as well, plus he could still be on a pure bluff and I was already ahead), the river was another blank and he showed AQ (no club, not suited) to win the pot.
My assessment of the hand is that I am not unhappy with the way I played it, except for the quick check on the flop which must have looked weak. Could I have bet on the flop? Maybe, and if I had gone all-in he might have folded, but I think I was basically beaten by being out of position. And of course had the flop not been all clubs, I would simply have folded the hand on the flop to his bet, with the ace showing. All comments would be welcome!
What is there to say. You had a good player re-raising you pre-flop, then an ace on the flop. You had to know you were behind at that point. The key for me is his £250 bet on the flop, leaving only £100 behind. Why leave it behind? Everybody knows he is pot committed there, so if it was a bluff why not all-in? You have to figure he has something. Forget AA, any ace has you beat, and you should have let the kings go.
In general, at live low-stakes games, absent any specific reads or villain being a well-known regular, you can and should assume that any 3-bet is 99% of the time going to be QQ/KK/AA/AQ/AK. That’s it. If we assume a 3-betting range of QQ+, what does that say about an assumed 4-betting range?
When’s the last time you saw someone 4-bet bluff over a 3-bet from a reasonably tight player? More importantly…how could you possibly have such a read on a player after only a few hours of playing together? You had, what - maybe 90 hands together, of which he might have only played 25 or so? Of those - how often had he 3-bet or 4-bet? Especially when it goes against your initial description of ‘a good player with a decent range, good reads, and the ability to lay a good hand down’?
No - it’s far, far safe to assume ‘3- and 4-bets are almost always QQ+’.
You 3-bet to £50 - which is a very nice play. If he’s a standard villain, he has to be putting you on QQ+, correct? But now he 4-bets to £150. You have two Kings in your hand, which means there are less combinations of AK can have. Do you put him on Queens? For that to be the case, villain has to assume you were 3-betting with Jacks or worse.
When villain 4-bets, the pot is £215, it’s £100 to call. You can -not- profitably setmine here: the general rule of thumb is you need at least 10-12x the raise size to call to set mine, so £100 x 10 is £1,000 minimum. But the pot is only £215 and villain only has £350 behind.
Finally - when’s the last time you saw a non-spewtard bet **£150 **pre-flop? That’s a huge bet at £1/1 - 150BBs preflop! When is this -ever- a ‘pure bluff’?
Once you call and an Ace hits, you’re probably forced to fold *unless *you have the K:club: in your hand. Still might be a fold though, I’d have to think about it. But without a Club in your hand, your best-case scenario is that villain has QQ without a club; preflop you were ahead of AQ/AK, but now you don’t even beat those hands.
If you called because ‘he could be on a pure bluff’ - would you have called if you had QQ or JJ? Probably not, right?
Anyway, in general -
a) never, ever ever fold KK with stacks under 100BB
b) Definitely consider folding KK to major heat pre-flop with over 250BB
c) In between…it depends.
We have over 500BB effective here, so if someone looks willing to put stacks in, absent any clear reads I have no problem laying down KK to the 4-bet. There are 6 x 3 = 18 combos of premium pocket pairs and 16 x 2 = 32 combos of AK/AQ that we could assign a typical 3-bet/4-bet range. All told, that’s 50 combos.
If we remove two kings from the equation, now there are 6 combos of Queens, 1 combo of KK, 6 combos of AA, 16 combos of AQ and 8 combos of AK. That’s 37 total.
With KK on an Axx board, we beat or tie exactly 7 out of the 37 combos.
I debated whether you could have bet/folded the flop, if you were going to check call anyway…the idea being that, there’s a small but non-zero chance that AQ might fold when you bet out; you look -ridiculously- strong; you’re basically repping exactly AA, AK, or AK with one or two clubs.
But honestly, if someone is 4-betting with AQ/AK, we have zero fold equity when an Ace hits.
Was this in London? If so - was it at the Vic? It’s the only place I know that still has £1/1 since the Fox closed down…
Just chiming in to note that the combinatorics change on the flop when the A hits. There’s still 6 QQ, 1 KK, but now his range can only have 3 AA, 12 AQ (and this should really be discounted, maybe to only 3 AQs?) and 6 AK. So Dead Cat is now beating/chopping with 7 out of 28 (or 19) combos.
Having the Kc makes a large difference, incidentally. Without it, and limiting villain’s range to QQ+, AK, AQs, Hero is a 63/37 dog on the flop.
With it? A 62/38 favorite:
I’m still 5b/calling with KK, 250 bb effective (counting a nearly-every-hand straddle as the bb). Live reads would be nice: nervous, confident, shaking or not, the rest of the Caro playbook, etc… I’d be a lot more loath to call off the proverbial Old Man Coffee, than some kid with Beats and a hoodie.
Changing villain’s range to also include all AQ (not that 4b AQo IP deep vs Joe TAG strikes me as a great idea.) changes the odds to: [no Kc] 74/26 dog; [Kc] 54/46 favorite. I wonder why he didn’t jam the flop? I mean, betting over 50% of your remaining stack (and ~50% of your starting stack) is telling your opponent you ain’t folding.
I am not very familiar with B&M rakes, but 5% to 6 max at 1/1 strikes me as extremely penal.
You’re right; I didn’t go back and redo the combos when the Ace hit. I hadn’t done any pokerstoving; instinct was it a call i.e., at the table I think I call if I have the K of clubs, and in fact I had a hand exactly like that a couple of nights ago (see below).
Yep - makes 1/1 pretty much unbeatable if you do the math, especially since average stacks are almost always in the 60-80BB level at 1/1, which means pots are too small to take ‘advantage’ of the smaller cap.
Think of it this way:
You raise to £6, two callers, blinds fold, the pot is £20 on the flop. You c-bet to £15, one caller; on the turn pot is £50, goes check/check on river and you’re good. So the final pot was £50. Of that, £21 was your own money, so you really only ‘won’ £29. Over 17% of your winnings disappeared with the £5 rake; worse if they take another £1 for any rake race/BBJ etc, in which case now it’s a 20% tax. Unless the 1/1 game is juicy and the entire table is really deep, it’s pretty much unbeatable.
You should almost always be playing 1/2 because stacks are deeper and at least here in London the games don’t play -that- differently.
*£1/£2, effective stacks approx. £300. Table has been relatively straight-forward, standard opening pre-flop £10 or so. Well-known reg just sat down; rich young LAGtard that apparently doesn’t care about the money that much; I think he generally plays higher. He just lost £250 when a short-stack shoved £80 or so over a bunch of straddlers pre-flop; LAGtard shoved £250 ‘For protection!’ only to get called in the middle by AK, K hit on turn.
He’s only been at the table 15-20 minutes, but he’s opening literally every hand to £25 and c-betting big close to 100%.
I’m on the button, been playing relatively tight, but villain probably doesn’t know that. I’m on the button with Ac 8c. LAGtard villain is UTG. LAGtard opens to £25. I decide to call.
Flop (£53): Ad As 5c
Villain bets £30. I call, since I don’t want to fold out any of his bluffs, but the c-bet looks a bit small.
Turn (£123):Ad As 5c 3c
Villain shoves for around £245.
I sigh/call, bink a club on the river and felt LAGtard who flipped over A 10…
Yeah, it’s one thing to read AA into someone’s hand, but when an ace comes on the flop and someone’s attacking it’s not much of a stretch to think they have ONCE ace.
I actually mucked KK in a similar situation last week. Guess what, when the showdown came both players in it had an ace hat matched up beatifully with another ace that flopped. My KK would have been an expensive hill to die on.
Sorry, I should have made it clearer but I think some people are missing the fact that I said I had 2 black kings. IOW, I did have Kc - that’s what made the decision difficult, I was drawing to the nuts (unless and until the board pairs) so even if villain had AA, I like the pot odds on the turn even if he bets all-in for £350 at that point. If I didn’t have the nut-flush draw, I would have laid it down on the flop having seen the A hit.
You’re right - saying I “knew” he could be bluffing was too strong a word. My perception was that he had the ability to bluff me with a 4-bet pre-flop - particularly as he had seen me show down some pretty ragged cards earlier in the game.
Thanks for the analysis about calling the 4-bet, that’s really interesting. It suggests that with these stack sizes, I should fold if I think he has AA. Problem is, of course, he may not have AA - he may have AQ unsuited (which is what he did in fact have). With hindsight, you could view his 4-bet as a semi-bluff. If I somehow manage to go all-in over the top of him, he has to fold. But if not (and if you can make that bet, you’re not playing £1/£1 with a £200 sit down are you?), some of the time he wins immediately and the rest of the time he has position, having represented a really strong hand. As I said, I think position was a huge factor in this hand - more so than I realised when I called pre-flop, which just goes to show my inexperience I suppose.
No, Gala Casino in Bristol actually - which explains the ridiculous rake. Like I say, I only play for fun :).
I didn’t quite follow Gray Ghost’s figures, but they certainly seem to suggest that my call on the flop with the four-flush (and knowing there wasn’t a bigger flush out there) was correct, whether villain went all-in or just bet the £250 he actually did.
Finally, I must admit that it was in my mind that even if I lost the hand, I still had more than I sat down with in front of me, so it wasn’t disastrous to me if I lost. I know - hopeless way to think about the situation! But very difficult to train yourself to avoid. Which is why I will never be a pro.
This has been a fascinating read for me. I am not a poker player at all, but I am intrigued by the mathematics of the game.
Ome of the things I don’t know very well is the lingo, so a book or two would be appropriate for me. I will look at a few of the titles suggested in this thread.
I do have some questions for you folks thst currently or have played poker for your main source of income at some point in your life.
Can any of you give us an idea of how much you made when you were playing your best? Was it enough to sustain you and your family’s lifestyle? Did you make more or less at poker than you did at yoir regular job?
If I read correctly, playing tight with a short stack online can guarantee you an income, even if is is a small one. However, one of you mentioned player “bots”. These would be software programs set up by players to act as instructed by their software. You could easily program the, to do what you want, so assuming these are legal (and it seemed like the consensus was they were/are legal), why not just run a number of your “bots” on any number of internet gaming sites and move the money into your account each day. Or am I missing something with this strategy?
Essentially, you would never have to leave your home or apt., or enter a real casino. However, you could make as much money as you needed.
A friend of mine has fallen through the cracks and has not been able to get a job even with an MBA from a top school (topic for another thread). Anyway, he is now playing poker in casinos full time to make ends meet, and he has been able to do this for over two years now. So he is either very good, or as you folks are saying, much better than the average casino player that plays after spending time on-line. He doesn’t strike me as a loose player, so he must be grinding small pots out. He also doesn’t have any bots running, so his income is strictly Casino generated.
So my question is, does this gel with your experiences, or is he doing better/worse than you’ve experienced?
Yeah, this is where you can get into leveling wars or sometimes out-leveling yourself.
Level 1: “He 3-bet me, he must have QQ+, I’m going to fold my pocket Jacks”.
Level 2: “If I 4-bet here with Jacks, it will look very strong and he will often fold everything but AA or maybe KK. I raise!”
Level 3: “He’s been 4-betting a bit too frequently for him to always have Aces - I’m going to 5-bet shove with AQ, using the Ace in my hand as a blocker to AA. I only need him to fold a small percentage of the time to make this profitable. Ship it!”
Level 4: “He knows I’m capable of 4-betting a bit light, he might be 5-betting shoving light; I think I’m priced in and a flip at worst with my pocket Jacks - call!”
And so on.
It’s why you -really- need to pay attention to bet sizes and patterns. The ‘premium’ hands are AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ. That’s 50 combos. Since there are 1,326 possible combinations of two hole cards, the odds of getting a premium holding are 50/1326 = about 3.7%.
So if someone is only 3-betting once every two hours, it’s safe to say he’s probably only 3-betting at the top of the ‘premium’ range. If he’s 3-betting once an orbit - like, 10% of hands or something - it is highly likely that he has almost twice as many ‘3-bet bluffs’ in his range vs premiums.
Flip side: Against a really really tight 3-better, I’m more likely to call with a hand like 78s or medium pocket pairs: If I get a decent flop or hit a set, I think I can win the guys’ entire stack if he will never be able to fold an overpair, and I’m not sharing cards/outs with the villain. But I would never want to call a tight 3-better with a hand like AJ, since I’m almost certainly going to be dominated by AQ or AK etc.
Thanks for going into detail as to why that rake structure was so ruinous. It’s easy to think, “Well, it’s just 5%, and that’s only if I win,” and think it’s not that bad. Incidentally, your hand is a great example of the difference between “Sklansky Bucks” and “Galfond Bucks”.
For those who are wondering what I’m talking about, calling 245 to win 367 means DragonAsh needed almost exactly 40% equity on the turn. This is a type of pot odds problem you need to learn how to estimate in your head quickly at the table, BTW. With only 31.8% vs the AT we’re told the villain had, DA didn’t have it, so would have lost S$. I get an $ expected value ($EV) of -50.4. However, against any reasonable range you could construct for that opponent (I used all A hands, though I guess I could have included 42.), DA has 49% equity, and will have an expectation value of nearly +55. Quite a difference.
Aside, is 12-1 good enough odds to call with a mid-suited ace? I’d have thought you needed a bit more implied odds. The button certainly helps, of course. Just wondering why you didn’t 3b (raise) for value versus his very wide opening range?
A few things. First, position is irrelevant when you’re all in—all of your decisions have already been made. Otherwise it’s of gigantic importance in NLHE. Second, relating to what DragonAsh wrote, it’s very hard to put someone on exactly AA. There are players at 1/1 - 2/5 who will only 4b (re-reraise) with this, and there are others who will also put some AK in that range. Per either Sklansky in Hold’Em for Advanced Players, or Brunson in Super/System (I forget), “AK is a hand that wants to see 5 cards.” It’s a hand that needs a full run out to maximize its equity versus pocket pairs. Ergo there are players who don’t mind stacking off (going all-in) with it preflop, even though this is a mistake deep.
And then there are others who will 4b with AQo…which I guess isn’t too terrible if they aren’t calling a 5b with it. I doubt he was, given his bet of 150 was 30% of his starting stack of 500, so right at, but not over, his “commitment threshold”. (Though the cite uses the term “point of commitment” instead.) You could after all just be tired of his raising (though early-mid position at a full table is not what I think of as a stealing position) and re-raising with ATC (any two cards), a “re-steal”. I like his 4b better if he’s playing at a table with better players (who would be more likely to try things like re-stealing) and if he were out of position. Here, I’m not sure why he didn’t just call you in position and pot control/bluff catch with one of the biggest Reverse Implied Odds hands in Hold 'Em. Curious what others think of it.
If you haven’t already, download yourself Pokerstove and start playing around with how one hand does vs a range of hands. It’s how I obtained the quoted equities in my previous post. E.g., AA v KK is slightly better than a 4-1 favorite. (82/18) Add 1/2 of all possible AK to that AA range (normally there are 16 ways to make AK, but since you have two of the Kings, there are only 4 aces X 2 remaining kings = 8 combos left), and now KK is only a 62/38 underdog. Make it all AK, and KK is now just a 53/47 underdog.
I love discussing the math too. A starting glossary to the lingo may be found here and here. Another book that I don’t think has been mentioned, is Phil Gordon’s Little Gold Book. It’s a lot better than it has any right to be, as a book by a former player and commentator for the World Poker Tour. Usually, avoiding books written by ‘famous’ poker players is a good rule of thumb. It helps this book that a good chunk of it consists of interviews with much better players.
You aren’t alone in being concerned about bots. See, for example, this thread at 2+2 on the subject or this synopsis of an alleged bot maker’s experiences running the bot on PokerStars.
I have played poker for money—there’s really almost no point to the game if you don’t, the SDMB weekly game aside (which I’ll return to soon)—but have never tried to make my living at it. There are a few Dopers who have done so—Gadarene, Senor Beef, and Turble come to mind—and their threads on the subject offer interesting reading. Beef, IIRC, wrote a “ask the former professional poker player” post in either IMHO or MPSIMS a few years ago.
Pre-flop, I called mainly because it was heads-up, I had position, I had a hand that could make the nuts, and when it’s heads-up Ace high is often good at showdown. That it was a suited Ace wasn’t -that- big of a factor; I would have done the same with AJo or better as well. I didn’t 3-bet because a) I don’t want him to find a fold with his crap 94o hands, and b) I didn’t want to bloat the pot up vs a LAGTard maniac preflop until I had an idea of where I was in the hand.
The turn call was close - obv. he’s a LAGTard maniac, so he’s capable of doing this without an Ace, so that plays a factor. If he does have an ace, it’s tough because I only beat A7, A6, A4 and A2; I lose to any other Ace. However, I have flush draw outs. If villain had two pair (53) or sets (55 or 33), I have board-pairing outs.
I would have folded without the flush draw outs; as it was I thought I had enough equity in the hand to call off, although it obviously wasn’t a fist-pump call. Against an Old Man Coffee nit, it’s probably a fold even with the flush outs because I can only put villain on a better ace, which means I only have 8 flush outs, and a board-pairing card only chops.
I rarely open up the betting with a suited Ace unless it’s AT or better, and even then only from mid or late position. However, I will limp along behind a bunch of other limpers with suited Aces, because out-flushing guys that limped in with 96s is just sooo profitable. Often you don’t even need to hit the flush, just knowing that you have equity in the hand allows you to pump the pot and get the guy to fold his one-pair hands.
Had this hand last night.
£2/5, £800 effective stacks. New table, complete unknowns. I’m in LP with As Qs. Guy up front makes it £20, one caller, I make it £75, pre-flop raiser folds, middle guy calls.
Flop (£170): Ac 9s 4s
Check, I bet out £135, while trying to hide my raging boner, he calls fairly quickly.
Turn (£440): Ac 9s 4s 7c
Guy checks. Some guys would take a ‘pot control’ line here and check it back, but I bet out £250, guy calls.
(In case you’re wondering: I bet here because I want to play for stacks if a spade hits. If the villain calls the pot is almost £1,000 and I only have £340 left - when I shove the river villain is getting almost 3.8:1 odds; he only needs to be ‘correct’ 20% of the time to call profitably. Even tho the flush draw is really obvious, it almost forces him to make a crying call. Check/check turn / value bet river costs me the same £250 but makes it almost impossible to get the guy’s entire stack unless he completely spazzes out).
River (£940): Ac 9s 4s 7c Jd
Guy checks and I can’t invent a better hand that folds or worse hand that calls, so I check it back.
Sounds to me like you played it well. But what’s the punchline? My guess is that he had AJ suited - with AK he would have re-raised the inital raiser pre-flop, he decided to flat call him (and then you, which was a bit loose) in the hope that he would catch a flop like the one you caught and out-draw a better hand. Then he sucked out on you on the river. Am I right? I suppose the only other likely possibility is a set of 9s.
Well, let’s look at the action, and I mean all the action. First of all, I discount the odds of him having pocket 9s (or 7s or Jacks). My pre-flop raising size was specific - I only have £800 behind, and my pre-flop bet is £75; usually you want at leats 10-15x the raiser’s stack size to profitably set-mine. So I don’t really have a big enough stack for anyone behind me to call. Now, for the original better and caller, it’s only an additional 55 to call, and I have 725 left, so it’s maybe just about profitable…but we can dismiss pocket 9s due to the later action.
Because when I bet on the flop, a set is 100% going to raise. Why? Because my hand looks like QQ+, with a lot of AK/AQ combos very much possible. Raising the flop would very much look like he’s on a flush draw, since good players play their draws aggressively, and I am almost certainly going to call his raise. Good players play their monsters (sets) the same way as their non-made hands (draws); makes 'em very hard to play against.
Ditto on the turn.
And finally on the river, when the flush draw bricks, a set of 9s would be the effective nuts. No way does he check; he 100% has to bet for value. My hand looks an awful lot like at least AK/AQ, maybe AJ (although that’s a bit ambitious for a 3-bet preflop), so I’m going probably to call a reasonably-sized bet (and if I have AJ I might re-raise all-in). So once he checks there’s no way he has a set of 9s, 4s, or Aces. Especially when as we saw above, if he had a set he might shove the river when a draw busted out specifically to make it look like he missed his flush draw and was trying to bluff me out of the pot.
We can dismiss him having pocket 7s (wouldn’t call the flop bet) or Jacks (wouldn’t call flop and turn).
We can dismiss AJ because he doesn’t call the turn bet (I’m never betting flop and betting turn when checked to twice with AT or worse) and doesn’t bet the river.
We can dismiss him having pocket Kings, or pocket Aces because he probably 4-bets preflop. He folds KK on the turn as it’s clear I have at least an Ace.
He knows I have Ax, probably AK or AQ. He knows I -might- have pocket Aces, because pocket Aces would play like this, but if he has a big Ace, there’s only one specific combo of AA left in the deck, while there are a lot of possible AK/AQ combos left. He knows I don’t have KK, because I would not bet the turn when he calls my flop bet.
Could he have a flush draw? Possible - but I have the AQ of spades and the 9 of spades is on the board. So the only combo he could have is something like KsJs, Ks10s, or Js10s…and not only is it unlikely he calls a 3-bet out of position with those hands (my range absolutely has him crushed), he doesn’t call my turn bet.
When villain doesn’t bet the river, there are only two possibilities:
Unlikely, but possible is a hand like K10 or J10 that knows it can’t win the hand unless he puts out a massive bluff (which Ax is almost certainly going to call) - so he’s never calling a river bet. In other words, I don’t need to bet and I can win at showdown.
More likely: a hand that he’s happy to get to showdown with because he has some showdown value, but not one he particularly wants to bet for value, mainly because we have the same hand a lot of the time, so he’d be risking his entire river bet to win only half the pot.
So I’m looking at all this information - he called a pre-flop 3-bet, but didn’t 4-bet and didn’t raise at any point in the hand on an A-high, flushing board. Note that AK is actually probably not 4-betting preflop mainly because AK does not do that great against my range if I call or 5-bet. He seems to have a hand he’s happy to take to showdown. He’s called two big flop and turn bets from the pre-flop 3-better.
This is AK or AQ a ton of the time; or sometimes he has AA. Is AK, AQ, AJ (hands I either lose to or at best tie with) folding to my river bet? No. Is a hand like AT, pocket Kings, pocket Queens - all hands I beat - calling a river bet? No.
Now - could I have moved him off the pot with a big river bet? Possibly - but the only hands villain can put me on that he loses to are specifically AA (unlikely - only one combo) and AJ (unlikely - I’m probably not betting flop and turn with AJ; I’m checking back the turn for a bit of pot control). So I think he’s going to call my river shove knowing that he’s ahead of AQ and at worst chopping with AK.
Since I can’t think of any hands I beat that would call, and I can’t think of any hands I’m behind that would fold, I checked back the river and he of course rolled over AK.
Just forgot to touch on this. Actually, flatting the initial caller is a fine play. We don’t know what the initial pre-flop raiser is opening with. Could be a monster premium hand, could be high suited broadways, could be a pocket pair. It’s from early position, so we can probably dimiss hands like J8s etc, but either way, we’re slightly in the dark.
If the villain cold 3-bets the pre-flop raiser, it looks -really- strong. What happens? I probably fold my AQ. The preflop raiser folds his various Ax hands, his suited connector hands etc. Villain doesn’t want hands like AQ / AJ to fold, he wants to get value from them.
Secondly - and this is specifically what happened - someone behind him might decide to attack the pot, especially if others call behind him.
That’s why I 3-bet with AQ there when villain just flatted with AK: Because of the dead money. With a preflop raise and a call before the action gets to me, there’s £47 in the pot - that’s almost 10BB; I am quite happy taking the pot and all the dead money down right there.
Occasionally players will get tricky with AA: They’lll just flat the initial raiser, couple of callers, someone decides to raise to attack the dead money, and they come back over the top with a huge re-raise. Great spot to do it with AA, because you’ll get a ton of folds…which means you don’t need AA to do it! If you are going to get -everything- to fold, you could do the same play with 93o. And thus starts the various leveling wars…
Further food for thought: Knowing what villain had, could we critique villian’s play? Specifically, did he lose value by not betting the river with the nut one-pair hand?
I have to ask. Does all of this thinking and strategizing pay off? And if so, why don’t you play poker full-time? I’m reading these posts with great interest, because I have always wanted to know how to play poker better than your average guy who sits down at your house to play with friends and neighbors.
But your assumptions on who has what based on their betting patterns… Doesn’t that require that each player in the game to have read the same book of poker strategy that you did, and they are raising, checking, or calling the bet based on the same strategy you are?
I ask because I watch the WSOP whenever I get a chance, and I saw Doyle Brunson go in on the flop with 7-2 off suit. That’s the worst hand in the world of hold 'me, is it not? The best part is that he won the hand. Just by betting like he had something, people backed off, and we are talking about players with good hole cards and or a great flop to leae them sitting pretty with either a flush draw, or a strong pair. All of these calculations could be for nothing if even one person was bluffing, correct?
Ha, you beat me to it. DragonAsh’s posts are well thought out and explained, but it really seems to me that he is making his decisions based on the assumption that his opponents play exactly the same way he does.
Statements like
He wouldn’t call the flop bet? Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. What you really mean is that you wouldn’t call the flop.
