Critique of this poker hand

The Game Room
1

So I played a bit in college and have gotten away from it, but there’s a new casino near me so I thought I’d try it out.

1/3 NL hold 'em. I’m dealer. KH KD.

4th position raises to 16, and everyone calls around to me. I don’t want that many people in the hand and raise to 50. Small blind, position 6 and 9 call. Flop is 8H 10D 10H. Checks around to me. I figure they all have draws. Maybe small blind has a pocket pair and is scared someone flopped a set? Bet 200. Sb and 6th position fold, 9th goes all in, I call.

Turn and river come 6C QH. He had AH 9H.

Biggest hand I ever played in so I’ve been going over it in my head. I think I did ok, other than maybe optimizing my bet after the flop to get eveyone out of the hand. Thoughts?

2

You don’t say how much it cost to match his all-in shove so we can’t know the EV, but I don’t think you did too much wrong. You were ahead when you made the call, you can’t ask for much more than that, and if you had known for certain that he was chasing the flush would you have folded? I doubt it, so there is little point in second guessing your decisio in hindsight, it was the right call at the time.

3

Another like 230 or so.

Chasing the flush was kinda what I was hoping for. Most other credible hands had me beat except QQ or JJ.

4

So there is about 700 in the pot and its another 230 to call the all-in against a guy and a board that strongly suggests a flush draw?

His check raise would have suggested a draw to me so at those odds it was the right call. I don;t think you did much wrong, its just one of those things.

5

That guy plays like I do.

I like to set traps and try to trick people into believing I don’t have anything. I check great pairs and hands all the time, all the way to the river. I’ve flopped full houses, straights, flushes…and once, four of a kind.

And I always checked it all the way to the river. Just to see if someone else starts to bid or raises or goes all in. Of course, it’s an online game, so I think that online players are more likely to go all in and take that kind of risk more often because it’s online and, thus, not usually “real” money.

I have put in 150 hours into this one online poker game where it’s all fake chips and you get chips every day, so it’s not weird to see people shove all in all the time. I’ve had great success laying traps and playing the way that I do in this game. I pretty much check everything. Even when the river does come along, I’ll usually just throw out a value bet of however much the smallest raise is…making it look like I’m just trying to steal the pot with a small bid.

6

Anyway, I can’t see how you did anything too wrong…although, for me personally, a player going all in usually trips my alarms and I never usually risk it unless I’m 90 percent certain I can win. And a pair of Kings wouldn’t make me feel that way…YM obviously V…but it’s not a wrong way to play or anything like that.

7

I believe your aggression came on the wrong street. IMHO you should have bet more preflop, but not as much afterwards.

Let me explain my reasoning.

Let’s assume everything that happens up to the flop happened. I find the $200 bet on a paired board a little aggressive there. It’s a paired board, and it is certainly plausible someone could check raise with a ten in their hand.

Obviously, you got unlucky; your opponent made (if I am reading the numbers correctly) a stupid play, the odds were he wasn’t going to hit his flush, but he did, and that’s too bad. If you don’t have a lot of bad beat stories, you don’t play poker. However, I don’t like your $200 bet, because

  1. You just did not have to make a bet that large. Again, if I’m reading this correctly, I think there was about $250 in the pot. Your $200 bet is not fantastically sized. A bet of $150 would likely have elicited precisely the same reactions from your opponents, and would have made you feel less pot committed if your opponent had then threatened you with an all in bet. I will grant folding to his all in (knowing what we now know) would have been an error, but, read on.

ETA: Now I think there was $300 in a pot, so $200 was not unreasonable. The rest of my commentary still works though.

  1. Somewhat following from #1, you put yourself in a position to die with top pair. Don’t die with top pair. If you find yourself maybe committing your stack to top pair, you really have to ask how you got there, because you have probably made a mistake - especially with a board that has many obvious threats on it. Remember; Small pots for small hands. A pair is a small hand, even kings.

  2. Again assuming I am reading the numbers right, I believe the time for more aggression on your part was preflop. Preflop, your hand is not small. It’s a monster, the second best hand a person could possibly be holding. If this was ten-handed, Villain 4 raised to $16 and everyone called to you, that means that there’s $100 in the pot (16 times 6 plus the blinds.) A $50 preflop bet is not especially frightening. People are getting good odds to call, especially if someone else calls. Given that there’s $100 in the pot, I think I’d like to see a bet of another $100 there. You want to make a call hurt, and if it means you get no customers and you pull in $100 well that’s just fine. Your opponent’s suited ace is REALLY easy to call for $34 into a put of $150-$200; a call of $84 is quite a bit more harder to pull the trigger on.

I mean ,you did get unlucky, I’m just throwing ideas out there.

8

This makes sense, and I think I agree. The evidence bears it out too. Half of the people that had already committed $16 stayed in the hand after the raise. Something to work on.

I’m not sure the playing the KK was that reckless. The guys in the table, other than the guy that stayed in, I thought were pretty aggressive when they had hands so I thought they’d definitely try to defend trips against a flush draw. But it’s good to think about. Certainly could have changed gears and slow played it. Was I really that sure they’d have played it strong?

9

I mean, it’s a marginal argument, really. I’m not saying you donked this. I just think you could have lost less money. Let me ask you this; if you’d made it $150 to go and Villain pushed, do you think you could have laid it down?

10

Definitely raise more preflop. You don’t say exactly how many called the $16, but the pot’s already sizable by the time the action gets to you, so the ideal number of opponents you want to play against with KK is either 0 or 1. If 4 players see the flop and all the money goes in, it’s pretty unlikely that one pair will be the winning hand.

11

Welllllll… statistically I think I’d like my odds with KK against four hands. You will lose more often, but you’re going to win gigantic pots when you do, and you’ll win more than your share. That EV is really positive. You don’t have to win every time. If you win 40% of those pots you will make big bux.

Speaking as just a moderately OK player, my philosophy in advising on poker hands in low stakes games is usually to simplify. You don’t want to make a decision on an early street that sets you up for a difficult decision on a later street. Slowplaying or betting low with KK and inviting in more customers is statistically probably a justifiable move, and the truth is, a lot of people preflop made errors by either calling the $16 bet, the $50 raise, or both; there’s no way all those people have hands that good.

But there is also a lot to say for the amateur player to just hammer the bejeezus out of the preflop betting with a huge hand because it’s simple.

Alllow me to provide the classic example; I get a big work bonus and go play $10/$20 at the Commerce. Effective stacks are $4000. I look down and find myself dealt AA on the first hand. Someone makes it $60 to go, there’s a caller, and I make it $200 to go. Some guy says “Six hundred” and I look up and, holy shit, it’s PHIL IVEY. Phil Ivey, one of the greater poker players who ever lived! I didn’t even have time to notice him 'cause I was so enamored with my aces! Everyone folds. I have $3800 in front of me and Phil is forcing me to call $400 or raise. What do I do?

I’ll tell you what I do; I go all in. Just calling would be stupid. Of course I have the best hand (we could be tied, I guess, but he can’t have better.) Now, my four-betting all in I may force him to call and give up profit on future streets. But the key thing here is Phil Ivey is five bazillion times the poker player I am. If I do anything other than push, then I don’t know what will happen. What if the flop is 5-6-7 and he pushes then? Does he have a straight? Is he bluffing? Maybe he has two pair and wants to scare me off a straight draw but can I convince him I have a straight AAHHHH what do I do?

By going all in preflop, I rob Phil Ivey of all his advantages of skill. He cannot outwit me on any future street, because there are no more decisions that can be made. If he folds I win the pot; if he calls, we show our hands and I hope my AA holds up. Either way I am ahead of him. But if I offer Phil a chance to put me into tough decisions, that is clearly a big advantage for him. It is to my benefit to make the game a one-round-of-betting event against a superior player.

The OP’s case is kind of like that. If you bet more preflop, some equation somewhere will tell you you should have tried to lure in more fish. But what’s nice about just taking it down right there is you reduce the likelihood of making errors later in the hand.

12

The hand history is difficult to parse. The most glaring omission are the stack sizes. I am assuming that effective sizes for everyone were “9th’s” 50+200+230, or 480, but I’m not sure. I think you played your hand fine, FWIW; you got your money in good, and if I can get the new version of pokerstove to install, I’d cite equity calculations stating just how good. With an effective stack size of 150 BB, I’m going broke with KK pretty much most of the time, absent stereotypical reads that someone has Aces.

Anyway, there are some’ interesting’ decisions being made by the other players at this table. AIUI, you were playing with 9 or 10 players, and you were the Button. UTG through UTG+2 folded. The action was opened by MP with a bet of 16. The Hijack and Cutoff both called.

You raised to 50, which I agree was a little light. I thought in a LL cash game, the general raise amount was (2-3+n)X, where N are the number of people calling the original bet. Accordingly, raising to 65-80 would not be out of line. This would also make set-mining unprofitable. And calling a bet of 50, from an initial bet of 16, doesn’t. Moving along, the small blind cold calls the reraise. Which would scare the crap out of me, if I were either any of MP, HJ, or CO. Big Blind folds, MP accordingly folds, and HJ and CO both call the 50, closing the action. Had you noticed anything about the other players: how tight or loose they were, how sticky were they once they first committed money to the pot, how aggressive were they?

Four (HJ, CO, BTN, SB) to the flop and total pot 219 minus rake. 430 left in the effective stack. An under 2-1 stack pot ratio starting the flop is quite small, and means the hand is going to pretty much play itself. IMHO, you’re going to be eventually be all in on most non-Ace containing flops.

Anyway, two hearts and two tens hit the flop. Everyone checks to you, who bets 200 or pretty much pot. I agree that potting this doesn’t get you anything additional than a more typical continuation bet of half-pot. OTOH, if the maxim is true that once you’ve committed 30% to a third of your stack, you should rarely fold, and if initial stacks were 480, then pretty much any realistic bet here is pot-committing.

So, SB and HJ fold (which is weird—SB had enough to cold call 50, but not to re-raise, and this flop induced him to fold? I guess he didn’t like his AK?), CO ships 430 into a pot of 419, leaving you to decide whether or not to call 230 to win (430+419) 819. You need 230/(819+230) or about 22% equity to call this bet with positive expectation. Do you have it?

If you know he has Aces, you don’t. Similarly, if he has a Ten, you don’t. If he has 88, you don’t. Every other combo, you not only do, but you’re a favorite. There are six combos of aces, three of 88, one TT, and a few likely JT/T9/QT/AT. (Though I personally wouldn’t have played JT or AT with the preceding pre-flop action.) There are a few suited hearts combos, though you having the Kh really blocks a lot of them.

Put together an estimation of the range of hands you suspect he could have, plug that range into an equity calculator, and see how many connector/flush combos you have to give him in order for you to get to 22% equity. I suspect it’s not many. Even if you knew he had Aces, and you’re getting crushed, you’re only a 88-12 dog. It doesn’t take very many combos where you’re a 60-40 favorite, to raise your overall expected equity to exceed 22%, for the range as a whole. You’re a 57-43 favorite with the cards he actually had.

Let’s look at it from his point of view right before his flop shove. He is shoving 430 to try and win a pot of 419. To be profitable, this must work roughly 430/(430+419), or roughly 51% of the time. From his point of view, with a 9 kicker, he probably feels like he must hit his flush to win, or get you to fold, after you’ve shown strength throughout the hand and opened the betting this round with a pot-sized bet. I.e., you probably aren’t folding.

Normally, he has 9 outs to hit his flush, which gives him a 34.5% chance by the river. But he has a paired board, and he can’t be sure all his flush outs are clean. And it could be the case that you have a heart too. The point is, that he has a much worse chance than 34.5% to hit a winning flush, probably didn’t have much fold equity and he still decided to shove: he’s probably not all that good at NLHE.

Reload your stack and go beat these guys.

13

Reminds me of a book I read once (one of Asprin’s Myth series; I don’t recall which one). The main character, a newbie to the game, finds himself in a match against one of the best players in the world. At stake is not only a big pile of money, but also his reputation, which is even more valuable. So he goes all in on the very first hand, without even looking at his cards. He figures that in a normal, extended game, the other guy’s skill is guaranteed to eventually beat his luck, but on just one single chance, his luck just might hold out. And even if it doesn’t, he’ll at least lose with style.

14

David Sklansky (NLHE) Tournament System for Beginners. Basically go all in or fold, depending on your cards and the action ahead of you. It can be modified slightly, depending on stack size and position, but the essence is to make one decision per hand, and that is whether to go all-in or fold.

This is distinct from push/fold charts derived from Nash Equilibria. But the point is as you cite: take away the better player’s skill advantage by making as few decisions as possible, in the best possible situations.

EDIT: And I do see that in your example, Aahz or Skeeve (guessing it’s one of them, and not Tanda or Gleep----I need to dig out the books and read them again. I remember they were hilarious twenty years ago.) isn’t looking at their cards. They’re still trying to make as few decisions as possible.

15

With a hand like KK, your objective before the flop was to get all the limpers to fold if possible. This is a hand that’s best played against a small field. If you can get a bunch of dead money in the pot, all the better. So a bigger raise before the flop was definitely warranted. You don’t want callers - you want to play that hand against one or two people. This is a hand that can actually lose equity if too many people call.

On the flop, your job was to make sure that the obvious draws pay too much money to draw. Again, if you are up against multiple people on different draws, you can lose money even if a caller is calling incorrectly (without enough pot odds to warrant the call). So don’t just bump the pot enough to make it slightly incorrect to call - bump it enough to make it REALLY incorrect to call you. Again, this is for multi-way pots, not heads-up.

However, in this case the board is paired, so you can’t be sure if you even have the best hand. Worst case scenario is that it’s you on a draw, and your main draw is only two cards. In that case, you might want to get through as cheaply as possible, and that might mean placing a bet just big enough to stop anyone from trying to bluff you with a big check-raise or something. Unfortunately, this is one time when being on the button can actually hurt a bit, as a bet from the button after it’s been checked around looks like a bluff, and someone could try to check-raise bluff you right back. Since that’s what happened, and the guy went all-in, you were forced to deal with with a tough call, but I would have called. If the check-raise had been from someone with a big stack and the ability to cost you more on the turn and river, it’s a much harder call. And if even one other person had called him, I probably would have thrown those kings away. Someone who checks a flop like that and then calls a raise and a re-raise is likely slow-playing a monster.

Anyway, If the guy had a 10, you still had a few outs - running hearts, a king, or a running overpair to the ten. Not great odds, but combined with the fact that the player might have raised in that situation with a smaller overpair, a heart draw, a straight draw, or even a small pair or an 8 if he thought it likely you had something like AK or AQ, or that you might be induced to lay down an overpair to a big check-raise.

Big pairs are strong hands, but they are also the most difficult hands to play because they often land you in situations where you have to make a lot of hard decisions. And due to their nature, when they win they often win smallish pots, but when they lose they can cost you a lot of money. They’re hard to get off of, and they carry a lot of risk. You can play them perfectly and still lose a ton of money. So I think you played the hand reasonably well (with the caveats above), but you just had a bad outcome.

One caveat about all this internet advice - on close decisions in no-limit games, much comes down to your perception of the other player, your perception of THEIR perception of you, etc. Poker, and especially no-limit poker, is still a psychological game that requires the ability to read people. Was the player on tilt? Was his all-in raise a frustration move from someone ready to quit anyway? Is he known as a tight player? There are players I would lay that hand down to in a second if they showed that kind of aggression, and other players where a check-raise means nothing at all other than that they are bored and trying something different.

I once threw away two queens before the flop from a single first-position call by another player. It was an easy fold - the player in question has never entered a pot from first position with anything other than AA or KK. He was the tightest player I ever knew. And sure enough, he won the pot with AA. So advice from people who were not there and have no feel for the other players should always be taken with a bit of salt - mine included.

16

I had something like 800 at the time. Maybe one other player at the table was roughly even.

Yeah, and the main reason I was pretty sure the raiser didn’t have trips is because he was aggressive in defending hands before. I didn’t think he’d risk 3 people seeing a free turn on a flush draw. I’m mostly ok with my play after the flop. Good advice all around about pre-flop though.