Yanno, VarlosZ, he also could have JT of spades. He has a lot of outs and it makes for a great semi-bluff, especially in an unraised pot where villain doesn’t figure you to be as strong as you are:
Against an unpaired Ace, JT of Spades is about a coinflip and such betting has a ton fo Folding Equity against a weak Ace.
OK…what am I missing? I mean, besides the other guy’s cards and the resolution to the hand?
This sequence of events was amazing. This is four consecutive hands of a SNG.
I knew he didn’t have a Queen and that I was ahead. I figured he was on a flush draw the way he called and then pushed to get me off my hand. I called in a milisecond. He wasn’t on anything at all! Yet the Ace bails him out on the river.
So then I am broke so I push two hands in a row. See how lucky I get:
The next hand I get Aces and I decide to make a psychological play. I say in chat “I am just going to go all-in on every hand.” Here’s how that worked out:
So I lost a hand that crippled me as a 79.55% favorite and then busted out of the tournament as an 81% favorite. In between I doubled up as a 40% favorite and a 35% favorite. That’s why it’s called gambling!
What he had wasn’t important, or the resolution. Knowing those things can cloud your responses. I want feedback as to how you feel I played the hand.
I thought the idea was to put the resolution in a spoiler box so we could comment on the hand and then see how it turned out. Oh well, anyway…
I don’t like the raise. The button is so short that if he has anything remotely playable he’s going to play, so you’re at best looking at two overcards. Your chip position isn’t terribly secure, so why risk doubling up the short stack fooling around with a marginal hand?
Serves you right for trying to play cutesiepoo…sorry, I mean psychological.
I am not a big fan of the way you played this, but I may be more conservative than you are. If you get any callers you are almost certainly behind in the hand. And not by a little, you are probably two under cards. Of course you have suited connectors so you could end up chasing a straight or a flush which can pay off, or can be expensive. But chasers rarely prosper in the long run. So you could steal the blinds. Ok that’s fine if that happens, although I can’t see that as your intent with four to act ahead of you. You were pretty much obligated to call which is fine, I think. The short stack will play much more marginal hands than the others. But the initial bet is borderline IMHO. However, you did get head-to-head with probably two live cards suited connectors against probably someting like A something else, and you probably won with your pair, so it probably worked out.
Then I guarantee that you’re frequently taking the worst of it. You’ll flop two pair or better about 3.5% of the time. For the sake of argument, let’s say that your EV the other 96.5% of the time is 0 after the flop (I suspect it’s actually negative, but whatever), and thus -t45 overall. That means you need an average profit of about t1240 when you do flop a monster just to break even, and that’s definitely not happening.
I don’t know how familiar you are with 10-handed NL cash games as opposed to tournaments, but if you’re more used to the latter, that may be the source of the disagreement. In a tournament, yes, this is a hand you can play for all your chips (unless the stacks are very deep). Cash games are considerably tighter.
For example, in this game AQ in early position is generally a limping hand (and with good reason), and set-mining is a major source of value. In this spot, AQ and 66 are Villain’s most likely holdings, with AK a reasonably close third. Ax, Q6, and a flush draw are very unlikely other possibilities.
I think calling the flop reraise and continuing with the hand on the turn and river only if Villain keeps it cheap is reasonable, but I’m confident that the fold is also fine. Here’s why: I’m about to make a very expensive mistake. I’m going to pay off, to the tune of 90 Big Blinds, an obvious AQ or 66 (he 3-bet the flop), or I’m going to fold the best hand to a flush draw (if he’s aggressive enough to 3-bet out of position with just a draw, he’s almost always going to fire big on the turn – the play makes no sense otherwise).
10-player STT, 9 players left, blinds 25-50. I don’t have the hand history (can’t believe I didn’t pull it up to look at it again) so this is reconstructed. It’s still fairly early (about 20 hands in). I’m the chip leader with about 3500, having doubled through the previous chip leader by showing down a J6 from the BB which flopped two pair against his AJos.
I pick up KdQd in middle position. One caller ahead of me, I raise to 400. The button and the blinds both call. I don’t have much of a read on the blinds, but the button has gotten involved in some hands previously pre-flop, calling raises only to fold to post-flop bets when he misses.
The flop comes King-high with two diamonds, giving me a pair of Kings with a Queen kicker, and four to the second-nut flush. The blinds check to me.
What do you do?
I remembered the exact flop. It was KcJd9d, so I actually had Kings with the Queen kicker and a straight flush draw. If that makes any difference to your thoughts.
The hand converters aren’t working right with this Empire hand, sorry.
Think you could lay this down?
$50 NL Texas Hold’em - Saturday, December 17, 16:45:40 EDT 2005
Table Table 36586 (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 3 SB: Mac2041 ( $13.85 )
Seat 4 BB: Hero ( $35.09 )
Seat 5: lepa_brena ( $40.92 )
Seat 6: tdpalermo ( $22.50 )
Seat 7: triwel ( $68.30 )
Seat 8: easymoneythx ( $102.35 )
Seat 9: Andrews72 ( $70.28 )
Seat 10: pskrt ( $50 )
Seat 1: josephfar ( $66 )
Seat 2: Pokerfox222 ( $156.40 )
Mac2041 posts small blind [$0.25].
Hero posts big blind [$0.50].
pskrt posts big blind [$0.50].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero [ Jh Jd ]
lepa_brena folds.
tdpalermo folds.
triwel folds.
easymoneythx folds.
Andrews72 calls [$0.50].
pskrt checks.
josephfar calls [$0.50].
Pokerfox222 calls [$0.50].
Mac2041 calls [$0.25].
Hero raises [$3.50].
Andrews72 calls [$3.50].
pskrt folds.
josephfar folds.
Pokerfox222 folds.
Mac2041 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6s, 3d, 8d ]
Hero bets [$10].
Andrews72 is all-In [$66.28]
Hero is all-In [$21.09]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 7s ]
** Dealing River ** [ 5h ]
Hero shows [ Jh, Jd ] a pair of jacks.
Andrews72 shows [ As, Ad ] a pair of aces.
Andrews72 wins $69.18 from the main pot with a pair of aces.
For the record, I play tourneys almost exclusively, this was a small stakes ring game “test”. The limp/call from middle position basically blindsided me and I felt pot committed after my flop bet.
Maybe “pot comitted” isn’t the right wording… but with 40% of my stack in there getting 3 to 1 odds I couldn’t see folding there.
Not much of a read on villian other than he was like most of the people at this table: weak… limping every hand with very weak holdings.
I figured I was up against a pretty wide range of hands: medium pair, low pair with ace kicker, set, flush draw, or outright bluff.
Would you have played it any differently? Did I fail to adjust my tourney strategy for a ring game?
Sorry to triple post here…
Well my first thought was, 8 times the BB blind from MP with KdQd? That sounds really high… I try to vary my play but normally I’d go for a standard 3x raise there. The blinds aren’t worth stealing yet and there’s still 5 players left to act (including the limper).
As it is you built a huge pot with a marginal hand… t1650 right? the limper folded? With the same action the 3x bet yields a pot of t650 which I think is better for this early with a drawing hand.
After this flop normally I’m making a value bet - around 1/2 the pot. I like both the hand and the draw so I don’t want to chase everyone out but at the same time I want to leave room to get out if it gets ugly. But it sounds like the other three already have half their stacks in and are looking at a 1600 pot vs a 400 stack.
Given all of the above, I push all in.
Andrews is lucky you had the JJ to make the raise and clear out the riff raff. Calling with the Aces in that position is courting disaster. Without your raise, in a multi-way pot and a board of 8-7-6-5-3 there’s no way someone hasn’t limped with a 9 or a 4 to crack those Aces like a rotten tooth on a jawbreaker. I would’ve been hard-pressed to put the guy on a higher PP and, depending on how he’d been playing, a set doesn’t seem likely. A lower PP or overcards is what strike me as most likely, with maybe an A8.
I was going by the pot, which was 125, and raising about 3x the pot. I wanted to try to get the button heads up so if he missed the flop he’d fold to a bet.
Which is what I did. The button called with about 1200 and the others folded. He had AKos for Kings with an A kicker. Turn was a black Q to give me two pair. River was a black Ten to give him an Ace-high straight to beat my King-high straight. Brutal roller coster hand.