MT NLHE, Hands presented in the order received.
(KK) T2, Hand 20. If I'm going to slowplay a big pair, it's OOP to a LP raiser with, at most, one other caller. I'm planning the flop check-raise which will likely commit the short stack. Instead I get an all-club flop without the club, and I check for information. When the pf aggressor shoves his short stack, I put him on something like what he had: Ax with one club. He's got a lot of outs and hits one of them.
(AA) T1, Hand 30. After the gift of a turn uberblank on a draw-heavy board, I overbet the turn to seriously charge for the villain's apparent draw. He folds, and it was a suboptimal play because I didn't bet so he could make a mistake on the turn, but with my run of late, I really just wanted to take down the pot.
(QJc) T1, Hand 78. A nice-but-unmade flop for me, but I don't know how fast to play it. Is a Q or a J an out? I doubt it, and raising the flop is probably just going to end up getting me reraised. The turn call is debatable, but I do expect the short stack to call all in and give me extra incentive. I don't know what the other villain had, but if it was anything good, he did a nice job of losing the minimum.
(KK) T1, Hand 80. Let's follow that up two hands later with the supercooler to keep my ugly slide going.
$10 --> $0
80 Hands
$10 --> $7.57
46 Hands
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12 comments:
KK cracked - I think playing KK faster is getting the same result. Not to be ROTty or anything.
AA - will take up on TNP.
KK super cooler - First of all, I don't see anyone throwing away Kings there but I do have two questions.
1) After a flat call to your raise of .45 then shove of $19 after the door is opened, what range did you give villain's hand?
2) After the all in from AQ, do you not want to start building a side pot between you and AA?
1) It's tough to say, because I wasn't really paying attention to the villain's play up to that point, I was really just playing my cards while doing my usual multi-tasking. The range of his shove is complicated by the fact that I flat called the AQ's shove. I was trying to invite him to raise me off my hand by just calling, so when it "worked," I called. I called with great concern and braced for AA, though, because I expected him to call or make a standard raise, not shove.
2) I thought any raise there would effectively be an iso-raise, which I didn't want. Even a minraise is going to produce a fold for most hands in his spot. So, I *did* want to build a pot with him, but I expected to do it post-flop.
Tough spot. At .05/.10 I think all the money is getting in short of an Ace falling on the flop or an uber-scary high SF in Hearts looking flop. If you raised (min or otherwise) I think he's flat calling again to trap. If you shove he obviously instacalls. If you call, he calls behind. I think the only way that you could more reliably put him on Aces would be to make a substantial raise and then have him shove but by then you are making a crying call hoping for KK or AK, maybe QQ.
Stack sizes are important and overlooked a bit here. You are both playing with nearly 2 buyins and have both been very successful at this table both nearly doubling up. Neither party wants to risk this big stack without the absolute nuts preflop. So unless this guy is Uber loose, I just don't see him shoving with anything short of AA.
People just don't shove big stacks against big stacks with AK. Look at the WNP game. Besides my shove against Marsh where I was just tired of him stealing and restealing, few of us shove with AK when we have 14 or more stacks at risks. I know both Ryan and Marsh will occassionally shove as with Sola with AK, but has anyone done it with nearly 2 buyins at risk. I don't think so. KK maybe. So his range is likely KK or AA if he is a good player, which he likely is with the big stack he accumulated.
This reminds me of a hand I had the other night in O8. I had AKK3 and raise preflop. Big stack in blind raises pot again. I call with 2nd largest stack. Flop is JJ7. He bets I call. Turn is an 8. He checks, I think of shoving but I don't think most players, even myself would fold an AA to a player repping a J so I check. Turn is a 4. He bets pot and I think for a while. I have 2nd overpair and 2nd nut low. I am confident he has AA but does he have a 2. I call he has AA2x and I am scooped on. Should have had the radar on even higher since it was big stack against big stack.
By the way, I am truly hoping for a slide reversal for you. Any thoughts on why you seem to have abandoned O8 as a primary driver for accumulating bankroll?
Jason: That's a lot of talk from the rail with no definitive declaration that you would have acted differently. Are you saying you fold? You would have thought "AA, has to be," and dumped KK there?
Play at .05/.10 for a while and then tell me that's the only possible hand in an unknown opponent's range.
O8: O8 has never been a "primary driver for accumulating bankroll" for me, ever. I have been enjoying PLO more than O8, it's far less frustrating. There's no quartering, seeing flops with 5678ds is actually correct, and there is only one set of nuts to worry about.
Just saying in this situation I like Martin's suggestion. Put about a 1/4 to a 1/3 of your stack at risk in a big stack vs. big stack situation preflop. When the AQ guy raises, then reraise, a good size raise but still leaving enough of your stack intact to fold. When the guy shoves with AA you can be at the 95% confidence level he really has AA. Then fold. Seems heroic, but if you are that confident in your read, you are getting the correct "odds" to fold.
The only times where I think I could even consider folding KK preflop would be in the Beth Shaq, Phil Helmuth hand where Beth is dancing and showing the AA sign to her husband or in the game at my house where we were all sitting with 3 to 4 buyins in front of us for meaningful stakes with Derek and Joe. KK and AA never came up, but it would have been interesting.
These situations are rare indeed but I think all great poker players should have a spot where they dump KK preflop. Your situation might have been one of those rare events where the fold was appropriate. I don't have enough experience at the .05/.10 levels to say this definitively, but if you were playing at most any level with big stack vs. big stack I think the same logic will hold true.
If you like Omaha vs. O8 then by all means you should play Omaha. If playing poker ever becomes a task like pulling weeds we should all quit. My only comment is in the short time I played Omaha I saw fewer boneheaded plays by the villains than in O8. If you find it to be profitable, let us all know as I would love to discover another game where I can win a few dollars.
Wait, you are seriously drawing parallels between my hand and this one? Sure, when one of my opponents, thrilled to have all her money in with aces against a gloating Phil Helmuth, is dancing around the table singing "I got it, I got it” and exchanging "ace" hand signs with her husband in the stands, yes, I will safely fold my kings.
Meanwhile, you give me a three-paragraph response to the question, "You would have dumped KK there?" without ever giving a definitive answer. You should be a politician with those skills.
Making a flat call is a perfectly acceptable line to take in the spot given the opponent's range. I had all but one hand in his range in very bad shape, and any reasonable player would fold to even a minraise, but would overcall a flat call with the majority of the range.
Your recommended lines after the fact frequently maximize the play against what the villains turned out to have. (There should be a term for that, some kind of slang we could use...any suggestions?) You like the raise angle because you already have the guy on aces in your head, and raising gives you the best chance to lose the minimum against them.
If I had presented you with the same hand, except I raise in that spot with KK, and my opponent folds KJo face up, I bet your preferred line would be to smooth call with KK, get him to come along with a hand that's crushed, and try to extract more from him on a K- or J-high flop.
That being said, a raise is fine; to keep your premiums from being easily identifiable, sometimes you play them to trap, and sometimes you play them straight ahead. In hold'em poker, we like to vary our play.
Even though I question that one can, or even should, get away from KK in the face of the scenario you describe, that's not what happened. What happened was, I flat called and the guy shoved. Since there is no further action, this isn't a place to vary your play. Now are you telling me you fold your kings in that exact spot or not?
If you find [PLO] to be profitable, let us all know as I would love to discover another game where I can win a few dollars.
Yeah, I'll be sure to let you know. In fact, I'm thinking of starting a blog where I describe, in excruciating detail, every single one of my online poker sessions. I bet you would be able to get a sense of PLO's beatability from that...
I love the politician analogy. I am not sure what I would have done, most likely made the crying call like you did. But if you analyze it completely, I believe the correct play is a laydown.
Given the specific hand the villain had, the raise rather than the flat call was optimal. But there is absolutely no way you could put him on AA.
So I am fine with the flat call there. Let's figure out what the best play is with the flat call by you followed by the shove by the villain who happened to have AA.
The only way to do so would be to define the range and assign probabilities within the range.
We will all differ on the probabilities within the range but here is a start.
You are playing 9 handed and you both have big stacks. You raise, villain 1 flat calls, villain 2 shoves for 1/10 of your stack, villain 1 re-shoves for your entire stack and has you covered. The key here is the amount of the stacks preflop in relation to the buy in. You have 1.8X, villain 2 has 1.9X.
OK, now put yourself or any good player in villain 1's shoes. You have amassed a big stack and you are facing another big stack who flat calls a shove.
Villain 1 has amassed a good stack and you have not indicated he is a maniac or making big lucky suckouts. So let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say he is a decent player.
You have AK, do you shove here? Possible, but very unlikely. I still have not seen anyone whose game I respect, shove for 90 percent of their stack when they have amassed a stack of nearly 2X a buy in. In all the times we have been playing WNP, I still don't recall a single incidence of the shove with AK with nearly 2x a buyin.
KK, yes possible, as many players will shove with KK in any situation. Since you have KK, let's put this at less than a 1 percent chance.
JJ or QQ. Possible, especially if he has you on AK. Maybe he feels like gambling.
Air or a lower pair, less than 1 percent chance.
So let's put AK at 5 percent, QQ and JJ at 4 percent, all other hands at 1 percent.
If your probability for non AA hands for villain 1 is that he will have these hands 10 percent of the time, the correct play is clearly a fold.
Probabilities are difficult to assign unless we had a large statistical sampling, which we do not have. The only other way to do it would be to do an informal poll, which we could do at WNP. Would anyone from the WNP crowd shove there with AK,QQ, or JJ with that big of a stack at risk like Villain 1 had? I don't know the answer, I would not, unless I was on tilt. Playing a level headed A game, I think a shove against another big stack is a bad play with anything other than AA.
P.S. I was coolered last night as well. The most ugly was a flop of AKK when I had AAxx in Omaha 8. Villain had KKxx. Luckily, he was short stacked. I was not able to lay it down.
I am not folding KK there. I am aware that he might have AA but his range is much bigger than that. And the villain having doubled up his stack is in no way an indicator of his skill level. I am not saying it would be unheard of to let it go, but in now way can you narrow it down that much to AA.
Marsh:
Maybe not an indicator of skill level but the big stack vs. big stack is an indicator of any villain's williingness to shove preflop with less than AA. I challenge you to keep track of your AA vs. KK hands or any hands with big stacks vs. big stacks and a preflop shove. Maybe you only get 1 a month but so be it. See if anyone shoves preflop in a big stack vs. big stack situation that is not a maniac with less than AA.
We can then see if my premise that his range is very narrow or your premise that his range is wider is correct.
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