Poker Hands and Strategy

Sports & Other Games
242

I feel like this is a very optional situation for shoving, based on your relative skill level. If you’re one of the worst players at the table, then do it and be happy if you get called by A5 or 77. If you are clearly the best player, then maybe you want to play more smallball that doesn’t put you at risk of going broke.

You’ve got almost 30bb, so shoving does feel a bit reckless and it is possible a smaller raise size would accomplish the same thing. Or maybe raising to only 10bb is guaranteed to get called in at least two spots.

243

Blinds going up to 3/6k on the next hand btw. I should have mentioned that.

I dunno, I kind of feel like if I have a skill advantage with 30BBs it’s precisely because of knowing when to shove over limpers or late raisers light etc. There’s not much post-flop wizardry left to be had at that point. Stealing pots no one else is interested in - which I do. But that’s about it.

244

I’ll admit that I have a tendency to not shove as often in these spots because a lot of players who play the small tournaments at my local casino limp/call with hands like AK/QQ sometimes. I’m also a bit wary because I have a reputation for being a super-tight player who knows how to steal, so I have to try to figure out when someone is going to level themselves into making a loose call against me.

I tend to reserve my wizardry for stealing multi-way limped pots after the flop.

245

Yeah that makes sense. I had a read that these guys were limping a lot or I’d be more worried.

Erratic Asian kid just decided to gamboool with A9s to the astonishment of the others at the table. I think he was pretty much a novice.

246

Good call in chip EV terms. If you gave me > 1 mill in chips and dropped me into the tourney right at that decision point, I’d call. Going to assume this was more like a “sure, I’ll flip for stacks” situation though.

247

Pretty much. He had me barely covered. Also nobody shoves light like that. Hopefully and regs forget that I did.

248

Can we discuss books?

“Read Minds of Online Players!”

249

Seems legit

250

Another hand that I think is standard but just checking.

Blinds 1500/3k + 3ka. I have 140k chips for maybe double average stack. Final 2 tables, 18 left, top 9 places pay. I just got moved to the table, no reads on villain except he’s a well groomed 30-something latino-ish guy wearing a Dodgers sweatshirt. He has about 110k chips.

Villain limps UTG. I have JdJs in UTG+1 and make it 15k. It folds around to villain who calls.

Flop 357 two hearts. He checks, I make it 20k for ~2/3 pot. He fairly quickly minraises to 40k. Am I ever doing anything but shoving here?

The odds he’s making any kind of play, with me having him covered and new to the table so he has no reads on me seem small.

Does he do this with 88-TT, or lower PPs? Most people raise TT pre and maybe 99,88. Or do all worse PPs and any odd draws just call my flop bet? He could theoretically be minraising to see where he stands. But usually they just lead in those spots.

Is there merit in maybe calling him down since I’m pretty unlikely to be up against overs or a draw? Is folding ever in play?

People do make crazy plays in these - but they’re almost always long gone, or they’ve settled down by this point in the tourney. It’s really rare for someone who got this far to just go nuts w/o being on monkey tilt or some kind of aggro dynamic w/a a particular villain. And even those are very rare.

251

I’d muck a reasonable amount in similar spots with a little info on villain, but I don’t think you can do that with no info. The problem is that the hands that beat you are rare enough that this guy simply being a weird, nonstandard player is up there as a solid possibility. The minraise is very often strong but some players are bad enough to do this to “see where they’re at”.

252

Why shove? If he’s bluffing, don’t give him a chance to fold.

If I were in villain’s place, I would have a set.

253

While this is a good general rule, in this situation you want a pretty decent chance of getting additional money by calling because a free card which they hit on is costly, as the pot is large compared to stacks and it will also cost you the rest of your stack. A number of the guys who make “see where I’m at” raises tend to either check the turn or bet like 20K when called. I think the chances he’s flat out bluffing here are zero, it’s either that he has a set/some other strong hand or that he has a mediocre hand like 87 and doesn’t want to give free cards on the turn and river by flatting.

254

Finally a cash hand ITT!

IMO folding in that spot is out of the question at 1/2 against the described villains.

Shoving vs flatting is worthy of analysis. I never rule out flatting the flop against draws. Flatting can allow you to react perfectly to the turn card (as opposed to already being all-in when the draw comes in), and it often gives you a chance to induce mistakes by Villain on the turn.

Let’s see. The pot at this point is 85+2(40)+2(130)=425 but say 420 if you’re gonna tip a red-bird.

If you shove to 400 and V1 folds, then V3 has to call a 53% pot bet (270 into 510) to see two cards. So if he has a flush draw or an open-ender (let alone a combo draw), he has to call ainec, and he probably will even if he doesn’t know the math.

Although shoving now gives him a correct call, it’s better than flatting if he’s gonna make a correct fold on a blank turn, because assuming he has a naked open-ender, .68(420+270) - .32(360) is greater than .83⋅420 - .17⋅90. So whether to shove/flat depends on how big of a mistake you’ll be able to induce on a blank turn. The initial turn pot would be $510.

Let b = the bet size you think he’d call on a blank turn.

EV ≈ .68⋅425 + .83(.83-.17)b - .32⋅90

For that to surpass the EV of a flop race, we need b > 171

But in this case it’s not that simple, because you don’t know which draw he has and you won’t always get to play perfectly on the turn. The fact that you’ll have to incorrectly check a lot of turns strengthens the argument for shoving flop.

There are a few other factors, though, all of which support a flat:

  • If the turn is a club that gives him a flush or a straight, you’ll have the nut flush redraw (sometimes a boat draw too) and he easily might underbet the turn, allowing you to make a +EV turn call.

  • He might have a combo draw. If you knew he had one, flatting would be far superior, but just the possibility of him having one adds to the relative value of flatting.

  • He might be trapping with a set, in which case flatting sometimes saves you money (namely when the runout completes the draws you’re putting him on).

Without expanding the EV formula into crazy detail, I conclude that, depending on what you know about V3, shoving and flatting both have merit and it’s likely that neither is much better/worse than the other. If you think he’d snap-call your remaining $270 on a blank turn, I say flat. If he might not even call $200, I say shove flop.

1 Like
255

I think given the exact same situation in the future, I could find a fold here, based on:

  1. my reads on the generic unknown villain who makes it to the last few tables in both of these tourneys - having played a couple dozen of them by now
  2. he’s already committed half his stack - which makes minraising to find out where he’s at even less likely - although not out of the question obviously
  3. if I fold I still have 100k chips, a good enough stack in literally the easiest spot in the whole tourney to pick up chips - near the bubble when you have most people covered

My problem is I don’t even think about it in real time. I just say welp - if he’s got a set so be it. Clearly I’m not folding this flop getting 2-1 (assuming his stack is going in). Didn’t think much, didn’t count his stack or anything - just shoved and heard the sickening but not surprising snapcall. I need to get better about that.

I’ve been running insanely hot mid-game in these. I think the last 7 tourneys in a row I’ve made it to within one table of the money with an above average stack at least. But in those 7 I’ve finished out of the money 4x, chopped for 2nd place money once (luckily on the biggest prize pool night), chopped for 3rd place money on a low prize pool night, and finished 6th in the QTo debacle.

If I played better I’d probably have another $2-4k net out of those last 7. Oh yeah most of them are bounty tourneys - which helps as I’ve picked up a few of those even when finishing out of the money.

256

Yeah at low stakes never be like “just gotta do the thing, can’t draw unwarranted conclusions” because the players are insanely predictable. One thing that I think is really reliable at low stakes is interpreting what it is they want you to do. In that hand the minraise straightforwardly means they don’t want you to fold and that can normally be taken seriously.

Like I said though, I’m loathe to do that on hand 1 with someone, because there’s a pretty big chance they’re a weird player. Even like 2 or 3 hands of seeing them act normally can sharply decrease the chances of that.

257

It’s really normal to do well early in tourneys and then bust btw, it’s why I hate them. It’s profitable but high variance. I think cash is similar or higher hourly and makes me want to die less.

258

One thing that helps the variance somewhat in these is that everyone usually (except for my QTo debacle hand) wants to chop when you get to the FT.

I probably have an edge - but I’m still fine with chopping if everyone else wants to. Not worth grinding 2 more hours then busing 5th.

Only if I have a dominating stack and everyone else is playing for second. Then I’lll set my price (like 90-95% of first place money) and let them work it out. Pretty much have to be 3 or 4 handed for this to work though.

259

It wasn’t hand 1 at the table. Seems like there were a couple of previous hands and I didn’t see him do anything weird.

Also appearance matters here imo. Young and putting a lot of time into your outfit and grooming isn’t the norm at these. I didn’t really want to go deep into it - but he had on a brand new hat, some jewelry I think. Tightly groomed facial hair. It seems like those players tend to be more serious about playing good poker as well.

After the hand he said he debated shoving and wasn’t sure which looked more strong. I told him (honestly) with me - minraising, with most of these guys - shoving. They have no problem calling off half their stack. But when it gets close to all they slow way way down.

Most of the regs would probably just shove in his spot, because they don’t want to get drawn out on. Never mind that draws aren’t really in my range except AK/Qhh.

Or at the very least they would donk lead strong. Which in this case would have worked as I just shove over them. But they give up sooooo much equity not even waiting for the obvious cbet - and then they still show a monster. It’s hilarious. They do donk bet draws a lot too though. So I guess they balance their range.

260

Now that is some analysis. :+1:

I ended up shoving.

V1 called for he rest of stack.

V3 found a fold even with the pot being as big as it was with V1’s call. And folded relatively quickly at that. He told me after the hand he had flush draw (that he would have hit on the turn).

261

Well dang, that’s an unexpected benefit of shoving! Even an LP found a fold in a spot where he could have correctly chased for at least double the price.

For simplification I had taken it for granted that he’d call, but I guess the chance of him folding doesn’t need to be high at all to tip the scales in favor of shoving, given the enormous equity you’d gain from his fold. When I feel like it, I’ll add that variable to the mix and see how much the EV changes for each additional 5% chance of him folding.

Of course a comprehensive analysis can’t be done during a hand, but doing these analyses off the table still helps in future sessions.