Thursday 1 November 2012

Risk vs Reward


PokerStars Hand #88240824273: Tournament #634144143, $93.25+$6.75 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level III (25/50) - 2012/10/26 7:59:51 ET
Table '634144143 1' 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Player 1 (1640 in chips)
Seat 2: Player 2 (1052 in chips)
Seat 3: Villain (1982 in chips)
Seat 4: Hero (1795 in chips)
Seat 5: Player 5 (1069 in chips)
Seat 6: Player 6 (1462 in chips)
Villain: posts small blind 25
Hero: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Td 8c]
Player 5: folds
Player 6: folds
Player 1: folds
Player 2: folds
Villain: raises 51 to 101
Hero: calls 51
*** FLOP *** [8d Tc 3d]
Villain: bets 94
Hero: calls 94
*** TURN *** [8d Tc 3d] [4h]
Villain: bets 253
Hero: raises 306 to 559
Villain: raises 1228 to 1787 and is all-in
Hero: calls 1041 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (187) returned to Villain
*** RIVER *** [8d Tc 3d 4h] [2d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Villain: shows [7h 6h] (high card Ten)
Hero: shows [Td 8c] (two pair, Tens and Eights)
Hero collected 3590 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 3590 | Rake 0
Board [8d Tc 3d 4h 2d]
Seat 1: Player 1 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: Player 2 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: Villain (small blind) showed [7h 6h] and lost with high card Ten
Seat 4: Hero (big blind) showed [Td 8c] and won (3590) with two pair, Tens and Eights
Seat 5: Player 5 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: Player 6 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

This hand is a blind on blind encounter in the mid stages of a $100 turbo. Whilst I believe that playing these stakes requires there to be at least a couple of very bad players (and they should be the focus of your exploitation) if you have the opportunity to play in position against an extremely wide range vs any kind of player you should take it with a wide range. Such an opportunity arose in this situation where an extremely aggressive (and sometimes spewy) regular raised from the small blind (something I notice he does 75% of the time having consulted my HUD) with a little over a min raise. Whilst T8o may seem mediocre holdings it is actually a 45% underdog vs the 75% range (assuming you see all 5 postflop cards) according to Pokerstove. So as I'm getting 3 to 1 to call its a no brainer to pay the extra 51 chips to see a flop.

The flop comes a 8 T 3 with 2 diamonds, somewhat of a dream flop for me as its just unconnected enough for me to hardly ever have huge hand but draw heavy enough for me to get value from a huge part of his range whilst I'm almost always ahead . However, at the risk of sounding a little greedy, I want value from ALL of his range. I've also previously mentioned that he is hyper aggressive and sometimes makes ill timed moves which should aid me in my quest to maximize my value. This particular opponent almost always continuation bets the turn as well as flop so whilst taking a risk I flat call his C bet of 94 chips. This call has 3 functions. The first is value. The call is designed to mainly induce a bet from his absolute air ball combinations (Q5o, K2o, 75 of spades to name a few) on the turn that couldn't continue if I raised the flop as he will fire the 2nd barrel again. The 2nd is to under-represent my hand and therefore polarise my range massively when I make my move on my turn (and in turn hopefully induce a 'spew'). The 3rd is to balance my range so that I don't just have floats, draws and 2nd pairs here.

The turn comes an off suit 4 which only improves 44 in terms of hands that weren't beating me that now are. True to form he quickly bets 253 for around 2/3 pot. Here comes my chance to make my move. I raise small to 559 which at this time hugely polarizes my range to 44 and possibly TT (which I'm sure he'd believe I would be inclined to 3 bet preflop) or absolute air. It also leaves just over 1000 chips and the illusion of fold equity. As I tend to make my raises on the flop vs this opponent I was happy to make an uncharacteristic play to hopefully confuse this reg. After a while of thinking the reg decided to shove over the top which I quickly called off and he tabled 76 of hearts (he'd picked up a two way straight draw). I faded the 8 outs and the 18% equity to become the dominant stack of the tournament.

Whilst a few dangerous cards could have come on the turn I've played enough with this player to know that he won't slow down and will go for value quite thin (an important part of being a good aggressive player) so if the 7 of diamonds did come I wouldn't be too concerned about the chance of him shutting down on the turn if he had two Kings here. A few people might think that I need to charge the draws but as draws form such a relatively small part of his range (which involves almost 1000 combinations of cards) and quite a small chance of being completed in the next card I believe the long term benefits of adding a bit of slow play to enable me to play for stacks outweighs the chance of being sucked out on vs his range in this spot.

bigstealer

3 comments:

  1. very nice analysis sir. I also think the delayed "move" is good against a creative player who will realise your capable of floating the flop and raising turn bets with complete air. Against regs that are more straight-forward and likely to perceive a flop call as strength thus not fuck around too much on the turn, sometimes raising the flop is the best and you might get more action from their bluffs that way since it might appear more like a move.

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  2. Yeah very nice hand. I have a feeling I know who the other guy was. :)

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  3. 99% It was zibou04 the speward from my country.

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