Tuesday, January 4, 2011

What would you do? #214 - Mid flush facing aggressive river play

More from Bodog. I wish I could convert this to a usable form... It's copied out of HEM.

***** Hand History for Game 1111111111 ***** (Bodog)
$50.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, December 30, 02:05:14 ET 2010
Table Onit (Real Money)
Seat 8 is the button
Seat 1: Player1 ( $63.36 USD ) - VPIP: 31, PFR: 14, 3B: 0, AF: 1.8, Hands: 106
Seat 2: Player2 ( $36.30 USD ) - 11/7 / 4.5%3bet / 20% steal / inf AF / 72 hands
Seat 3: Player3 ( $60.70 USD ) - 29/5 / 0%3bet / N/A steal / 1.7 AF / 21 hands

Seat 4: Player4 ( $62.25 USD ) - VPIP: 15, PFR: 12, 3B: 0, AF: Infinity, Hands: 33
Seat 5: Player5 ( $49.25 USD ) - VPIP: 28, PFR: 4, 3B: 0, AF: Infinity, Hands: 25
Seat 6: Hero ( $52.55 USD )
Seat 7: Player7 ( $71.88 USD ) - VPIP: 38, PFR: 12, 3B: 2, AF: 1.0, Hands: 136
Seat 8: Player8 ( $22.69 USD ) - VPIP: 12, PFR: 9, 3B: 7, AF: Infinity, Hands: 92
Seat 9: Player9 ( $51.10 USD ) - VPIP: 34, PFR: 1, 3B: 0, AF: 0.9, Hands: 116
Player9 posts small blind [$0.25 USD].
Player1 posts big blind [$0.50 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero [ Th 7h ]
Player2 calls [$0.50 USD]
Player3 calls [$0.50 USD]
Player4 folds
Player5 folds
Hero calls [$0.50 USD]
Player7 folds
Player8 folds
Player9 calls [$0.25 USD]
Player1 checks
** Dealing Flop ** [ 9h, 7c, 4h ]
Player9 checks
Player1 checks
Player2 checks
Player3 bets [$1.50 USD]
Hero raises [$4.50 USD]
Player9 folds
Player1 folds
Player2 calls [$4.50 USD]
Player3 calls [$3.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Kh ]
Player2 checks
Player3 checks
Hero bets [$8.00 USD]
Player2 calls [$8.00 USD]
Player3 calls [$8.00 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ 8d ]
Player2 checks
Player3 bets [$40.00 USD]
Hero ???


Click to see results


Hero folds

I think this is more of a reads-based fold than anything else. If Player 3 checks the river, it likely gets costly for me, but I still think I'm making the same fold to the check / raise. Either way, the Bodog'ers are CRAZY players, and fairly readable. This just smacks of such an obvious over-flush that it's not even funny...

Player2 calls [$23.30 USD]
Player3 wins $16.70 USD
Player2 shows [4d, 4c ]
Player3 shows [5h, Ah ]
Player3 wins $83.60 USD from main pot

5 comments:

  1. I'll give the standard 2+2 answer:

    fold pre.

    overlimping in middle position with a suited 2 gapper? That's not like you. You're the "meister"!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm starting to do things like that more often. I'm finding, particularly on Bodog, that I can limp a wide range and value bet my good hands PF. Bodog 50nl plays like live 1/2, where there are a host of limpers and overcallers with any and all Aces. Unlike Full Tilt, where the players are a bit "smarter," it can be quite profitable on Bodog to limp concealed potential monsters because players there will call down all day with their 2 pair or top pair hands vs. a 3flush or 3straight board.

    To an extent, I've started playing a wider range on Tilt, where I'm limping my EP suited connectors. I realize that this doesn't work at 100nl, because the 100nl players love to punish the limpers, but so far, it's worth the penalty of 1BB to limp / fold at 50nl.

    I've been looking at this from a limited data set, but here's the read: a lot of the time, I'll wind up HU with the BB who checks his option. Just about any flop can be taken down with a cbet of a .75-$1 into a $1.25 pot. The BB is going to miss 80% of the flops (not sure mathematically, but it's a high percentage and I'm too lazy to look it up), and they're automatically assuming I have a small pair or a speculative hand that hit a pair. When I get into the situation where I face a later position raise, if there are no callers, I can throw the hand away and take a 1BB loss. If there is a multi-way pot, I'm calling and taking a flop.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I would have called the river here. I feel like I'm often questioning how often you fold. Maybe a lot of it has to do with the stakes you are playing and (1) my opinion of the level of play at those stakes and/or (2) my lack of care about losing just $40 if I am wrong. I am not at all saying I would call this river bet in a 5-10 nl game where the bet on the river is $600, but for $40 in this spot, with the way the hand played out, I would tend to think you are ahead easily often enough to call here.

    Again I go back to the way you played the hand. You raised on the flop, so this guy will never in a gillion years put you on the flush when it fills and you bet again on the turn. Since he will never peg you for the flush, his river bet is certainly going to be behind a flush in a significant percentage of cases (90% or more maybe?).

    Of course you could be behind a higher flush here, that kind of thing happens all the time. But sometimes you just have to lose a pot to a significantly unlikely occurrence rather than be exploitable by big bets into your big hands. It's not a terrible leak to have as far as leaks go, and if you are winning money playing your style then who am I to suggest you change it, but in light of your most recent post on adjusting to win, I think you need to give more consideration to how often you fold to large bets and how much more money you could be winning if you worked on that a little more.

    By the way I think the call preflop is just fine, given my comments above. Small bet, loose table, suited 2-gapper is to me the exact kind of hand I like to see a cheap flop with multiple players in. The key is knowing and trusting yourself that you will be able to get away when you're beat. Now, calling with the suited 2-gapper but then folding the river when you hit your flush and disguise it as well as humanly possible? Now that's a leak worth fixing. If you're not playing this hand out after you make the flush, hide it this well and then get a guy to bet you solidly at the river, then you definitely have no business playing the hand preflop.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hoy - FWIW, the Adjusting to Win post was from omgitsjoshua, a poster that irregularly publishes to the blog.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hoy - Your comments about the $ value are troubling. If I'm to read what you're saying and translate it, you're saying that a putting your tourney life on the line for a flush over flush situation is worth it if it is early on in the tourney, but later on, when the money is significant, you may find the fold button. While the impact is greater due to time investment, return on $$$, etc., the decision remains the same - are you making the correct decision or not. As poker players, we should always approach the game and hands from the view of what makes the most profit / what is optimal.

    I realize that this probably doesn't translate exactly, but think about the fact that I play at least 12 tables at once; at least $600 spread throughout the tables. If I'm making this mistake often (i.e. calling off and going to showdown with the losing hand in what I thought was a fairly overt situation) then it is a huge leak. Simple math of volume of hands justifies this fact (and I'm not talking about simply flush over flush, but more overpairs vs. sets, etc.). If you're one tabling, seeing about 60 hands / hr, it's very easy to mark up an early exit from a single tourney to bad luck. However, a deeper look at the hand would reveal a few things which you touched upon: mainly, you have to be good enough to ditch the hand if you limp, i.e. "The key is knowing and trusting yourself that you will be able to get away when you're beat."

    Look, I limped a hand which was completely speculative. I didn't define any hands pre-flop, so anybody and their brother could be in their with any and all hands, JsXs on up (not that a PF raise would have necessarily changed anything). Should I be going broke on a limped pot ever? Does my decision change if the flop comes 77 X or TT X and my opponent is pushing on the river? I'm simply making the best decision I can, given the circumstances. It's a game of edges, and if I can get 55% vs. 45% on the field, I'll take that and get my hourly average $10-20 or whatever it works out to.

    I wish I could get away from hands where I know I'm beat at a much higher frequency, and this blog is a sounding board for that. As is, my W$SD is a almost 50%, which is a dramatic improvement over the past few months, where I was calling river bets too often.

    The other point that I want to make is that, while critical of my ability to lay down huge hands, the WWYD posts that I write are 1 shot out of the 800-1600 hands I've had throughout the session. More often than not, though, these hands are the difference between profit and loss.

    ReplyDelete

Blog Archive