Change100 at PokerWorks

Thank you all for your comments on the J-T and K-K hands. I truly appreciate the time you took to offer your thoughts.

Let’s look at the K-K hand first.

After the UTG player made it 7,000 and I saw the kings, I thought back to what he had seen me do at our first table, early in the rebuy period. I was pushing a lot of hands and made a couple of huge suckouts, including one on him when my 3-3 took out his 9-9 with a 3 on the turn. The whole table was getting frustrated with me, as I built a big stack rather quickly and decided to wield it instead of tightening up. I played a lot of marginal hands and won more coinflips than I lost in those early levels. He was playing a loose (and I think correct) rebuy strategy as well, he’d just caught the worst of it. But here he was again, so my first instinct when he raised UTG and I picked up the kings was “how can I get the most value out of this situation?”

Even a tight player’s UTG raising range is something like what Absinthe noted in the comments, AA-88, A-K, and A-Qs. I crush all those hands except one. So when I was deciding what to raise, I decided to make it 20,000 specifically to give him the chance to try and come after me with a weaker hand. Had I moved all-in for 44,000 right then, a good percentage of those hands might go away a good percentage of the time. I’d lay down A-Qs, 9-9 or T-T in that spot against a lot of players. Maybe even A-K. This guy was aggressive, though. Not really a “table captain” per se, but I felt that there was a good chance he would push back at me with hands in that range if I made it a smaller amount. So I the amount of my raise was designed as an attempt to induce a push from him.

So when he pushed, and so quickly, I got exactly what I wanted. But in the 5 or so seconds it took me to call, I got such a bad feeling. I thought “ohmygod he really does have A-A…. but… there’s no way I’m laying this down… I am not Phil Hellmuth…I want 92,000 chips so I can make the final table…but with my luck he has A-A and I’ll go on tilt…still, I’m not going to be a pussy and fold to 78 bucks because 3.5 hours for $17 would piss me off even more…. I call.”

He did have A-A. And got another A on the flop for good measure. I busted 7 from the money after 3.5 hours of play. Aiii fucking yaa.

Hold your hand out to the dog and the dog bites you? You’re not going to like dogs very much. That’s how I feel about tournament poker right now. I’m second-guessing a lot of my decisions that should be fairly straightforward, which in turn cause me to make odd plays that I don’t think I would make were I running better, like checking the turn in the J-T hand (which we’ll get to in just a second).

So like C.J. noted, yeah it’s an easy push. And like Schecky pointed out, I did get the whole night to myself. So I got high and watched 24. I love that show but man is it going off the rails this season! Nukes! Constitutional crises! Crude amputations! And Powers Boothe as the craaaaaazy Vice-President!

Anyway, moving on. The J-T hand.

In the J-T hand the blinds and stack situation was very similar. 750-1,500 blinds and I have 45,000 vs. my opponent’s 106,000. He made a min-raise from the cutoff and I called from the big blind with the Jd-Td. I flopped a flush when it came down 2d-4d-Qd. Again, I’m thinking– “how can I get the most value out of this situation?” In this case, my opponent was very aggressive (now this guy was a “table captain”) and I felt that if I checked, there was maybe a 75% chance or better that he would follow-up his pre-flop raise with a continuation bet, even on a semi-scary board like this. I checked and he bet out 9,000.

When deciding what to do, I thought of all the times I had raised in this situation, only to have my opponent fold right away. If he had a big diamond, he might call a raise or even push back at me and I’d have a lot more money invested going into the turn and not feel great about my hand. If he was just making a continuation bet with an unimproved hand, he’d probably get out right away. So I decided to call and see what came off on the turn, preparing to throw up if another diamond fell. But there was much more of a chance of a non-diamond falling than a diamond falling since at least five of them were already out.

The turn was the 2s, pairing the board. Instead of betting here (I NEED to bet here) I made a very bizarre check and he checked behind me. Honestly I can’t tell you what I was thinking in that instant, except that maybe I temporarily forgot I was playing hold’em and thought it was Omaha, where the board pairing is more of a cause for alarm. I mean, the check is such a weird play here because on one hand, it makes it look like I’m slow-playing, and on the other, it makes me look like I fear a flopped set from him. And fearing a set here is pretty irrational.

If I could go back and do it all over again, I’d have moved in on the turn (option “C” from the first post). It would have been a bet of about 32,000 into a pot of about 26,000 which could have, as Absinthe noted, induced a “catastrophically bad” call from my opponent. Even if my opponent made the call and lost, he would still have over 60,000, still well above average. A deuce would call, but was unlikely given the pre-flop action. He’d definitely think about it with the Ad. Even 2 pair might gamble here and find themselves a 9-1 dog. This guy was certainly loose enough to try something like that.

Check-calling the flop and pushing a non-diamond turn is a more gambly play, but one that has the potential to yield a huge pot as a significant favorite. If a diamond did fall on the turn, I’d probably have check-folded and felt like throwing up, but would have still had 32,000 chips, not great, but enough to work with going into the last 100 players before the bubble. If he calls my push, and my hand holds up, I have 90,000 chips. If he folds to my push, I still drag a decent pot and have 58,000, a gain of 13,000 chips. If he calls my push and sucks out, I still got my money in as an 85% favorite.

So, back to the actual hand. The 3d falls on the river. By this point, I know I’ve fucked up on the turn and that more likely than not, I’ve allowed him to get there. I feel like if I want a shot at this pot at all, I need to bet here, just in case he never had a diamond to begin with. I bet 10,000, an amount that leaves me an escape hatch in case he does value-raise. If he raises, I know I’m done with the hand and I’ll save the few chips I have left and go lick my wounds. He doesn’t raise though, just calls, and shows the As-Kd for the higher flush I allowed him to draw to. I didn’t bust from the tournament on this hand, but I did lose almost half my stack.

When to think about value and when to protect your hand is a fine line to walk. I think I made a good play for value in the K-K hand but was faced with a terrible result, while second-guessing my initial instincts and fearing monsters under the bed caused me to significantly misplay the J-T hand.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 8:16 am and is filed under Uncategorized.