Rebound

I played a hand about as bad as you could play it in my cash game a week ago.

I was going to write about it, but it really defied explanation. I still cannot pin down why I played it so badly. There were 4 decision points in the hand, and I made the wrong decision 3 of those 4 times:

1. Limp with seven-Ten of hearts in middle position, behind other limpers. (bad)

2. Flop comes JTT. Lead from new, inexperienced player in the blinds. Raise his lead. He calls. (good)

3. Newbie bets $20 into a $23 pot, on a 3 turn. Look for tells, don't see any. He looks comfortable, and turns to his right to check the basketball score. Realize I don't beat anything except T2, T3, T5, T6. Call anyway. (bad)

4. Newbie shoves his last $34 on a 4 river. Realize I now you beat even less than I did before. Call. (oh so very bad).

What the hell was I thinking? Was I drunk? I don't think so, I had 3 beers in me, enjoying evening and company. Was I tired? Well, yes, I was a bit tired that night. Was I tilting? I don't think I was tilting before that hand - I was not running particularly well, but didn't feel that upset about it. In fact, I had won a few nice pots just before this hand and had crawled back to near-even on the night.

The only real explanation for the hand by the turn is a form of tilt - that mid-hand, "I can't believe this is fucking happening to me, I have the strongest hand I've had all night and I'm still beat" kind of tilt. The tilt that forces you to make awful calls with trips/no-kicker, even when Mr. Newbie's got a big sign on his head that says "oooo-full house for me". (or at least "ooo, trips and I don't hate my kicker").

I was really irritated with my play of the hand for most of the week. I vowed to play better this week. In fact, I made a vow to myself to finally unleash "online mode" at my home game this week - play the same poker that I play vs. the online sharks that infest the micro-stakes waters of one of the few online sites left to US players. My overall play in my live game is tight-aggressive, solid poker, but I sometimes lapse into comfortable, easy, "let's see a flop this one time" mode. And I often pay for it - like I did by limping with 7-T sooooted.

Nope, this week would be my best effort, from the top down. I was going to take my game seriously - not just most of the way, but the whole way. I made sure to plan my week's rest around being refreshed and ready to go for Friday night. I took a cup of coffee at the perfect time before play started. I allowed myself 2 drinks early during play, and then switched to alcohol-free fare. I promised myself to think through all possible choices at every point, and then to make the best decision for the situation. I brought an extra buy-in to the table (3 total), and told myself that it was ok to get stacked if the proper decision called for that risk.

There are no guarantees of victory in poker, even if you bring your best game to the table. The cards can be bad, or just good enough to lose money. You can alternate between the two, or suffer repeated bouts of misery that makes it look like it just isn't going to be your night. Even when these things happen, you must know that as long as you played your best poker, then you should take pride in knowing that the long run will work out for you.

Alternately, you can play a good session of poker and get rewarded. You can steal pots with the worst hand and not show down, and then win most of your showdowns, even when you thought you were pretty weak. You can turn a monster draw in Omaha and know that they can't chase you away with a pot-sized bet (especially with a weak caller in between). Then you can actually hit the monster draw and scoop the mega-monster pot your way. You can count out a 309(!) big blind victory at the night's end, and the feeling of pride comes a little easier.

Running Bad

Running Bad is so much more than big all-ins that don't go your way.

In fact, I think I've only been stacked once this month, but my luck has not been very good

. Every AJ or 33 raise gets three bet, and every KK raise gets folds. Every AK misses the flop. Every draw misses. Cbets are floated, sets and overpairs get no action.

It's like they can see your cards.

try and plug a leak, get a flood.

I fold much too often to 3 bets. It is very exploitable, and even average players can take advantage. I see good players with like 55% fold to 3bet and I'm not sure how they do it.

Tonight I tried to work on this leak, and I ended up stacking myself. AKs for me, and immediately 3bet. The player was pretty tight 11/7, with a 2.7% 3bet. Pretty snug but not ridiculously so. I fought the urge to just auto-fold. I had AKs for Christ's sake! If I fold that, then what am I continuing with?

I called. Got a king high, dry flop, and value-stacked myself against aces.

Not so good.

I definitely need some help defending against 3bets.

Are we afraid of this shove?

I can do range/combo analysis fairly well when ranges are this tight.

Merge, $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 8 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

CO: $4.92 (49.2 bb)
BTN: $18.37 (183.7 bb)
SB: $8.21 (82.1 bb)
BB: $10.15 (101.5 bb)
UTG+2: $10.92 (109.2 bb)
MP1: $18.26 (182.6 bb)
Hero (MP2): $10.61 (106.1 bb)
MP3: $9.85 (98.5 bb)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with Q Q
2 folds, Hero raises to $0.35, 3 folds, SB calls $0.30, BB calls $0.25

Small Blind is a nit: 8 VPIP/5 PFR after 135 hands. 1.8% 3bet. Quick, before you see the flop, put him on a range. Flop: ($1.05) J 3 Q (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $0.70, SB calls $0.70, BB folds

Top set, nice for me. And some action, too: he calls, too. How's his range look now?

Turn: ($2.45) K (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $1.83, SB calls $1.83

Hmmmm, This bet is bigger, and he's still calling...

River: ($6.11) 6 (2 players)
SB bets $5.33 and is all-in, Hero ?????

Villain open shoves for 80% of pot. Do we call this bet or not?

Me vs. Sonny, part 2.

I played one more big hand vs. Sonny, although I'm wondering if I played the hand well. I'm going to analyze the hand below and see what conclusion I come up with.

One limper to me, I punish again to $4 with pocket sixes. Sonny is in the blinds this time, and he three bets $14. All else fold to me.

The default play is to fold, setmining in 3bet pots isn't profitable most of the time. "How much do you have back, there, sir", I ask Sonny. He's a good player, he pretty much knows without counting. "About one-forty, one-forty-five", he says. I have him covered.

Even though his stack is above an average 100 bigs, I still don't really have odds to call. I'm getting 10:1 effective implied odds, most advice I've seen calls for 15:1 or even 20:1 implied odds to setmine a 3bet. Admittedly, these rules of thumb were not present in my mind as I pondered my decision. What went through my mind was a more fuzzy "hmmm, bigger stack than normal, I don't have to auto-fold here", and then made the call. I'm not thrilled with this decision.

Before seeing a flop, I put Sonny on a range. I felt like his range might be a bit wider than AA/KK/QQ, because a) he was a good player who is capable of 3betting lighter, and b) I had been running the table over pretty good and not showing down much, and he might be getting sick of it and making a move. I decided on JJ+, AK, AQ, and a couple combos of bluffs as my range for him.

I didn't flop my set, but hit the next-best thing, a 4-5-7 board. It's not often that you hit a draw with a small pocket pair, but I had done just that. Draws are great because you can continue aggression with semibluffs, and then get bailed out by hitting a hand on future streets.

Sonny continued his aggression and made a $23 cbet into a $31-ish pot. A very strong move, and I pondered what to do. I already knew he wasn't folding any of his overpairs (I had seen him go broke with QQ against KK earlier), but I also felt like his range had widened enough that he missed this board at least as often as he hit it.

I didn't feel like I could just call and try to hit. Any six, three, or eight that gave me a winner also put a 4 card straight out there, and he would easily check/fold to all those cards. Folding seemed a waste - I had been given this rare opportunity to semibluff, and wanted to take advantage. So that left raising. Shoving was too big, $126 into a currently $54 pot. I went with a standard raise, $60. As I slid the chips out there, I realized I was again wading out of my comfort zone, about to commit 74 big blinds with flippin' pocket sixes. I wasn't sure if I had just committed myself to calling a shove in a spot where I would almost certainly be behind, but I figured I would have time to do that math if I was faced with that decision.

Sonny heaved a big sigh, and I knew he was folding. He complained that he felt like he was still folding the best hand, which I'm guessing means he had ace-king.

So was my semibluff a good one, or was I just being an aggro-spew-monkey by putting 74 big blinds into the pot with pocket sixes? Let's bring in the visual aid... 

3Bet pots are fairly easy to analyze because ranges are generally tighter, and even easier when you've got Flopzilla to help you. As I mentioned, I've got his range at AQ, AK, and JJ+, with T9s acting as 4 combos of bluffs. We're left with 3 possible hand types that Sonny can have.

Unpaired overcards (shown as "Ace High" and "No made hand" in the screenshot): He has these 60% of the time, and is going to have to fold to my raise.

An overpair: He has these 40% of the time. I'm assuming he never folds an overpair here, so he'll be shoving over my raise.

The third possibility is that he hit a flush draw with the 2 spades on the board. (AsKs, AsQs, or Ts9s make up the combos in my example. I'm using Ts9s as a bluff type hand, but I'm going to include this one combo here to represent the possibility that he decides to shove with a flush draw that he happened to hit on a bluff). These few combos make up 5% of the "Unpaired overcards" above. This is a decent player, so I think he shoves his flush draws also, which means we really don't have to treat them differently than overpairs.

The math is as easy as pie now. The pot is $54 before my raise. He folds 60% of the time, meaning I win $32.40 when he folds. If he shoves and I fold immediately, then 40% of the time I lose my $60 raise, for a net of -$24. So my semibluff nets me $8.40!**

Finally, let's take into the case where Sonny shoves, and see if a call is correct or not. He has $103 after his cbet (140-23-14). The pot is currently 217 after his shove (Sonny puts in 140. I put in 60+14. The limper and blinds put in 3). I have to call $43 to win $217, giving me 5:1 odds on a call. With these odds, I have to win about 16% of the time to turn a profit. His shoving range is JJ+, and the three spades hands (see below). Against that range, I am 39% to win, meaning a call would be mandatory.


26,730 games 0.025 secs 1,069,200 games/sec 
Board: 4s 5d 7s 

Hand 0: 61.173% 60.47% 00.70% 16164 187.50 { JJ+, AsKs, AsQs, Ts9s } 
Hand 1: 38.827% 38.13% 00.70% 10191 187.50 { 6c6d }

So there you have it. My preflop call of the three bet was marginal. But my flop raise was certainly profitable**, and even getting all in with 66 against his shoving range would have been profitable also, had the hand gotten that far.

**All this analysis is based on my assumptions of his range, which I have pegged somewhat wider than normal. If he's only 3betting AA/KK/QQ, then I'm in much bigger trouble here the whole way.

Every tool at my disposal

A monster cash game last night nets me 294 big blinds. Good fortune was involved, as it always is on a winning night, but I also used a few new tricks, and some old ones, to keep chips coming my way.

One hand stands out in particular. 2 limpers to me with ace-jack offsuit. I play "punish the limpers" for 5 bigs. Everyone folds except for one player, I'll call him Sonny. We're heads up to the flop.

I've played with Sonny 2 or 3 times before. He's pretty good postflop. He thinks about his opponents' actions and looks for spots to take pots away. I played a hand with him last year where I bet a flush draw down to the river and ended up rivering third pair. I made a river bluff, just continuing my action, and he woke up and raised me. I couldn't really see what he was representing, but couldn't really call with third pair either, so I folded. He showed second pair - so he was bluffing me with also, but happened to be holding the best hand.

"I had you on the flush draw", he said as he gathered the pot. Nice read for sure, but I didn't like his raise much. What does it accomplish? If he thinks I'm bluffing the river, just snap me off with second pair, call the bet, and take the pot down. Raising isn't getting many folds from better hands, as I recall.

So now fast-forward to last night. We're heads up to the flop, with me in position and as the aggressor. I hit my top pair on an ace-eight-deuce board. No flush draws. A nice dry board for me. He checks to the raiser, and I follow through with an $8 bet. Sonny thinks for a second and then checkraises me to $22.

My default play here is to fold my top pair/meh kicker. Sonny looks like he wants to play for a big pot, and I don't have a very big hand. Wading into big pots with medium strength hands is a pretty good way to lose a bunch of money. But this time, I take a bit of extra time to try and decipher the meaning of the bet and what this decent opponent is trying to do to me.

Sonny limped preflop. I'm not worried about ace-king or ace-queen, these are raising hands, and this player would have definitely opened them for a raise. (Sonny limps into too many pots, but he raises with somewhere around the top 15-20% of hands). So I don't think I'm losing the kicker battle if he has a pair of aces. Did he flop a set? If so, he held pocket aces, eights, or twos preflop. Aces or eights are raising hands, for sure - I can't put him on either of these. Pocket deuces could go either way - I think it's more likely that Sonny would limp with deuces preflop than raise them, so 22 is a definitely possible holding.

Left in the list of hands that beat me are two-pair hands. The garbage hand Eight-Deuce is eliminated, Sonny's a bit loose preflop, but not that loose. Ace-rag hands are always distinct possibilities, though, so I can't rule out A2 or A8.

So that's it. 22, A2, or A8 beat me. I can rule out all other logical hands that beat ace-jack right now.

Is Sonny capable of bluffing? My story from the hand last year is proof that he can obviously bluff me. It also shows that he's capable of turning a showdown-value hand into a bluff. Look what happens to Sonny's possible hands once we know that he has this move in his arsenal. All other ace-x hands from Ace-2 to Ace-Ten must get added to his range. I'm beating more of those than I'm losing to. We also have to add Eight-x hands to his range, like 78 and 89, perhaps even some gappers like 86, 8T, or 8J. He might even have a bottom pair like king-deuce suited that he's turning into a bluff.

Suddenly his range looks pretty lopsided - way more bluffs than value hands. I am beating way more than I'm losing to.

Finally, I take one extra second to look over at my opponent. I am consciously, deliberately working on the science of poker tells right now, and this sure seems like a great time to make the effort to look over there and see if I can pick up anything. I'm admittedly a babe in the woods at this part of my game - a hopeless amateur - but it seems to me like Sonny is not all that comfortable right now. His lips seemed pursed - something I definitely read about earlier this week. He glances over and me and then looks away very fast - he doesn't want to meet my eyes. His posture seems stiff.

My decision seems clear - even if it's well out of my comfort zone - I am ahead right now, and the best way to maximize EV on this hand is to call him down. I make the call, with one mental provision - if the turn bet looks like he wants to play for our entire 150 big blind effective stack, then I will not continue.

The turn bricks low, a three or four. One more raggy ace beats me, all the other weak-hand bluffs stay behind. This time, I'm watching him intently as he considers his action. "Same bet, twenty two" he says, sliding four red and two white chips across the betting line.

I can stop looking for tells now. I have used the phrase "same bet" myself, and I know what it means. "Same bet" means he knows he has to keep his foot on the gas and make some bet, and he knows he can't bet less than he did on the last street, but he also doesn't want to bluff off his entire stack to someone who seems to like that ace on the board. I call the turn bet, much more confident that I'm ahead. All I have to do is avoid him hitting his two pair or trips. Since I won't know what card that is (any Ace-x is in play, cards near the eight are scary, and any eight or deuce), I will have to watch that river bet size again.

I honestly don't remember the river card. Sonny looked at it for a few seconds, frozen stiff. He didn't look any more comfortable than he did on the flop. Wordlessly, he tapped the table, all but surrendering the pot to me. The pot was plenty big enough for my medium strength hand ace already, and I didn't think he could call a bet with most of his holdings. There was no point in betting the river, even though I was pretty sure I was ahead. "Ace-Jack", I said, flipping over my cards.

"The jack plays", said Sonny, hinting that he had a worse ace (but also not showing his cards). "Nice Hand", he offered, as his cards hit the muck.