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I was involved in 2 cases last night where river bet sizing took an important role.
The first was a Holdem hand. Tony raised on the button. I sat in the big blind with Ace-Ten offsuit: a tad too weak to defend with (don't tell the other players in my game who defend their blinds like parents defend children), but at the top of my folding range. These are good hands to turn into semibluff 3bets. Tony will fold small pairs and broadways with 40%+ equity against me, and I will profit.
Or, he'll take advantage of his position and play a big pot with advantage. He flats, and we see a Queen-nine-nine flop.
I'm pretty much done with the hand. The queen misses me and hits his range well enough. Can't very well represent a nine in a three-bet pot. Tony is sticky with pairs and this flop won't scare him too much - he'll probably float a cbet and leave me in the same position I'm in now on the turn, except with less money in my stack. I check.
Tony checks behind, giving me enough credit for the possibility of a checkraise.
The turn is interesting - a third nine. Our relative hand strength hasn't changed, I'm still done with the hand. I check, and Tony checks again. I've got him on a small pair now, or Ace-King. I don't beat any of it.
But the river changes this. A ten gives me a strange nines full of tens full house. I think I've just caught his ace-king and spiked over all his pairs. A value bet is in order, but Tony isn't calling a very big bet here. The bet size has to be small enough for pocket sixes to call, as well as ace high, king kicker. His range is very weak overall, but he can beat bluffs, and I have to try and eek a bluff-beating call from him.
I bet an even $10, into a pot of $24. Less than half pot. This should feel like a weak stab to him. He calls pretty quickly.
"I hit the ten", I say as I start to roll over my hand.
"Pocket Jacks", Tony replies, surprising me. Maybe the one hand that beats me that I could see being played this way.
"That was a nice blocking bet", he tells me. "If you checked the river, I would have bet much bigger".
"It wasn't meant to be a blocking bet, it was meant to be a value bet against every other hand you could possibly be holding", I laughed. But it did work out for me like a blocking bet, and I escaped my bluff-gone-not-quite-right without too much damage.
A similar situation happened later, in an Omaha hand. I ended up with the second nut flush, a queen high heart flush on a board with three hearts and 2 aces. I had two opponents in the hand. This time, I was much less sure of a winner, as is often true in Omaha, but I knew a small bet would get smaller flushes and trip aces to call me and I could squeeze a bit of value out. Furthermore, I could virtually never get raised by anything but a full house - the king high flush would be afraid of full houses himself, as would trip aces. A raise would bring an no-brainer fold.
My bet was $20 this time, but into biggish $100 pot. It was the correct size for what I was trying to accomplish. Value against weakish flushes and trip aces, blocking bets against the nut flush and full houses. Both players called me, and I was knew I was not winning the pot this time, as the king high flush dragged the chips his way. But again I mitigated severe damage.
Hilarious night with the fish getting the better of me time and again...
Started with getting all in on the turn with TT as an overpair, fish calls with AQ and spikes an ace.
Then I iso-raise another fish with J9s, hit top pair 9, and valuetown myself for 3 streets against Ace-nine. Ridiculous. Dude was playing 69% of hands at the time.
Aces cracked against the fishie's tens for another stack.
I was down 130BB, and was ready to call it a night. Last hand being dealt before my blind - I'll just fold and close up shop...
Except that it's aces.
Ok, don't get fancy. Raise to 3.5 bigs. Folds around to the fishy button (yes, this was a GREAT table), who three bets me.
And then, if that isn't enough, the big blind, the tightest player at the table, he cold calls the 3bet, padding the pot some more....
Alrighty then, no need to shove now. I close the action. Let's just call and shove the flop. With my luck tonight, I'll probably get them cracked again (for the third time), but it's the correct play...
Flop is 885 rainbow, nothing to worry about there. the tight-ass big blind bets his last 2.50 into the $17 pot. I flat, thinking the fishy button will shove all his overpairs. He does. I call. We're all in. Small blind has kings, big blind has ace-king, unimproved.
I have one out to dodge - the last remaining king. I dodge it. My 130BB loss becomes a 63BB gain on the last hand of the night.
Lost 120 big blinds in the cash game last night. We had some new players to the game - skilled, unafraid to get their money in, not very mistake-worthy. You have to play pretty mistake-free poker and then avoid getting unlucky to come him with a profit against this new group.
I thought I was on my way when I raised up 2 jacks and got 2 callers, and hit a nice little jack-eight-rag flop. Hello, top set!
I don't slowplay sets. I'm constantly cbetting with air, I like to do it with my monsters as well. This is even more true because two of the flop cards were hearts, and damned if I'm going to let that flush draw get there for free. I bet 8 into a $12 pot. One caller - one of the new players. Top pair for him, maybe QQ, maybe floating with TT/99. Or of course the damned flush draw.
No heart on the turn. A black queen. Now my opponent leads into me with a $21 bet. Eight-Nine for a straight? Really? JQ for two pair? Did he flop a lower set? Let's hope so. I start adding up combos - 4 combos of 89s (no way he's playing offsuit connectors) to beat me. 3 combos of 88, 3 more of the low card, and 2 more of JQs. I might throw in a slowplayed AA combo or two also. I'm ahead twice as often as I'm behind. Time to get the money in.
I raise to $68. My villain thinks a long time, staring at the pot. He's counting it, figuring his pot odds. He calls.
Heart draw. My guess is AhQh or KhQh now, top pair + flush draw. Gonna have to dodge the heart river...
I do. A black ten. The final board is J8xQT, putting a 4 card straight out there. My opponent checks. Any way he's got a nine in his hand? I don't think so. If he had 89s, he would have shoved over my raise. Should I bet for value though? I've got him on top pair flush draw, most likely. He should call some type of bet...
...I chicken out, though. I'm in position in an already nice sized pot, on a dangerous board. I can minimize losses when I'm behind, and this opponent isn't calling a large value bet with one pair. I could bet small - that always seems to induce a raise. I'm not sure what the correct play is, but I check it back. It saves me money.
"I got there", he says, in a near-conciliatory way. King-nine of hearts. Flush draw + gutshot. I watch him scoop the mini-mountain of chips his way, cracking my flopped top set.
Irritating, ridiculous, silly, all that woe-is-me-poker gods crap be damned - I love the way I played this hand in the end. I bet enough to deny him odds with his 12 out draw on the turn, and then I denied him any implied odds by using my position and checking back the river. He played the hand well, also - he made a just-barely-short of correct pot odds call, hoping for some backup implied odds, hit his perfect card, but didn't get any extra money out of me.
2 good poker players, nobody making any major mistakes, banging away with a couple of monster hands. Maybe there's some money to be made at the other end of this table...
"Trip" in quotes, of course, because Ohio's first casino doors are two blocks from my downtown work parking spot. I woke up to a beautiful warm morning, hopped on the motorcycle, and drove to work. Except I didn't have to go to work, I took a right instead of a left and headed towards Public Square.
One of the more surreal experiences of my life was walking into the room for the first time - living in this town my entire life and then stepping into the neon energy of a completely packed casino in the middle of downtown Cleveland. I would have sooner believed there was a teleporter that brought me to Vegas than there was a casino in the old Higbee building.
Speaking of the Higbee building, I had a total "Christmas Story" moment 15 minutes after I walked into the set of the old movie, where Ralphie and brother Randy went to visit Santa. I walked up to a short line of people standing in line for a Total Rewards card. When I tried to step into the line, a polite casino worker stopped me and said "Sir, this is the start of the line, you have to go back to the end". She pointed to her right, and I saw what looked like an endless single file line of people stretched back along the wall.
"All the way back to Terra Haute", I thought, as I sulked to the back of the line.
No matter - I got my card 45 minutes later and made my up to the top floor. The poker room is separated from the rest of the casino - which helps to dull the din of the slot machines. I arrived early enough to be seated, at a new table, not 10 minutes after putting my name in.
The dealers were a mixed bag. The woman who started our table took her entire shift just preparing the table. She literally didn't deal a single hand. The next dealer wasn't a whole lot better, and my tablemate - a floor shift manager of a poker room in Pennsylvania, noted we were getting dealt about 12 hands per hour. 30-34 is the norm. So there will be a bit of pain before our dealers are experienced enough to play at a reasonable speed.
I won't complain too much about the dealers, though, because one of their mistakes saved me about $45. I held pocket aces and raised to $18. Two players called me, both with position on me. I bet $25 on a king-jack-x board, two hearts. Both players liked the flop enough to call.
The turn brought a nine. Queen ten just got there. I had to act first, and took a few seconds to contemplate my move. I looked down at my stack for a second to make sure a bet wouldn't commit me if I decided to bet-fold. When I looked up, the player on the button had slid $65 across the betting line.
I was about to speak up - "uh, I haven't acted yet in the hand", but before I could, I glanced to my left. My other opponent had already cut out $65 in chips, and had about $40 behind. He looked like he was going to call.
I didn't think I was ahead of both these guys, so I folded instead of arguing. One of these guys had hit their straight. They showed down a river (after shortie got all in) - KJ two pair vs. QT straight. They had both cracked my aces, but the dealer blunder saved me a bet.
I took it as a good omen.
I played well, overall. No mistakes. My few limps were behind several limpers, in position. I punished limpers with weak aces and a few connectors and won easy money with cbets vs. the fit-or-folders. Then my cards dried up for about 2 hours, and I patiently folded (ok, maybe not so patiently, but I kept folding), until the last orbit of my afternoon, where I punished one more time with a raggy ace, and then again on the very next hand, this time with queens. No callers either time. I waited for the blinds to reach me and left, a small but satisfying $71 profit.
Stepping out of the casino, back into downtown Cleveland, was as odd a feeling as it was stepping in. We have a casino in Cleveland!
..and call your door-opening request a silly thing.
This is me to the poker gods today. They were gunning big-time for me, but I wouldn't give in. Didn't tilt, didn't spew. Kept my play solid and was thrilled with a 20 big blind loss on the night.
Consider the challenge I faced:
Aces cracked in a three bet pot. All club-flop, no ace of clubs for me. I bet big and my opponent calls - I'm 100% sure he has the ace of clubs, maybe top pair to go with it. I'm going to get paid.... until the club on the turn. Easy check/fold.
2 hands later, an Omaha hand, AATT, one suit. Whiff. check/fold. No biggie, it's almost a misnomer to say Omaha hands get "cracked" - there are really no big hands until we see the flop anyway. But it's still fun to say I got aces cracked twice in three hands, so I will.
A four-way pot with pocket sixes, on a JJx flop. A tight aggressive player leads out after I check. I can actually see his cold-calling hand chart in my head - he doesn't play KJ/QJ to a raise. Maybe AJ, maybe JTs as connectors. It is way more likely for me to have a jack than he. He has pocket eights-tens and is clearing the field. I checkraise.
He thinks a long time, then calls the raise. A ten on the turn, we check. I'm not even loving life if my six comes right now.
It doesn't. A rag. I give up, he rolls $45 out there. He has JT, or flopped a boat with whatever card wasn't the jack on the flop with a small pocket pair .
My personal favorite - I raise a limper with a hidden 7cTc and have two callers. Pair on the flop, gutshot+flush draw on the turn, and my flush on the river. Someone leads out for a pathetic $4 into $18, I raise it up to $22. He re-raises to $50-something.
I consider all options - is he value-3betting a worse flush, or the straight that's out there? No way. Nobody in my game is value-3betting worse, or 3bet bluffing the river. It's the nuts. Severe puke-fold for me.
What else you got, bitches? I'm still here.
Cleveland casino "trip" report (it's 0.4 miles away from my work) coming Saturday night....
"I can't win here", my table-mate TW muttered as he stood up from my cash game table, stacked again. He cursed his luck and made the walk of shame up my basement steps, as he has done a dozen times before.
Tonight's bustout hand was a limp, then calling a raise behind him by the tightest player in my game. So tight, in fact, that this limper-punishing move could only be one of two hands in my estimation - pocket aces or pocket kings.
The flop came all low, something like 458 with two clubs. TW lead out, got raised, then shoved the rest of his stack in. His stack was nothing to write home about - he started the hand with about 35 big blinds. Mr. Tight called and showed his pocket kings. TW flipped over 36, both spades. His straight didn't come, nor did his backdoor flush, and he was left to curse his bad luck once again.
TW has some fundamental mistakes in his game that will prevent him from ever winning in poker. He likes to limp often and see a lot of cheap flops with raggy cards, but he never plays a deep enough stack to win money in those few times that the raggy cards hit.
Fire up your copy of Flopzilla (or go buy it if you're serious about poker and don't have it yet). Enter 63s into the starting hand chart, then click on the green Flopzilla monster to calculate how often this hand will hit the flop. For me, it's registering that it will hit twopair+ about 5% of the time, or 1 in 20. These are the hands that will crack Mr. tight's pocket kings.
What about flush draws and straight draws, you say? Well, true, you can flop a decent draw around 15% of the time. But when you're playing a tiny stack, your draws don't mean much against an obvious overpair. You're going to have to shove your stack in and get called, and then run the cards out to see if one of your outs hit. You might as well shove preflop and get called by the kings. No fold equity, but at least you get to see all 5 cards, at which point you'll crack the kings one time in 4.
So let's do some math. You limp with 36s, get raised by Mr. Tight, and shove your whole $35 stack in just to guarantee you see all 5 cards. He calls 100% of the time (because all he ever has is AA or KK). 20% of the time, you'll win 36.50 (Mr. Tight's 35 and the blinds). 80% of the time, you'll lose $35. So (.2 * 36.50) - (.8 * 35) = -$20.7 on average. A wildly bad play that loses 21 big blinds in the long run every time you play it.
So open shoving isn't going to cut it. Let's try calling the $4 raise and only shoving if we hit our king crackers on the flop. This happens 5% of the time, let's say he never folds when we crack the kins, so we win (36.50 * 0.05) = 1.825 big blinds. We have to fold and lose 4BB the other 95% of the time, for a net of -$3.8. (-4 * .95). -3.8 + 1.825 equals -1.975, or roughly a 2 big blind loss every time we run this play. Not as bad as 20BB, but not positive, either. A losing play.
In actuality, it's even worse than a 2BB loss per hand. We assumed we would auto-double up every time we crack Mr. Tight's kings but that's not going to happen. Sometimes we'll flop a flush, straight, or two pair, but an ace will come on the board, and Mr. Tight won't put his whole stack in with kings. Or maybe the board comes all spades and Mr. Tight with the two red kings or aces simply folds. So we're not guaranteed a double up even when we hit our rags.
Conclusion: there's no way to profit playing a 35 big blind stack and a raggy hand like 36s against a nit who almost always has an overpair. No way at all. My friend TW said "I can't win here", but really, he can't win anywhere without fixing some big fundamental problems with his poker game.
A 6th place finish for me tonight. They paid 4, so not quite the money for me.
I played well. I got kings cracked early and sat between 10-15 blinds for the pretty much the whole tourney. Fortunately, 900 sit-n-goes on Full Tilt in 2008-2009 helped me hone my shortstack skills, and I am a downright pain in the ass to the casual players who are still trying to limp and see cheap flops.
I was ahead with an ace when the money went in on my bustout hand, but got caught on the turn with a gutshot straight. My shove was correct, as was his call. I ran out of time.
One other note - I'm picking up more and more from other players at the table. The guy on my left liked to look at his cards early, and twice I picked up on something that prevented me from shoving into him as he held a hand he would have called with. I also folded ace-jack to a minraise from a player who had been foldin for a long time - a hand I would overshove with in many cases. But I picked up on something and avoided danger.
