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Poker What would you do?

Discussion in 'Poker Forum' started by Jimmydean, Feb 7, 2015.

  1. Jimmydean

    Jimmydean New Member Lineage to Founders

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    This is a long post, but can lead to fun discussion.

    I will lay out a scenario, including table reads, and solicit thoughts on what folks would do in the situations. As each street plays out (based on our consensus actions), there can be room for new discussions on why we are acting as we are.

    You are 4 handed at the final table of an MTT. Pay outs are:

    1st place: $8,000
    2nd place: $4,663
    3rd place: $3,500
    4th place: $2,750

    Blinds = 10k/20k 2k ante, 45 min levels, level has just increased. next level = 15k/30k, 3k

    Start pot = 38k (30k SB/BB, 8k antes)

    Seat 1 (SB) = 200,000 (behind posted blind)
    Seat 2 (BB) = 1,100,000 (behind posted blind)
    Seat 3 (UTG) = 425,000 (after ante)
    Seat 4 (you, BTN) = 675,000 (after ante)

    Seat 3: has been very loose and aggressive pre flop throughout the event - recklessly so. At this point of the event you are pretty clear on a read that this player will enter on about a 50% range, including any A or any PP. He tends to limp the very bottom of his range (perhaps hoping to see a cheap flop?), as well as the very top end (AA/KK/QQ, but not JJ/AK). He tends to always raise, making it 3BB to go, with any 2 broadway hand, or any mid pp, raises or limps each about half the time each with suited K9/Q9/J9, any Ax, and T9o/98o type hands, as well as 50/50 raise/limp split with the pp under 77. All other weaker hands in his play range he will limp.

    Post flop S3 tends to be very aggressive in position, practically always firing into a check by the turn,and quite often doing so on the flop. OOP he is surprisingly reluctant to C bet (doing so only about 50% of the time), and your impression is that he will continue pre flop aggression only with top pair hands and the stronger 2 way draws, but will check/call as light as gut shot + overcard draws, or bottom pair with a board over.

    S3 also seems to river bluff busted draws more often than profitable (but not every time), and tends to turn hands with showdown value into bluffs on the river with some frequency as well.

    Seat 4 = YOU. Your impression of how your opponents view you, and the effect on their play this might have -

    You believe your are viewed by Seat 3 as a "good" tight/aggressive player based upon the fact he tends to think at least a little bit when in a hand with you. Overall though, your feeling is Seat 3 plays mainly by the strength of his own hand, and any info on others he uses tends to be informed by gut intuition supplied by a spottily effective "monkey brain" set of poker instincts.

    You believe Seat 1 is generally going to view you through tight and disciplined goggles rather than seeking ways to attack your possible individual weaknesses. He seems ABC in how he uses info on his opponents, and relies overly much on the fewer, but more expected, situational play adjustments to vary his tight game. In large part this means you do not expect him to read you as an especial "target" for steals/re-steals, but you do feel he will tend to make these plays at least occasionally, especially when most people would agree such a play is needful.

    You believe Seat 2 is a very strong opponent, who switches gears with great effacacy. He seems entirely aware that your stack is the one with the most to lose when in a hand against him, and at times he has seemed to be specifically attacking the least sniff ofweakness in your play. All through your time at the final table, Seat 2 has shown he has the ability to make impeccable decisions versus both weak and strong players, and seems to be especially good at at reading opponent hand strength. If anything, Seat 2 may be showing a tendency to call a bit too much against you, perhaps as a result of reading you as slightly over aggressive in your betting lines.

    Seat 1: seems to be in uber nit mode. Your read is that he is ladder climbing on the shortest stack, having lost about half his chips when his AK lost to Seat 3's A5s on the river after all chips got in pre flop a few hands ago. Your sense (although you are not certain) is that S1 feels S3 will self destruct soon, and he does not want to forego the chance at a "free" $750.

    Seat 2: Seems to be a very strong opponent. As we are short handed, labeling this very aware opponent as tight or loose is a little bit moot - he is switching things up so fast based on situations, stable reads of a general nature don't work. You do believe that he might be avoiding you in hands slightly, either through folding a bit tighter when you play, or trying to freeze you out pre flop a bit more often, to take on the 2 "weaker spots" at the table.

    ACTION:

    Cards are dealt, and Seat 3 looks at his hand. He quickly glances at you, and limps for 20k (Pot = 58k, S3 stack = 405k).

    You look left and see Seat 1 with his hands cupped over his cards (for short handed play, 2 sit each side of the dealer, approximately at the 7/8 and 4/5 spots). In the 2 seconds or so you look, Seat 1 seems to swallow hard, but without context you feel you cannot read anything into this. Seat 2 is watching the action, but you do not think he has looked at his cards.

    You check your hand and see: Kh Jh

    What do you do here?

     
  2. ronald spaner

    ronald spaner New Member Founding Member

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    Well first of all let me say thats its good to see you again and a well written example.
    So the first thing I know is I am in the money and I know I would like to move up and a kh jh 4 handed is a good hand so what do we do. Well were not going to fold here and we cant just limp so a raise is in order the question is how much. To determine what to do lets look at our no 3 opponent he just limped and according to your observation he usually does that with the bottom range of hand so if we put in a solid raise here I dont belive he would shove and feel that he would fold base on your image. Either way he shouldnt stop us from rasing plus you should have position on him. Now lets take a look at seat one he has 200k left and is the short stack he may fold to a good raise to see if seat three self destructs and since I belive your raise should be 165k to 180 k this means that unless seat one has any thing he should fold and he only can raise another 20k any way. So that leaves seat no2 since it is 4 handed play I feel that you may make him fold here but you need to be ready for any thing pre flop so at best I feel he will call and with a good raise I d think he may fold.
    So what do i do here I raise to between 165k to 180 k and get ready to take it down. This was based on the blinds and one limper.

    Ps jimmy why dont you join fullflushpoker.com it would be great if a lot more of us were together again.

    rondster
     
  3. Jimmydean

    Jimmydean New Member Lineage to Founders

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    heya Rondster. I do have an account there, but Iaman infrequent dabbler (only like 30$ there now). Im tryin to play once a week/every other week in the Windy City Poker league charityevents live. They haveprettysick cash game action. For instance the typical sit stack for 1/2 nl is around 400 there, so it isntsurprising to see upwards of 5k on in play at a 10 person table within an hour of the action starting!

    I just got home (it is 545 am) from playing a60$ deep stack mtt, then a 4.5 hr cash session. Overall things are good in poker, so I dont get to play on line as much as in the past. Live is where it is at baby! but it wouldnt be bad to pop in to say hi to pso'ers!

    -Dave
     
  4. AJD804

    AJD804 New Member Lineage to Founders

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    Finally I get a HH where there is good info on all of our opponents. So the first thing Im going to do is take a look at the short stack in seat 1. You said he is a nit who appears to be ladder climbing. Well the description you gave of him after looking at his cards tells me he is nervous. The only reason I would thing he is nervous is because he is ready to push here. And being a nit Im guessing his range is 99+ AJ+. I really cant put him on much worse than that and without doing the math, we arent fairing well against that range with KJs. Im folding, because if we raise to 70k or so we are almost going to be forced to call his shove.

    But lets pretend that seat 1 didnt do this, and we think he is going to not play. Well then we have seat 2 to deal with. If he is as good as we read him to be, then we can expect to get played back at here a decent amount of time. Lets say we raise to 75k, and he plays back to 200k, do we really want to go to war here for our whole stack with KJs? Also, dont forget about seat 3. you said he will limp his big pairs too, so there is a chance he is waiting in the weeds too. There is plenty of time here and our stack is big enough where I think we can wait for a better spot. Im folding everytime.
     
  5. Jimmydean

    Jimmydean New Member Lineage to Founders

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    Give it maybe 24 more hours, then set up a vote?
     
  6. Jimmydean

    Jimmydean New Member Lineage to Founders

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    Well...with only 2 vote, it is a SPLIT DECISION!!!! LOLOL
     
  7. Jimmydean

    Jimmydean New Member Lineage to Founders

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    My thoughts here:

    I think in this spot, I'd be inclined to favor a CALL with KJs.

    First: If we raise as Rondster suggests, making a directed bet at the SB's short stack, we put ourselves in a precarious position if SB folds and BB comes over us. Seeing as how BB (possibly) reads us as overly aggro, I think such a large bet PF would tend to expose our middle strength hand (I mean would we REALLY fire that hard on KK/QQ/AA?), and a strong opponent with more chips than us could test us in a way we are unlikely to pass without mucking about 25% of our stack.

    Next: While AJD's line has merit insofar as it saves us potentially sticky spots with both a large and a small stack in the blinds, I think 4 handed at a FT, mucking KJs on the BTN is a touch too risk averse. If we run KJs versus the range info in our read, we get about 57.8% equity for KJs (give or take - I did not combine the 50/50 raise or limp ranges, and kept in all limped hands. See stove info below). I do agree with AJD that a more standard size raise than Rondster's, on the order of 70k (3.5 bb) to go over the single limper, does stick us rather hard to the pot if SB shoves - as he MIGHT because it would be a pretty fat spot for him. We could not really love our hand in that case then, since we'd have a pretty tough time ranging the SB. That standard size raise also presents us with issues due to the slightly greater calling tendencies we have seen in the very good playing BB large stack; we are unlikely to iso on the weak limper as we'd like to for such a smallish raise, and this could present us with issues we might avoid when holding a trouble hand like KJs

    By flatting we can fold to aggressive action behind us much more cheaply (only 3% of our stack) than either a standard type raise (70k), or the suggested over raise (165k to 180k). By flatting we also keep the spot smaller, perhaps lessening the sweetness of a steal attempt by either blind, thus tightening their ranges to o9ur benefit. We also tend to go to the flop with positional advantage over a strong player on 2 random cards, and a player whose range does not play well versus our holding. All in all, I think a call line gives us the greatest flexibility in this spot.
     

  8. Jimmydean

    Jimmydean New Member Lineage to Founders

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    Poker Stove info on KJs vs. our range read of the UTG Villain above:




    Hand 0: 58.797% { KsJs }
    Hand 1: 41.203% { QQ+, 66-22, A9s-A2s, K9s-K2s, Q9s-Q2s, J9s-J4s, T6s+, 96s+, 86s+, 76s, 65s, A9o-A2o, K9o-K5o, Q9o-Q7o, J9o-J7o, T8o+, 98o }
     
  9. letsdothis68

    letsdothis68 New Member Lineage to Founders

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    i really like the information provided in this scenario.
    I think a 70k-100k raise would be good here... The statement you are making the the short stack is that if he shoves he is going to be called.... the smaller raise you are telling seat 1 that you may want the reraise and that you are trying to isolate the limper.....If the limper calls you have position on him and you have a good read how he plays post flop, if seat 3 shoves over your raise you can still fold if you feel he is stronger than he first appeared.

    Limping this hand and letting the BB check to see flop puts u in danger of him flopping 2 pair with any 2 low cards, esp if u flop top pair
     
  10. AJD804

    AJD804 New Member Lineage to Founders

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    When you mentioned that seat 1 was cupping his hands over his cards and you watched him swallow hard, you said that you have no context into what this means. Does that mean you have seen him do this before and doesnt mean anything, or that you havent seen him do this before but really cant read what it means? I ask this because when I see someone do this, it usually means they are nervous about something. What they are nervous about can vary, but with the info you gave about this player and the fact that the level just went to 20k Im reading it as he is nervous because he is going with this hand and isnt really confident. So that is why I felt seat 1 is shoving here regardless, and KJ isnt a hand I want to play here.

    Now I dont mind your suggested call, but I really think that more often than not you are setting that 20k on fire, because you are most likely going to get raised off by either of the blinds. And if we dont then chances are we wont connect with the flop and have to fold, or even worse getting check raised off of our flop steal. There are better spots than this.
     
  11. Jimmydean

    Jimmydean New Member Lineage to Founders

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    AJD: the idea of that piece of info was pretty much to reveal what WE think about, and how we integrate info we do pick up. There is no set thing that it means, just like if you saw it at the table you'd not be 100% certain what that info bit means.

    To you, it represents one info bit (nervousness) that you interpret as a prepartion to jam. If that is what you "see", your line here really does have a lot of sense: do we REALLY love playing KJs vs this player for 1/3rd our stack? Are we really CRUSHED because we do not take absolutely every possibility to play a pot? Sometimes discretion is a very good thing...

    I too see some reason for caution, at least as much as it takes to NOT attempt an iso raise on the weak UTG player. The important point we do tend to agree on here AJD, is that there does seem to be a place for caution of some form here. It is just our thoughts on that line take different tacks. What I'd be curious to see here is the thoughts of someone (let's or rondster) in favor of aggression regarding our desire to be a little more circumspect AJD.
     
  12. ronald spaner

    ronald spaner New Member Founding Member

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    the problem is by calling you look weak and set up an almost automatic raise from the blind than what do you do. I prefer a fold to calling, so we may try as an option a small raise to make it look like your begging for a raise which really works better with a one on one but may work here with reverse physiology so I am with lets do this 68.
     

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