Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Hot Hand #4 (Updated With Results)

On Memorial Day earlier this week, full tilt ran a 5k guaranteed special tournament in the evening East Coast time. This was a $5 buyin tournament, lower than full tilt's usual lowest buyins for MTTs, but with the holiday and all, they had little trouble attracting more than 1000 entrants trying to take their shot at the $1000+ first prize, and when I saw it sitting there, I decided to take the plunge as well.

About 45 minutes into the 5k guaranteed Memorial Day tournament, I look down to find KQo in middle-late position. The player in 3rd position, who bet first preflop following the SB and the BB, had limped already, after which everyone folded to me.

Question 1: What's your play here? Do you fold KQo preflop in 6th position after the guy in first betting position limped in, and everyone else folds to you? Or do you limp along? Or do you raise, attempting to isolate given that KQo is the kind of hand that tends to do better against just one opponent, and not so well in a multiway pot?

In the end, I elected to raise it up to 3x the big blind, for isolation purposes. Unfortunately, my isolation attempt failed miserably, and we saw a flop with four players including myself, with the pot containing 390 chips before the flop hit the felt. Here was the flop:



A few things to notice about this situation:

1. Check out the guy in the big blind on this hand. It is none other than on_thg, a fellow poker blogger even though I didn't realize that was him until just now as I wrote this post. On_thg even has another hand from this same tournament, same table posted on his blog, I just noticed today, and there is me across the table from him. Hard to believe I sat at thg's table for this long and didn't notice him nor acknowledge his presence. Ahh, maybe he took it as intimidation from me and donked me some chips as a result. Who knows.

2. You can see from the action on the flop, first on_thg moved all in on this three-spade flop. Then, the guy to his immediate left reraised allin as well.

3. Lastly, also please note that I am actually holding the nut flush draw in my hand with the King of spades, with two cards to come. So you know neither of those two guys has the nut flush draw (or the nut flush itself) in his hand.

Question 2: What are these two people holding here? Are we looking at TPTK, two pairs or trips, some kind of a draw, or maybe a made flush? Both called as the third and fourth players in on a 3x preflop raise, and now on the flop one of them moves in and the second one raises allin. What are they holding?

Question 3: What is my move here? Presumably I am behind at least one of these two allin bettors at this point, but what are my realistic outs? Should I consider calling these two allin bets? What is the money move here?


I will tell you that this ended up, in my opinion, being a very interesting hand, and one with a result that is not often seen at the holdem tables. I am interested in hearing everyone's thoughts, in particular on the last two questions, and I will post the results, including what I decided to do with my nut flush draw and what the hand ended up looking like when all was said and done.

************************************************
UPDATED with hand results:

Well, no one got the opponents' hands exactly right here, but I would think it was pretty weird if anyone had, because it turned out that they both were on the same kind of made hand:



Yes, I did call this bet, and yes the spade on the river gave me a huge chipup early on in the Memorial Day 5k event. What I liked about the hand is that the pot odds actually did dictate that I call allin in a situation where I knew going in that I was behind. I just love that two players had flopped flushes on the same hand, which you hardly ever see, and then to top it off, they both lost to a higher flush when a fourth suited card hit the river. Let that be a lesson to everyone on why you should pay attention to pot odds. I made a call that I would typically never make in a tournament, because once the second played had moved in as well, it suddenly became mathematically correct for me to put my entire stack on the line when I knew I was behind at that point in the hand. You won't find my chasing draws very much in large MTTs, but that's generally because the pot odds aren't there. Almost any time someone fails to bet enough to make the pot odds dictate a fold, I am likely to take a card and see if I can put a move on somebody to scarf that pot away regardless of what the next card is.

7 Comments:

Blogger SirFWALGMan said...

I think you called.. heh. I like calling there. You have a great chance to tripple up early. Your outs are any spade, 3 K's 3 Q's possibly.. I think you take a shot and hope to win.

12:55 AM  
Blogger KajaPoker said...

Question 2 is the tricky one. I would venture a guess and say you are looking at either a set (probably Qs or 2s, but not As), two pair Aces and Queens or a made flush with someone holding suited connectors like J-10 or 10-9. Some long shots would be pocket Js with one of them a spade hoping for a flush to hit, but that doesn't make much sense. Maybe even AK...

As for Question 3 I would just count the outs for every situation. The best hand here would be a flush unless the board paired and gave someone a boat. In the event that nobody holds a spade (unlikely) you have 9 outs in spades. Since there are three players left other than you I would think there were on average 3 spades out (one for a draw and one for a made flush) - that would give you 6 outs. The rest of your outs would be the 3 Kings and 2 Queens (if nobody made the set of Queens or Aces up). I am not sure if I would even count these as outs, since they would all lose to the made flush. So I figure we're looking at about 7-8 outs and about 7.5-to-1 odds. you are getting 2-to-1 odds to call and implied odds of 3-to-1 if TBone also calls.

I think you call anyway. But what do I know....

2:27 AM  
Blogger StB said...

I think you called as well. It was just $5. If you miss, you didn't lose much. If you hit, you have a nice lead early on.

I think one of them had a made flush, the other probably A J with the J spades.

2:43 AM  
Blogger smokkee said...

that's an insta call for me. it's early in a low buy-in MTT and you have a chance to pick up a lot of chips early. with a pair a nut flush draw and back door straight draw, you should call. i doubt either of them has a made flush (over 100-1 odds to flop a flush). one of them's got an Ace obv. the other's on a straight or flush draw, leaning toward J-10.

2:58 AM  
Blogger Guin said...

KQo is only good against few players? Really I always thought you needed others in the hand to make pot big enough to justify calling with these types of hands.

So question 1 I think a call is in order or a standard raise to eliminate the complete junk out of the blinds. But I would like 3-4 callers with this type of hand.

Question 2 I believe you are facing a J10 with a spade and possibly a set.... 2's.

Question 3: That being said you are getting good odds with a good draw and two cards to come. I call but I think you have less outs than you would normally have given the action.

I don't think that the cost of the tournament should decide what to do with your hand. You aren't sitting on a ton of chips and you can put yourself back into the running if you win this hand.

Of course Hoy you could always fold this and grind (steal) your way back into contention!

7:29 PM  
Blogger Matt Silverthorn said...

Question 1: I think that you raised too little. If I'm raising with a limper already in, I want to make it hard for the big blind to call, especially with a hand like KQo. I would have raised between 4x and 5x here.

Question 2: It's irrelevant, given the pot odds.

Question 3: For the love of God, you better have called this hand.

2:09 AM  
Blogger kobabumga said...

I think you raised quite a few preflop, a little more and you get rid of opponents with junk, specially
that one with 3sJs.

I thought you were against a made flush color (the second one obviously had it) and a bluff or draw, first one (AJ, AQ). According to my expectatives, there are 3 (on board) + 2 (the flush made hand) + 1 (your K of spades) + 1 (very likely on the first better) spades.

So then there are only 6 spades left, --this means about 25 % you hitted your flush. So then 75 % you didnĀ“t get it. A huge pot, two players left, but only 25 % for u, and if u miss u are out....

Well, up to u...

5:14 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home