Big, Big Folds

For those of you watching ESPN's WSOP Main Event coverage as it runs on Tuesday evenings, did you see the hand they showed the last part of this Tuesday night when one player 6-bet small preflop with pocket Jacks? My eye was literally twitching when I watched someone make as bad of a play as that, and then my entire side started aching as I watched the other player move all in with pocket Queens, and then I passed out when the guy with the Jacks instacalled. I mean, it's one thing to call an allin reraise preflop when you're fairly short and there's not sufficient chip utility out there to play a 3- or 4-bet pot before or after the flop. But in this hand, the guy had 6-bet with pocket Jacks from something like 2.1 million to something like 3.5 million, opting specifically not to move allin (a horrible play with Jacks, btw, in particular if you're just going to instacall if your opponent pushes in his entire stack). Despite the idiocy and horribad fishiness of this hand on both sides, the bottom line is that, in my experience, if someone 6-bet raises you preflop, and they're doing it not even moving all-in but instead a smaller amount that seems more callable, and you have Queens, you are probably about 25% to win the hand if you call, plain and simple. In that scenario, you'll be up against pocket Aces probably about 85% of the time, pocket Kings 14% of the time, and an incredibly fishily-played AKs or some other garbage the other 1%. That the other player would be so unmitigatingly terrible at no-limit holdem as to get it allin in that spot with a hand as bad as pocket Jacks, is such an outlier that it doesn't even show up in the percentages. I think that might literally be the only time in the history of poker that somebody in a big, big spot (1300 players left in the Main Event, not down to two tables in the Mookie) 6-bet raised small preflop, and only had pocket Jacks. I said it above and I'll say it again: when you get 6-bet small preflop in no-limit in a big spot, it's pocket Aces pretty much every single time. That is equally true about a four-bet, for that matter, but for six bets it's a complete joke.

How either of those monkeys got themselves through 5000 other players in this event is beyond me, because if one thing shows what an inexperienced, amateurish nlh player someone is, it's not folding a hand like pocket Jacks or pocket Queens for all your chips when you are obviously, obviously beaten preflop. Play enough nlh and you'll run Kings into Aces, let alone Queens or Jacks into Kings or Aces, more times than you ever thought possible. Seriously -- KK vs AA sounds to many players like the rarest of long shots, but when you actually sit down and play a million hands of holdem, you just can't believe how many times setups like that can and do occur. And in this case, that small 6-bet raise should have been the absolute last possible straw to tell the pocket Jacks and the pocket Queens guy that they are hopelessly behind and they should GTFO of the hand right then and there. Queens vs Jacks for a small 6-bet and a call preflop. God, you could hardly dream up a worse-played hand between two absolutely hopeless poker clowns.

This all reminds me of a hand described on Goodnight Moon's blog a few weeks back involving Toph Moore, the 21st place finisher in this year's WSOP Main Event. As Moon describes the hand:

"At 80-160k blinds, Anton Makiievskiy, a strong young Ukrainian player, raised early and Toph called in position with the AJ of hearts. Toph had Anton outchipped roughly 12m to 10m. The flop came out KJJ rainbow. Anton fired a standardish continuation bet of 450k on the flop and Toph raised to 1.1 million. Anton then made it 2 million to go, and Toph clicked it back to 2.9 or 3 million. This all took a while going back and forth with both players carefully considering, but then Anton quickly moved all-in for about 9.2 million, and Toph quickly called. Anton had KJ and the board ran out blanks."

The majority of the commenters about this hand on Moon's blog generally seemed to think that it is simply results-based thinking to be focusing on this hand, that it was an all-time great cooler and there is no way anyone should ever even consider getting away from AJ on the KJJ board in this spot, which occurred late on Day 7 of the Main Event, well into the money positions already. Like Moon, however, I do not think I agree with this over-simplified analysis, and it really comes down again to the number of raises, and what the smallish size of the raises says about the hands in question.

Of course, Anton is a highly aggro player and thus his standard c-bet on the KJJ flop means precisely nothing. When Toph raises him to $1.1 million, though, that's where the hand starts to get interesting. To me, a raise on flop, absent any other information or relevant details, generally signifies a good but not necessarily monster hand. Most players will at least consider checking, or check-calling on the flop if they have a monster, not wanting to scare away their opponent, whereas a flop raise more often than not defaults in my mind to signifying a good but beatable hand, usually a top pair good kicker type of hand, or on occasion a solid draw on a semi-bluff. The raise sizing for Toph here seems more or less normal, and thus my first thought on the KJJ board when seeing Toph raise the 450k c-bet to 1.1 million, is that Toph thinks he is ahead but is not totally sure. Maybe a KQ type of hand, maybe a medium pocket pair, something like that, and that's what I would expect Anton to put Toph on once Toph slides in that 1.1 million chip raise.

When Anton re-popped this hand to 2 million, the alarm bells first start going off in my head. I mean, you can't fold AJ in that spot to the reraise to 2 million chips, because Toph's raise on the flop is generally going to signify a good but not monster hand, and thus, with Anton knowing that, he could easily be trying to put a move on Toph on the understand that Toph is not super strong, and the small size of that raise could be consistent with either a flopped monster wanting to draw Toph in, or someone making a move with nothing great, but not wanting to lose too many chips if forced to fold to a reraise there. But still, re-raising in that spot at a huge inflection point in the world's biggest poker tournament, that definitely got my dander up, even holding the AJ for top trips in Toph's hand.

Toph responds as I probably would in his spot, which is to bump it up again, and he opted for what amounts to very nearly a minimum re-reraise, to around $2.9 million or 3 million chips. That's as small a raise as you can get, and as I mentioned above, when you're seeing a 3-bet or 4-bet (or 6-bet, see above) that is itself a minimum raise, you are looking at the stone cold nuts almost every single time. In this case, Toph did not have the mortal nuts but the third nuts, losing to KK (high boat) and KJ (under boat), but the fact is that Anton could not perceive a reraise there from 2M to just 3M -- given effective starting stacks of around 10M -- to be anything other than extreme strength. It screams such obvious strength that I don't even like the bet from Toph, who I think should probably have just moved in rather than making such an obviously-strong min-re-reraise there, but in the end of course it would not have mattered.

What does matter is that Anton then takes this clear and obvious showing of strength from Toph, and quickly pushes allin. And this is where the analysis on Moon's blog breaks down in my view. I mean, if I am Toph in that spot, I am pretty sure I would fold my AJ face-up, confidently knowing I have to be behind, and just move on disgustedly to the next hand. I mean, it's not close. AJ on a KJJ board looks super pretty, and the fact that it is trips with top kicker is very attractive, I won't deny. But as I mentioned above, this isn't even one of those one-outer type of scenarios where it's just so mathematically improbable to be beaten that you just have to call -- rather, in this case, as I mentioned Toph isn't sitting on the nuts, or the second nuts, but rather the third nuts, albeit a very pretty-looking third nuts -- but once he puts in that silly min-re-reraise to 3M, and his opponent responds to Toph's obvious showing of extreme strength by quickly moving all-in, if you think about it could it be more obvious that AJ is facing one of those two superior hands?

I know this is a huge, huge fold, but the truth of the matter is that I don't think Toph should have min-raised there, but since he did, Anton's response could not have screamed any more that he was ahead of the third nuts. Do you think any kind of a decent player is going to reraise that flop with a hand like JT (maybe, at best), and then follow that up by re-re-reraising allin after the most obvious monster-hand bet that Toph has ever made in his life? With a Jack and a medium-strong kicker? I am just not seeing it, and neither should have Toph, who in my book should have made the biggest fold of his entire poker career, and done so confidently knowing he had to be hopelessly behind given the action in that spot.

It took me a long time and hundreds of thousands of nlh hands under my belt before I started accepting the frequency with which absolute setup fuckings happen to anyone who plays this game. But several years ago at this point, I learned to accept that if all possible signs point directly to my opponent having one of the two or three mathematically improbably hands that could beat my strong hand, he almost always does. Despite the craziness of folding AJ on a KJJ flop this late in the biggest tournament in the world, as I read the hand history the very first time through, I knew the AJ was behind the minute I saw Anton's instant five-bet push following Toph essentially screaming at him with his 4-bet that Toph has AJ. In my game, when you basically get in someone's ear and scream at them that they're beat, and they insta-allin you, it's time to start thinking like PLO and assuming that whatever the stone nuts is, it is out there against you.

Sad Poker Story

I have literally not even been able to write about this for the past couple of weeks, but a few weeks back I suffered far and away the worst beat of my live poker career, easily outdoing getting suckout-eliminated by then reigning world champion Joe Hachem from my first WSOP tournament back in 2006. I had headed down to the Borgata to play in one of the Borgata Poker Open events, which was a $350 buyin tournament that ended up with around 300 runners and a prize pool of around $90k as I recall. I had the fortune of being seated at Table 1 for the tournament, and I had my favorite seat at the table -- Seat 5, right in front of the dealer, with the shortest distance between my eyes and where the board cards are placed -- so I knew things were starting off good because my table would not be broken for several hours and I loved my seat and my position against the other troubling players at the table.

I really can't say how I managed to stay alive, let alone chip up at all, in this tournament, as this was one of those increasingly frustrating events where I am literally forced to sit and watch every single player around me showing down pocket Aces, pocket Kings, pocket Queens, pocket Aces vs pocket Kings, etc. I saw the same guy win three huge pots with pocket Aces while at this table, and I even saw one player show pocket Aces, pocket Aces, pocket Kings, pocket Kings and pocket Queens all while sitting with me for no more than two hours maximum on the day. And meanwhile, I was dealt JJ on the very first hand of the tournament (I raised, got called preflop and then had to fold to action on an Ace-high flop), I saw AK exactly two times, and otherwise I didn't get dealt shiat for starting cards. For hours and hours. It was so, so sick. I don't think I have folded more patiently in any live tournament I have ever played in -- the BPO event I was playing started with I think 12k stacks and featured 30-minute blind rounds, so there was at least a little more time than in your average 15- or 20-minute live casino blind rounds tournament, and I was determined not to get nailed by a 2-outer or one of these naked-flush-draw-on-the-flop idiots who had ignominiously eliminated me from my last three live events so I wanted to be patient and try to play as deep into hands as possible before committing my chips, and to start with the best possible starting hands wherever possible to help enable me to do that.

Anyways, I sat and watched as literally every single spot around the table showed down pocket Aces at least once, and many of the seats two or three times, while I never even sniffed pocket Aces, pocket Kings or pocket Queens, I received exactly two big slicks, and not even a single AQ to play with, over the time I survived in this tournament, which totalled a little over six hours of play. I can still recall the anguish and annoyance I felt near the later stages as we got near the money payouts as these clowns were just showing Aces over and over and over again, and I simply could not believe the luck was so uneven for me that there had to be literally20 or 30 pocket Aces or Kings hands spread across the 10 seats at this table that day (and that's only counting the ones that were shown!), but that not a single one of them had come my way on the day. I mean, how do you play for six+ hours with only JJ, JJ, AK, AK and AJ to show for your "premium" hands, and never even receive a single truly premium hand on the entire day? How could anyone survive under those circumstances for any meaningful period of time in such a tournament?

And yet somehow, that is just what I did. As I mentioned, I don't even think I can recall at this point how I managed to amass a stack in this thing, but I do remember that every big hand I won, was won with either two totally shit cards on a naked steal or resteal from me, or with a spec hand like T7s that I had opened for a raise preflop and ended up making two pairs with. For example, I won a big pot when I opened for a raise with A4s, the flop came down K94 rainbow, and then the turn came another 4 and gave me unknowable trips, and I played the hand exceedingly well to get paid handsomely by my opponent with KQ (in this case I bet the flop on a c-bet from my preflop raise against my tight heads-up opponent, but then I checked the turn when I hit my miracle 4, such that when I bet strong on the river he felt totally compelled to call). I won another nice pot when I turned a straight with J9s and was able to milk another nice river bet from an opponent who himself had made two pairs on that same turn card. But that's what I was winning with -- the 75s, the 97o, the A4 and A5 sort of hands, while everyone else just kept flipping up pocket Aces in showdowns, or maybe if they were weak, pocket Kings. It was so frustrating, and it made the mental drain on me far, far worse than usual for this kind of a tournament, because no matter what people say about how stressful big mtt's are in general, getting dealt AA or KK every other orbit pretty much plays itself, and there is very little stress involved in relative terms in finding your way through such situations. Not when compared anyways to having to constantly be evaluating whether you are ahead or behind before the flop and on most flops and turns as well, like you obviously have to do every step of the way when you're trying to win pots exclusively playing starting hands like suited semiconnectors, small pairs and the like. Every single pot was a struggle for me without exception, and on two or three different occasions in the first several hours I was allin on what was more or less a total and complete bluff where I surely would have been eliminated from the event if any one time my opponent in the hand had just decided to make a donkey call.

About four hours in, with me sitting at my tournament high of around 50k in chips from the 12k starting stacks, the loudmouth guy across the table -- a euro (judging by the accent) for those of you interested in such things, who not only dressed like Sammy Farha but even kept an unlit cigarette in his mouth for the last hour or two he played in this tournament -- reraised me allin preflop when I held the second of my two AK hands on the day, and I instantly called him allin pre given the complete and utter shit I had seen his euro ass been chasing all through the tournament, and he flipped up pocket Jacks for what was fixing to be probably the largest pot of the tournament at my table. A King came on the flop, and the euro guy proceeded to trash me to no end for several minutes for instacalling with AK preflop and for "playing AK like it's actually a hand preflop" as he gathered up his things and left, bitching the whole time until he was out of earshot, but the upshot of all this was that I was suddenly up over 100k in chips, and a top-10 stack in the event as we wore down towards the 27 people who would receive payouts in the tournament.

From there, I continued to play very patiently, as I wanted to start to muscle people around with my stack, but the cards and the situations I continued to be faced with simply did not support my making almost any moves at all. A couple of times I raised with J4o and 92o when the action folded around to me in mid-late position, and of course I had to fold when one of the few people behind me actually woke up with a playable hand, and that got old fast with blinds and antes of 1000-2000-300 and an average stack of around 50-60k in the event. So for the most part, I continued folding. The people around me (who by this point in time, with over 80% of the starting field eliminated, were every single one of them not the same people with whom I had started at this table some four or five hours earlier) still continued to be dealt premium pocket pairs at an alarmingly annoying rate given the cards I had to deal with, but still my big stack remained intact as we progressed down to the final 75 and then the final 50 players remaining in the tournament.

At one point, with 44 runners remaining and with 27 set to receive payouts, I was still sitting on a top-5 stack in the tournament at around 110k in chips, and I open-raised a little over 3x from middle position with pocket 5s, sadly among the best starting hands I had been dealt on the day. I got only one call, from a tight old man on the button who I figured to have some sort of a hand even to just call from the button when he had not voluntarily put chips into the pot in the hand to begin with. Incidentially, this was also a guy whose picture had been scrolling through the images being shown on the walls of the Borgata's poker tourament room, and he had earlier explained that yes, he had won the $500 buyin event earlier in the BPO already but he wished he didn't have to keep admitting it publicly with his picture being shown all over the place.

So anyways, this guy calls my preflop raise with 55 from the button, and the flop comes down a stone cold miracle, TT5. I have flopped a boat, and done so with a hidden set in my hand, a far, far superior hand to "flopping a boat" with 55 if the flop comes down, say, JJJ or some similar trips. Even though 9 times out of 10 I will check in this spot, not wanting to lose my opponent when I am holding such an unbeatable monster this early in the hand, in this case I had been c-betting almost without abandon at all all through the tournament since I had been playing so few hands in the first place due to the shitcards I was dealt, and when I've been c-betting like it's going out of style, it is crucial to also c-bet with my strong hands to help balance out the average value of the cards I am holding when I do fire out a bet on the flop after already being the aggressor preflop. So I went ahead and fired out for about 2/3 the flop, the same size bet I would make if I was holding pocket Aces here or an unimproved hand like AK or AQs. My opponent -- a tight old man player, again, mind you -- hesitated briefly before moving in his entire stack, which was about twice the size of my bet.

I don't think I hesitated for more than a second or two on this decision, but is anyone realistically folding here? Again, I've got 55 on a TT5 flop, and the tight guy I am playing heads-up just called my preflop raise and is now pushing allin on this flop with a good-sized stack that is itself also a top-ten stack like my own with just 44 runners remaining in the tournament. I mean, the only way I possibly lose this hand are if he just happens to have TT in his hand for the sickly flopped quads, and of course no sane person can put him on exactly that hand given the action here. Given how tight he is, and the fact that he called my preflop raise, I'm figuring he is on one of two different kinds of hands here: ATs, possibly JTs, or a big pocket pair like Queens or Jacks (I am assuming he would have reraised preflop with Aces or Kings). And the simple fact is, I am crushing every single one of those hands. TT is just not an option that is worth considering folding here to. This guy with himself a big stack has just pushed his entire pile of chips into the middle in a spot where I just flopped a boat by making a set with my two hole cards. I am obviously calling here.

I announce I call within one or two seconds of the old man's push, and right away he gets this sick look on his face as he flips up? Pocket 9s. So it was a much looser push than I would ever expect from this old man-looking guy who has not pushed a bad hand yet even one time that I have seen, but I guess I had been forced to fold to enough preflop and flop raises of my bullshit bets with totally worthless hole cards that he figures this is his time to make a stand. I flip up my pocket 5s for the boat, and the color drains right from the guy's face. As I'm giving him the apologetic "I just made a huge flop" explanation, the dealer burns and turns and a mother fucking nine rolls right out to the board, staring me in the face for a good two or three seconds before it finally sunk in what had just happened. The river was a harmless King (how awesome would the resuck have been in that spot??), and then there I am, counting off 87k in chips to match his stack, leaving me suddenly with less than a third of the average stack and under 10 big blinds in a spot where I was so close to garnering such a huge stack that, given my experience and the way I play, it is almost inconceivable that I would not have final tabled.

First prize in this tournament was something like 24 grand btw, did I mention that?

As I said, this was a beat the degree of which I cannot say I have ever experienced before in live play, and let me tell you I hope I never have to again. Making that walk out of the big convention room two hands later when my 8 big blinds with 85s failed to hold up against AQ was an absolutely horrible feeling, and as I drove myself home up the lovely Garden State Parkway, I must have talked to myself out loud with the radio all the way down for at least the next 90 minutes straight. I mean, I just could not get out of my head what had just happened to me.

Tournament poker really is something that only crazy people would ever really focus on. You bust your ass for seven hours -- or for four days, for that matter -- amassing this nice huge stack, folding after folding after folding (I would guess my VPIP at the Borgata could not have been higher than 6 or 7% given how horrible my hands were all day long), playing good, patient poker, and not making a single mistake or getting in behind even a little bit even one time, and then all of a sudden, POOF! it all vanishes like a fart in the wind. Through a total setup suckout hand in a huge spot the likes of which are almost unfathomable by most people out there reading this. I could not and would not have played that hand any differently, and my god if you gave me the choice I would specifically opt to be in that exact same position 10,000 times in a row, but there you go, even a 19-to-1 shot sometimes is not enough of a lead I guess. Hopefully this at least means that I have another 16 or 17 of these similar situations in the future coming to me where I can hold up and go on to make a big splash in some other mtt with some real money at stake. But for now, it's taken me the better part of a few weeks to even be able to write this all down and type it out on my pc. Even reading the story now makes me angry and sad and frustrated all over again, and the thought of plunking down a few hundys anytime soon again to play with these monkeys who just cannot get in ahead of me no matter how hard they try is really unnerving.

Tournament poker is for the birds, I tell you.

50-50 Final Table Hand Revisited

On Thursday I wrote about the silly suckout that knocked me out of the 50-50 on the final table bubble on Wednesday night, netting me about $900 cash but raping me of an expected value from the tournament that was probably closer to $3000 or so before the suckout occurred, and significantly higher once I was a better than 4-to-1 favorite to become the chip leader with ten players remaining in the tournament with just one river card to come. In the comments to Thursday's post it was suggested that my opponent did not make a bad play by pushing in his entire chip-leading stack on a massive overbet to the size of the pot when he flopped 743 rainbow with his holding of 75o. This strikes me as a particuarly bad play -- in fact as the very worst of the chipleader's options in this spot -- but I always focus on keeping an open mind about things so I spent my entire train ride home on Thursday with a pen and some paper trying to work this question out and see if my math instincts, which do not usually lead my astray, might have done just that on this one. As I worked through the problem it occurred to me this might be a fun blog post. So here we are. And keep in mind, I am well aware that solving this sort of problem in a poker context requires one to make about 8500 assumptions, all of which are challengeable if you want to, but without assuming many things there is simply no way to compare the worth of one play versus another. So I'm going to solve this the way I believe Sklansky, Harrington, etc. would approach it, having read pretty much all of their books.

OK so to review and give you the whole setup, there are 10 players left in the 50-50. This was a larger than usual 50-50 with just under 1100 runners, a good 10-15% more entrants than this thing has been attracting most weeknights these days, and this number of players equates to approximately 2.1 million chips in play. The approximate payouts for the top 10 spots range from $900 for 10th place, $1000 for 9th, $1200 for 8th, $1600 for 7th, $2100 for 6th, $2700 for 5th, $3500 for 4th, $4600 for 3rd, $7000 for 2nd place and up to just about $11,000 for first place, for a total distrubtion to the final 10 finishers of $35,600. For lack of any better way of determining the players' relative Expected Value of the Tournament in cold, hard cash (TEV), I will add up all the money available in the remaining prize pool ($35,600), and I will assume that each player's TEV share of that $35,600 prize pool is equal to their proportion of the total chips in play with 10 players remaining, multiplied by the total prize pool left to be distributed. As I mentioned above, this obviously is not an exact science, but I can't think of a more accurate way than this of determining what each player is likely to win given their current chip stack and the money available to the remaining players in payouts in this event.

One important caveat I will have to follow about using this TEV formula, however, is that it very quickly gets out of whack once one player amasses more than, say, 20% of the outstanding chips with still a full table of players remaining. This is because the first prize of 11k is itself only less than a third of the total $35,600 prize pool to be paid out to the top 10 finishers in the 50-50, so if one player has, say, half the chips, it's not like his Tournament EV is actually half of $35,600, since the maximum he could possibly win by taking down the entire tournament is only the 11k first prize. So, once we get above around 20% of the chips in play with ten players remaining, I can't use this simple TEV formula anymore since it leads to TEV outcomes that are highly skewed to the upside. So for those calculations in the below solution, I will explain the alternative formula I have opted to use instead as I go through it.

So here is a chart of the approximate chipcounts of the 10 remaining players and the respective Tournament Expected Value (TEV) of each player in the tournament given their current chip stack when this problem occurred:

Player     Chips  TEV
Player 1   440k  $7120 (Villian)
Player 2   290k  $4692
Player 3   270k  $4369
Player 4   250k  $4045
Player 5   240k  $3883 (Me)
Player 6   190k  $3075
Player 7   170k   $2750
Player 8   140k  $2265
Player 9   120k  $1942
Player 10  90k   $1456

Again, these TEV figures come from simply taking each player's proportion of the total 2.2 million chips in play, and calculating an equal proportion of the $35,600 in total prize money available.

So, Player 1, the Villain in this hand, has an expected value from this tournament of $7120 right now before the hand in question, due mainly to the fact that he has almst exactly one-fifth of the total chips in play, giving his an excellent chance of nabbing one of the top few cash payouts in the prize pool. I should note that his nearly 20% of the outstanding chips is right up against the point I mentioned above where my simple TEV formula starts to skew, but even if this $7120 figure is skewed by his 20% of the outstanding chips, it is only skewed by a little bit, a couple hundred chips maximum in any event. So I'm sticking with the $7120 as Villain's starting TEV for this problem, although if you prefer to think of it as $7000, or even as low as maybe $6800 or so, I can't really say that is any more or less accurate than the $7120 figure I am using. Anyways, my TEV at the time this hand occurred was $3883, as I had just over 10% of the chips in play and thus my TEV is very close to the average of all payouts remaining in the pool.

OK on to the hand in question. Villain, the significant chip leader, is in the small blind and the action folds around to him. He looks down to find 75o. He should probably fold here, but I'm not gonna kill him for trying to pad his chip lead at a time when everyone else is probably going to be playing tight, scared of missing the final table. So he raises the 5000-chip blind around the size of the pot to $18,500, bringing his chip stack down to 421k (these numbers are not necessarily exact, but they're all very close). I wake up in the big blind with pocket Kings, my first premium pair of the entire tournament. No point in slow-playing this, I don't want to go up against the big stack here on the literal final table bubble with a hand that's going to be hard to lay down, so I bump it up by the size of the pot again, to 55k, bringing my chip stack down to 185k. Villain calls -- with 75o!! -- which was a horrible, horrid, putrid play that stinks so bad I can still smell it here more than 30 hours later, making his stack now 384k.

The flop comes down 743, rainbow. Villain has flopped top pair and a 5 kicker. He also has an inside straight draw. As I even just begin to ponder how much I love this raggy flop in this key spot for me, Villain instantly pushes allin for 384k into a 113k pot. I think for about 2 seconds and then of course I call for all my chips, the turn is a raggy 9 but the river brings a 7, giving the Villain trips and sending me home in 10th place for the $900 final table bubble payout. I know I played this hand optimally, so I don't have any doubts at all about my own play, but my feeling when I posted on Thursday was that Villain's allin insta-overpush on the flop against my preflop reraise was a bad move that clearly cost Villain TEV over time. Some comments said otherwise. So let's work it out.

Remember, the starting point here is that Villain comes into the hand with 440k in chips, and thus an TEV of this tournament of $7120.

The first, and really the central, issue in this hand is what is my hand range for me to pot-reraise the chip leader preflop for over 25% of my stack here on the final table bubble. The answer is that this is a hugely tight range of only the absolute very best hands. He is the chip leader, and we're right on the final table bubble. Now, with ATs or something like that, it is unlikely but I suppose conceivable that I might push allin on a reraise. I actually would fold a hand like that in this spot, but trying to get into Villain's head, maybe he could think that way. But to only pot-reraise as opposed to pushing allin, with about 27% of my stack into the pot preflop, against the chip leader, on the literal final table bubble with the payouts just about to start really escalating, a reasonable hand range for me is AA-JJ, and AK. That's it. Perhaps he could think I would make this move with AQ as well, although of course in reality I would not. I might reraise allin, and I might (more likely) fold to his preflop raise given that this is the final table bubble and he is the chip leader, but no way in hike I pot-reraise with AQ there. So it's AA-JJ or AK, and maybe he would throw AQ in there as well. That's it.

The next assumption is to predict what I'm going to do with each of those hands to his massive insta-allin overbet on the flop. This one is easy. I'm folding the AK (or AQ), and I'm calling with all the big pairs. He was making a move from the small blind, I had been playing fairly tight while he had been an uber-calling donkey for the last hour or so, and I felt more or less positive that I was well ahead of anything he might have been holding as soon as he did not re-reraise me before the flop. His allin massive overbet insta-push on the flop absolutely iced it for me. AA or a flopped set would never, ever do that in this spot for fear of losing me, and would surely require at least a few moments of thought as to how to extract the most chips from me with such a flop. So I'm calling 100% of the time with AA-JJ, and folding 100% of the time with AK, or AQ if you think that's in my range.

So let's look at the structured hand analysis of how likely each of those hands is for me. There are 6 ways to make each pocket pair of JJ, QQ, KK and AA, and there are 12 ways to make AK (and AQ). So there are either 36 hands in my total range (if AQ is not included), or 48 hands in the range (if AQ is included), and in both cases 24 of them are pocket pairs which call 100% of the time in this spot.

So, moving on to the math, let's see what happens to his stack and with what probabilities, and thus what happens to that $7120 TEV he started the hand with, once he pushes allin on the flop. He should figure, if he is behind (he always will be if I call), he has 9 outs (two more 7s, four 6s and three 5s), discounted a bit for my redraws to trips with my pocket pair and better two-pair hands:

If AQ is not in my hand range, so it is just AA-JJ and AK:

66.7% of the time, I have a pocket pair (24 out of 36 possible hands), which I call with every time given the circumstances. In this case:

(1) Villain will win 36% of the time with his 9 outs twice, discounted slightly for my redraws. If he wins the 483k pot, his stack jumps to 682k, giving him around 31% of the chips in play and a very high likelihood of nabbing one of the top 3 payouts. Unfortunately here we cannot use my Tournament EV formula, because it would equate with him having a TEV of around $11,100, or higher than the first place payout, which of course makes no sense whatsoever since the maximum he can possibly win by winning this tournament outright is the $11,000 first prize, and there is still an entire final table of players to get through. This is exactly the skew I was referencing earlier with my TEV formula once someone starts amassing a huge portion of the remaining chips with more than a few players remaining. So for Villain if he beats me here, we will have to devise a different method of computing his Tournament EV. To do this, let's instead just intuit that, with 31% of the chips outstanding and 10 players remaining, he has just a 10% chance of missing the top 3 payouts, paying him an average of $2000 if he does, and a 20% chance of ending in 3rd place ($4600), 30% of second place ($7000) and 40% of ending in 1st place ($11,000). This equates to a Tournament EV of $200 + $920 + $2100 + $4400 = $7620.

At first glance this may not sound right because his TEV with 440k in chips was already $7120, and now with another 245k in chips on top, the TEV only rises another $500 or so. But in reality this makes perfect sense. With ten players left, there is only so close to the $11,000 first prize that one's Tournament EV can ever come. So much can happen, so much is still dependent on luck, that with 10 players left it's going to be nearly impossible to nab a TEV much higher than 2/3 or so of the first prize payout. So $7620 for Villain's TEV if he wins my stack seems about right to me.

(2) Villain will lose 64% of the time to my higher pocket pair, in which case his stack drops to 199k. At 199k, his TEV drops to $3220 from the $7120 it began the hand with.

So, to summarize, 66.7% of the time when he pushes, I have a pocket pair and will call. When that happens, 36% of the time he wins anyways and his TEV climbs to $7620. 64% of the time he loses and his TEV drops to $3220.

What happens the other 33.3% of the time, when I have AK? I fold, so Villain automatically wins the 483k pot, bringing his stack up to 517k. Once again my original TEV formula is going to produce a TEV value skewed too high with Villain then holding nearly a quarter of the total chips in play with still 10 players remaining, so let's intuit again for a bit. With 517,000 out of 2.2 million chips, let's figure he has a 15% chance of missing the top 3 payouts for an average payout of $2000, an 18% chance of 3rd place for $4600, a 28% chance of 2nd place for $7000 and a 39% chance of first place for $11,000. This equates to a Tournament EV of $300 + $828 + $1960 + $4290 = $7378. Again, not much higher than his TEV with 440k chips and ten players remaining before the hand even started. Of course these numbers are all so inexact and you could adjust them here and there however you want, but my point is, his TEV does not rise much by getting me to fold and bumping his stack up another 113k with still ten players left.

OK, so for the grand summary, when Villain pushes allin on this flop, 66.7% of the time, I have a pocket pair and will call. When that happens, 36% of those times he wins anyways and his TEV climbs to $7620. 64% of those times he loses and his TEV drops to $3220. In the other 33.3% of cases, I have AK and I fold, raising his TEV to $7378.

Now we can easily figure out his overall TEV from the above probabilities and values. Remember, he started with a TEV of $7120 before this hand began.

66.7% (I call) x 36% (he wins anyways) = TEV of $7620.
66.7% (I call) x 64% (he loses) = TEV of $3220
33.3% (I fold) = TEV of $7378

Adding these three mutually exclusive outcomes up, we have $1829.71 + $1374.55 + $2456.87 = $5661.13. Villain's Tournament EV from pushing allin on the flop against a guy with a range of AA-JJ or AK who will call with any of the pairs and fold the AK, drops from $7120 to $5661.13. That right there is a hugely bad play for Villain, which is what I felt at the time. As chip leader with these payouts now all within reach, making that overpush is a major mistake. Now of course there are a million different assumptions and guesses thrown in to the above calculation, but hopefully it is clear that my results are so far below the $7120 TEV that he started with, that it is obvious the play is a bad one regardless of my being a little bit off here or there. He simply cannot increase his TEV very much no matter what he does in this particular hand with ten players still remaining in the tournament, but he has an overall 42% chance of decreasing his TEV to $3220 if he doubles me through. This is a gamble he should never make given that he is in position to make a serious run to the hefty top few payouts in the tournament given where he is already situated.

For interest's sake, let's throw AQ into my range as well. Like I said, there is no way I pot-reraise the chip leader with AQ in this spot, absolutely none (I might reraise allin, or I might more likely fold, but never a pot-reraise for 27% of my stack), and I refuse to even consider my doing that with a shithand like AJ or KQ or worse because that is just plain looptidin this spot. But let's throw in AQ, because it makes a whole new 12 hands in the structured hand analysis that I would fold to his flop push. I will try to simplify some of these calculations now since I've already been through how it all works once above.

So, if AQ is in my range, so it's AA-JJ, AK and AQ:

(1) Now only 50% of the time do I have one of the pairs (24 out of 48 possible hands). So I call 50% of the time, and once again when that happens, 36% of the time he wins anyways and his TEV climbs to $7620. 64% of the time he loses and his TEV drops to $3220.

(2) Now the other 50% of the time, I have AK or AQ, and I fold, raising Villain's TEV to $7378.

Again, we can easily figure out his overall TEV from the above probabilities and values, given a range of AA-JJ, AK and AQ for me:

50% (I call) x 36% (he wins anyways) = TEV of $7620.
50% (I call) x 64% (he loses) = TEV of $3220
50% (I fold) = TEV of $7378

Adding the TEV's of these three outcomes up, we have $1373.04 + $1030.40 + $3689 = $6092.44.

So, in sum, if I would pot-reraise Villain before the flop in this spot with AA-JJ or AK only, Villain's TEV by overpushing allin on the 743 flop drops from $7120 to $5661. If I would pot-reraise preflop with AA-JJ, AK or AQ, his TEV drops from $7120 to $6092. As I said, I won't even consider adding AJ, KQ or weaker hands to the mix, because that is a ludicrous assumption given that we're on the final table bubble and I'm going up against the chip leader. I suppose we could add TT to my hand range as well, but hopefully it is intuitive to you that adding another big pair to my range is only going to lower Villain's TEV from the move, because that is another hand that I will call with and be ahead of him on the flop. And I wouldn't pot-reraise with TT anyways preflop in this spot. Again, as with AQ, I might reraise allin preflop with it, and I might more likely fold it in this spot, but pot-reraise with a vulnerable and hard-to-play hand on the flop like TT? Not happening. And equally unthinkable is sinking 27% of my chips into this pot before the flop here on the final table bubble, and then folding an overpair to hsi insta-overbet allin push. Not in a million years.

So there it is, in all its boring and overcomplicated glory. It is definitively a bad play for Villain to push allin on that 734 rainbow flop with his 75o, only because the range of hands I would need to have in order to have reraised the chip leader the size of the pot on the final table bubble is so strong that his 75 is behind more often than not. If he wants to push way earlier in the tournament with 9 outs twice and possibly being in the lead in the hand in any event, there is some math to at least make that not an objectively poor play. But once you're down to the final table like this, the cash payouts take on utmost importance and the relevant calculation for many allin moves like this becomes not EV but Tournament EV -- at least the way I view it, it does.

By the way, once the guy flopped top pair, you know he could have considered that he had only top pair shit kicker and an inside straight draw, and that it was about 2-to-1 likely that I had a higher pocket pair in my hand, and he could have gone ahead with a bet of approximately half the pot,say 60k into the 113k pot. This would have brought his chip stack from 384k down to 324k, and I would doubtless have raised him allin, and he could have insta-folded there. With 324k chips and still a solid 2nd-place stack, this would have left his Tournament EV at $5196. So he could have made this half-pot bet on the flop, and I'm still going to fold my AK (33.3% of the time) or my AK/AQ (50% of the time). So his TEV of betting half the pot instead of the foolish massive overbet allin looks much better:

With a hand range of AA-JJ and AK, I have the big pair 66.7% of the time, I raise allin on the flop, and he folds, leaving him with a TEV of $5196. The other 33.3% of the time I have AK and I still fold to his half-pot bet, giving him a TEV of $7378. So this equates to an overall TEV of $3465.73 + 2456.87 = $5922.60.

With a hand range of AA-JJ and AK or AQ, I have the big pair 50% of the time, I raise allin on the flop, and he folds, leaving him with a TEV of $5196. The other 50% of the time I have AK or AQ and I fold to his half-pot bet, giving him a TEV of $7378. So this equates to an overall TEV of $2598 + 3689 = $6287.

As you can see, whether my range includes AQ or excludes AQ, the strategy of Villain betting just half the pot on the flop and then folding to any push by me dominates his silly allin overpush, leading to a higher TEV for him in either case. So even if you think him check-folding to me after flopping top pair and an inside straight draw (admittedly, that seems a bit weak to me as well) is too wimpy for the chip leader in this spot, the allin overpush on the flop was truly the worst of all of his available options.

Flame away.

Have a great weekend everyone. I should be in the FTOPS Main Event on Sunday night at 6pm ET, looking to make a big run in the first ME I have played in I think this entire year in the FTOPS.

Betting Lines

Man ever since yesterday's post when I was talking about the line I preferred to take with my 85s on the J75 + flush draw flop, that's all I've been thinking about -- betting lines. As far as I can recall among all the poker books I have read, there are only a couple that really include an exploration of specific lines and what types of hands they tend to be good for and what they tend to represent in your opponents. One of them was Secrets the Pros Won't Tell You About Winning Hold'em Poker by Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky, a book that doesn't get much pub at least in my circles but which I thought actually was pretty decent as far as playing holdem for a living, and the other I think was Winning in Tough Hold'em Games by successful online players stoxtrader and zobags. Otherwise, though, the Sklansky's and Harrington's and Hellmuth's and Brunson's and Cloutier's of the world don't seem to spend too much time with more than a reference here and there to taking a particular line with a particular type of hand.

Anyways so the only poker I've been thinking about the past 24 hours or so has been the different betting lines I tend to use with different hands, and how each one works with each type of hand. For example, here is a quick "synopsis" style summation of the rule I was discussing yesterday with that early-tournament hand I had started with last week:

The "check-call the flop, check-raise the turn" line is one that I like to use best with a monster hand on the flop and with me not the preflop aggressor. "Very strong" meaning at least two pair, probably even top two pair, and mostly better than that. Not just a drawing hand but a made hand already on the flop. Flopped sets from out of position are a perfect candidate for this line on the flop with the way I play. A flopped straight or flopflush is another one, although some people tend to have difficulty winning with flopped straight as I hear. But as I discussed yesterday, I prefer the checkraise on the turn in the hands where I know already on the flop that I want to make a large pot, but check raising the turn is a large-pot move.

In contrast, the move I went for in the hand from last week that I finshed up with yesterday is the "call preflop, checkraise the flop" line. Unlike the previous example where I just check-call the flop and then checkraise on the turn, in this instance I go for the checkraise right on the flop, when the pot is smaller and when there are still two cards to come. For me as I mentioned yesterday, I like to checkraise on the flop when I have strong equity on the flop but one that will either be less strong on the turn or more obvious if I hit, both making it less likely that I can take down a big pot once the turn card falls. The quintessential case for this line for me would be flopping a big draw like the hand yesterday, or sometimes even some kinds of top pair hands on the flop. In the previous example above, I have flopped something big already, so I can wait till the turn to checkraise because I am already 100% positive that I will have a big hand on that street and I know the turn checkraise will create a huge pot. Here, in contrast, I do not know if my hand will be big on the turn, so I would rather get the money in now on the flop, keep the pot small if possible, and I still know if I get called that I have a bunch of outs to win a smallish pot.

What other betting lines are there out there? Of course there is the standard aggressive "raise preflop, bet the flop" line, which is the standard c-bet situation. You can also tack on an additional step to bet the turn as well, which is when you fire a second bullet after having your c-bet called. In that situation I typically need to have some kind of a strong draw or some chance that I might be best to fire that second bullet once my opponent has already called me before the flop and again on the flop, indicating that he has something and is not likely going away.

Another popular move in particular in middle- and short-stack tournament play is the stop and go, which is basically "call preflop, push allin on the flop". Of course especially if the stacks are small, this can be as much desperation as anything else, but sometimes if you can pick up a decently strong hand you can use that image to win a quick double-up if things go your way.

Another interesting line is "reraise preflop, bet the flop". This one is typically only for starting hand monsters, or at least for people who want to represent a big pocket pair or AK. The preflop reraise tends to narrow hands down IMO to AA-TT and maybe AK, and the flop bet pretty much backs that story up well.

A related line I like to take, again usually only with my strongest starting hand monsters, is the "raise and smooth call a reraise preflop, checkraise the flop" line. This can be combined as well with a check-call on the flop and the turn checkraise, but in this case with pocket Aces or Kings or sometimes AK, having a raise and a reraise preflop already tends to make a big enough pot that a checkraise on the flop can get you the large pot you are looking for without the need to wait until the turn. My favorite part of this is the not re-reraising before the flop. Without a doubt the preflop action that tends to lead to me winning my largest pots when I am dealt pocket Aces is for me to raise with them, and then if I get re-raised, I just flat call. Re-reraising here basically telegraphs that you have Aces, maybe Kings sometimes, while just smooth calling the preflop reraise lets your opponent believe his AK or QQ might be ahead, and then when the flop comes all rags, you can get all his chips in a pot that is already fairly large on the flop, often by letting him bet first and then checkraising allin in a tournament context.

Of course, with all of these lines, as well as the countless others there are out there, the trick is to mix up your play appropriately enough such that your opponents can never really tell what you hold by just the way you play your hand. Sometimes with the flopped monster you check it on the flop and don't checkraise until the turn, while other times when you do the check-call and then checkraise the turn, it is with a big draw. As with most of poker, you only need to mix in a little bit of deception to keep your opponents honest. In my view if I can vary my play of when I use a particular poker move in only as little or 15 or 20% of cases, that should be more than enough to make your opponents unsure at all times of exactly what I have or exactly how strong my hand is.

That's it on betting lines for today. Tonight I plan to use the call preflop, call the flop and then suckout allin on the turn as often as possible early in the Mookie at 10pm ET on full tilt. Password as always is "vegas1". See you there for the grandpappy of all the blogger tournaments these days.

MATH Recap, Early Tournament Hand Question (Continued)

We had 13 runners last night for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt, with once again the top 3 spots paying out. With the 6-max action in da house, the Gigli came early as per usual, and another common trend also held true almost right from the getgo on the night -- the one and only Hoy virgin in the tournament, a player named AGuda (if you have a blog let me know in the comments and I will link you), absolutely blew up. I think Guda recorded both of the first two eliminations, jumping out to more than 7500 chips before anyone else even had 4000. Guda held a large chip lead all the way through the first hour, and shortly into the second hour when I busted losing a race he was still the prohibitive leader with sometihng like 11k in chips to second place's 8k. Eventually I fell asleep so I can't comment on how it ended, but I will say that the final payouts is a who's who of blogger tournament crushing people:

1. twoblackaces $156
2. AGuda $93.60
3. surflexus $62.40

So there he is, Mr. AGuda coming in second place and winning nearly a fresh hundy in his very first appearance at Mondays at the Hoy. Will the mysterious man named after a misspelled kind of cheese make another appearance in other blogger tournaments anytime soon? Will he return to continue his dominance over the MATH field? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, there is tba winning yet another blonkament. This guy has been absolutely on fire in the blogger tournaments. I love another guy who takes playing with the bloggers seriously, but not so seriously that he gets pissed off in the chat box. Anyways this has got to be 4 or 5 top-2 finishes for tba in just the past few weeks of the blogger events, making himself a force to be reckoned with as we head into the typically slow summer months in the blogger tournaments.

OK, so back to the early tournament hand I had posted about last week. To refresh everyone's memory, I had already doubled up very early in a $10 buyin tournament, so I was sitting on a nice stack in the top 3 or 4% of the field with more than 300 players still remaining. I called a minraise from the big blind into a 3-handed pot at better than 5 to 1 odds with 85 of spades, and then the flop came 75J with two spades. I was first to act out of the big blind and I had asked for your opinions on how to best play this kind of a "drawing hand" from here:



I got a lot of well-thought-out responses as usual, but some of them were contradictory which I found very interesting and I thought I would weigh in with my thoughts. Basically some people advocated betting out some fraction of the pot size at this point, a slight majority it seems like the check-call line on the flop and then reevaluate on the turn, while a few commenters pushed for a check-raise in this spot. I think all three options have merit to them, so I thought I would focus on the factors that I was sifting through in my head as I contemplated my move.

The first thing I focus on is that the current pot size is small. It's small enough with just three players in for a minraise very early in an mtt, that I am just not too concerned about making sure I don't blow a chance to take this pot down now. There's barely anything in there right now, so I ended up not going with the line that involves betting out on the flop. If I had been the preflop aggressor, then a c-bet seems much more appopriate, as I want my opponents to understand and expect that I will be protecting my preflop raises with flop continuation bets in most situations. But given that no one showed any real strength preflop, I am honestly not concerned with the possibility of checking up front here even though it means I might miss a chance to steal the pot if it ends up getting checked around on the flop.

And this leads in to the other main consideration I have at this point: the nature of my hand. So yeah right now I have just a measly pair of 5s. But I have basically 14 outs to improve to a hand that I expect to win most pots (two pair, trips or a flush). It is a small hand now, but it has several outs to improve to a hand that I expect to be very strong. And yet, the pot is small enough and it's early enough in the tournament that, as a couple of the commenters pointed out, there is no real reason in my mind to build a huge pot at this point when I have just this very poor made hand at this point.

Whenever I have a hand with a large potential -- these 13, 14 outer type of hands -- but one that is not made right now, I am often looking to go for the check-raise on the flop. A few of the commenters suggested check-calling the flop and then check-raising the turn if I hit. I like this suggestion, and in some circumstances it is one that I definitely follow, but for my game I tend to do that more for hands that are already huge. For example, if I flop a set I might be very apt to check-call the flop and then assume the c-bettor will lead out on the turn as well, where I know I can put in a very large checkraise into a pot that, by the time the turn is out, will already be quite large. The check-call on the flop and then checkraise the turn line is one I use quite a bit, but again it tends to be a line I save for my big made hands mostly because it's a line that tends to create very large pots. Any time there is a raise preflop, a bet and a call on the flop and then a checkraise on the turn, that sounds like a very large pot to me, and I don't really like to start down that path with just a pair of 5s. That's why I don't like to checkraise the turn with this kind of a hand, at least not when I set about planning how I'm going to play out the whole hand right at the beginning.

If I can check-raise on the flop, however, I avoid the few significant weaknesses of the checkraise-the-turn line, which is that (1) if I don't hit on the turn, then I have a weak drawing hand with just one card to come, way less than 50% equity, and I often have to abandon my plan for the checkraise since my equity has dropped so much by the time the turn card is out and it has missed my hand, or (2) if I do hit my draw on the turn -- in particular if the board pairs my 5 or if a spade comes -- I am less likely to get paid off on that turn checkraise since my opponent will likely put me on the exact type of hand that I in fact just hit.

For me, in this kind of a hand in this small of a pot so far, checkraising on the flop is a superior line I believe for a few main reasons. Number one, it allows me to get some more chips in the pot now with my approximately 50% equity in the hand by not donk betting and instead allowing the preflop (min)raiser to bet out first before I make my move. Secondly, even if my checkraise does get called, I am not the least bit concerned for two reasons. First, my equity is strong, with around a 50% chance of having the best hand by the time the river is dealt. And second, by putting in my checkraise on the flop instead of waiting until the turn, the pot is still small. Even if I checkraise and my opponent reraises me allin, I can easily fold and still have lost just a fairly small portion of my overall stack here. And I like that, being that I have made only a pair of 5s so far in the hand.

You can see for yourself what I mean here with this screenshot when I in fact check-raised the flop:



For my game, with a nice stack early in an mtt, this is where I want to be. This way, if a large stack moves me allin or something, even with 50% equity in the hand I might call or not call depending on what I think he might has and how I am feeling at the time. But I have the freedom to fold to the reraise here on the flop and you can see I've only lost maybe 10% of my stack or so. No biggity. But if I wait for the turn after check-calling on the flop, then my turn check-raise, in order to be credible, would have to be a good thousand chips or so, representing a much bigger portion of my stack in a spot not as advantageous to me IMO as the checkraise on the flop, where my equity is high and no obvious draws have filled on the board.

In case you're wondering, in this case my opponent responded to my checkraise with very close a min-reraise of his own, which screamed out to me some kind of big pocket pair since he left so little of his own stack behind with this reraise:



At this point it becomes a simple math problem for me. I have to call 240 into 1090 with what I figure to be 14 outs twice, maybe discount it to 13 outs since my two-pair outs may not all be winners, but the point is this is the easiest call in the world. In fact, since his remaining stack is so small now that he will be forced to be or call any bet on the turn or river with what I am at this point quite sure is a strong pocket pair, I just went ahead and moved him allin. And again, if he had had enough chips to stack me, especially if this were a "real" buyin tournament instead of just a $10 one, and had reraised me allin on the flop, the idea would be to fold fold fold and move on to the next hand with a loss of only around 10% of my stack. But with this short stacked opponent, it's an easy call and really a matter of just common practice to re-reraise him allin for his last 290 chips into a pot of around 1400 chips by the time I call his reraise.

Or more accuately, I reverse hoyed him just to make a point since he felt it was so important to hold back those few chips even though it made his high pocket pair easy as ballz to read:



We got it all in, and he showed his hand:



Right on schedule. 13-14 outs or so for me here. And bloooom on the river:



And of course, my favorite part is the observer chat right after the hand:



Yeah it is pretty "sick" when those 14-outers on the flop fill by the river, huh? Man you have got to love the players at pokerstars.

Thanks again to everyone for the comments. I welcome any dissenting opinions now that you have seen how I like to play this hand. Oh and to the commenter last week who asked if I play this hand any different in cash or in a tournament, the answer for me is no. Either way with the small made hand that has a large draw to a winning hand, and with the pot small and my stack large, I am probably using the flop checkraise to find out when the checkraise is still cheap whether or not I am beat, and otherwise hopefully use my checkraise on the flop to get a free card on the turn even if I miss. Good question though.

So I guess there is no Skills event tonight? I'm actually liking the idea of some weeknights without blogger tournaments for a change -- it's funny but even though the BBT3 was obviously completely nailed by full tilt and Al this time around, the collective weariness and lack of interest in all the blonkaments right now belies the fact that people really want a break. Being in the middle of the typical summer doldrums doesn't help either. But I'll be curious to see if anyone steps in to fill the void over the summer here on Tuesday nights, as even the bodonkey is apparently on a hiatus. I should be on at some point tonight, playing the usual run of mtts in addition to dabbling in the turbo sngs that I have been playing more and more of lately.

Super turbo is calling me already, I can hear it even from a few miles away from my laptop at home. "Hoyyyyyyyy......Hoyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, come indulge yourself in me. Pillage and plunder my super turbo ways....You know you want it...." Foul temptress.

Firing That Second Bullet With Air

So today I had been planning to return to that early-mtt hand I had profiled last Thursday, but I was flipping through one of the bibles of limit holdem over the weekend, a book that I have worn thin from reading and re-reading it at least 10 or 12 times, and I had dog-eared a page with one of the coolest thoughts I have seen regarding aggressive limit holdem play. It's so cool that I'm thinking about it here again as the new week begins, so I figured today's post would be about that.

The book is Small-Stakes Hold'em -- Winning Big With Expert Play. Sklansky, Malmuth and Ed Miller. As I mentioned this is indisputably one of the bibles of limit holdem play, and anyone who does even a medium amount of reading about holdem has obviously read it. This thing is chock fuckin full of good stuff. Many great, original ideas about poker strategy, and interesting variations and recommendations for loose, normal and tight games, and detailed and useful treatments of various poker situations like semi-bluffing, playing overcards, etc. It is really great. Anyone who wants to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of the game and is looking to read one of the best books out there, Small Stakes Holdem is probably just the thing you're looking for.

Anyways, it is the section dealing with how to play overcards after the flop where the poker point I like so much is hidden. So again, as you already know if you're an avid Sklansky reader, he advocates generally speaking a tight-ish but position-based starting hands play range, so the assumption behind the upcoming statement is that you are not in the pot to begin with unless you have something worthwhile in the way of overcards. Like, the below statement does not so much apply to playing overcards like 97o on a 642 flop, as opposed to playing AKo on that same 642 flop. What we're talking about here is when you raise before the flop with two high cards, typically in the AT+, KQ+ range, and then the flop comes with three undercards.

The next thing to understand is that in limit holdem, the Sklansky-Malmuth-Miller approach would have you c-betting the flop in most cases where you were the preflop aggressor. So again the assumption here is that you are playing two solid high cards with a preflop raise, you get called, the flop comes with three undercards, and you make a continuation bet on the flop. We've all been there. If you haven't, then you blow. You raise preflop, someone calls you out of the big blind with probably a shit hand, and the flop comes with rags. You have to bet out in a game like holdem (limit or no-limit) a significant portion of the time here with the c-bet, or you are undinably giving up value. You're only going to make a pair or better with two unpaire hole cards what, 32% of the time or something? Those other two-thirds of the time, if you take the aggression preflop but then give it up on a bad flop, you are passing the baton to your opponent to steal that "dead pot" away from you. Who's going to win that other 68% of the time when you don't flop a pair with your non-pair hole cards? If you don't c-bet regularly, you are definitely not following the Sklansky et al way.

So the question being addressed for this situation in the book is when is the best time or the best situation to follow up with a second bullet on the turn card when you play overcards on the flop? And the answer is what I thought was so interesting. The authors explain:

The best time to follow up with a second bullet on the turn after c-betting the flop is when the flop was moderately coordinated.

That's it. It's so simple, but simple little rules like this are a lot of what I'm reading poker books for in the first place. I love the easy little rules that explain quite well how to play in a particular spot, especially when I've never quite thought about such decisions in nearly as simple a way as it is dealt with in the literature. I rememeber posting here way back when about a quick n dirty rule I found in Professional No-Limit Holdem regarding when to semi-bluff on the flop, which was another little heuristic just like this one and also something I was really into because of the fresh way it presents of looking at an often-encountered situation by all successful holdem players.

So the best time to follow up with a second bullet on the turn after c-betting the flop is when the flop was moderately coordinated. If the flop was totally uncoordinated -- say like a Q75 rainbow flop -- you c-bet it and someone called you, then that caller is not likely to have a draw given the nature of the flop. In this case, they are highly likely to have at least one pair, and therefore are not likely to fold on the turn either in limit play. So you might consider not firing that second bullet on the turn with just the overcards since your opponent is not going away even if you do bet, and since you have nothing but a high-card hand at this point.

Similarly, if the flop was highly coordinated -- say a flop like TJQ double-sooted -- and you c-bet and got called, that caller is likely to have a strong draw or to be slow-playing a big hand. In either situation, once again your opponent is not going away for just the one bet on the turn after the pot was raised preflop and bet and called already on the flop in limit poker. Plus, in this spot you could be facing a raise on the turn, and you might not even know if your hand would be ahead even if you manage to hit one of those overcards on the river.

This is why the best time to lead out again on the turn in the hopes of taking down the pot uncontested with just overcards is when the flop is moderately coordinated. It is in these cases where the likelihood is highest that your opponent smooth called your flop c-bet with just a hand like two overcards, a gutshot or similar low-quality turn hand. These are the times you want to be looking to fire that second bullet, because your chances of folding your opponent out are higher than if he stayed in on the flop when it was highly coordinated or highly uncoordinated. This is a rule that I have used to significant benefit over the past few years since I first read it in the book, and I thought I would get it up here today in case anyone has any thoughts on the concept or might be able to make use of it in your own games.

Mondays at the Hoy is tonight again at 10pm ET, don't forget. Password as always is "hammer", and as always we are always looking for new and first-time players, so if you're out there and you've been reading for a while but have never sat down to play with the bloggers, come on out tonight and see what it's all about. First-timers have traditionally had great luck in the Hoy so perhaps tonight will be no different. The game is 6-max nlh and the buyin as always is a mere $26 or a Tier 1 token, so hopefully we will see you tonight under the "private" tab for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!

Skills, Mookie and Smooth Calling with Draws on the Flop

Another holiday weekend, another awesome time with the family. We headed out to the same indoor waterpark for the weekend that we went to last fall, and the kids went nuts for it once again. It was great. And I got to see how much they had each grown during the just seven months or so since we were last there. You out there reading this, and me, we all know how little time seven months really is. It's nothing. You don't change over seven months, I don't change over that period of time. But for these kids, seven months is sick. My youngest daughter, K, is 2 1/2 now, so compared to when we went to this waterpark last year, K is now basically 25% older than she was then. Even my older one, who is 4 1/2, is a good 12% older today than when we were out there last year. So I got both girls moved up to the next level of waterslides which was great, and on top of that, my oldest M is now a swimming fool. Throw one of those kid-life-jacket things on her and she will just tread water and doggie paddle in the middle of the pool for 15 minutes straight. Good, good times.

And, I played no poker for a few days there either, which was also all good as far as I am concerned. Ever since I got sick a couple of months ago and was basically unable to play poker at all for a few weeks, not playing on a given night has taken on a whole new meaning for me. I still play most nights, don't get me wrong. But I also skip a night entirely with much more frequency than I had been previously, which used to happen almost never. Now, I am not playing a whole lot if at all on most weekends, and while I used to be a regular Iron Man on full tilt, I'm sure these days I am nowhere close. And I don't even care. Although I don't have a whole lot more than a few sng wins to show for it, I am liking my game over the past couple of weeks since getting back into the poker rotation after my recovery, and I'm sure the good results will come in time.

The good results were nowhere to be found in this week's Skills Series game for me, however. I did manage to play very solid for the first couple hours or so of this thing, maintaining and even growing my starting stack, but eventually I got called by pocket Kings or something and IGH around the middle of the field. Other than my one big BBT3 win in the Stud-8 Skills event a few weeks back, I have just not performed well overall in the Skills games for whatever reason. I have won blonkaments this year in nlh, rebuy nlh, O8, PLO and Stud-8, so it's not like I don't know how to play these games and play them well. I'm just not playing them right, for whatever reason. I think I have finally solved my issues with playing too loose early in these events, but I still seem to be missing something with my middle game now, where I still think in the end I am opening up and taking double-up chances with more marginal hands than I probably should be for that point in the tournament.

I saw in the a.m. that blonkament killer Surflexus managed to win his second BBT3 title in the Skills PLH tournament on Tuesday, succeeding not only in adding to his already very impressive resume of blogger tournament victories but also in further shrinking the series-ending BBT3 Tournament of Champions in a refrain that has become more and more common as the BBT3 has rolled on towards its conclusion this coming Sunday evening with the Big Game. What are we down to now? 47 seats maximum in the ToC? This thing is so much sicker than I ever thought it would be, as we march on towards basically better than 1-in-12 odds of every player in the ToC of walking away with at least 2k in cash to be used at the World Series of Poker event of your choice. Surf's winning a second event this week only serves to further ease the burden on the rest of us tournament winners in the upcoming ToC, and that I think is all good.

Speaking of the Skills game, I was on the girly chat last night with a fellow blogger, and we had an interesting exchange about a hand at our table where my IM chatter's opponent bet out for about 25% of this blogger's remaining stack into a large pot on a flop of something like AT9 with two suits, and this blogger ended up pushing allin on a raise on the flop with a king-high flush draw and an inside straight draw for what he figured to be 12 or 13 outs. He got instacalled on his allin flop raise, with his opponent holding top pair and the nut flush draw, which filled on the turn and sent my blogger friend home also somewhere in mid-field.

What followed was some on-the-spot analysis of the hand between he and I, where this blogger opened the conversation on the particular point of his flop raise by pointing out that if he had just called on the flop, with a bet that large he would basically be declaring himself to be on a drawing hand with such a move. Not wanting to be so obvious about his holding, he figured an allin raise was better since he planned to get it allin anyways with a likely 13 outs on straight and flush draws on the flop.

The more I thought about it, though, and the more I think about it here now, I am really not sure I like this logic. I mean, let's assume for argument's sake that you truly are basically telegraphing that you're on a draw on an AT9 flop with two to a suit. I don't think this is necessarily true, with an Ace on the flop especially you could easily have some kind of a medium-high Ace here, an AJ or A8-type of holding, but again for the sake of this discussion, let's assume that you will basically telegraph the fact that you are on a drawing hand if you smooth call an opponent's flop bet at these blind and bet levels and with these pot sizes at this point in the tournament. My answer is: so what?

Sure, it is an obvious poker truth that the less you give away about your own hand, the better you will perform overall in this game. As a general poker maxim, there is no doubt about the veracity of this point. But, in this case, does it really matter if you betray the true drawing nature of your hand at this point, on this flop? My answer I think is no, and here's why. It's one thing when I am only on a 7- or 8-out draw, something that I would like to stay in for cheaply, but which I'm not about to call off my entire stack chasing after given my only roughly 1/3 chance of filling by the river. I think this is an especially important interest on a particular kind of flop, one that has only one kinda obvious draw on it -- say a K72 flop with two clubs, or a rainbow flop of T93 or something where your opponent generally can reliably put you on a particular draw, and will therefore be likely to know if you hit your draw on the turn or river.

But in the Skills hand from last night, remember the flop in question was AT9, with two suits. So first and foremost, given the bias towards high-card and Ace-having starting hands, the opponent in this hand likely had some kind of top pair hand as opposed to hidden two pairs or something like that. The likelihood of one's opponent having precisely one pair is one factor that I think weighs in favor of just making the smooth call in this spot. With a likely 13 outs working for my blogger friend, I worry much less about telegraphing that I might be on a draw, because the player with just one pair on the flop is not likely to go too crazy on the turn once I have smooth called his normal-sized bet on the flop.

But the bigger reason I don't mind the smooth call on the AT9 two-suited flop, even if you are sure your opponent will know you are on a draw by your smooth call, is that the two suits on the flop, combined with the two consecutive cards on the flop, and the fact that the two connected cards happen to be high cards as well, the bottom line is that I just don't think my opponent has any way of knowing if I've hit my draw even if it does fill. For example, if an offsuit King hits on the turn, I see it as a solid betting opportunity -- especially if I can reliably put my opponent on just top pair or some kind -- because he reasonably has to fear that I hold QJ for the oesd that just hit its mark on the turn. Similarly, if a 6 falls, he once again has to worry that I have just made a straight with an 87 in the hole. Technically, even if a Queen or a 7 falls, I can bet out and there has to be some chance in my opponent's mind that I have hit some kind of an oesd with semi-connected cards. Or how about if any flush card falls, and once again I can lead out with a good chance of successfully getting my opponent to fold based on the scare card.

So in this case, on an Ace-high board and one with several possible draws on both the flush side of things as well as several possible straights, I really don't mind as a rule if my opponent can sense from my actions on the flop (usually a smooth call) that I am in fact drawing. There are just too many possible draws I could be on on this particular kind of a flop for me to be too concerned if my opponent knows I am drawing. Let him know I'm drawing. On the AT9 two-club flop we've been discussing here, any 6, 7, 8, Jack, Queen, King or club give me a hand that could have filled on my draw. That is over half the deck that can have hit my draw on the very next card. So let him know I'm drawing on the flop, I don't really mind because I don't think it hurts me much with so many possible "hit" cards for me on the turn or river. Sometimes I prefer to smooth call on the flop with big draws -- in this case, an expected 12 or 13 outs -- and see if I can either hit one of my draw cards on the turn, or at least hit a card that is sufficiently scary to my opponent to enable me to win the pot. Sure, as a rule I am not a big fan of smooth calling a whole lot in no-limit poker, and I think a strategy that minimizes smooth calling in general other than in slow-play situations is probably a more profitable one than most people, say, in the blonkaments, tend to pursue. But sometimes, in just the right situations where there are lots of outs, lots of possible draws I can be on, and a higher than usual likelihood that my opponent has just one pair, I think the circumstances can line up to make smooth calling the flop on a draw a perfectly acceptable move, at least as a variation play if not as a downright good chance to get into a position to win the pot with big bets on the turn and/or river.

Hopefully that all makes sense to you. It was just one of the many poker conversations I have with girly friends on a nightly basis while we're out playing together in our regular private blogger tournaments. And speaking of which, don't forget the Mookie tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt (password as always is "vegas1"). This will be the third-to-last event in the BBT3, so everyone should be out in force to take one of their last shots at winning their way into the Tournament of Champions like I did. And since it's the Mookie, all the cockfonkeys especially should be chomping at the bit this evening to be the latest loser to wear the weekly Mookie belt. I have cashed in I think three consecutive Mookie tournaments though -- clearly a first time for that situation -- so who knows, maybe tonight I can make it four in a row. See you there, I wouldn't miss it for the world.

MATH Recap, and Semi-Bluffing on the Flop

75 runners showed up for the MATH on Monday night on full tilt, making for a nice round $1800 prize pool and payouts to the top 8 finishers. As usual given the faster 6-max format of the MATH, our first bustout happened within just a few minutes as last week's winner dwal78 was gone within just a few hands played. I actually managed to hang around a little bit for a change, taking advantage of a lucky situation when I flopped a set of 6s near the end of hour 1 at the same time as Kat flopped TPTK with her AQ. As I've said many times, TPTK can be hard to get away from with escalating blinds and antes, especially in a fast-structure blogger tournament, and double especially when the other player is playing a monster hand slow like I did in this spot. So this doubled me up to around 10k in chips and a top 10 stack heading into the first break, the highest up there I have been in the MATH all through the BBT3 so far.

The big hand with Kat also enabled me to get to experience my favorite time in the Hoy, which is from roughly 11:15 to 11:30pm ET -- basically from shortly into Hour 2 to the midway point of the second hour -- when a ton of players who barely made it through the first hour decide they've waited for AA long enough in Hour 2 and now have to start making moves or going busto. And go busto they do. For the 15-minute period from 11:15 to 11:30 on Monday night, we went from 55 players left to 35 players left, with 3 and 4 bustouts every minute it seemed as I guess the blinds just catch up to the donks, the passives and the unlucky around this time. At 11:30 after busto time I was sitting in 7th place of 35 remaining with around 9500 chips and doing well.

Then enter the card death. I didn't see another good hand the rest of my time in this tournament, and that just makes things very hard to deal with, especially when other players at your table always seem to have some kind of a hand and when you're into the antes in a 6-max nlh structured event. I had to lay down a resteal when I tried to use this move to make up for all the blinds and antes I had lost while folding hands like 63o and 74o and J5s. I blinded off for like it was goin' out of style, and before I knew it with the resteal laydown I was down to just over 5k in chips and in the bottom quartile of the 25 remaining players or so. And as I've written about here so many times, when eventually I was dealt KJs after bleeding off all those chips with nothing, those two cards looked like Aces to me. Scottmc raised preflop, and I pushed allin, knowing I would be pot-committed if I called his raise and really hoping to take it down then and there, and unfortunately Scott called. He showed TT, and I was actually in a much better position than I could have otherwise hoped. Alas I did not hit my 49% shot and IGH in 25th place of 75 runners, while Scott was off to the races for yet another MATH cash in the end.

Speaking of which, here are your cashers for this week's Mondays at the Hoy tournament on full tilt:

8. $63 jamyhawk
7. $63 scottmc
6. $99 mattazuma
5. $144 iam23skidoo
4. $198 recessrampage
3. $261 numbbono
2. $378 Pirate Wes
1. $594 corron10

So congratulations out to corron10 for taking down this week's Hoy, and more importantly for winning already his second seat in the BBT3 Tournament of Champions coming up at the end of the series. That is impressive now, with a Skills event win and a Hoy victory already, joining Lucko as the only two-time winners so far in the BBT3 events, and bringing now the maximum number of seats in the Tournament of Champions down to 53 with those two repeat winners.

And also congratulations out to this week's second place finisher Pirate Wes, better known to some of you as a104I9 on full tilt, for taking over the lead in the the updated 2008 MATH moneyboard, including this week's results:

1. Pirate Wes $959
2. columbo $928
3. astin $664
4. lucko21 $650
5. dwal78 $597
6. corron10 $594
7. Tripjax $553
8. fuel55 $512
9. surflexus $488
10. pureprophet $484
11. zeroluck001 $476
11. Jordan $476
13. TuscaloosaJohn $423
14. twoblackaces $409
15. Loretta8 $389
16. ChiipyMcStacks $316
17. Breeze81 $310
18. bayne_s $291
19. tilt_away $289
20. jmathewson_III $274
21. numbbono $261
22. Miami Don $224
23. Roberto55 $217
24. Donkey Shortz $215
25. VinNay $203
26. DaBag $202
26. Byron $202
28. recessrampage $198
29. buckhoya $150
29. Mike Maloney $150
31. iam23skidoo $144
32. BuddyDank $142
33. chitwood $127
34. cubanlinks $120
35. LJ $119
36. kevin_with_AK $106
37. mattazuma $99
38. BamBamCan $95
38. thepokergrind $95
40. ANIguy $89
40. bartonf $89
42. HotPants29 $74
43. katiemother $67
43. Hoyazo $67
45. scottmc $63
46. jamyhawk $63
47. CheckinMyAA $62
48. PirateLawyer $60
49. DonkeyPuncher74 $56
49. RaisingCayne $56
51. jeciimd $52
52. zeroluck001 $52
53. AltronIV $47

Now for today's poker topic I wanted to discuss semi-bluffing on the flop. Semi-bluffing, or the practice of betting with a hand that is not likely to be the best right now, but which if called has a reasonable chance of becoming the best hand later in the hand, has its time and its place in every serious poker player's arsenal. I know against most of the competition I am playing against, say, once the big mtt's get deep into the money will easily adjust and outplay me if I never ever bet without a made hand, and always bet only when my hand is not on the come. So sometimes I know I have to be willing to bet on the come, to bet with a draw, on the flop if I want to get fully paid off when I do hit those hands.

But semi-bluffing can be a nasty business. Especially as the blinds / antes get big and the Ms get small, I can really hurt my overall results if I semi-bluff too much. I remember two distinct occasions where my careful hand analysis after every one of my sessions saw me finding an over-inclination to semi-bluffery that was costing me cold hard cash. Specifically back during my cash game nlh days in 2007, I remember at one point realizing with a sort of a shock that I had actually been betting with almost every single draw I had without regard for any other circumstances of the hands in question. This strategy works great when you're hitting your draws, don't get me wrong. Nobody can consistently put you on a drawing hand if you bet on the come on the flop and then your draw fills on the turn, especially when like me you have good instincts about slowing down just enough with the action on the turn. But when you are missing your draws, or even when you're only hitting them your mathematically expected 1/5 of the time or so on the turn or river on the primary draws, habitual semi-bluffery will drain your bankroll. Once I corrected for this error, my cash game results improved dramatically.

So what do I use when deciding whether or not to semi-bluff with, say, a primary draw? There are basically three criteria I focus most on with this decision, one related to my opponent(s), one related to the size of the pot and one relating to the cards on the flop. And here it is important to note once again that I do not handle this same question in this same exact way in every situation. Any pattern, any consistent repetition, will be sniffed out by the stronger players, so I basically never play something the same way every time. But the other players, the chips in the pot and the cards on the board play the major roles in determining my decisions these days as to whether or not to semi-bluff the flop.

First, my opponents. Sklansky has a number of great discussions of this in all his various books, but I think the place I remember it most vividly is his No Limit Hold'em: Theory and Practice book which I have read a few times over the past year, year and a half or so. There, Sklansky discusses the semi-bluff at length, and the key point I take from his discussion there that I agree with 100% is that you only semi-bluff when you think there is a reasonable chance of making your opponents fold with the flop bet and taking down the pot right then and there. So, in other words, if I think it is highly likely that my opponent is going to call my bet, I generally try not to semi-bluff in the first place. I want my opponents to all fold when I am on a draw that is expected to fill only 18, 19% of the time on the next card. But if I know I am playing against a passive player, a calling station or what I have come to think of generally as pairmonkeys, then I generally try to avoid the semi-bluff in this spot. He is going to call my bet anyways, so why not try to draw to my long-odds hand as cheaply as possible, right? So against calling stations generally, I tend to slow down with the semi-bluffing. Whereas, against players whom I know to be tight post-flop and more likely than average to fold to my bets, I am more likely to semi-bluff there to try to get a fold and end the hand right there.

Seconly, there is the size of the pot. Generally speaking, when the pot is small relative to the stack sizes, I tend to be slightly more liberal with my semi-bluffing. This is purely an absolute dollars and cents thing, but in general, say I am the small blind, say very early in the Hoy with 3000 starting chips, and both myself and the big blind limp in to a pot with 60 chips in the middle to see a heads-up flop. Then I flop an oesd or a flush draw with the flop cards, and it will only cost me 40 or 50 chips out of a stack of 3000 chips to put the semi-bluff out there, I am generally speaking more apt to do so. In a way this is counter to my first point since the small number of chips tends to make that flop semi-bluff more easily callable by my opponent, and therefore perhaps I should rethink my position somewhat here, but at the end of the day when it is a very small portion of my total stack I tend to be a bit more liberal with the semi-bluffs, because I can afford to be, and because of my ability to win a large pot if I do hit my draw, having bet the flop before that draw ever filled. But, conversely, if I have 2000 chips say 90 minutes in to the Hoy with blinds of 250-500 and 50-chip antes, and I limp in to see a flop from the big blind, then in this spot with such a low, low M I will often try to avoid the semi-bluff if at all possible so as to hold on to my precious few chips in a spot where I have no made hand at the time.

Lastly, and to be honest probably most important in my decision of whether or not to semi-bluff is the cards on the flop, and more specifically, the "texture" of those cards. I have written about this before in the context of continuation betting, a similar exercise in some ways to the semi-bluffing decision, but generally speaking, I am more apt to semi-bluff on a ragged board, with no likely draws on it. This is because, harkening back to my first point, such flops increase the likelihood that my opponent will fold to my bet. Additionally it also becomes easier for me to put my opponent on some kind of a decent-at-least hand if they do call my semi-bluff flop bet on such a raggy flop. So if the button open-limps and I limp behind from the big blind with 54s and then the flop comes 239 rainbow, I am more inclined to semi-bluff there with my oesd, all other things being equal, because the flop is so ragged I feel that there is a high likelihood that my opponent will fold to my bet on the flop. But, alternatively, when the hijack open-limps, the button overlimps and then I limp in from the big blind with a hand like 98s, and the flop comes down KJT with two of a suit that is not mine, that is a board I do not like the semi-bluff on. Why not? Because with a limper out of the hijack and the button, the odds are that a three-high-card flop like this has clearly hit someone, hard enough at least to make them want to call my bet here. And if I am just 18% to fill my draw on the turn -- assuming it will be ahead as it is even if it does fill -- then I do not want to put more money into this pot in this spot as a significant underdog. So more than any other single factor, the texture of the flop tends to have the most impact on my decision of whether or not to semi-bluff with my drawing hands on the flop in nlh tournaments.

In all, the question of when (or if) to semi-bluff is one that may seem trivial to a lot of players out there, but careful analysis of these situations is a crucial piece of any properly introspective approach to one's poker game. As I mentioned above, I can specifically recall two separate occasions where I realized from studying my own hand histories that I was playing too liberally with my draws, and frankly there have probably been times as well where I was failing to ever bet them enough. As with any consistent poker situation, the proper handling of such decisions cannot be based on the exact same factors leading to the exact same results every single time or I know I will be playing identifiable, and therefore exploitable, poker. But having guidelines like the ones I follow above in this post has still helped me dramatically in facing what can otherwise feel sometimes like a very eenie-meenie-miney-mo decision for many players out there.

Now don't forget to come out to the latest Skills Series event tonight at 9:30pm ET on full tilt and to use these fresh semi-bluff decisionmaking skills (password as always is "skillz"). And tonight is gonna be a doozy too -- $12 limit Razz. Ahhhh I just threw up in my mouth just thinking about that. What fun. But you gotta come out and play the most frustrating of all the poker games, because tonight by around 1am we will have awarded yet another seat in the BBT3 ToC coming up in early June. And also don't forget to check out the BlowDonkey tonight at 9pm ET if that's how you roll, hosted by Smokkee who recently won over 6k in the 40k guaranteed nlh tournament on full tilt last week. I won't be on Blowdog but I will definitely be in there for Skillz razz at 9:30pm ET tonight, trying in vain still to pick up my very first elimination bounty of the entire year in any of the Skills games. Hopefully that bounty will come against you tonight on full tilt!