Thoughts From the Borgata Fall Poker Open Part III (Conclusion)

OK so props out to Astin and MorningThunder for coming the closest in guess what the two players had in the biggest fold I made on the day at the Borgata a couple of weeks back.

For those who did not yet read my last post, here is the recap on the hand in question, pasted from my prior post:

For starters, the guy to my immediate right (a different guy from the hand above) had just lost an allin pot from his big blind to a guy across the table who had only about 400 chips fewer than he had, leaving the guy next to me with just that many chips at a time when the blinds were I think 400-800 with a 75 ante. Being that he was also the small blind in the hand in question, this guy was thus allin blind with his last chips in the middle to start the hand. Which meant that his $100 elimination bounty was totally up for grabs. Which meant that everyone around the table would be playing like complete and utter maniacs to try to get his bounty, as always seems to happen whenever a cash bounty is on the line in one of these bounty tournaments. And that's the setup for the biggest pot I saw on the day. Oh, and did I mention that, as this hand began, we had the two largest chip stacks left in the tournament both at my table? One, the actual chip leader at the time, was on my immediate left (I spent pretty much the entire last 8 hours of this tournament with the chip leader on my immediate left, through two different tables in fact), and was sitting on approximately 125,000 in chips, at a time when my paltry stack (as it was most of the day) was around 14,000 (which was really fun for me, in case you're wondering). And another guy across the way had about 120,000 in chips in his stack, good for #2 at the time in the tournament, also seated at our table even though we had about 60 runners left in the event.

So, with the setup out of the way, the small blind was allin with the last of his chips, and his bounty chip in the middle in front of him, and I was the big blind in the hand. The UTG player and tournament chipleader with 125,000 chips started off the action by min-raising, in a weakass, half-hearted attempt to take the guy head-on for his bounty, but the weak minraise to just 1600 chips did nothing of the sort and instead led the UTG+1 player to call, then the guy next to him folded, and then the next 4 players also called the 1600-chip raise. I looked down in the big blind to find 97s, a hand which I would have open-raised with myself and which I would have probably called most small raises with even in a heads-up pot (certainly against the chipleader), so I of course called the raise as well for another 800 chips out of my stack with 97s, and we saw a 7-way flop -- with the small blind and his bounty already allin and up for grabs -- by far the most players to any hand I saw in my entire 13-hour run on the day.

And the flop came down...949 rainbow. My heart jumped to my throat. I mean, of course a nut straight or a flush would be even better flops for me, but in general I had nailed this flop -- far and away the best flop hit over made in the entire day, mind you -- and I was in the big blind to boot, in a hand with two ginormously-stacked players who had been very aggressively pushing people around already to get those huge stacks.

I checked, as I had checked almost every flop I had seen throughout the day and I just didn't see the point of betraying any strength in my hand and possibly chasing anyone out with all these chips available on the table. My thought was that someone would surely bet this flop out of the 7 players in the hand (6 with chips behind), and then I would most likely reraise allin almost any bet from any player and take my chances. The chipleader opened the betting to my immediate left, but with a shocking bet of 20,000 chips. This was about a fifth of his entire monster stack, and more than that, it was enough right out of the gate to basically cover the entire stack or nearly the entire stack of every single other player in the hand at the time, except for the #2 stack across the table. That did not please me to have to call an allin instead of having some fold equity into what was a pot with under 10k in chips in it at the time, but at the same time, this guy was an aggro monster and the size of the bet made him seem more weak than strong to me, so my plan was still to call his allin when the action got around to me.

There was a fold, then another fold, and another, and my plan was really crystallizing in my head. But then a crazy thing happened. The other ginormous stack in the tournament called the 20k bet. He didn't even raise it, mind you, but he just smooth called the bet for 20k, now putting a silly amount of chips into the pot, and then the action folded around to me. As I stared at the obscene action going on in this hand, my plan to get it allin started to crumble right before my eyes. I mean, one guy pushing in a huge bet as an aggro steal play when he had the chips to lose was one thing, but for both of the big stacks to be committing tournament-altering amounts of chips here -- and in particular with the guy across the way only calling and not reraising allin to even try to get the big stack to lay down -- those alarm bells I often write about started going off in my head. Something just did not feel right here. I thought. I analyzed. I agonized. Suddenly, my trips with the 7 kicker were feeling pretty well outkicked. Again, if either one of these guys had alone made a big move at this pot, I'm probably sliding 'em all in there and taking my chances, especially given that I was below average like I was the entire day long in the tournament, and if my 97 is beat, then it's beat. But once the enormity of the pot I was looking at really sunk in, I just sat in disbelief as the fingers on my right hand slid my cards face-down towards the muck in the center of the table. I was behind, I had to be.

The turn card brought an offsuit King, making the board 949K rainbow, and the big stack to my left insta-pushed allin for a gillion chips. And the guy across the way beat him into the pot calling the bet. For his entire 2nd place stack. Against the one and only player in the entire room who had the power to eliminate him. This of course left me all the more sure that I was in fact behind.

I had asked for guesses as to what the two players involved were holding, and the actual answer is that the chipleader to my immediate left flopped the underboat with pocket 4s, and the #2 stack in the tournament across the table from us was sitting on Q9o. MorningThunder technically was closest with his guesses of 44 and K9, but Astin with 44 and A9 was basically right there, too. Although I think both of those guesses highlight my key point with this hand -- I obviously folded 97 because I just did not see how trips with a 7 kicker could be ahead given the two huge bets made and called ahead of me by the two prohibitive chip-leading stacks in the tournament with still some 60 runners remaining. And I did not see much in the comments to my last post to suggest much support for me continuing to play on with the hand that I had given that action, which I think makes sense since (obviously) I folded it, although it was the most painful fold I had made all day for sure.

The point I alluded to above, though, is that I think the big stack across the table made a big mistake in getting all his chips in in this spot, even sitting on Q9 on a 949 flop. I mean, once the chipleader -- and once again, the literal only player left in the tournament that could eliminate him from the event at that point, through more than 75% of the field at the time but still about 45 players away from the money positions -- slid out the 20k bet on the 949 flop, I would have given serious consideration to folding if I were the other big stack. Now, to be honest, that is not to say that I would have been confident that my Q9 was behind -- given the minraise from early position from the chipleader and his incredibly aggressive play since he had become the chipleader -- but rather, as a reflection of the fact that (1) I could be behind, (2) the huge bet requires me to commit a significant portion of the large stack I've built up thus far, and leaves me in terrible position facing potentially larger bets on later streets, and (3) even though I may likely be ahead, my stack is so large at this point that be folding here I can basically maintain my huge chiplead over almost every other player remaining and ensure that I live to fight another day, instead of taking what may even have amounted to only a 20% chance of being behind.

In any event, even if I had chosen to smooth call the chipleader's 20k bet on the 949 flop with my Q9 and the second-largest stack in the tournament at the time, I would almost certainly have folded the Q9 to the insta allin bet from the chipleader on the turn. I mean, what does the #2 stack put the chipleader on, to be making that kind of an allin push against this other huge stack that had the ability to cripple his chipleading stack if he is wrong? Why would the chipleader be pushing that hard, without some huge hand? Basically, in my view, by the #2 stack instacalling the instapush on the turn, the #2 stack is basically saying that he thinks the chipleader is an idiot. There's just no other way of saying it. I mean, to instacall that allin with a Q9 on the 949K board means that he thinks there is little to no chance that the chipleader has 44, KK, A9 or K9, the four possible hands that beat the #2 stack's Q9. But when you really look at the action, the chipleader -- unless he is, in fact, a poker idiot, which I can assure you he was not playing like on this day in any way, shape or form -- almost has to have exactly one of those four hands by the time he pushed allin on the turn. He is already the chipleader in the tournament, with around 150 big blinds in his stack even before this hand begins. Why on earth would be put that entire huge stack at risk against the #2 stack in the tournament, with a hand like AA, or J9 ot T9? I can only assume that the #2 guy put the chipleader on a hand like AA, but even that makes just no sense to me given the way he played the hand. The preflop early position minraise could definitely be AA, but when you see a 7-handed flop with a middling pair like 9s on the board, isn't almost all but certain that at least one other player in there flopped trips? Again, unless the chipleader is an idiot, he's not risking his entire massive stack with just a pocket pair against a mass of 7 players on a paired flop. No way. And is he really going to insta-push there on the turn with just trips and a middling kicker like J9 or T9? Come on, second stack. That was a terrible play, and while again I can accept the possibility of him calling the 20k on the flop and seeing what happened on the turn, the instapush on the turn that required the #2 stack to put in the rest of his chips with trips and a Queen kicker, should have been a very loud and clear signal that he was beat.

OK well there you have it. I had some more to say about my run at the Borgata, but as is usually the case with my deep runs, give it a week or two to sit around and it all just seems less important and less relevant than it did when it first happened. Will I get down to play some more poker again before this year is out, and maybe create some new live tournament stories to regale my readers with here at the blog? It's possible. I just found out today that I still have three vacation days left that I carried over from 2010 and which will expire per my employer's policy if I do not use them by the end of this year. And, while normally I would just throw those three days in in that week between Christmas and New Years and spend some more quality time with the Hammer Family, my group at work has a policy that any time off during that heavy-vacation-volume week must be pre-approved by the powers that be, and suffice it to say that all the lazybones already got in their requests months ago, leaving it impossible for me to get any time off myself during that week at this point in time.

So, will I use one of these three vacation days that I have to take in December to head back down to AC or up to Foxwoods for some more like poker action? Only time will tell.

Thoughts From the Borgata Fall Poker Open (Part II) -- The Big Hand

Yesterday I wrote about my fairly deep run in the Borgata Fall Poker Open black-chip bounty event, where I ended up busting just short of the final table at the hands of a vicious suckout. I was fortunate enough to have played in the tournament with two fellow fun poker bloggers, Edgie and the beautiful Josie. Although I had read his blog before and seen some comments on my own and others' blogs, this was my first time meeting Edgie (Jeff), which I managed to do over a quick bite during dinner break at the Borgata's food court just below the poker room. Jeff was a super nice guy, and more than that, a very solid poker player as well as he followed up a $9100 score earlier this month on bodog by final tabling the very same tournament that I played in. Despite us both outlasting more than 98% of the field in this event, Jeff and I never got to play at the same table, but Josie was kind enough to give me updates on Jeff's progress throughout the afternoon, and it sounded like Jeff was off to a nice big stack early, and that within minutes after the dinner break, his stack multiplied several times and set him up nicely for a final table run.

I should mention as well that Josie, who busted shortly before the first break in this tournament, came into the event flush in the pocketbook as she had managed to win not, not two but three buyins at the 2-5 nl cash tables the night before at the Borgata's always-active cash tables. I can honestly say that I have never won anything close to $1500 in cash poker of any level at any one sitting, and Josie having been able to pull that feat off is a testament to her abilities as a cash player in addition to her known tournament prowess which includes her own final table the last time I played at a live tournament with her, at Foxwoods a few months back. There is definitely something awesome about a woman who can kill you in both cash and tournament poker, and even though Josie was done in early by pocket Kings in the Borgata black-chip bounty tournament this time around, she cleared well into the four figures overall for her three-day trip to Atlantic City last week thanks largely to the cash tables, a result any of us would envy, and I have to say Josie was a great resource for me last week to discuss hands, to listen to my many complaints from bad cards to bad seat position through the tournament, and generally just to take a break from the stress of hand after hand of increasingly crucial situations.

Anyways, a belated congratulations to Edgie for his Borgata final table in what I can personally attest was a grueling field, and to Josie for destroying the cash tables at a level higher than her normal 1-2 cash play also at the Borgata last week.

OK, so back to the tournament. When I left you yesterday, I had referenced that, although my poker instincts were fairly far from sharp in the tournament, I did make a couple of big folds that, like mostly ever deep mtt run I have ever had, did more to keep me in the tournament than basically any hand I did play throughout the day. Despite not getting many strong hands for several hours to begin the tournament, I did have to fold AQs about four hours in, in the only time I saw this hand on the day, to a raise and a reraise in front of me before the flop. I have simply found that I have done well folding AQ -- sooted or otherwise -- to almost any preflop reraise, which generally speaking indicates either AK or a pair of Queens through Aces in the pocket probably a good 75% of the time or more in my experience.

An even bigger preflop fold, albeit also something which I have learned over the years the discipline to do with some regularity, was when I also laid down JJ preflop, about which happened several hours in, about 2/3 of the way through the field. In that hand, I was getting fairly short, back down to around 15 big blinds (where frankly I spent most of the day's action), and I hadn't played a hand in about an hour, so I was getting antsy to make some kind of play. You can imagine my excitement when I looked down to find pocket Jacks in the big blind, and even moreso when the action folded halfway around before the flop, and then a fairly aggressive stealer open-raised it up a few seats to my right. I had already decided I was going to reraise allin any preflop raiser from any position with my shortish stack and pocket Jacks, and when half the players folded and then the pot was opened by a guy with a weak image already, that all but sealed it. But then to my dismay and disappointment, a very tight player who was also sitting on a big stack reraised on the button, after also not playing a hand in the past hour or so, and that really changed the whole calculus for me. I mean, I needed the chips bad, but as much as I wanted to get some action with my pocket Jacks, I was not about to call for 2/3 of my stack or push allin against a tight preflop reraiser with pocket Jacks. Especially given the reraiser's large stack, my perception was that he would not risk all of those chips with a few players still to act behind him without a very strong holding, and so, after a minute or so of thought, I grudgingly but confidently laid the JJ down. The guy to my right went on to show AA when the original stealer also folded to his preflop reraise. Much later, the guy to my right would go on to win the entire tournament.

But my biggest fold on the day was not before the flop, but on the flop, and it also happened to be the biggest pot I saw in the entire 13 hours I played in the tournament. Here's how the action went:

For starters, the guy to my immediate right (a different guy from the hand above) had just lost an allin pot from his big blind to a guy across the table who had only about 400 chips fewer than he had, leaving the guy next to me with just that many chips at a time when the blinds were I think 400-800 with a 75 ante. Being that he was also the small blind in the hand in question, this guy was thus allin blind with his last chips in the middle to start the hand. Which meant that his $100 elimination bounty was totally up for grabs. Which meant that everyone around the table would be playing like complete and utter maniacs to try to get his bounty, as always seems to happen whenever a cash bounty is on the line in one of these bounty tournaments. And that's the setup for the biggest pot I saw on the day. Oh, and did I mention that, as this hand began, we had the two largest chip stacks left in the tournament both at my table? One, the actual chip leader at the time, was on my immediate left (I spent pretty much the entire last 8 hours of this tournament with the chip leader on my immediate left, through two different tables in fact), and was sitting on approximately 125,000 in chips, at a time when my paltry stack (as it was most of the day) was around 14,000 (which was really fun for me, in case you're wondering). And another guy across the way had about 120,000 in chips in his stack, good for #2 at the time in the tournament, also seated at our table even though we had about 60 runners left in the event.

So, with the setup out of the way, the small blind was allin with the last of his chips, and his bounty chip in the middle in front of him, and I was the big blind in the hand. The UTG player and tournament chipleader with 125,000 chips started off the action by min-raising, in a weakass, half-hearted attempt to take the guy head-on for his bounty, but the weak minraise to just 1600 chips did nothing of the sort and instead led the UTG+1 player to call, then the guy next to him folded, and then the next 4 players also called the 1600-chip raise. I looked down in the big blind to find 97s, a hand which I would have open-raised with myself and which I would have probably called most small raises with even in a heads-up pot (certainly against the chipleader), so I of course called the raise as well for another 800 chips out of my stack with 97s, and we saw a 7-way flop -- with the small blind and his bounty already allin and up for grabs -- by far the most players to any hand I saw in my entire 13-hour run on the day.

And the flop came down...949 rainbow. My heart jumped to my throat. I mean, of course a nut straight or a flush would be even better flops for me, but in general I had nailed this flop -- far and away the best flop hit over made in the entire day, mind you -- and I was in the big blind to boot, in a hand with two ginormously-stacked players who had been very aggressively pushing people around already to get those huge stacks.

I checked, as I had checked almost every flop I had seen throughout the day and I just didn't see the point of betraying any strength in my hand and possibly chasing anyone out with all these chips available on the table. My thought was that someone would surely bet this flop out of the 7 players in the hand (6 with chips behind), and then I would most likely reraise allin almost any bet from any player and take my chances. The chipleader opened the betting to my immediate left, but with a shocking bet of 20,000 chips. This was about a fifth of his entire monster stack, and more than that, it was enough right out of the gate to basically cover the entire stack or nearly the entire stack of every single other player in the hand at the time, except for the #2 stack across the table. That did not please me to have to call an allin instead of having some fold equity into what was a pot with under 10k in chips in it at the time, but at the same time, this guy was an aggro monster and the size of the bet made him seem more weak than strong to me, so my plan was still to call his allin when the action got around to me.

There was a fold, then another fold, and another, and my plan was really crystallizing in my head. But then a crazy thing happened. The other ginormous stack in the tournament called the 20k bet. He didn't even raise it, mind you, but he just smooth called the bet for 20k, now putting a silly amount of chips into the pot, and then the action folded around to me. As I stared at the obscene action going on in this hand, my plan to get it allin started to crumble right before my eyes. I mean, one guy pushing in a huge bet as an aggro steal play when he had the chips to lose was one thing, but for both of the big stacks to be committing tournament-altering amounts of chips here -- and in particular with the guy across the way only calling and not reraising allin to even try to get the big stack to lay down -- those alarm bells I often write about started going off in my head. Something just did not feel right here. I thought. I analyzed. I agonized. Suddenly, my trips with the 7 kicker were feeling pretty well outkicked. Again, if either one of these guys had alone made a big move at this pot, I'm probably sliding 'em all in there and taking my chances, especially given that I was below average like I was the entire day long in the tournament, and if my 97 is beat, then it's beat. But once the enormity of the pot I was looking at really sunk in, I just sat in disbelief as the fingers on my right hand slid my cards face-down towards the muck in the center of the table. I was behind, I had to be.

The turn card brought an offsuit King, making the board 949K rainbow, and the big stack to my left insta-pushed allin for a gillion chips. And the guy across the way beat him into the pot calling the bet. For his entire 2nd place stack. Against the one and only player in the entire room who had the power to eliminate him. This of course left me all the more sure that I was in fact behind.

Anybody care to guess what the two players had? I can post the results on Wednesday but will give some time for people to get in their guesses if they want to.

Suffice it to say, the winner of this pot went on to be such a massive chipleader and hold more than 300 big blinds at this point in the tournament, which is something I have never even seen before in my entire life of live or online tournament play.

Let me know your guesses, and I will post the results tomorrow. Also, I would like to understand if anyone thinks I should have called the action here and taken my chances with my 97s, and if so, based on what reasoning.

Live Poker Hand -- What are the Odds?

So here's an interesting poker problem I ran into recently when I was playing a no-limit holdem tournament at a live casino. The guy to my left had been raising and betting pretty actively early on, including in a couple of hands where I felt fairly sure that he had nothing more than a drawing hand. Contributing to my image of him as a reckless, super-active player, I won't lie that his face definitely had the look of a euro, and, well, if you play at all during the day on the major online sites then you can imagine what my generalization is as to the euros out there. Anyways, suffice it to say that I had this guy pegged as a loose, maniac style of player, and I could not wait to get involved in a pot with him.

I got my chance maybe an hour in to the tournament, with blinds of 100-200 and average stacks of around 14k (10k to start), when I open-raised to 750 from middle position with Q9 suited, and Mr. Euro quickly called my preflop raise to my left. The flop came down a juicy-looking TJQ rainbow, giving me top pair plus the bottom end of the open ended straight draw, and moreover I figured I was likely ahead of whatever my opponent had since he had quickly called my preflop raise. AK of course was a scary possibility with this board, but in the end he had called quite fast preflop, and AK is not a hand that I find many people act quickly with before the flop when it has already been raised up ahead of their action. So I figured my top pair might not be good, but my draw together with top pair likely was. And, since my opponent had called a preflop raise, I figured there was a good chance he hit this board in some way as well with a high card or two.

Figuring therefore that my opponent was likely fairly strong but that I was ahead with two cards to come, I led out on the flop for 1200 into the 1800 chips already in the pot, and Mr. Euro did his usual move of a very quick smallish raise, only up to 2700 total, just barely more than the minimum allowable raise. I had around 8k left in my stack at the time, and I pretty quickly pushed allin, figuring that this guy was making another Euromove and was probably himself either bluffing or drawing, given what I'd seen him do so far in this tournament. My opponent sat for a while, clearly struggling with what to do, which made me really want him to fold since I figured he probably had a King (for the higher oesd than mine) plus one of the other cards on the board. But alas, eventually he called. The Euro tabled JTo for flopped 2nd and 3rd pairs, and he happily yelled "come on, HOLD!" as the dealer burned and turned a rag, and then burned a turned the river, the 9 of diamonds to give me the hand with a higher two pairs.

When that 9 hit the river, you would not believe the ruckus that this guy made at the table. He slammed his hand down hard on the felt, so hard that everyone's chips jumped a little bit, and he kind of screamed out "I cannot believe that suckout!!" As he had had me outchipped by a little bit, he was then forced to sit there and continue muttering about his luck and how he could lose that hand after flopping the two pairs for the next 20-30 minutes until he was finally eliminated from contention. As he left he made some kind of nasty comment under his breath to how I got my money in as "an 80% underdog", which did not sound right to me given where I thought I was in the hand.

So the question is, off the top of your head (of course any monkey could look this up on a holdem odds calculator, like I did after I returned from the casino), what does your gut tell you his and my equity were in the hand in question? Again, I held Q9 and he held JT on a QJT rainbow board. I knew for certain that his estimate that he had 80% equity in the pot was a gross overstatement, but my instincts were telling me at the table that this was about a 60-40 shot. I actually guessed out loud to the guy who was on the other side of Mr. Euro that I was maybe a 42-58 dog in the hand, whereas he was estimating that I was maybe a 38-62 dog, but we both figured this hand to be somewhere around 60-40 given all the outs I felt I had.

So, again with no cheating by looking this up, what does your gut tell you in terms of my and my opponent's equity in the hand in question?

Live Poker Hand Question -- Conclusion

Yesterday I posted about a hand that occurred early in a $400 buyin tournament in AC this past weekend, and asked what you would do on the river if you were me. As a reminder, here is the setup from yesterday's post:

The tournament started with 10k in chips, and late in the first hour I called a preflop raise from mp with T8s, and the big blind called as well which brought us a flop of T84 rainbow, three-handed. With 1250 in the pot, the big blind led out for 400 chips, and the original preflop raiser thought for a few seconds before just calling, and I smooth called as well with the flopped top two.

The turn card was an offsuit Queen, making a board now of T84Q. The big blind surprised me by leading out again, this time for 1000 chips into a pot of 2450. The guy to my right thought it over, for a little longer this time, and eventually slid out a purple chip as well for the call, and again I made the pot-odds call as well, a bit reluctantly.

The river card then brought an Ace. The big blind hesitated a bit and then slid out another purple and some yellows, a 1400-chip bet for his third lead of the hand. The guy to my right had a kind of disgusted look on his face, but after a few seconds he too slid out 1400 chips to make his third postflop call of the hand. The action was to me on the river to call 1400 to win 8250 in the pot.

Now of course, the answers I got in the comments were mostly well thought-out, but like any good "What would you do?" hand, almost nobody could keep themselves from critiquing my earlier play of the hand -- even though that's not what I asked -- in particular my not raising on the flop. As I mentioned yesterday, top two pairs is the only two-pair hand that I will generally slow-play, and I should re-mention that nobody gave me any credit for the fact that I wasn't checking here, I was calling a decent bet, building the pot by about 60% on that street while keeping two potentially weak players in the pot. Someone, I think it was Astin, mentioned that when your top two pairs are Tens and 8s, it is almost not like top two pairs at all. That is a semi-valid point, although the math I imagine would not bear out that statement in its extreme. The turn card will be a Ten or below still more often than it will not be, and even if a Jack or Queen falls it is hard to be too concerned with just the one non-Ace and non-King overcard on the board (I certainly would not be, given the action in this hand so far). Another commenter mentioned the many straight draws available on this board as a reason for the raise on the flop, which I simply do not understand at all. For my money, if I see a flop of T84 in a 3-way raised pot, that is one of the least drawy boards I could ever hope for. If T84 rainbow is scaring you away from slow-playing because of draws, then you just have a different view of math and odds than I do I guess. Sure, 732 rainbow would be even less drawy, but T84? Come on. That is almost ideal from a drawing perspective as far as maybe letting another card slide off.

This is all a long way of saying that I think I agree that with medium two pairs like this, and only because of the fact that this is a 3-way pot and not heads-up, some kind of a raise on the flop is probably the more +EV play over time (I'll have to check with Blinders on the EV calculation of course). Certainly in this spot it did not work, as the turn was an overcard that also completed an open-ended straight draw from the flop, and then of course the river brought the dreaded Ace, but taking the results-oriented viewpoint out, I think I buy that raising my hand on the flop was probably the better move against two opponents. I just don't think it is nearly as obvious as the commenters seem to think it is, as I think a couple of key considerations I mentioned above were overlooked in general by the commenters.

That said, this was really a question about what I should do at the river. The comments were split about 50-50 as to folding and calling, though even those recommending a call seemed not very confident, calling more for the pot odds than anything else. Well, I already had the alarm bells going off in my head from the flop when the guy to my right just smooth called, and when he did the same thing again on the turn, I was thinking either overpair or flopped set in a big way. When the Ace hit the river, I figured I was going to have to fold to any action since at least one opponent had at least one pair heading into this street, and the odds of one of them holding an Ace as a kicker are fairly good given that they called a preflop raise in this hand to begin with. So when the first guy led out again -- for the third time after getting two callers on both the flop and the turn -- this to me smelled like a very solid hand, at least an overpair himself if not two pairs or better. I mean, how many times do you ever lead out on the flop, get called (twice), lead out again on the turn and get called (twice), and then actually lead out still another time on the river? That to me just screamed of strength. Similarly, the player to my right calling all three of those bets also screamed out that it was at least strong ish -- more than one pair, say -- in which case it seemed to me that I had no option but to fold on this river. I was not sure that both of my opponents had my two pairs beat, but 3rd and 4th pair really could not reasonably be ahead of both of these guys the way I saw it.

And so I laid it down, even for the measly 1400 into an 8250-chip pot. I would only have to be ahead of both guys roughly one time in six to make always calling here profitable, and yet I relied on my reads sufficiently to figure that I'm not going to be ahead of both of these guys even that often to make the call worthwhile.

The big blind flipped up?












Pocket Kings. How he bets out a third time on that river after getting called twice on each of the flop and turn is utterly beyond me, but that's definitely the way a big-time donkey would play this hand.

And the guy to my right flipped up?











We'll never know. He took one look at the big blind's pocket Kings and he fucking mucked.

One pair FTW!!!

As an epilogue, although it took me a good hour to truly get calmed down from the tilt induction that was that hand, eventually I bounced back in the tournament with several big hands, mostly without having to show down anything, and in the end I took 3rd place when my short stack push with J9s got called by A8o and I could not catch up. Still, I won almost $1600 for my efforts, and overall I played great in my last live tournament tune-up prior to leaving for Las Vegas three weeks from yesterday. Make that two weeks and six days from now. Just two+ weeks baby, just two+ weeks.

But tell me, how do those two clowns both bet and call three times with just one pair?

Preflop Decision -- Pocket Queens (Conclusion)

Here is the conclusion to Wednesday's post about Pocket Queens preflop. To refresh those of you who did not see the real-life scenario I recounted yesterday or who need a reminder:

You are down to 25 left out of 58 remaining in a $200 buyin knockout tournament in Atlantic City. Blinds, which rise every 20 minutes in this typically fast daily casino tournament are up 400-800 with a 100 ante about two hours in to the event. Right now the average stack is 26k, and you are sitting on around 34k after a couple of big pots have helped you to more than triple from the 10k starting stacks.

An old man with about 14k in chips leads out under the gun for 10k straight up. This utg open-raise is for approximately 12 big blinds, and I immediately looked to notice that it was for most of this utg player's stack as well.

The utg +1 player, one of the largest stacks remaining in the tournament with around 50k in chips, thinks for a while, seems to be agonizing before eventually just smooth calling the 10k raise.

After all that action, you look down in utg+2 position to find pocket Queens.

How do you act?

I note that this is from an actual hand that happened to me recently in a live casino tournament and there was considerable disagreement after the fact on the best play.

We got some good, thoughtful responses, and as expected (and in line with the opinions at the table), there seems like a pretty even split between pushing and folding. That's why I think this hand is so interesting to analyze, because it's one of those situations where people with decent poker brains seem to reasonably disagree. Even though to me I hated playing this hand but in the end I felt like I had made the right decision, regardless of how the results ended up.

I agonized for a good while -- this was far and away the only premium hand I had seen thus far on the day after a good few hours of play -- and then I laid down the Queens.

How could I not? One of the key pieces of information that nobody keyed on in my description above but which definitely played a very significant role in my read of the utg player was that he was an old man. For those of you who have only ever played online poker, maybe that means nothing to you. And maybe it shouldn't if online is all you ever play. But putting guys like Doyle and Slim aside, old men as a rule are tightass tightwad tighty mctightersons. Especially when I've sat with them for 30 minutes and have barely even noticed that they're in the game, like this fogey.

So when this grizzly old fogey bastage who's been tighting his way along quietly for half an hour suddenly open-raises from under the gun, immediately I hear those bells I always talk about going off in my head. When I looked over and saw that he had pushed in approximately 10k of his 14k stack on the raise, when the blinds were just 400-800, those bells turned to ambulance sirens or rock concert speakers. I tried hard to get into Old Man Tighty's head, and to really imagine if I am a tighty mctightass, what hand would I possibly push in 10k of a 14k stack on a 12-big blind raise? I mean, I know this guy is fuckin tight. So is he pushing only 12k out of his total 16k stack in there utg with pocket 4s? No way. Tighty is definitely sitting on more than enough chips to wait for a better spot when any pocket pair out there, or any two high cards, are likely to call his below-average stack. And one thing about these tighties -- they will roach like my old apartment on Sullivan Street in Soho. These tightass old men will just fold and fold and fold and hang on and fold and fold and fold some more. They don't care if they're the lowest stack in the tournament for three straight hours. They will wait for those pocket Aces and then boom, they're allin and lament how everyone else folds to them. We have guys like that in our own group in fact, you can watch em nightly in the mtts on the major poker sites. Fold fold fold fold fold fold fold fold push allin with pocket Aces, everyone folds. It's good stuff.

Anyways, so Oldy isn't pushing with 44 there from utg with still 16 big blinds left and only 15 or so people from the money (10 paid). And if he did btw, he would obviously push in all 16k, rather than leave the highly curious 4k behind. So it's not 44 or 55 or something like that, of that I am sure. And as I thought about it, it's not 88 either. Same reason. Tighty just doesn't risk pushing in like that utg when any higher pair or two high cards could call and bust him, when he is beginning to be able to sniff the sweet smell of that minimum cash coming up if he can just fold for another hour or so. Not UTG, not with 16 big blinds left (in a very fast daily casino tournament, where 16 big blinds actually has him not far under average), and certainly again not for 12k of his 16k stack rather than the whole 16k. So it's not a low pair like 3s or 4s, and it's not even a medium pair like 8s or 9s. Now let's think about Tens or Jacks -- why would he possibly push just 12k of his 16k in with those hands instead of the whole 16k once he gets above a normal raise of 3 big blinds or so? Remember, this isn't full tilt, so that 12k couldn't have been some misclick or something. The old man looked at his hand and then willingly settled from among all his possible options to push out 12k of his 16k stack for a 12 bb preflop raise. Why? Anyways, no way with Tens or Jacks, or even Queens I would say, all of which are hands that people fear. He might raise 3x with those hands, sure, or maybe as much as 5x as you sometimes see people do (but with 16 big blinds total, 5x leaves you with fewer options than a more standard 3x raise in my book), but 12x? Leaving another 4x behind? I just don't see that.

Then I thought about AK. Could the geezer have AK? Would tightwad raise 12k of 16k with AK? Again, I just couldn't get myself to see it. I know tons of guys, in particular with a below average stack and a very tight mentality who would autopush with AK there, and actually hope to get called by a pocket pair and take a race to double up or go home. It's not even a terrible play in many cases in my view. But in no case would I ever advocate raising "just" 12k of your 16k stack with AK. Why hold back that last 4k when you are looking for the double up and want to make sure you see all five board cards with your AK in case you get called? Withholding that last 4k does nothing for you in that situation whatsoever, even if you get called by AQ or something you are now in a stoopid position for your last 4k in chips, for no good reason. No, that's not a move that the tight old guy does with AK either. So it's not 22-QQ, it's not AK (and certainly not a move that the tighties would ever do in that spot with AQ or below), which leaves only two hands really, one far more likely than the other: AA or KK. I just couldn't see any other preflop hand that fits the tight guy's range. And frankly, I know the ubertight mentality well -- they really hate letting anyone in when they've got pocket Kings, cuz we all know they'll get in there with a weak Ace and then of course an Ace will flop. So to me, this was about 75% likely pocket Aces, 20% likely pocket Kings, 3% likely AKs, and 2% likely for the rest of the field on the theory that he could just be a massive donklesmith.

While I was busy considering the fact that I was going to have to fold pocket Queens from utg+2 in a fast casino tournament and a chance to jump near the top of the leaderboard if I win, the big stack next to me in utg+1 slides out just a call of the huge 12k bet, with enough chips behind easily to bust me.

I knew as soon as I saw him move his chips forward that I had to fold. It actually made the decision much easier, but frankly I was folding to the old guy anyways I am pretty sure. When I am 98% sure a guy as AK, KK or AA, and really 95% sure that it's AA or KK, I just can't commit a huge portion of my nice stack to QQ preflop. And as I mentioned, it was the only hand I'd seen the entire day that was anywhere near that strong, which made the laydown all the more annoying. But I remained rational, I refused to get attached just because it looked good before anyone had acted in front of me, and I opted for the smarter, more patient route.

Especially since UTG had pocket Aces, and UTG+1 had AK. And of course, the AK did suck out a rivered set and busted the UTG guy after getting allin on the turn, and he would have eliminated me as well had I pushed preflop, which is the only way I would have considered playing this pot if I opted not to fold given how large the preflop pot already was.

I have another good preflop situation that happened shortly after this one in the same tournament, maybe I will post that tomorrow for people's comments.

Preflop Decision -- Pocket Queens

You are down to 25 left out of 58 remaining in a $200 buyin knockout tournament in Atlantic City. Blinds, which rise every 20 minutes in this typically fast daily casino tournament are up 400-800 with a 100 ante about two hours in to the event. Right now the average stack is 26k, and you are sitting on around 34k after a couple of big pots have helped you to more than triple from the 10k starting stacks.

An old man with about 14k in chips leads out under the gun for 10k straight up. This utg open-raise is for approximately 12 big blinds, and I immediately looked to notice that it was for most of this utg player's stack as well.

The utg +1 player, one of the largest stacks remaining in the tournament with around 50k in chips, thinks for a while, seems to be agonizing before eventually just smooth calling the 10k raise.

After all that action, you look down in utg+2 position to find pocket Queens.

How do you act?

This happened to me recently in a live casino tournament and there was considerable disagreement after the fact on the best play.

Hand Reading -- Concluded

Good comments to yesterday's post regarding what my opponent was holding, and how best to respond. First, to recap, with my thoughts after each step of the way:

So we're very early in the nightly 40k guaranteed tournament at 7pm ET on full tilt, and I was dealt KK in the cutoff. The action folded to me preflop, and I put in my standard 3x raise to 90. Both the small blind and the big blind called.

So far, it's hard to put either guy on much, as many people will defend their blinds against a late position steal with a very wide range when the blinds are still small. I'm thinking, probably a top-60% hand for both of them or better.

The flop came down Q92 with two spades (I had the King of spades). The small blind checked, and the big blind bet out 90 into a 270-chip pot.

Here the big blind is leading out into me instead of allowing me to bet first since I was the preflop aggressor. This is highly likely to be a top-pair-middle-kicker sort of hand. There is almost no way it's strong, in that if he flops a set here or something he clearly check-raises instead of donk betting. And I find it highly unlikely that he bets out with a 9 or a deuce here, since I raised preflop. Possible, but unlikely in my book. Middling Queens are the best fit for this unusual and I think quite telling out-of-position lead bet so early in an mtt so far.

I called the 90, hoping to get in a raise on a later, bigger street with my overpair and really only fearing the three non-spade Aces on the turn, and the small blind called as well, putting 540 chips into the pot:



The turn brought the 9 of spades, now putting a 3-flush on the board in addition to a pair of 9s, the small blind once again checked, and the big blind once again led out, time for 240 chips into the 540-chip pot.

Here it becomes impossible in my book that this player has any type of strong hand. With two players calling his donk bet on the flop, he almost has to put one of us on some kind of a draw, and with the third spade now hitting the board, any type of solid hand or even reasonably solid hand has to bet strong here, not less than half the pot like he did. Even TPTK or the trip 9s like some commenters suggested is going to bet bigtime here with now three spades on the board, fearing a fourth spade on the river and wanting to chase any one-spade flush draws off right here and now. Think about it -- if you have AQ here, wouldn't you bet more than 240 into the 540-chip pot in this spot (if not, you stink)? That's my read. He is leading small once again, taking the lead for the second street in a row against a preflop aggressor, even in the face of a scary board. This guy is surely not strong, and yet he's not weak either to be leading out twice against a preflop raiser. What he has is top pair. That's basically it. Possibly Ace of spades and middle pair or something, but far more likely in my mind that this is top pair middle kicker. That's the read here.

I once again just smooth called, hoping to draw in the small blind when I held an overpair in addition to the King-high flush draw with just one card to come, but unfortunately the small blind folded:



Now the river brought a raggy 6 of diamonds, and, with 1260 chips in the pot, my opponent led out for 420 chips:



OK that ices it for me. This is top pair, and to lead out three times in a row against a preflop raiser, it's not a shitty kicker. So let's start from the highest kickers and move our way down his likely range. It's not AQ, because I'm operating on the assumption that that particular hand would have raised TPTK on the turn when the third spade hit the board, and I'm not going to put him on KQ because I hold two Kings myself so that is unlikely. QQ would have raised preflop. QJ and QT are solid possibilities, if this guy thought I was stealing preflop, especially if he holds a spade in there so that the third spade on the turn would not have scared him too too much into betting more than he did. And is he betting out this much with Q9, Q8 or a lower Queen? I just don't think so. Maybe on the flop, sure (although I'm not a fan of the donk bet, almost ever. If I donk bet you, chances are you are about to get played with), and maybe even on the turn if he thought I was floating him on the flop. But leading out, and so small, once again on the river? In my mind, this isn't Q8 or Q7, which would have to fear AQ, KQ, QJ or QT in addition to overpairs and other two-pair-or-better hands. It is QJ, or possibly QT. Outside chance of Q9 for two pairs and the turned boat, but that is highly unlikely as a Queen and two 9s are already on the board as it is. That third lead bet, and yet all of them small, ices it for me like I said above. This guy is on QJ or QT.



Now, this is where my particular style of play comes in. In this particular case, I was pretty damn sure about my read here. Like, in my head I knew his cards. So while most of the commenters made the absolutely valid point that my hand could be beat by a lot of possible hands and that thus it makes the most sense to just call here, I just don't play that way, not when I have what I view as a dead-on read like this. Sometimes I am wrong of course, but I picked this hand in particular from the other night because I noted it right away as one where I just felt like I had an absolute bead on my opponent's play. This was QJ or maybe QT, and I was ahead. So how best to play it, if you're me?

The dreaded minraise. Why not? If I push in on this guy, surely he's gonna fold his top pair middling kicker. If I even pot-raise him, we're all in and he will I think fold. This is a $75 buyin event, and we're not even 20 minutes in at this point. But I don't want to just call, not when I feel 98% sure that I'm ahead but that my opponent believes I was stealing preflop and that he's been ahead on every street, and where I have purposely played it slow enough here to lead him to continue believing that. If I'm him, with the preflop raise and now two calls, I'm probably putting me on a middle pair, maybe 8s or Tens, or maybe AK or AJ with a spade in there, all of which he is ahead of. If I make a bet that changes his read of my hand, he might fold it. But for another 420 chips into what is now over a 2500-chip pot, there's no way he'll lay down top pair to me. So there it is, one of the few times you'll ever see me min-raise a guy:



He did in fact call my minraise, and I took down the pot:



And there it is:



This is the way I play, and of course again I picked this specific hand because I laid a dead read on him and was right, and I thought it was interesting to look at how much information he really did give from his preflop call to leading out, and doing so small, on all three streets, given the particular cards on the board along the way. Those of you who play with me often or who have railed me in mtts or sngs will know that sometimes I make a read and am fooled by someone, often resulting in my elimination from tournaments. But this is the way I play the game. I don't usually get such a strong and confident feeling about what a guy is holding, but when I do, It's not my style to just make the weak call just in case I'm wrong. If I think there is value to be had, I'm going to go and get it, and in this case that extra 420 chips was to me well worth what I perceived to be a miniscule risk that I was beaten.

I have so many screenshots saved up, I could run these "What's He Got" pieces for the next 25 years and never run out. If it was fun I'm sure I could try to do more of these.

Hand Reading Question

This week I thought it would be fun to look at a few hands I played in over the weekend in mtt's where I was faced with some interesting hand read situations, and maybe you can try your own hand at figuring out what my opponent is on, and how best to respond to that read.

First there is the 40k guaranteed tournament at 7pm ET on full tilt, which is a $75 buyin that runs nightly and which IMO is one of the best values on full tilt in terms of prize pool, buyin and the usual size of the field. This hand was very early in that tournament, during the 15-30 blind round, and I was dealt KK in the cutoff. The action folded to me preflop, and I put in my standard 3x raise to 90. Both the small blind and the big blind called.

The flop came down Q92 with two spades (I had the King of spades). The small blind checked, and the big blind bet out 90 into a 270-chip pot. I called the 90, hoping to get in a raise on a later, bigger street with my overpair and really only fearing the three non-spade Aces on the turn, and the small blind called as well, putting 540 chips into the pot:



With 540 chips in the pot, the turn brought the 9 of spades, now putting a 3-flush on the board in addition to a pair of 9s, the small blind once again checked, and the big blind once again led out, time for 240 chips into the 540-chip pot. I once again just smooth called, hoping to draw in the small blind when I held an overpair in addition to the King-high flush draw with just one card to come, but unfortunately the small blind folded:



Now the river brought a raggy 6 of diamonds, and, with 1260 chips in the pot, my opponent led out for 420 chips:



What hand do you put this guy on, and why? And would you call, raise or fold based on that read in this spot?

Leave your answers in the comments, and I'll be back tomorrow with the results.

Top Pair / Big Draw Hand -- Concluded

Kudos to heffmike for his last comment on my hand question from yesterday. Basically everyone said they're not folding in that spot, which is what I figured. I did not fold either, and naturally the river came some raggy crap which did not fill any of my twelve outs twice, leaving me with just top pair Queens and top kicker with an Ace on a board of QJT52 with three clubs, and me holding the Ace of clubs and an offsuit Queen.

The reason I say kudos to Heffmike is he suggested I play it exactly the way that I did, while everyone else said I should basically be pushing on the turn. I opted to do it the heffmike way and just smooth called the turn raise. The river came raggy, and when my opponent led out enough to put me allin -- another 750 chips or so -- you know what I did? I folded.

Think about it. With something like 4500 chips in the pot and only about 750 chips left in my stack, when this guy led into me at the river, that's all it took for me to stone cold know I was beat. It took me all of maybe five seconds to see it clearly from his perspective. With those kind of pot odds -- better than 6 to 1 -- and with only 750 chips left in my stack, this guy had to know I was calling with any kind of an even semi-reasonable hand. How could he ever think I would fold to that teeny tiny bet in that spot? There's no way. So, the fact that he led out anyways told me that my TPTK was clearly beat. I would bet good money that this was AK for the nut straight, or maybe even a flopped flush. I do love to lose to flushes, and he played it awful strong. But if he even had two pairs, would he really lead out on the river there? Quite improbable. But what hand that my TPTK could beat is possibly leading out for my last 750 into a 4500-chip pot in that spot? Answer: nada. There isn't any way.

Could someone make that kind of play with a stone bluff, or with KQ for top pair second kicker and the oesd? I suppose. But not this guy. It would take an extremely high-level trickster, someone of which there is maybe only one guy in this entire blonkament who thinks on that level to begin with (including me, I would never ever bluff or bet with just one pair in that spot, because I'd know without a shadow of a doubt that my opponent was calling). And more than that, this guy would have to have the absolute utmost respect for my play, which I don't think a single guy in this tournament does. I mean, you would have to read me for such a thinking player that I would actually think that you would never bet without a near-nut hand in that spot. Nobody in this group as a rule thinks that deep, on that many levels.

So when this guy led out on the river, I laid it down and did so right quick. And I know -- and I do mean know -- that I was beat. So why give up my last handful of chips, even though it was only 750? I managed run it back up over 1000 once or twice, pushing with a bunch of bullcripe but hoping to get called my a medium pair or something I could be racing with, and eventually maybe 20 minutes later I got exactly what I was looking for -- a chance to more than double with my KQ against another player's pocket Tens. Now of course I didn't win ther ace and IGH early in the tournament, but that is neither here nor there as far as the outcome of my earlier decision to fold and preserve my last 750 chips. I laid it down, and I managed to get back over 1000 and then get allin to more than double in essentially a 50-50 shot. I win that and I am right back in it.

So even though I pretty much butchered the hand in one or two spots, I do like the way I played that river. Far stranger things have happened than coming back to cash in a blonkament when down to 20 big blinds early. Now if I could only go back in time and make that monster draw hit, or better yet, not make that TPTK on the turn so I could lay that down with ease....

Top Pair / Big Draw Question

It's the first hour of a 40-person blonkament, and the effective stack size between the player in the hand is 2800 chips. I am on the button, and the player in the cutoff open-raises the 40-chip blind to 120. I have A♣Q♥. I reraise the likely late-position stealer to 360, the blinds fold and the cutoff calls my preflop reraise. We see a flop with 780 chips in the pot.

The flop comes down J♣T♣5♣. My opponent checks, I bet 590 with the 9-out draw to the nut flush, 3 outs to the nut straight, and 6 more likely overcard outs. My opponent calls.

On the turn comes the Queen♠, and my opponent checks to me once again. Now I add top pair top kicker to my 9 nut flush outs and 3 nut straight outs, plus an overcard Ace for 3 more outs to make top two pairs in case my opponent has two pairs himself. With 1960 already in the pot and 1900 chips remaining in my stack, I bet out smallish, around 600 chips, and I am raised to 1200.

Does anybody get away from the hand in this spot? My gut told me I was probably in trouble after the checkraise on the turn, and if I had just been drawing at this point I think it is much easier to fold with just one card to come, but in this case I had picked up top pair top kicker on the turn card -- albeit on a scary board -- and I found myself thinking I had 12 outs to the nuts, 3 more outs to a better two pair if that's what my opponent held, and that I might not even need outs since I had top pair top kicker in any event. I've been struggling with this decision for several hours here and I still think I might play this turn the same way again. Anybody agree / disagree?

Early Tournament Hand Analysis Question -- Conclusion

Back to yesterday's hand analysis question. To review:

It's early in the first hour of the nightly 50-50 on pokerstars (this is actually a 70k guaranteed tournament nowadays, I just always call it the 50-50 still). The Hero is basically right around where he started it at 3000 chips, and the blinds are 25-50. UTG+2 opts to limp with JTs. The player in the cutoff seat raises the 50-chip blind to 150, and all other players fold. Hero (UTG+2) opts to call the 150 with his JTs.

The flop comes KT9 rainbow. Hero checks his inside straight draw to the preflop raiser, who leads out for 300 into the 375-chip pot. Hero opts to call, admittedly a somewhat loose call as he's got nothing much so far, but thinking that his second pair could be good here and he has an inside straight draw and a backdoor flush draw as well to boot.

The turn brings a miracle Queen, filling Hero's inside straight. This time Hero opts to lead out for 600 into the pot which currently contains 975 chips before the turn betting begins. The Villian calls, making the pot 1575 chips heading into the river, and leaving roughly 2300 chips in each player's stack.

An offsuit 9 falls on the river, pairing the board. Hero leads out for 800 chips with his straight, and the Villain min-raises him to 1600.

I then asked what should Hero do here.

I was surprised by the responses, the majority of which recommended that Hero should fold. In my mind, Hero is probably beat, don't get me wrong, although I think it is more likely by a rivered boat than by a higher turned straight. So I don't think it's a great call to make. But this is the pokerstars 70k, not the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. The buyin is $50, many players qualify by satellites and thus pay even less than that, and generally speaking the quality of play in this thing is somewhere between bad and worse. Even down to the final table, where I have been several times this year, the play is generally pretty dam awful in this tournament. So, while I think Hero is likely behind in this spot, with 4000 chips in the pot and only 1500 behind in Hero's stack, to call he only has to be ahead ortie about 1 time in 2.3 in order to make this call good. In this situation, in the Stars 70k, I think the odds are there to make the call. It's a crying call for sure, but I just don't see how a fold is the right move here, leaving yourself with half the starting stack and trying to fight your way back from 1500 chips. And it's not that 1500 chips is too little to do anything with -- I've run deep in this or similar tournaments after losing half my starting stack enough times to know that 1500 chips with still 30 big blinds is more than enough to claw your way back in -- but rather that the chance of splitting (or winning) the pot here and having 4000 chips to play with is great enough that it outweighs the certainty of folding down to just 1500 chips remaining. My suspicion is that some of the commenters who recommended a fold in this spot would be much less likely to fold this hand in reality than they are in the comments on some donkey's blog, but who knows.

In any event, this hand came from the latest poker book I am reading, a fun one called Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time by Eric "Rizen" Lynch, Jon "PearlJammer" Turner and Jon "Apestyles" Van Fleet. This is a fun book, following in the footsteps of Gus Hansen's Every Hand Revealed in that it shows how to play all kinds of hands, starting from the beginning of a tournament with very low blinds and very deep stacks and no reads on anyone, all the way down to the bubble in large mtts. Again, much like Hansen's book, it ends up reading very much like the hand questions I pose on my own blog, which is probably why I enjoy this structure of poker literature so much as I have always firmly believed this to be the optimal way of really explaining winning poker tournaments to others. I mean, sure you can read Super/System a million times over and really understand it, but imagine how much more valuable it would be to actually get to see hwo Doyle Brunson played every single hand when he won the Bellagio Five Diamond Classic a couple years back or whenever it was. Imagine getting to literally watch every single hand from start to finish in a tournament from Doyle's eyes, knowing his holecards and getting to hear and understand his thinking every step of the way. That's what this book is like.

There are limitations to Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time, however, as there are with basically any book. In this case, only PearlJammer's section really hits home for me as someone going out of his way to share all of his knowledge. Frankly, I have been most disappointed in Rizen's section, as he appears very much close to the vest, clearly not willing to share everything he is thinking about poker tournaments, and thus his section is not nearly as useful IMO as the other two writers. Apestyles, the only player with whom I was not familiar prior to purchasing this book, writes a section that is helpful and insightful, but still not as down-to-earth and forthcoming as PearlJammer's, but overall the book is a very enjoyable read and I think would help just about anyone's tournament game who is interested in learning more about how definitely great players approach tournaments.

Anyways, in the book, when I read the hand example above, I was shocked and disappointed when all three writers said they would fold the hand in question if they were Hero. Again, it's not that I believe Hero is definitely ahead here, but rather than I don't think he is losing often enough to justify folding and therefore ensuring that he is down to 1500 chips remaining. One thing I have always harped on even in my own tournament recaps when I win a big tournament is all the big laydowns I have made, so I am always intrigued when I read about other proven successful tournament players making similar types of laydowns in big spots. I have to admit, I have had a lot of success in the Stars 70k this year and I would be highly unlikely to make this laydown, and I would expect to split (or rarely even beat out trip 9s) in this spot probably a little over 50% of the time. But from reading everyone's comments to yesterday's post, along with the three pros who wrote the book from which the examples are pulled, this is apparently yet another example where I can learn something from others who would play a hand differently from me. And that in the end is what reading poker books is all about, at least from my perspective.

Early Tournament Hand Analysis Question

So it's early in the first hour of the nightly 50-50 on pokerstars (this is actually a 70k guaranteed tournament nowadays, I just always call it the 50-50 still). The Hero is basically right around where he started it at 3000 chips, and the blinds are 25-50. UTG+2 opts to limp with JTs. The player in the cutoff seat raises the 50-chip blind to 150, and all other players fold. Hero (UTG+2) opts to call the 150 with his JTs.

The flop comes KT9 rainbow. Hero checks his inside straight draw to the preflop raiser, who leads out for 300 into the 375-chip pot. Hero opts to call, admittedly a somewhat loose call as he's got nothing much so far, but thinking that his second pair could be good here and he has an inside straight draw and a backdoor flush draw as well to boot.

The turn brings a miracle Queen, filling Hero's inside straight. This time Hero opts to lead out for 600 into the pot which currently contains 975 chips before the turn betting begins. The Villian calls, making the pot 1575 chips heading into the river, and leaving roughly 2300 chips in each player's stack.

An offsuit 9 falls on the river, pairing the board. Hero leads out for 800 chips with his straight, and the Villain min-raises him to 1600.

What should the Hero do here? I am happy to get your comments on the play of the other streets as well, which I am not saying were perfect by any means, but I am most interested in your thoughts on Hero's move at the river here. Although this is a real hand that occurred, I do not want to disclose my involvement in the hand because that should not impact anyone's rational decision as to the optimal move to make in this spot. Please leave your answers in the comments and as always I will be back tomorrow with the outcome and some discussion.

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.

Cash Game Question -- Conclusion and Analysis

Wow! What a set of responses to my actual real life poker question yesterday. Guess maybe I should post a little more about poker, huh? I will see what I can do about that. I am definitely still very interested in the game, and I'm still reading and thinking and playing quite a bit, although the new job combined with the slowing economy definitely has me playing a bit less than I once was. Hopefully both of those factors will start evening out over time, but who knows. In the meantime, I do not think it's a bad thing for me to be writing about topics other than poker, as I do have a lot to say on many other topics, and my readership has surprised me by growing significantly over the past two months since the fall of Lehman Brothers and the historic global stock market crash. And most of all, I find that I have really enjoyed writing about these non-poker topics, which is the best part of all since, as I like to remind everyone from time to time, this is my blog after all. So you can expect more of both in the coming days and weeks as the beat rolls on here at hammerplayer.

OK so back to the hand analysis question I posed yesterday. Now let me begin my saying that like a good little lawyer I chose my words in yesterday's post very deliberately, in that the hand I described did not actually happen to me. But it is a real situation that I read about, and was somewhat shocked at the result. I know last week I had written about the frustrations I was having reading Dan Harrington's Cash Games books, and specifically that I was starting Volume II despite being disappointed in Volume I. Well, the hand from yesterday comes directly out of Harringon Cash Games, Volume II, pages 84-87. I basically reproduced everything more or less directly as described in the book, and posed the question to you all as to how you would handle rivering a set in that hand with a ton of preflop action.

To review, here is a recap of the hand I asked about in yesterday's post:

You're playing in a $5-$10 no-limit holdem ring cash game, with all the stacks fairly large. The game can be classified as a fairly tough game with mostly good players, mostly fairly tight and aggressive types generally typical of a 5-10 game in my experience. UTG+1 limps for $10. UTG+2 also limps for $10. You are UTG+3 with 88, and you opt to raise 5x to $50. The button reraises to $150. The small blind calls the $150 cold. The first two limpers fold to the $150 double-raise. There is $380 in the pot and it is $100 to you to call with your pocket 8s. As the other two players both have larger stacks than yours (all more than 100 big blinds), you opt to call the reraise and do a little set mining.

The flop comes AQ5 rainbow. The big blind checks, you check given the Ace on board, and the button checks as well.

The turn is an offsuit King. Again the big blind checks. You check as well, knowing you must be behind with all that action before the flop. The button checks as well.

On the river falls an 8, giving you the rivered set. Now the big blind bets out for $200 into the $480 pot.

What do you do here?

So that's the question. The many comments to yesterday's post basically went right on along with my own thoughts on the hand. I figured the rivered 8s was probably ahead, but not definitely since the possibility of a set of Queens, Kings or Aces had to be out there given all the action before the flop in this hand. One thing I thought was that there was a significant possibility that one of these players was sitting on AK, and given all the checking-around on both the flop and the turn in this hand, the raggy 8 on the river would have to make that guy with AK believe he was in the lead. Thus, as I read this hand in Harrington's book, I was torn between flat calling the bet, or possibly putting in a small raise which was designed to elicit a call from the likely player with AK. As I mentioned, this is exactly the range of responses I received to yesterday's post. Almost everyone said to call or perhaps minraise, and I think both of those answers have merit. A number of the commenters hit on the fact that the set of 8s could surely be behind a higher set here, since with all that action preflop anyone holding AA, KK or QQ has you beat, so a raise, or at least a significant raise, is not really in order in a cash game context here, in particular with all players involved holding more than 100 big blinds.

You will notice not a single player suggested that the set of 8s fold his hand at the river. A number of people thought the situation does not bode well for the 8s, but the bottom line is that, with both the flop and the turn checking around, you are a donk if you fold your set of 8s in this spot. To say that such a move is exploitable, weak poker is understating things. Again, I'm not saying that you're definitely ahead with the pocket 8s and you should clearly jam here, but for $200 into the $680 pot at this point, it is very difficult to imagine folding given the absolute dearth of action on both the flop and the turn heading into this river bet. If just the flop had been checked but then the turn was bet and called, that changes things significantly as a big flopped set might quite often bet the hand in just this way. But there is a good reason that not a single commenter, nor myself, thinks that folding the hand to this one nearly half-pot river bet is the right move here.

You want to know why I dislike Harrington's books? Remember I was saying last week how annoying it is that he uses examples where he clearly knows the outcome and uses that knowledge in designing the advice he gives on the hands, thereby making his entire array of advice basically useless and worthless for someone trying to pick his brain about cash games? Well, here's Harrington's response on the hand, directly from page 86:

"On the river, you hit your set and the big blind bets. You're getting 3.4-to-1, but it's actually a very tough call. (Give yourself many demerits if you actually thought about raising.) The big blind probably has a set of kings, and there's a decent chance the button has a set of queens. Your set of eights, in this situation is just a hand with some value. The 3.4-to-1 odds look good, but you can't be sure that another raise isn't coming from behind you. At a loose table I would most likely call here, but at this tight, tough table I'd regrettably let this go.

You fold. The button calls. The big blind shows a set of kings and the button mucks his hand."

What a fucking genius!! How oh how did Harrington know that the button had that set of kings? Is he the best hand reader of all time? Oh no, wait. He knew the answer before he wrote his analysis of this hand! This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about with why Harrington's cash books suck so horribly. In a situation where the call -- albeit a crying call -- is more or less mandatory in reality, in a book that is supposed to be helping the readers with their cash play, Harrington uses his foreknowledge of the other players' holdings to make himself look like a fucking genius and therefore give out the clearly wrong advice under the guise of advocating good, tight play. What an ass.

Do not buy Dan Harrington's cash game books!

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful comments though, that was really fun. I will get some more hands up here shortly for people to chip in with their thoughts.