Coming Up For Air

Wow.

So let's recap:

1. Yes, I am still alive.

2. No, I did not throw myself off a bridge after bubbling the BBT4 Tournament of Champions last Sunday night.

3. Work has been all-encompassing this week, just about the worst it's ever been for me as far as having my life taken over by my job. Due to various conditions and circumstances, I ended up taking on a boatload of work over the past couple of weeks, the end result of which as they all came together and were suddenly due at the same time, has been me getting into my office before 7:30 in the morning, staying around 12 hours, driving home and taking just enough time to scarf down a quick dinner before jumping right back on the pc and continuing right where I left off at home. Stay up until all hours of the morning trying desperately to finish everything that needs finishing before the next day in the office, and then rinse and repeat the next day. Every day this week, I've spent more than 16 hours struggling to get through everything that needed to get done, and it's only sometime today that I've had any chance at all to come up for air.

I thought while I'm free for what is sure only to be a momentary break, I would jump on here and let everyone know what's what.

Some other thoughts to share before I dive back down into the depths:

First off, my bust from the ToC last weekend. What can I say about it. I don't like the play I made calling off the rest of my stack with AT on the QT4x board down to 5-handed in the tournament. I've gotten a bunch of emails and girly chats about the play, so for the record I am here saying that, with a little hindsight, I don't like the play I made and I think the better play would have been to fold and wait for a better spot, especially given what was at stake.

But that's not to say that I can't explain making that call. I know exactly why I made the play that I made. It really comes down to two things: Hand Ranges, and frustration.

Let's take them in reverse order. As I tried to capture in my live blog of the event, I ran like Zeus and Jupiter rolled into one during the first 90 minutes of the ToC. I was dealt AA and KK once each, getting paid nicely with both as I recall, but the real story had to do with my draws. I must have hit three flushes and two straights, most of them on the turn, during the first hour and a half of the ToC. With the massive 5000 starting stacks that Al was able to secure for us for the ToC, the implied odds of chasing almost any reasonable draw are huge, and on top of that, you bloggers were not making properly-sized bets to price me out of chasing even from a pot odds perspective. I remember calling a couple of 2/3-pot bets on the flop with naked flush draws early in the tournament, knowing that I have more than enough pot odds to see two more cards if my opponent did not bet again on the turn, and knowing the tremendous implied odds if I could get paid off (and I did often). At least once, I chased an oesd on the flop by calling a bet of just half the pot. I mean, if there's a draw on the board and you're out there leading out for just half the pot, you damn well better have a set, or you are making a downright bad play. Even with a set it's probably a bad play since you can lose if that draw fills on the turn or river, but it's defensible with a set. But if two of a suit flop, or two high cards flop, and you're betting half the pot, you are just asking to get called by a draw and then end up paying if you actually had a hand when the flop came down.

So for 90 minutes in the ToC, I called every bet on the flop with every draw just about, and I swear I must have filled every single draw I saw, and I got paid time after time after time. It was without a doubt the only time I ran good in the entire BBT4, and I was lucky enough to have that happening in the Tournament of Champions, with $24k in free prizes at stake for the winners. I floated lucko on a steal attempt with my K2s and managed to flop trip 2s. I raised from early position with sooted connectors, and I flopped the flush. It was sick. I ran like god, and we all know how easy poker can be when you are running godlike. So that was me for an hour and a half at the ToC, and I quickly amassed a solid chip lead while probably eliminating a full ten bloggers along the way.

And then, poof! It was over.

For the last 2 hours and 40 minutes in the Tournament of Champions, I got no hands. Zero. I mean, I didn't see a premium pair, I didn't see a single pocket pair at all in fact, and I did not receive AK, AQ or AJ even one time during that span. Once we got down to about 20 players left or so in the ToC, my cards were finished. I still managed to win a couple of nice pots, but even those required me to make very marginal calls with very marginal hands and in both instances I got lucky to get in ahead. Once was the hand against F-Train somewhere down to the final two tables, when I called his allin reraise preflop for about 10k when I had raised originally from the cutoff for around 2k, and I flipped up the very dominatable A9o. Lucky for me, F-Train was sitting on A8o, and my kicker played and I got another elimination. On another occasion also down to the last two tables, I called another short stack (mostly everyone was a short stack compared to me almost all the way through this thing) with just top pair and a Jack kicker, and ended up being up against top pair with a lower kicker for another nice jump and another knockout from the ToC. But that was all I had going for me with the cards I was getting, and that only got worse and worse as we got down to fewer and fewer players left.

So, by the time I made that fatefull allin call with second pair top kicker at the final table, you have to put yourself into my shoes to understand how I could make an ill-advised call like that. I hadn't seen any hands for about 150 minutes. I was stealing like a banshee, but I had no cards. None. Nada. And it sucked. And those of you who play a lot of poker know how it is -- when you've been looking at a steady stream of 84o and J3o and Q6s for the past two and a half hours, forced to fold to raise after raise after raise from the big stacks at the table, and watched your own stack dwindle to less than half what it was at one point an hour or so earlier, and suddenly you pick up ATs, it looks like the stone nuts. I raised preflop with it, the first time I had had a hand when I raised before the flop in hours, and the table big stack called. The flop came QT4, so I caught second pair with top kicker, and I bet out again. actyper called. When the turn brought a rag (I think -- too lazy to look back at the screenshots at this point), actyper suddenly led out allin for about 3 times what I had left behind.

And this is where my second explanation comes into play -- hand ranges. I'm playing hand ranges here. That's what I always do. I did it when I called F-Train's allin with my A9, reasoning that he might push any Ace, any two face cards and any pocket pair there, and I got lucky. When I called the allin on the flop with my QJ on the Queen-high flop and ended up being up against Q9 or whatever it was, same thing. All I can do is put a player on a range of hands, given the way he or she has played a given hand from the moment the player first decided to voluntarily put money into the pot, and then I make my decisions based on that hand range.

So when actyper pushed so strong there on the turn, the first thing that went through my head was that he must be weak. As it turns out, this was a testament to how well actyper played the hand, because he sent me the absolute wrong message about the real strength of his hand, and I bought it. Partly because he played it real well, and partly, I am sure, because of the frustration of not having seen a good hand for 150 minutes. But in my head when I made the call, I figured I was sure he would push allin there so quickly with just about any Ten, possibly a few draws, and of course anything better than those hands. But any Ten and a draw were in my view squarely in actyper's range of hands to be pushing like he did there, again especially in light of him not having let me lead out again on the turn before check-raising me allin. So, my analysis of the hand ranges involved led me to believe that I was ahead of a significant part of his range, and drawing to probably five outs to another big portion of the hand. And looking at the chips in the middle, the percentage of my stack already involved, and the pot odds of calling off the rest of my chips, my analysis of the hand ranges led me to make the call. Turns out he had flopped a set of 4s, and IGH in 5th place.

Of course, in retrospect I can easily take a different view of actyper's actions in the hand. Here he has a significant chip lead with 5 players left, two of us set to win 10k to play in the WSOP this summer, and actyper called my preflop raise, called my bet on the flop, and then led out allin when a rag fell on the turn. Now, are those really the actions of someone with a weak hand? I mean, is actyper really gonna risk that entire huge stack he has amassed, at a time when he can pretty much just sit and wait this out for a while before having to make a move? I'm not so sure as I look at it now, with a lot more time and perspective to really review everything. But I have detailed notes on actyper, and generally I show him as an aggressive player who would much rather be the one pushing than the one calling, and at the time, all I can say is that I felt his range included enough hands that I was ahead of or was drawing to beat that I felt it was the right decision to make the call. Of course, in retrospect, seeing what he had, of course I wish I had just folded. But I really didn't want to be in last place of 5 players remaining, and I certainly didn't want to give up a bunch of equity in the pot against a guy who I could easily see at the time pushing with a bluff because he would expect me to fold rather than go out on the bubble. My sense knowing how actyper plays a little bit is that most of the people I've spoken with don't get my point about hand ranges, but I think that call was a lot closer than most of you out there is my guess. Still, I think in retrospect it is a call I would not make again, and one I wish I had not made on Sunday night.

So congratulations to actyper and to jj for taking down the 10k seats. I firmly believe that jj owes it to us as a community to come out for the $1500 WSOP event on Saturday June 27, even if he's not planning on using the prize to play in the Main Event itself. And congratulations as well out to ck and karmarules, who I understand may be katiemother (who recently made her blog private, also adding to my suspicions), for each winning the 2k prizes. Here I was listing jj and ck (and karma, frankly) as three of the big longshots in the ToC, and they managed to nab three of the four big prizes in the event. What a thrill to be a part of such a battle as the BBT4 ToC, and the hugest thanks of all again out to Al for putting it all together and for continuing to figure out unique and fun ways to send bloggers to the World Series of Poker. I will continue to say until my grave that, ultimately, that's what it's all about -- sending bloggers to the WSOP.

What else? OK so the Yankees can't beat the Red Sox -- that is 7 for 7 this year so far for the Sox as of this writing -- but how effing great have the Yankees been playing since A-Rod joined the team? I think I saw recently that they are something like 22-8 since A-Rod's return from a steroid-induced hip injury, and lord knows that Yanks' first baseman Mark Teixeira is enjoying the protection. I know I wrote about this a few weeks back, but at this point Tex is leading the majors in home runs with 20, and he is roundly understood to be one of the best free agent signings of this past offseason, when just one month ago you could not have found someone -- anyone -- who would have described the Teixeira signing as anything but an abject failure. Like I wrote about last month, what a difference a little protection makes, huh?

Oh -- and if you didn't see Jayson Werth of Your World Champion Philadelphia Phillies absolutely single-handedly save the game last night in the bottom of the 10th inning last night against the hapless Mets, you should definitely go and check it out. Basically, with a man on first in a tie game in the bottom half of the 10th inning at Citi Field, perennial step-downer David Wright smacked a ball into the alley in right-center field. With a fast runner on first, Jayson Werth knows that if the ball gets by him, the Mets will likely score the winning run on the hit and the game will be over. So Werth just throws caution to the wind and goes completely balls-out, makes a sensational diving catch that even had the homerass Mets announcers screaming in amazement.

Remember back a few weeks ago, when the Mets lost a game in the 9th inning after Carlos Beltran was thrown out at home plate after refusing to slide in a close play? Even after the game, Beltran himself and his coach both excused his play and neither seemed to think it was much of a big deal. Well, Jayson Werth showed on Wednesday night just how much hustle like that matters, and in doing so he illustrated perfectly exactly what makes the Phillies a better overall team than the Mets right now. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the Mets are a loser team, and they've got no heart whatsoever, something they show time and time again, game in and game out.

So much more to say, but this is all the time I have for now. Hopefully back at ya tomorrow with more of the same.

Image

I was thinking a lot about the hand ranges post from yesterday. One of most fun, and sometimes most difficult parts of putting people on hand ranges involves factoring in image. Image in poker is everything. I talked expressly about it in yesterday's post. If you know someone is a stealy player, then the hand range you put them on when they open-raise from the button is going to be quite a bit wider than if the guy who never ever steals except from the button suddenly open-raises from the hijack or the cutoff. While it is entirely possible to start putting people on ranges of hands right from the very first time you sit down at the table, the bottom line is that what you're really doing in that situation is working from a starting model, one of, say, the "average" player. So if I first sit down to a poker table and in the very first hand, a player I've never seen before sitting under the gun open-raises 3x the big blind, I don't know him from Adam but I'm going to assume he has a big Ace or big pair. Why? Because that's how most people play, and until I learn anything otherwise, I can only assume he is "average".

But all that changes once I've seen him get taken to the river, and say he shows down in the hand above something like pocket 3s. Now I know quite a bit about his starting hand range, and I can immediately think of him as likely more aggressive then the average player before the flop. Or say he shows down A8s after open-raising utg before the flop. That tells me quite a bit as well. I don't play that hand in that spot, not in cash and not in tournaments except when late or short for the most part, so the fact that he does can also reinforce that aggressive, loose image. Now once I've seen that hand, if the very next time he is utg he raises it up again, now am I just putting him on a big Ace or a big pocket pair? Of course not. Now it's any pocket pair (if I just saw him raise utg with 33), or many big and medium Aces (if he showed down the A8s). That kind of information is absolutely key if you're going to be using hand ranges to evaluate where your opponents are at in every hand you play. Which as a reminder is the only way you should ever be playing this game.

The above should be pretty obvious stuff for most of the people who read here regularly. But one of the most interesting aspects of the whole image thing in hand range analysis to me is how, if you're playing in a game with strong players, or say maybe very late in a big mtt where most of your opponents are cognizant, solid aggro types, your own image in the minds of the other players at your table impacts the hand ranges you can put your opponents on after they take a given action. I find this to be a big issue for me in every blonkament I play in, as I have profiled so many hands and so many tournament runs at this point that basically everybody and their mother in every private blogger event I've ever played in believes me to be a stealy, aggressive player. This is how I get impacted by this aspect of putting people on hand ranges, including how I have to adjust my own play as a result:

So let's say there are 10 players left in the Riverchasers, and I am near the top in chips (yes, I decided to go with something that happens quite frequently, so what of it?) Now the action folds around to me in the cutoff, and I look down to find pocket Jacks. I raise, and only the button (say, with half my stack size) calls me. The flop comes down 753 rainbow, I have the solid overpair to the board. Now I bet out, and the button raises me allin. In this scenario, if I am an unknown player and I have just sat down in, say, the 50-50 or whatever it is at a table full of players who don't know me, I am definitely going to consider folding here. In most cases under such circumstances in fact, I do fold this hand. I only have pocket Jacks, and my opponent could have any two pair, any set, the flopped straight or even just a higher overpair, all of which will beat me and potentially eliminate me from the tournament. I don't like busting out early in a tournament with just one pair on the flop (the only fourth-highest overpair at that), and normally I am not calling off anything resembling a large stack in this spot.

However, getting back to my Riverchasers example, all this analysis changes if I am a thinking player and if I accord a similar thinking nature to most of my opponents at the table. If I think the player on the button who called my preflop raise views my image as someone who loves to steal and raise and bet aggressively with nothing, then the hand range he puts me on when I open raise before the flop is much wider than my actual holding of pocket Jacks. What's more though, is that since he puts me on a wider range of holdings to be open-raising with late in the Riverchasers, then the range of hands I put him on to be calling that preflop raise from me also needs to be widened, in some cases significantly depending on who the exact player involved is. That's the part that tends to get me into trouble in the blonkaments, perhaps more than any other single facet of my blonkament game.

Take the pocket Jacks on a 753 rainbow flop scenario again. In the 50-50, if I bet out with my Jacks on that flop and get raised allin, I am likely to fold. I understand that this unknown player who does not know me puts me on a decent hand but is raising, indicating that he probably has a measly pair of Jacks beaten at this point. But in a blonkament, where I know my opponent thinks I am a stealer who open-raises with bullshit cards, for him to call my preflop raise could be with almost any two cards, and to raise me allin on that flop can be just as much being done with air simply based on the expectation that I am a stealer and therefore I can fold. Similarly, I often fold a medium overpair like pocket Jacks on a raggy flop when I believe my opponent in a large public mtt might have a higher overpair given that he raised or called my raise before the flop and then raised my bet on the flop. But again in a blonkament, when I know my opponents have that stealy, aggro image of me and the way I play in these things, it is just so much more likely that they are in there with just top pair, an overpair but a lower overpair than my Jacks, or even many kinds of draws with overcards, that I often feel compelled to call in such a situation. Ironically, it is my own aggro image that causes me to make such a call in the blonkament situation, because I know my image is perceived by my opponent, and therefore I know he or she is widening his own range of hands to play against my perceived weaker range.

The more in touch we all are with our own images at the poker table, the better our results will be, plain and simple. I try to remind myself of this every time I get caught calling off and getting stacked in a blonkament because I know the way I am perceived by the other players around me. I continue to see players in these things who do not seem to have a clue about the actual image they have actually amassed over countless tournaments playing together with the group, and these people seem to be the most consistently easy to outplay because they refuse to accept the way that others are factually thinking about their holdings given their actions in a given hand. Like many parts of life, image in poker is everything.

Oh, and congratulations to que31dawg for taking down this week's MATH tournament in addition to the full $240 prize pool for winning the latest Shootout tournament. I got silly coolered early on when I rivered an inside straight only to lose to the higher rivered inside straight, and I shut it down from there so I don't have any of the details.

Hand Ranges (Part II)

So, back to Thursday's Hand Ranges question, here was the scenario:



So a stealy guy with a big stack open-raises from late position early in the Mookie. I don't put him on much there necessarily, but probably a top-half hand or so. Then I smooth call from the cutoff. Obie can't put me on a whole lot there either, although as I said, I would put myself on a top-third hand or so, as it is unlikely I just call there with a pile of shizz like 92o or something similar. Now, when Obie reraises to 450, what does that say about his hand?

First, the fact of the raise itself. He is raising a preflop open-raiser and a caller of that raise. That generally speaking is a fairly strong move. Not saying it's the strongest of preflop moves, but it is generally an aggressive move made with a solid holding to reraise not just a preflop raiser but someone who called that raise. So in my mind this narrows Obie's hand range down quite a bit. Before he raised, Obie was the big blind, so you knew absolutely nothing about his hand. With just his one reraise, he narrowed his hand range in my book from every hand in the deck down to only the strong holdings. I don't see him reraising both PL and myself there with a hand like 88 or a lower pair, nor do I see him doing that with KQ, AJ or lower. Not even sooooted. Arguably he might do this with AQs, but even that to me would be a questionable play. In general, I'm thinking his range to reraise the two of us there is probably only AK or AQs among the Aces, and otherwise probably only TT-AA among the pairs. That's it.

But there's one other aspect of Obie's raise that interested me, and that was the size of the raise. Take a look up at the screenshot -- it's a small raise. The bet at the time was already 150 chips, and the pot had 375 chips in it. To me, if I'm raising here, I would normally be aiming for something at least 3 times the current bet. With the raiser and a caller in there, I would probably go for closer to 4 times the current bet or so. But Obie bumps it up not even 3x, giving each of PL and me express odds to call of 250 into 775 or basically 33%. Given PL's raise and my call, I would suggest that it is likely that at least one of us, if not both, will call, and since I thikn Obie recently won a Mookie tournament, he is obviously a great player and therefore I have to assume he understands this bet is not likely to win him the pot right now. If I have a hand like TT or JJ in Obie's spot and I decide to raise (I might fold, call or raise, personally, depending on various other factors), that raise is going to want to be big enough to chase players out, not to entice calls from hands like AQ and KQs that have overcards to my pocket pair. Obie's raise was clearly not one designed to chase us out, so for me that eliminates as well the TT and JJ from the bottom of the range I had put him on. So to me, that one reraise from him to 400 chips tells me he probably has QQ-AA, or AK.

Now let's look at PirateLawyer. Seeing this action ahead of him from Obie, he puts in the re-reraise to a number large enough to commit him and Obie here. First things first -- this is now the third raise in the hand, and in the experience of myself and many others, the third raise usually means Aces, and pretty much always means Aces or Kings. If PL re-reraises here with AK, he is just itching to race or be dominated. Now in my experience, PL is a fairly aggro player, so I cannot take AK out of his range in this spot. But that's it. PL's re-reraise in this spot tells me he either has AA, KK or AK. That's it. He's not folding here with Aces or Kings for sure, and I like to think he would lay down AK or at least just smooth call and try to hit the flop. It's really Aces and Kings, with a slight chance of AK, probably soooted. I just don't see any other way it can go. Not when a guy small-raised a preflop raiser and a caller. If PL is playing his hand right and analyzing hand ranges himself properly, then he cannot be re-reraising this amount here without Aces or Kings.

In the end, I think this was a pretty easy case where just a few actions from two players before the flop can make it fairly easy to narrow their holdings down to one of just a very few possible hands. One of these days I will post some more hand situations like this one, where I think it is a little less subtle as to how exactly to narrow someone's possible holdings based on their actions in the hand.

Don't forget Mondays at the Hoy tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt! Once again it is a $26 buyin, and the game will once again be a shorthanded no-limit shootout. See you then!

Hand Ranges -- Intro

Hand Ranges. So much of a successful holdem player's game depends on his or her ability to accurately assign ranges of hands to his or her opponents. Probably just as important is the corresponding ability to understand the range of hands that your opponents are putting you on given your own set of actions so far in any given hand.

I've been planning a series of posts about hand ranges for some time, and I probably have a hundred different hands and scenarios saved up already over the past few months since I've been thinking about this topic. I like these questions for posts because they require a very small amount of up-front information, and it can be really fun to use what can seem to a novice to be very little information and clues, to come up with a fairly narrow range of hands for certain players, even before the flop even comes out on the board.

Today Ima start with an easy one. This particular screenshot comes from the Mookie this week, which means that there are specific players involved with specific images that have been cultivated over months and months of play together with the bloggers. Image has a huge impact on putting a player on a range of hands (including yourself!), so in this case since the two players happen to be guys you may have played with before, you should most definitely use your perceived image of the players involved in whatever way you see fit. The question is, if you have to put the players in this pot on a hand or a range of hands, what range do you think they are likely holding, given their actions below?

Here's the setup. We are early in the Mookie, at the 25-50 level so we're talking somewhere in the first what, half hour or so of play. The action before the flop folds around to PirateLawyer in the hijack, who has been very active so far on the day and who raises it up 3x to 150 chips. I smooth called from the cutoff. The button and the small blind fold, but then Obie315 in the big blind repops the 150-chip bet up to 400 chips. PirateLawyer is next to act, and he re-reraises to 1375 chips. I think for two seconds and then I fold.

First question, before I show the screenshot, is what is my most likely hand range in this spot? I smooth called an LP raise from a stealer, and then I folded to a reraise and a re-reraise behind me. Get your ideas together, and I will skip some room before I show the screenshot of the hand in question below.












OK here it is:



So there I am with pocket 3s. With almost any pocket pair I am likely to call PirateLawyer in this spot for one raise before the flop. Especially with him sitting on a big stack, the set-mining (and implied tilt) odds are just too great to pass up. And a small pair is also consistent with my fold to the reraise and re-reraise behind me. So a small to medium pocket pair is a great hand range for me in this spot, but given the way that I play, reasonably speaking my range has got to be somewhat wider than this as well. All things equal, I might straight-up float PL with almost any two cards if I thought he was stealing, so it may be a little difficult to put me on specifically a small to medium pocket pair here.

But the better question is, what hand ranges do you assign Obie and PirateLawyer to here? Obie reraised less than the size of the pot from the big blind after a late-position raise and a call of that raise, both from fairly aggro opponents early in a blonkament. And then PL, who put in the original raise in the hand to begin with, re-reraises what looks like the size of the pot here, with me still to act behind him. What ranges of hands do you put these two guys on here?

I will give my comments later but am interesting in hearing everyone's thoughts in the comments. This sort of hand range assigning exercise is commonplace for the way I play every single hand I am involved in or even witness to at any poker table where I'm at, and it's something that I know basically all successful poker players do as well. So what do you think, what do these guys have in this spot?