In Poker, So Hot and Yet So, So Cold

Ever wonder why I tend to get kind of short when people talk about how "bad they run"? Why I openly chuckle when I read about someone quitting poker because of how bad they got screwed...in the Mookie last night? Or why I don't have the pitying reaction you're looking for when I read your story about your brutal loss in the first hour of that 1500-person mtt you like to run on occasion?

This weekend of online poker for me had all the answers and then some. I should start by saying that I played some of the best poker of my entire life over the past four nights (I was home from work on Friday, so this was like a four-day weekend for me in terms of being able to stay up late and make some deep runs without having to worry about being up at the crack of dawn to get to the office). But while playing a bunch of really awesome tournament poker enabled me to make deep run after deep run over the weekend -- some of it in some pretty damn big tournaments -- something always seemed to just get in the way to prevent me from making the real big money on the weekend. And the stuff that "just got in the way" this weekend was enough to make most of you yak in your shoes, especially when you consider how much actual cash money I left on the table over the past few days.

So here was this weekend in a nutshell for me.

On Thursday night, I didn't do much in a few of the other tournaments I played, but I made an awesome run in the nightly 25k guaranteed sniper (bounty) on UB. After nearly five hours of play, I'm in 6th place out of 17 remaining. I've spent hours building up a solid image and playing absolutely, positively mistake-free tournament poker to get to this point, and I find JJ in mid-late position and open-raise it up preflop. The guy to my immediate left calls, who had played fairly tight over the past couple of hours at the table with me and the flop comes the almost best possible flop I could imagine:



I mean, sure, everyone wants to flop top set, but when you think about it, when you're this close to the final table and are looking to build an insurmountable stack, and your preflop raise without an Ace gets called, you're almost rather looking to flop second set with an Ace on board so you can feel confident you're going to get paid off by someone holding a big Ace of some kind. I had played with this guy for hours and I was quite sure he does not just call my preflop raise with pocket Aces, so needless to say I was thrilled with my situation there on the flop, and I could begin to smell the 6k+ first prize as I prepared my bet on the flop. I bet around half the flop, wanting to seem a little weak and encourage a raise from a guy with an Ace, and was overjoyed when the guy pushed allin on me without even a moment's deliberation:



Of course I can't fall over myself fast enough to call, and my opponent flips up QTd -- not even an Ace -- for a Queen-high flush draw and an inside straight draw to boot. With my set on the flop, plus all the redraws to a boat even if my opponent makes his straight of flush, I am a 66% favorite here, or 2-1 to amass a monstrous stack and be comfortably in second place of the 17 runners remaining. But then check out the turn (and the river!):



He made his 2-to-1 shot on the turn, and then made it again on the river for good measure, and of course no resuck for me. First prize in this tournament was a little over 6k. I bust in 17th place for a paltry $420 instead after playing absolutely perfect poker and flopping a set on pretty much the most favorable flop for me that I could realistically have imagined.

Moving on to Friday, I should mention that I finished in 22nd out of 1227 players in that same nightly 30k guaranteed tournament on pokerstars that I took 2nd place and 1st place in earlier this month:



My exit here wasn't bad, really. After losing a big race with 77 vs AQ, I was in 18th place out of 22 left when I obviously open-pushed allin with A8o from the hijack, and the cutoff woke up with AK. IGH in 22nd place -- netting under $100 cash in the process as opposed to the first prize of around 6k -- but at least it wasn't a suckout or bad beat that did me in.

Unfortunately, I can't say that about the rest of my weekend's big eliminations.

Also on Friday, I busted from the nightly $75 buyin, 7pm ET 40k guaranteed tournament on full tilt in 26th place, my second-deepest ever run in this tournament, and this one was another of those eliminations that I just cannot deal with very easily. A middle position player who's been highly aggro for hours open-raises it up preflop, and I call from late position holding pocket 7s, feeling pretty confident based on this guy's history that I am ahead here of what is likely a couple of big calls. The flop comes T88, and my opponent insta-pushes allin for the rest of his stack without waiting even half a second after seeing the flop hit the felt, the classic sign that a donkey has missed the flop with two overs, and I think for just a few seconds before calling him down, and I am shown AQ unimproved. I'm in line to have a top-3 stack with fewer than three tables left, but no sooner can I begin to enjoy having outplayed another guy in a huge spot in a big tournament, that the turn comes a Queen:



First prize in this one was around 10k. I bust in 26th place for $220. Who knows how much more Tournament EV I left on the table there, but with a 3rd-place stack and 25 players left, several thousand was entirely likely for me, a heck of a lot better than a measly $220 for my efforts.

Also on Friday night -- a "great" night of poker for me that featured three really deep runs in the same evening -- was UBOC Event #12, the $150 buyin, 75k guaranteed sniper tournament that is right up my alley. I absolutely crushed in this one, taking advantage of two AA's and a KK during the second hour of play to build up a massive stack early, after which I coasted for a good couple of hours before taking advantage of countless Harringbots on my way to another deep run in UB's annual poker tournament championship series. I made so many great plays in this thing, never missing a read and always keeping my aggro in check despite being in the top 10 in chips pretty much from early in the second hour all the way to the 7th hour. I managed to bust 16 people along the way, which I know because you get one of those little bounty windows (and a $15 bounty prize) with every elimination in these sniper events on UB, and I was an absolute terrorist from start to finish through the field of 573 runners who came out to play UBOC #12.

Unfortunately, "finish" for me in this ended up being in 15th place, when I held a 4th place stack and ran KK into the 5th place stack's AA:



KK into AA, with less than two full tables left in one of the annual majors on UB. It is just so sick, especially since I didn't even reraise allin preflop with my Kings, opting instead to wait to see if an Ace fell to give me a way to get off the hand, but the Q22 flop did me no good as it it just about the least scary flop imaginable for a guy holding KK. But alas, this one was in the cards (pun intended) from literally seven hours earlier, and IGH two hands later in 15th place with just $570 to show for my efforts, plus of course the sixteen $15 bounties I picked up along the way. First prize in this tournament was 18k, and I had been in 4th place of 15 left, and was dealt KK to boot. From 18k to $571, with one flip of the cards. In light of all the other stupidity I ran into late in mtt's this weekend, this KK into AA might have been the biggest sickness of them all.

Not to be outdone, on Saturday night I final tabled full tilt's nightly $26, 8pm ET 35k guaranteed tourney for the second time this month, powering my way through more than 1200 runners despite having nothing going on for the first two hours in the event. So we're down to 8 runners left, with me in 6th place of those 8 remaining. The tournament short stack raises the 24k big blind to 72k from early position, and I push my own short stack of 390k allin from the big blind with pocket 7s. I am of course instacalled by AQs. The flop is clean, and the turn is cleaner, and I am just one card away from sitting solidly in 2nd place of 7 remaining in the 35k:



And then, putting a delicious capper on a weekend that was so hot, and yet so, so cold on the virtual felt:



Seven hands later, I'm out in 8th place, for a wonderful consolation prize of $761. Now, 29 buyins is 29 buyins to be sure. But, first prize in this tournament was $8800, and I was one card away from a 2nd-place stack with 7 players remaining. From $8800 to $761, it's hard for me to feel anything but queasy about it even when I re-read this a couple of days later.

I played consistently the best poker I've played over a whole weekend in my entire poker-playing life over the past few days. And while I probably netted around 2k overall over the period, realistically I've got to guess I left what, 15 to 20k in Tournament EV on the table in very real terms over the entire weekend.

So forgive me if I don't necessarily share your opinion that you "run so bad" because of how that $10 90-person sitngo ended for you the other night.

Preflop Raising Hands

This was prompted by an email I got from another blogger last week about how I would play a certain hand at a certain point in an mtt. Actually it was the same hand, dealt to Hero twice at two different spots in a large mtt, one getting kinda late in the tournament and then one well into the money positions. And in giving my response, I started thinking about how I tend to play certain hands differently at different times in a tournament, or from different positions at the table, or depending on the different actions in front of me in the hand.

For example, say it's early in a tournament and I am dealt A9o in middle position. I am probably going to raise 3x the big blind if the action folds to me before the flop. But if there is a raise ahead of me, I typically won't even consider reraising and instead will sail that shit into the muck as fast as you can say "shazam!" And even if there is a limper ahead of me, I will usually fold the A9o from middle position unless a whole bunch of other limpers come in along with me.

Similarly, say I am dealt a hand like 99 and I am in the cutoff seat. If the action folds to me, surely I will again raise a standard amount with the hand. If there is a preflop raise in front of me, I will typically not fold as I would the A9o hand above, but rather I am likely to call if the stacks are any kind of good size so as to make set mining (or potentially flopping an overpair) profitable. I might even fold the 99 to a preflop raise if we are on the final table bubble of a tournament and I put a lot of value on the jump in the cash payouts for the final tablists of that particular tournament. At other times on the tournament bubble, I might be very apt to reraise allin with the 99, figuring I am likely racing or dominating if I do get called, and most likely that my opponent will fold his two high cards and avoid taking a large beat with the cash payout positions so close to being reached.

There are countless examples of starting hands which I may fold, call or raise in a tournament depending on the circumstances -- again, usually the chip stacks involved, my position, and where in the tournamentwe currently are. And this got me wondering if there are any hands which I basically always raise with preflop, including reraising if the action comes back around to me. And the answer is, pretty much, yes. I think there are three hands that I nearly always raise or reraise with before the flop in nlh tournaments. Of course there are always exceptions to everything, which I will discuss in a minute, but for the most part with the following three hands I will be putting in a raise of whatever the current bet is before the flop, pretty much regardless of my position, and pretty much regardless of where in the tournament we're at.

The first hand I basically always raise with is KK. Pocket Kings is obviously a great hand, but we all know how magnetically these things tend to attract the killer Ace on the flop. The last thing I ever want to do is take an action preflop that permits or encourages one or more players holding the A9 or AJ hands I mentioned above from sticking around in the hand and seeing a flop. On very rare occasions I may limp from utg with KK, but even that is a move I don't like very much, because invariably some donkey with Ax limps as well around back and suddenly when the Ace flops I have no clue where I'm at. Whereas, I love limping utg preflop with pocket Aces, because in that situation even if no one raises behind me there is no hand out there I am particularly concerned about allowing to see a cheap flop. But with KK, I don't like to limp generally, even under the gun, and if anyone raises in front of me -- even a pretty rockish player -- I am generally going to reraise. KK is ahead of all but one starting hand, and it is in good shape against anyone without an Ace, so I want to get more money into the pot even against a preflop raiser, a typical one of which is likely to have what, AK-A7 or any pocket pair? KK crushes that range, and to the extent that I can maybe get the A7 guy to fold, that is all goodness for me and my pocket Kings. More than that, sometimes the other guy has JJ or QQ or AK and is more than happy to reraise and get it allin preflop, which again is a great outcome for me. So with KK, I basically always raise the current bet, even if it's been raised already in front of me, and that really doesn't change at any point in a tournament. On occasion late in a large mtt I might slow-play KK to try to double-up with it if I have been folding a lot and am afraid that a bet or raise might scare everyone else off, but generally speaking I don't even do that nearly as much as some other people might. It's almost 100% accurate to say that I always raise or reraise with KK before the flop. And as I've discussed before, I do not fold KK preflop. I never have and I don't know that I ever will. Maybe if Beth Shak is already allin and is dancing around yelling "I got it!" to her husband. But that's about it.

The next hand I pretty much always tend to raise or reraise with preflop is AK. A lot of people play AK a lot of different ways, and I'm not here to say which way is "right", or which way is the most profitable. Probably, like most things, the most profitable way to play AK is going to be different for each individual, depending on how strong they are at reading their opponents, what their image is, and how good they are at extracting chips from their opponents when they do flop a TPTK or better hand. But for me, I am hugely profitable over time with AK in tournaments, and the way I tend to play it preflop is to raise, or to reraise around the size of the pot if it's already been raised ahead of me. Now, are there exceptions to this? Unlike KK, sure there are. I have folded AK before the flop several times in the thousands of mtt's I have played in my day, but never without a raise in front of me, and never with only one raise in front of me either. I will pretty much always raise into an unopened pot from any position at any point in a tournament with AK, unless I am trying to trap an aggressive short stack behind me who I just know is going to push allin over the top of me with any Ace or any two high cards if I just limp. If the pot has been raised in front of me, or if there are one or more limpers, again I am pretty much always going to reraise it up, as I mentioned usually around the full size of the pot. The bottom line is, AK is a very strong hand, and the way I play I figure I am just about always getting the best of it if I put in more money before the flop when I hold Big Slick. Of course if the other guy has KK or especially AA, I'm in trouble there (and that happens to me more than you could believe), but other than those two hands, I believe with my post-flop skill I am getting the best of putting any additional money into the pot with AK even when it's been raised up in front of me.

So when do I fold AK before the flop? Basically, only when I know someone has AA or KK. Even if I knew the other guy had QQ or JJ I would not fold AK before the flop if there is any significant amount of chips already in the pot, because I figure that I will get away from it with a minimal loss if I miss the flop given the way I play AK after the first three board cards are out, and if I hit the flop I will do whatever it takes to convince the guy with QQ that I might have missed and I'll be able to extract from him to a nice degree. No, the only time generally speaking that I fold AK before the flop is if I am sure someone else has AA or KK in the hand. And in order to be sure of that, I either have to be playing against the tightest rock in the world -- for some guys, any preflop reraise pretty much always means Aces or Kings -- or I'm going to need to see some sickass action in front of me, from stacks that are large enough not to be pushing to try to double with some less than premium holding. So, for example, I recently folded AK preflop when I raised it up from utg, then the guy in 3rd position reraised me the size of the pot, and then someone in middle position pushed allin on a huge re-reraise of about 60 big blinds maybe 15 minutes in to a large mtt. I figured, I'm here raising under the gun, about as strong as I can look at this point in the tournament, and someone just to my left reraised me. He's got to have a big pair, or maybe another AK, or I suppose AQs if he's a massive donkey. But once the third guy pushes allin on the massive overbet re-reraise, what am I gonna put that guy on that is behind AK? AJ? No -- I didn't say this was a blonkament. KQ? Not. He could have QQ there, but in practice in my experience about 9 times out of 10 that guy flips up Kings or Aces. He might not have pocket Aces, but when he doesn't, he's usually going to show me pocket Kings. And this early in an mtt, with me only in there for one raise of three times the big blind, why risk my tournament life? But that's the kind of action it takes for me to lay down AK preflop -- like I've said, I need to be pretty much sure that someone else at the table has Aces or Kings.

The last hand that I like to nearly always raise or reraise with preflop is pocket Queens. Once you get to JJ and the lower pocket pairs, they are just too beatable by the bigger pairs, and too vulnerable to the two-high-card hands for me to treat them like I have to raise with them. But with QQ, in most situations in a tournament, I am going to raise or reraise with it. Now this one comes with all the same caveats as the AK discussion above -- show me someone who obviously has AA, KK or AK at the table, and I am likely to fold. I've probably folded QQ preflop a hundred times in my life, and it's not something I find particularly difficult to do if there is huge action up front. As easy as it is to be sure that someone has AA or KK if they're going crazy before the flop, throw AK into their range and you can sometimes be more or less absolutely sure they've got one of those three hands. Anyone putting in a third or fourth raise before the flop in no-limit holdem, me and my QQ are gone. But against anybody who has just put in one raise, I am going to reraise them the size of the pot with the Ladies pretty much every time. Sure, sometimes they reraise me and I am forced to fold, or worse yet, to call and then be racing against AK or run into Aces or Kings. But the bottom line is that, in most of the mtt's I play online, an initial raiser's range before the flop at any point early in a tournament has many hands that QQ is ahead of, many of them far ahead of, and as I've said there's only three hands I have any fear of when reraising with QQ. And as the tournaments progress, the tables get shorter, the Ms generally get shorter, and the end result is that preflop raiser's hand ranges are widening, not shrinking, meaning that my QQ is more likely to be ahead of a preflop raiser's range late in an mtt than it is at the beginning. And I almost never limp preflop with QQ. The only person you're trapping when you limp up front with pocket Queens is yourself, of that I am sure. Now you're letting KJ and K8s come in in addition to AJ and A8s. That is in my experience a bad mistake, and when you lose a big pot after limping in early with QQ, you have no one to blame but yourself.