burningyen says

Very cool, looking forward to the CR videos! There's been a big hole in their content since AJ left.

08/29/07

Anonymous says

Looking forward to your MTT's on CR!

08/29/07

Landlord79 says

Nice review of those 3 hands. It's good to see someone expounding on a players perception and tilitiness.

08/30/07

lakong says

Great read. I liked your thinking on hand 3. I definitely could have put him on a worse K, although KQ was a good possiblity here. I also can see him with a hand like A9, A7, 8T, 86, or even 9x or 7x. While he could have made a set, I see this guy going for the check raise or push on the turn. He hates you and really wants your stack. I don't think he shoots his wad just yet with a dominated hand. He might even lead out with a set thinking that you'll go for the raise again.

08/30/07

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There's no particular overriding theme to these hands, but I think they're worth posting and make for a good read...

This is a story of 3 hands from the 1K sat I managed to bubble the other week (heh). After a $10 dealer addon, we started at 11K chips and 25/50 blinds. Other than me in Seat 4, my first table had a couple of solid 2+2'ers, but otherwise seemed pretty loose passive, with the exception of Seat 6. Seat 6, a late 20-something guy with an Ipod who looked confident, was playing at least half of his hands - open limping and overlimping everything, then firing at a lot of flops. Unlike most people that play like that, though, he clearly took flop texture into account; he'd never fire, say, an Axx board, but he wasn't afraid of 2 barreling when the flop and turn were low. As a result, he picked up a truckload of small and medium pots without a showdown or even a river and had around 13K at the end of the 30 minute first level.

I really wanted some of those chips, but with him to my left, this was going to be tricky. I resolved to play loose preflop, knowing that I'd be folding a lot but would get some of his c-bets in the pot when I hit - especially with my no doubt weak image. I got to see a couple of flops, missed them and folded (there's no reason to play a hand with guys like that without hitting *something*), so the first important pot came during 50/100:

Seat 6 limped UTG, three more people limped and I completed 87o/the BB checked. The flop came Q76r, we checked to him and he bet ~350 into 600. Everyone folded to me. Ordinarily, I'd obviously just fold, but here, I called, planning on check/calling the turn and river unimproved - a risky play but one I felt I could afford to try this deep with what was quite possibly the best hand. A very nice 8 hit the turn, I checked, he fired about 800, I thought before raising to 2200 and he turbofolded, for the first decent pot he'd lost all day.

[Sidebar: The reason I CR'd here was, of course, value in case he actually had a queen/to protect my hand in case he randomly turned any one of a number of draws I'd have to pay him off on. This was not, however, the way to get the most chips in the pot - if a 7 came off I'd likely check/call and possibly even check some rivers. I might also do this if I had Q7 on a Q762 board. In those cases, where his marginal hands would be drawing dead and I wouldn't be so vulnerable to most of the deck, I'd usually want to let him see a scare card like an ace on the river and decide to fire again.]

After that hand, the guy clearly geared down for a while and the rest of 50/100 passed without much incident from our side of the table, but he'd taken a couple of more pots off loose players at 75/150 and was probably around his original 11K when Hand 2 came up:

I caught jacks in EMP and raised. Seat 6 called (I got the feeling he wanted to play a pot vs. me) and we saw a KT8, 2 spade flop HU. I bet ~700 into 1225 and he predictably called. [Sidebar: the reason I bet here is to control the bet size - no reason to check/call 1K - and because I could probably fold to a raise. If I felt I couldn't, this would likely be a check/call.] The turn was a brick club - making two clubs - and went check/check.

The river: a red jack. Ordinarily, we'd just bet and hope to be called by a ten, a bad king, etc.; even if he were to bluff a missed draw a lot, we'd likely get paid more on average if we set our own bet size, since he'd never call a checkraise. But here, when we just checkraised the villain once already, the CR is a perfect play; most live players would never be able to resist a call with any showdownable hand the second time around. So I checked, he bet 1100, I made it 2600, he called and mucked.

Hand 3 came at the end of that level. A 2+2'er raised in MP (not needing too much), someone called in LP, I overcalled KJ on the button, and Seat 6 made it four handed to a K97 flop. It was checked to me, and I bet 1200 into ~1700, mostly just wanting to take it down. Since this is called '3 hands against the same opponent', Seat 6 naturally shoved for about 7K.

I thought it over for a full two minutes. Basically, against any other player at the table, this would be an autofold - except for three straight draws, it was a dry flop, 97 was a distinct possibility, and he would certainly shove with a set. Could he be tilted enough, or mad at specifically me, to do this with a worse king? Possibly, but what worse king? On the other hand, I couldn't see him with AK, and thought he probably wouldn't be here with K7s. Overall, I felt that I was right around 40% - maybe a shade less - against his range and getting just about the right odds. Eventually, after taking longer than anyone at the table to that point, I made the call against what, luckily, turned out to be KT. Oddly enough, I'm still not sure that a call was the right play - it turned out that he *could* have a worse king, and, of course, I had to take his potential tiltiness vs. me into account, but if I'm right and sets/97 need to be weighed more heavily in his range, I might have lost a few G-bucks here.

C'est la vie.

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A quick announcement: As of today, I'm officially the newest guest pro at Cardrunners.com, where I'll be doing videos and the occasional full tournament HH summary/review (like the ones I used to do at 2+2 a long time ago.) The good news is, while CR is a paid content site, I'll no doubt have a bunch of outtakes and the like left over, some of which I'll definitely be posting here. Expect to see an "Adanthar busts out half an hour into a bunch of tourneys" video or two around mid-September.