Marginal turn NL situations

[Ulysses]

I read the intro to this month's magazine and get excited about reading some good NL stuff. Hopefully this is not an indication of things to come.

In this article, the author builds an $1100 pot on the turn, leaving himself with $350 behind. Given his reasoning in this hand, why is he raising to $400 rather than pushing?

[DyessMan89]

Yes, I really dont understand that raise and the check behind on the river.

[gergery]

I eagerly await an El Diablo article......

-g

[fyodor]

[ QUOTE ]
I eagerly await an El Diablo article......

-g

[/ QUOTE ]

Some people are poets. Some people are poetry critics. It is rare (T.S.Eliot) that someone is both.

Be thankfull the El Diablos of the board are out there reading these articles with a knowlegable and critical eye.

Disclaimer: This was not meant to be a bj for El D but I'll get off my knees now. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[DyessMan89]

I think he has definite merrit in everything that he has critized. Both of these articles seem severley flawed.

The turn raise seems ridiculous ... you are completey commiting yourself on the turn with that raise, why is the last amount of money being left behind? This is the same reason why I dont understand checking behind on the river.

[gergery]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I eagerly await an El Diablo article......

-g

[/ QUOTE ]

Some people are poets. Some people are poetry critics. It is rare (T.S.Eliot) that someone is both.

Be thankfull the El Diablos of the board are out there reading these articles with a knowlegable and critical eye.

Disclaimer: This was not meant to be a bj for El D but I'll get off my knees now. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

I posted b/c I think there's a greater chance ElD is like TS than not.

-g

[Yeti]

Yeah, I was disappointed by this article too.

I don't like the limp preflop, but whatever. I hate raising the flop, especially to that amount.

I'm tempted to write something myself but a couple of things are holding me back; namely, I don't know what to write about, and am not smart enough to write a good article.

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
This is the same reason why I dont understand checking behind on the river.

[/ QUOTE ]

The check behind on the river I understand. It's just that I can't understand putting myself in that spot.

[Ulysses]

Ed, Mason, author, anyone? Any comments here? Is there some part of reasoning I'm overlooking here?

[Zeno]

[ QUOTE ]
anyone?

[/ QUOTE ]


By choice, I have limited myself to Ray Zee and Ed Miller. Sometimes I sin and read Mason or David.

-Zeno

[Zeno]

Opponent has Hero coverd.

From the Article:

[ QUOTE ]
Now he bets [on the turn the opponent bets $125 into a $315 pot]. If he has a strong hand and puts me on a draw, why is he charging me so little? If he has a very strong hand and puts me on a strong hand, why isn't he betting the larger amount such a hand would be willing to call here? Even hands as strong as a set or a straight will usually bet larger here in an attempt to make me call incorrectly with draws or commit me to a second best hand.



Using that logic, I'm pretty set on reading my opponent's bet as indicating a weak hand or draw. If I'm confident in my read, a call is terrible, and a small raise gives my opponent almost direct odds for strong draws and implied odds for most other reasonable draws.


[/ QUOTE ]

The Author then recommends a raise to $400 on the turn. Given the above he appears to be making somewhat the same error he wishes to impose on his opponent.

The Author also worries about his opponent presenting a 'crediable threat' on the river.

And he rises to $400 on the turn, leaving himself $350 behind.

Given his reasoning as presented in the article this actually seems like the wrong play.

Pushing in against a larger stack, with what you reasonably think is the best hand (plus some draw outs) is the better play to offset his 'crediable threat' on the river, and also to charge his opponent the most (-EV) for being on a draw or a weaker hand [which he states is his read].

Did I get that right?

-Zeno

PS You owe me a beer for making me read that article.

[KaneKungFu123]

[ QUOTE ]
Ed, Mason, author, anyone? Any comments here? Is there some part of reasoning I'm overlooking here?

[/ QUOTE ]

[barongreenback]

[ QUOTE ]
Ed, Mason, author, anyone? Any comments here? Is there some part of reasoning I'm overlooking here?

[/ QUOTE ]
I suppose we could have a debate between the merits of fanatical defence of an article (a la Barron) and no effort at all (as here).

When thoughts are presented in an article they carry considerably more weight than in a post and are more likely to be taken as gospel by those of us not in the know. It is vital that they are subject to greater criticism. Having a forum for the magazine is a great setup but you can't have a debate if both sides aren't represented.

BTW, I'd like to know the forum names of article writers.

James

[Ulysses]

Sure seems that way, doesn't it, Zeno?

I cannot see a good reason why pushing is not better than raising to the amount advised.

This article is about what to do on the turn. THAT IS WHAT THE ARTICLE IS ABOUT. In my opinion, the advice is not edgy, non-traditional, interesting, thought-provoking, worthwhile, or any of the other words used by the publishers to describe what's in the magazine.

If I am missing something, I would simply like the author or publisher(s) to explain what the benefits of this line are over pushing. If there are some, I'd like to consider and discuss them. If there aren't and it's simply bad advice, that's fine too, just say so. I just want to know whether or not there is some reasoning here that I am missing, as it seems just plain wrong to me.

[bobbyi]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm tempted to write something myself but a couple of things are holding me back

[/ QUOTE ]
Wow. An article from you would be awesome. Seriously. Do it.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know what to write about

[/ QUOTE ]
Then do what this guy did: take an interesting hand that you played and walk through your thought process street by street.

[ QUOTE ]
am not smart enough to write a good article.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wtf? You must be kidding. Having spent a while last week digging through your old posts on MSHPLNL, I can't see how you could think this is true.

[Yeti]

I am flattered, but I don't know how you could think those things. My posts consist of stating obvious advice, and in recent months, snide one-line comments. My mathematical grounding is somewhat poor, and thought process not much better.

Regardless, I may try. A reason I've not posted a lot lately is having no interesting hands come up. They are quite hard to come by, esp. in these capped buyins. There are literally 1-2 people in MHNL who recognise what makes an interesting hand, and I am rarely one of them.

[bobbyi]

[ QUOTE ]
My posts consist of stating obvious advice

[/ QUOTE ]
Things that obvious to winning online 5/10 and 10/20 NL players are not obvious to .25/.50 and .5/1 NL players and I am in the latter category. Having someone show the way that a successful mid-stakes NL player approaches standard situations is exactly what we need to reach that level. I can understand that once you are already at that level, these things start to seem mundane and self-apparent and that you don't feel capable of writing an article that will blow the minds of people who are already winning 10/20 NL players (although I am not qualified to say whether you are right about that or not), but as someone who is still trying to learn the mindset needed to approach NL situations correctly, I find having someone provide the "obvious advice" very helpful.

[Yeti]

Fair points. I will attempt to chip in more, and maybe dabble in SSNL occasionally. My point was that those types of totally standard threads shouldn't really be in MHNL.

Anyway, good luck to you sir.

[Xhad]

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, I really dont understand that raise and the check behind on the river.

[/ QUOTE ]

The river check is about as obvious as you can get as far as I can tell:

-He will not call with a busted draw
-He will not fold a made hand better than yours to a river push after calling that turn raise
-Is he going to call you with a worse made hand more than half the time?

[KaneKungFu123]

youre too modest.

[chrisptp]

Hi

I wrote the article in question and I just wasn't aware a thread had been started about it. I'll try to answer a couple of the complaints.

First off, let me say that the point of the article was, for me at least, to detail the process you want to be going through mentally on the turn; the hand was meant to be an illustration. So, I wasn't trying to give advice on what to do specifically in very similar scenarios as much as I was trying to articulate handling the turn in general.

Anyhow .... in the order in which they were received:

"In this article, the author builds an $1100 pot on the turn, leaving himself with $350 behind. Given his reasoning in this hand, why is he raising to $400 rather than pushing? "

I don't see a unique advantage to pushing. I want a bet big enough to make it incorrect for my opponent to call, small enough to mask that fact. I guess I should have mentioned it in the article, but I rarely raise all in when it would be out of line with the pot size.

"The turn raise seems ridiculous ... you are completey commiting yourself on the turn with that raise, why is the last amount of money being left behind? This is the same reason why I dont understand checking behind on the river."

I think that is half answered above and the second half is answered well by a poster below. I'm still not hearing good reasons FOR going all in on the turn.

"The Author then recommends a raise to $400 on the turn. Given the above he appears to be making somewhat the same error he wishes to impose on his opponent. "

Why? I don't get the links here.

"Pushing in against a larger stack, with what you reasonably think is the best hand (plus some draw outs) is the better play to offset his 'crediable threat' on the river, and also to charge his opponent the most (-EV) for being on a draw or a weaker hand [which he states is his read]."

Sorry if credible was spelled incorrectly somewhere in the article. There still are no solid warrants here for why an all in should be my move. The one given is that an all in offsets the credible threat; there's a misapplication here because in the article I make it clear that a large raise on the turn makes it clear to my opponent that I am committed to call the river, taking away the bluff possibility. The credibile threat comes in if I call or raise small on the turn and we're both deep as a result on the river.


"I cannot see a good reason why pushing is not better than raising to the amount advised."

And I still haven't seen a good argument as to the opposite. I'll admit that I should have pre-empted this area somewhere in the article, but it's really not where I was headed in the article [see caveat at top].

I think there's interesting fodder here for a discussion on the relative benefits of all in vs large raise that commits you to call.

Anyhow, sorry for the delay, will try to be more prompt.


Chris

[Yeti]

Feel free to comment on this :

"I don't like the limp preflop, but whatever. I hate raising the flop, especially to that amount."

Personally I would nearly always call that flop and keep the pot small, but if I raise, I raise a lot more. Whatever hands he led like that (all sorts of draws, pair+draws), are not going to fold to the small raise.

You are just bloating the pot with a mediocre hand.

[chrisptp]

How much more do you raise? Enough to commit yourself and also enough that only hands which have you crushed will give you action?

I cut direct odds and since I feel comfortable abandoning this hand on a terrifying turn, I'm not too worried about an opponent calling because they think they have implied odds. I think calling just puts me in a very awkward spot on the turn since I haven't done very much to define the hand.

Now that we know what happened, maybe there seems to be more support for a larger raise. Without hindsight, I like the smaller raise because I believe it motivates my opponent to make a mistake, gets me good information, defends my position and does it while keeping my exposure limited.

Personally I think calling with marginal hands on the flop is a much weaker play than raising. I would often rather fold than call in a spot like this. You're not putting a whole lot less money in the pot [calling vs my raise], but in return you're giving up a lot of info and image.

I think you have to be willing to bloat the pot with a marginal hand on a regular basis in shorthanded NL. You just get in individual conflicts more often, and people have to have a reason to think they should play back at your raises with questionable holdings. If i don't show that I'm willing to commit some chips with these hands, getting action on my strong ones is a lot tougher.

chris

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't see a unique advantage to pushing.

[/ QUOTE ]

1) You make more money when your opponent calls incorrectly with a draw.
2) You get more fold equity v. a lot of hands you want to fold.
3) You eliminate the chance of incorrectly folding to a desperation bluff on the river


[ QUOTE ]
"I cannot see a good reason why pushing is not better than raising to the amount advised."

And I still haven't seen a good argument as to the opposite.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's fine, but you still haven't answered the simple question as to why you think your raise amount is better than a push. I provided three reasons above why all-in might be better. What are any reasons why raising to the amount you did is better? I can only think of one, but it's a reach and I'm pretty skeptical about it. Actually, I can think of a second reason as well, but I think it's pretty much BS.

[ML4L]

Critic:

[ QUOTE ]

"Pushing in...charges his opponent the most (-EV) for being on a draw or a weaker hand [which he states is his read]."

[/ QUOTE ]

Author:

[ QUOTE ]
There still are no solid warrants here for why an all in should be my move.

[/ QUOTE ]

This doesn't vibe.

While it is possible that critic's assertion is not true, I think that the assumptions necessary to invalidate his point would be unreasonable, given the available information.

ML4L

[J.A.Sucker]

[ QUOTE ]
I posted b/c I think there's a greater chance ElD is like TS than not.

-g

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you saying that El D is gay?

[fyodor]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I posted b/c I think there's a greater chance ElD is like TS than not.

-g

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you saying that El D is gay?

[/ QUOTE ]

Eliot was gay? I know he had some issues but this is the first I have heard of this. I am probably in the top ten of most naive people on the planet so it's no surprise I haven't heard but do you have any references I could look up for this info. I have a few Eliot bio's on my bookshelf.

[J.A.Sucker]

There are rumors that he had at least homosexual tendencies. I'm sure if you google it, you can find some stuff - and I believe everything that I see on the internet.

I can't comment for Diablo. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[chrisptp]

[ QUOTE ]
1) You make more money when your opponent calls incorrectly with a draw.

[/ QUOTE ]

This assumes that they will call often enough, relative to their calls when I raise less. I don't think that happens on the turn in the 5-10 NL games I play as much as you're assuming. I think if we were talking about flop play you'd have a stronger argument, but it's my impression that people are more likely to call incorrectly when there's "something left to win." At the point at which I don't put him on a very strong draw, my raise forces a mistake. Maybe it's simply a matter of feel for your opponent [which so many things are in NL, especially short] that lets you tell between those opponents who will make obvious blunders [go ahead and push, then] vs opponents who you have to trick a bit more.

[ QUOTE ]
2) You get more fold equity v. a lot of hands you want to fold.

[/ QUOTE ]



I don't see a lot of scenarios where this is true. It sounds like a nice argument, but what hands are you thinkng my opponent is holding at this point that make your argument work?

[ QUOTE ]

3) You eliminate the chance of incorrectly folding to a desperation bluff on the river


[/ QUOTE ]


No, I already covered this in the article, I appear so committed with my turn bet that they really can't bluff and I really can't fold. If anything, this argument works for me, because if my opponent would not call an all in on the weak draw but would call my raise and then bluff at a miss, I'm coming out ahead when I call the river every time.


I still contend that the point of my article is being entirely missed, but that's fine - this is a useful discussion for me anyhow, as I regard the all in as a very weak play in most spots and I appreciate having to defend why ... one more time, tho, the point of the article was to articulate how the communication of you and your opponent's actions changes from street to street, and how you can't consider the turn in a vaccuum. The hand was an example, not necessarily a tutorial in and of itself.


That being said, I do think I played the hand the right way, and I think players who want to get all in on the turn here are not making as much money playing marginal hand vs marginal hand as they could in short NL.


Chris

[chrisptp]

People need to refer to specific ideas when possible for me to be able to play along ...

[ QUOTE ]

While it is possible that critic's assertion is not true, I think that the assumptions necessary to invalidate his point would be unreasonable, given the available information.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which assumptions and why? When I say there are now arrants, I'm not being lazy or vague; there really were no arguments to support the premise. Here you make a claim but don't point to the specific bits you're referring to, making it very difficult for me to respond constructively.

Chris

[ML4L]

[ QUOTE ]

Which assumptions and why?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's what I was asking you; what assumptions are you making to counter the assertion that this person made:

[ QUOTE ]
"Pushing in...charges his opponent the most (-EV) for being on a draw or a weaker hand [which he states is his read]."

[/ QUOTE ]

My first post was a little cryptic, so I'll be more specific. The assumption that you would have to be making is that you are against an opponent who will make a small mistake, but not a big one. I think that this is what you were getting at when you said to Diablo:

[ QUOTE ]
This assumes that they will call often enough, relative to their calls when I raise less. I don't think that happens on the turn in the 5-10 NL games I play as much as you're assuming.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't necessarily agree with this assumption. When you say that you put your opponent on a "weak draw," what does that mean exactly? Something like KQo?

Your holding is tentative enough that there are very few hands that your opponent could hold that don't have a reasonable number of outs. You've also set up a situation where you are paying off every time that your opponent makes his hand (since you say that you will never make a bad fold on the river). So, I think that your opponent is making a very minimal mistake on the turn by calling with most holdings and not making a mistake AT ALL to call with others.

If you push, he may fold most of the time (although I doubt that a player who raises J4o and plays it postflop as he did folds in most relatively-close spots), but the times that he does not, he is always making a pretty sizeable mistake. So, he doesn't have to call the push very often to make it more profitable than your nearly-breakeven play of raising less.

I had wanted you to explain why raising the amount that you did is better than pushing so that I didn't misattribute any thought processes to you. Feel free to correct any of my assumptions.

Also, perhaps you could put him on a more specific range of hands and start crunching some numbers that support your position?

ML4L

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]

1) You make more money when your opponent calls incorrectly with a draw.
2) You get more fold equity v. a lot of hands you want to fold.
3) You eliminate the chance of incorrectly folding to a desperation bluff on the river

[/ QUOTE ]

In his reasoning, the author seems to be ignoring Ed D's last two points entirely, and a raise to $400 won't accomplish those goals nearly as often as a push. The author seems to be playing out some tourney ploy where he slowly milks the opponent when holding a monster, but his hand is much more marginal and vulnerable than that, even given his likely correct read of the opponent's hand from his actions thus far (and even against bad players he will the majority of the time be against a better hand than the dog the opponent had). And the best implied odds situation he gives in fact gives the opponent exactly correct odds to call. This is especially funny since the reason so many weak-tights bemoan limit poker is that both the good opponents and the fish have so many situations when the the pots odds justify a call and they can't blow them off a hand like in nl. Even if the author doesn't like to push in general, leaving just 1/3 of his stack behind on the river and exposing himself to making a bad call or being bluffed (assuming he would ever fold) is just bad poker.

And fwiw, I push short handed in way more situations than on a full table in nl, precisely because your opponents who are not rocks don't figure to have as big of hands and I am always looking to generate fold equity.

[BarronVangorToth]

[ QUOTE ]

I suppose we could have a debate between the merits of fanatical defence of an article (a la Barron)

[/ QUOTE ]


I missed this aside in my skimming of this thread, but I really didn't warrant the "fanatical" comment unless your definition of "fanatical" means not necessarily agreeing with people who apparently don't understand something just because they have more posts than you / have been around longer than you / play higher stakes than you do.

That aside, back on topic of this thread, this seems like a clear push for many of the reasons correctly described above.

At least here the corrections are fundamentally grounded and not (partially or wholly) illogical and/or misguided.

Barron Vangor Toth
BarronVangorToth.com

[ML4L]

n/m