Another hand from the Orleans
 

Same tourney as before, $200 total buy-in, almost $6K for first. 290,000 chips in play, down to 15 players. Pays 10.

Blinds 500/1000, Ante 200. 8 players at my table.

The good player to my left has been eliminated. Nobody remaining can really play the game. Everybody would probably be happy with a 15-way chop for $900 or whatever.

I'm on the button, the SB is relatively new to my table. The BB is the SB from the last hand I posted. The SB has only been here for a few hands, but he instantly folded his BB to a min-raise after looking at his cards even though there was 4100 in the pot... which says something about his play.

I have around 25K chips, which is a little above average. It's folded around to me and I raise to 3500 with pocket deuces.

The SB looks at his cards, begins to fold, but looks at the pot and then looks at his cards again. He then looks at me and calls. He has around 18K in chips. The BB folds.

The flop came Kh-8d-4d and the SB leads for 3000 into a 9600 chip pot. I have a hard time putting him on a hand. My instinct tells me he won't fold to shear aggression here. I call.

The turn was an off-suit 3. He leads for 3K again, leaving him 9K. Geez, I was getting 6 to 1 on a call and I was becoming convinced that he wasn't on a diamond draw and that I may have all the diamonds as bluff outs on the river. But I didn't like it and was ready to fold. Instead of folding, I decided to take a little more time to try and figure out what was going on. I was fairly sure he wasn't walking a monster, and very sure he wasn't on a diamond draw. I also felt like he would want to protect 2 pair and would have pushed with a K-8... probably the weakest hand with which he would have called preflop. Did he have K-T or K-J? Seemed like he would try to protect at least K-J. K-T or K-9? Yeah, that seemed about right. So, how many bluff outs would I have on the river? Could I get all of his chips if I hit my deuce? We he fold if a diamond came? Would he fold if an Ace came?

I decided that I probably had 13 outs to win or bluff the pot. That justified a call of another 3K into this pot in my mind.

The river was the 7 of diamonds and he pretty quickly bet 1k. The minimum. He had 8K behind and I could see him praying for me not to raise.

I took the amount of time I thought I would take if I made my flush and raised 8K more, putting him all in if he called.

Results later.

Irieguy

Re: Another hand from the Orleans
 

I just fold the flop. I think spots like these require a very specific level of inability from your opponent to be profitable. Your 2 outs may be no good as villain's preflop goofy tell could easily be 88 or 44, and it sounds like you don't know what villain's capable of folding.

Re: Another hand from the Orleans
 

Irieguy, you are officially nuts... and I love you.

The only thing that rubs me the wrong way here is that Villain has too little chips to the point where you have to factor in how often he will call on the river out of sheer frustration even though he "knows" he's beat. The smaller the stack, the more likely this is to occur.

More importantly though...

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Nobody remaining can really play the game.

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Then why even bother with such a risky move??

Re: Another hand from the Orleans
 

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I just fold the flop. I think spots like these require a very specific level of inability from your opponent to be profitable.

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i agree w/ this.

But once you got to the turn i like it. Though that minbet on the river would bother me a bit (but i'd still go ahead with plan)

Re: Another hand from the Orleans
 

He sounds like the kinda guy who won't fold anything half decent. I can't fold the flop faster (as it seems you are calling just to steal the pot later.)

Re: Another hand from the Orleans
 

i don't like this line at all.

with such a limited read on the villain, how do you deduce that he'll be capable of folding to a bluff after all the cards are out and he's pot committed but NOT willing to fold to a bluff on the flop when your folding equity is much greater?

how were you even able to put him on a hand or a range of hands at all? are his donkishly small bets (especially on the turn) typical or atypical of his betting patterns? personally, i think the 13 outs you gave yourself was seem too generous. would have played the hand that much differently if he was on a draw himself?

Re: Another hand from the Orleans
 

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he instantly folded his BB to a min-raise after looking at his cards even though there was 4100 in the pot...

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To all the people who are saying, "how can you expect him to fold when he's pot committed?"... I think this is how.

As for the actual hand, I probably would take Exitonly's line... so fold the flop, but being that you got to the turn in the manner you did, I like your play from there.

Edit to say: I say fold the flop because it seems solid after knowing what he does on the turn. In practice... if someone made that weak of a lead on the flop, I'd have a hard time folding too, especially if I felt I could outplay him on a later street. I'm sure you planned to bet if he checked the turn and probably felt there was a decent enough chance that he'd check it. So I don't hate the flop call or anything.

Re: Another hand from the Orleans
 

Posts like these are what making trolling 2+2 for hours everyday worthwhile.

I’m not sure if your line is going to work, but I do believe there is a good chance. I read something lately about bluffs that I liked, “A bluff should be misleading but not confusing”. And from the Villian’s perspective, he can construct a story where some guy kept calling with a flush draw that miraculously hit on the river. So I like the bluff on the end.

But what I found most rewarding was your train of thought on the turn. You put your opponent on a range of hands (albeit small one). And then looked at how many cards would allow you to bluff him out of the pot and then based your decision on that. What I found original about that approach is that you anticipated a scare card coming. I, on the other hand, will make a bluff when a scare card falls but I’m never taking into consideration in advance that a scare card should be counted as an out.

Thanks for the insight.

Re: Another hand from the Orleans
 

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he instantly folded his BB to a min-raise after looking at his cards even though there was 4100 in the pot...

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To all the people who are saying, "how can you expect him to fold when he's pot committed?"... I think this is how.

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although i'm 90% sure this reasoning worked out for Irieguy simply because he posted it, i think there's a danger of reading too much into that preflop fold.

for many players, even those who aren't usually thought of as weak, there's a BIG difference between putting additional $ in the pot when you've got 27o in the hole (pot odds be damned) vs. folding to a raise on the river when you've got even the slightest bit of a hand and you're fully pot committed.

Re: Another hand from the Orleans
 

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down to 15 players. Pays 10.

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i like it because of this. For those that don't play live, you wouldn't know the 'embarassment' factor of bubbling. The line that you took was consistent w/ the hand you were trying to rep. His hand was readily defined, so I like it. I put him squarely on a weak King.

Re: Another hand from the Orleans
 

I love the line; but I would prefer to be against a player that I knew could make a "big" laydown. Since the field was weak (and presumably Hero would find a number of other spots where he has an edge), I think i fold the flop.

If I inherit the hand at the turn; I like hero's line.

Re: Another hand from the Orleans
 

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I put him squarely on a weak King.

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i'm having a hard time trying to figure out why any top pair hand, even a weak one (and Irieguy put him on no worse than K9 as a top pair only hand), wouldn't shut Irieguy out on the turn given the possible flush draw unless, of course, we're simply assuming that the villain is a really, really bad player.

Results
 

Well, this hand ended up being my virtual demise in the tourney.

After my push, my opponent stood up and started cursing about how lucky I was to make my flush. He then said "well, I have to call." He had K-7, making 2 pair on the river.

I'm not sure if he would have folded his TP-7 kicker if a different flush card, or an ace had come on the river. I'd like to think that the chances were good enough to justify my play of the hand, but I just don't know.

I'm pretty sure that everybody is right and that I should have just folded the flop. What's funny is that there was very little chance that I would have folded there as the hand was happening. That's the challenge for me when analyzing this hand: I need to figure out what's wrong with my poker mind such that the best/correct play hardly occured to me in real time. That could be hard to fix.

I busted out the very next hand by open-pushing with JJ and getting called by the same guy holding a weak ace.

Meh.

Irieguy

Re: Results
 

[ QUOTE ]
Well, this hand ended up being my virtual demise in the tourney.

After my push, my opponent stood up and started cursing about how lucky I was to make my flush. He then said "well, I have to call." He had K-7, making 2 pair on the river.

I'm not sure if he would have folded his TP-7 kicker if a different flush card, or an ace had come on the river. I'd like to think that the chances were good enough to justify my play of the hand, but I just don't know.

I'm pretty sure that everybody is right and that I should have just folded the flop. What's funny is that there was very little chance that I would have folded there as the hand was happening. That's the challenge for me when analyzing this hand: I need to figure out what's wrong with my poker mind such that the best/correct play hardly occured to me in real time. That could be hard to fix.

I busted out the very next hand by open-pushing with JJ and getting called by the same guy holding a weak ace.

Meh.

Irieguy

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wow, wtf? K7? maybe I gotta go play some daytime tourneys now...

Re: Results
 

[ QUOTE ]
Well, this hand ended up being my virtual demise in the tourney.

After my push, my opponent stood up and started cursing about how lucky I was to make my flush. He then said "well, I have to call." He had K-7, making 2 pair on the river.

I'm not sure if he would have folded his TP-7 kicker if a different flush card, or an ace had come on the river. I'd like to think that the chances were good enough to justify my play of the hand, but I just don't know.

I'm pretty sure that everybody is right and that I should have just folded the flop. What's funny is that there was very little chance that I would have folded there as the hand was happening. That's the challenge for me when analyzing this hand: I need to figure out what's wrong with my poker mind such that the best/correct play hardly occured to me in real time. That could be hard to fix.

I busted out the very next hand by open-pushing with JJ and getting called by the same guy holding a weak ace.

Meh.

Irieguy

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Yeah, but I think others might not have been quick to fold the flop in real-time either. Opinions tend differ once the rest of the hand is known. But unfortunately, we can't know how the hand is going to play out until it does.

I think that, in the long-run, being able to play hands like this is good.

Re: Results
 

YOU NEED PROFESSIONAL HELP

I would have gone broke on this hand too, but I would have "donked" it off by moving allin pre-flop and having him spite call me because he was late for dinner; at that point I would be in a 53/47 "coinrace" position and could curse the Gods for my badluck....I wouldn't have to think about having had 4 separate opportunities to not go broke [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

It doesn't do anygood to be the best player at the table if you don't play better than the others [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Re: Results
 

in a 50+5, if i'm the preflop raiser and the caller bets out weakly into me on a 2 tone flop, it tells me that he has a piece of the flop, but not tp.

he's betting for information. if i go over the top, i'm representing top pair/overpair. he usually folds unless he was slowplaying a monster and trying to induce a raise, in which case i get crippled. (that's poker)

for this hand, i would fold w/3 overcards on the table. sure, he might have been on a flush draw. but since i'm not short on chips, why risk it?

anyway, you called. your call tells him that you also have a piece of the flop but nothing powerful since you're not raising to protect your hand. he will usually check the turn.

but since he didn't, i read his weak bet on the turn as a blocking bet for a cheap flush draw.

i read his min bet on the river as a value bet for his made flush. he figures that since you were playing so weakly that anything bigger might scare you off.

like i said, this is what i would have thought if it was a 50+5 sng w/no reads on the opponent. obviously, this doesnt apply to a tourny at the Orleans. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

btw- irie, you said his weak turn bet convinced you that he DIDN'T have a flush draw? Can you elaborate on how you came to this conclusion?