Hand from the Orleans
 

Orleans Sat. night tourney. $100+ buy-in, and one $100 add-on. Buy in gets you 1200 chips, add on gets you 2000 chips.

First place paid just shy of $6K, 10 places paid. 120 entrants. 290,000 chips in play.

Down to two tables, I have 13,000 chips which is average. Blinds are 300/600 with 100 ante. The table is very tight. The only good player remaining is to my immediate left. He has 2100 chips. He will wait until it is correct to go all-in, but is good enough to know that he should open all-in with any two, but re-raise all-in only with hands that race reasonably well.

I'm in the cut-off, and the blinds have shown that they will fold if their cards don't look pretty no matter what the situation is.

With 1900 already in the pot, I will happily put in 1200 with a reasonable chance to win the blinds/antes and a willingness to race the "good player" as a dog for another 900 if he pushes. So, I have decided to open-raise for 1200 regardless of my cards if given the opportunity.

I am, I do, the good player folds, and the SB reluctantly calls with around 10,000 behind. The BB folds. 4000 in the pot. The SB is ABC-tight and very untricky. He's not a complete moron, so it's not like he only bets with a hand... but he is easy to read. He probably has an ace lower than AK or a small pair. KQ suited is the worst hand he is likely to hold.

I have 2h-5h and the flop comes 2d-8h-Jh.

He checks and I bet half the pot (2000). He checks his cards and calls. I am not convinced that he has anything better than ace-high. I hope he doesn't have KQh.

The turn is a black 7. He checks and I check behind.

The river is another black 7. He quickly bets 3000, which is about half his stack.

What's your move on the river? Any criticisms of my play up until the river?

Irieguy

PS- I will not be able to check back until tomorrow morning. Results later.

Re: Hand from the Orleans
 

Is a minraise really narrowing his range down to pairs and AK/KQ? I don't like the minraise preflop, just go ahead and make a normal raise.

I like the flop bet, but I think you have to follow through on the turn if you are convinced that he doesn't have a hand yet. based on your preflop read, he will be hardpressed to call you.

After checking behind on the turn, I don't think you have much room to do anything on the river now.

Re: Hand from the Orleans
 

shove turn

Re: Hand from the Orleans
 

Bet the turn. From your description of him, he knows you could make that bet on the flop with something or nothing. He likely therefore think your check behind on the turn means you missed and have nothing. His bet on the river could therefore either mean he caught a piece of the flop or he now thinks his 33-99 is good. Or do you think that he could be betting with AQ,AK,KQ thinking you missed and cannot call ariverbet?

I most likely fold on the river. It comes down to how likely it is for him to bet out with A high or something here if he thinks you missed, and how likely it is he has a J or a pocketpair. A raise on the river will only be called by hand s that has you beat. It will look like a bluff after the turncheck, but he doesn't sound like the kind of guy to call with AK just because he thinks you are bluffing.

Re: Hand from the Orleans
 

Why not just push the turn? It sounds to me like he folds here a very large % of the time. And you've got outs against any hand in case he calls.

Re: Hand from the Orleans
 

I don't understand the check on the turn?...But you're a much better player than I, so there has to be a reason. I don't call the river bet for the simple reason that he would check air....FWIW, I put him on 9-9 or T-T, possibly A-8s...he clearly does not have a J or higher

Re: Hand from the Orleans
 

Fold. You are beat. Since he is a non tricky player, what could he have. Personally, I would bet he has A7h.

Fold. And yes - push the turn next time.

Re: Hand from the Orleans
 

[ QUOTE ]
KQ suited is the worst hand he is likely to hold.

[/ QUOTE ]

you think he's probably folding KJs/KQo to a min raise with antes? then min raise it up! no point wasting a lot of chips when he does have something.

after that, i like your line. if flush draws constituted a lot of his calling hands on the flop, i could see a turn bet, but it sounds to me like he's pretty likely to have Jx, or possibly 8x/99/TT, and he's likely not folding them. the fact that he could have Ax and you can win by checking down makes checking the turn even better.

not folding the river would be really bad.

Results and comments
 

Thank you for the comments. Here are the results and an explanation of why I did what I did:

PREFLOP:

There were 3 reasons why I min-raised:

1. There was 1900 in the pot. A 1200 chip raise doesn't even need to work half the time to be +EV. Based on their previous play, I knew there was a >50% chance that the blinds would fold.

2. I wanted an all-in by the short-stack button to re-open the betting. If I made a standard raise, his push would not allow me to re-raise. I wanted to be able to re-raise all-in if he pushed and one/both of the blinds called since their range of calling hands to my 3-bet re-raise would basically be only AA/KK or QQ.

3. I would have to fold all but the best hands to a re-raise by one of the blinds, and a min-raise would accomplish everything I needed preflop while minimizing my loss if the blinds woke up with a big hand.

FLOP:

Not much to talk about. I rated to have the best hand and bet enough to make him want to fold. The fact that he had to check his cards before calling my bet with a red flop led me to believe that he had a heart, and there was a good chance it was the ace of hearts. He didn't have AJ, so AQ and AK were most likely. He could also have a pair smaller than JJ.

TURN:

Everybody likes a bet here. There was 8000 in the pot and I had 10,000 or so left. He had a little less. Betting and folding to re-raise would be horrible, so an all-in bet would probably be the best bet size. I thought about it. But here was my thought process: I wanted to get paid off if I made my flush. I wanted to give him a chance to bluff with ace-high on the river. I didn't want to blow my whole stack if I was wrong about my read. I decided that by checking behind I could satisfy all of these. It turns out that a push on the turn would have taken down the pot. But I wasn't sure enough at the time.

RIVER:

When he made his bet I replayed the hand again in my mind. Deliberating over the preflop call... looking at his cards before calling me on the flop, checking the turn, and that weak-sauce bet amount on the river. He had ace-high and I was pretty sure of it.

The problem I had was that I was going to have to show down 2-5. We were about ready to reach the point of this tournament where the correct play would be to push preflop. I rated to understand this portion of the tournament better than everybody else because I play primarily SNGs and am familiar with ICM and Eastbay's SNGPT. So, soon I would be pushing correctly while everybody else made betting errors and passed on pushing opportunities. The problem is that I needed folding equity to get maximum value out of the end of this tournament and showing 2-5 wasn't going to help.

I figured that there was a very good chance that my opponent held exactly A-Q with the ace of hearts. If I said that out loud and was lucky enough to be right... I may be able to dazzle the table enough to dissuade them from calling my pushes in a few minutes. Those of you that play primarily on line will think that this is a bunch of crap. But in live tournament play the meta-game dynamics at the table influence people's decisions more than you may think. Especially push/fold decisions on the bubble.

So, I said "I think you have the Ace of hearts and the Queen of diamonds. I call."

He showed exactly those two cards, I pulled in a nice pot, and the table was so spooked about calling his cards that they just may have forgotten that I raised preflop with 2-5.

I'll post another key hand that occured a few orbits later if I get a chance later today.

Thanks again for the comments.

Irieguy

Re: Results and comments
 

Great post Irie, as usual. Question though: why didn't you say that, and then push? If you did get his hand spot-on, he will probably fold face up, giving you dazzle value and you don't have to show your 5h2h. Thoughts?