Play a Hand With the Masters #2 Flop II

[locutus2002]

If villain has a9, what hands does he expect to be ahead of that would open EP?

If I had a9, I wouldn't miniraise as I am unlikely to get any useful info, and I'd just be building a pot OOP with a hand that could lose my stack.

There are 16 hands that are weak aces and 48 hands that are 1 pr plus str8 draw. Villain must be concerned that his outs might not be clean, but hero's range is pretty wide too.

I agree that villain probably folds to a push, but he should call another T900 with a pair and a str8 draw getting 3.3:1 in the pot. The pair and a str8 draw is 3 times more likely than a weak ace.

AA-KK and AK is unlikely because of the Hero's holding and the board. QQ would probably have reraised pre-flop. I think the Hero can now rule out JJ since, given the scariness of the board, villain would have more than likely value bet or check-raised all-in rather than give a card that could beat him. And any hand with a Q or T in it (besides QT itself) would have have just called the raise on the flop to get a cheaper look at the turn (except AQ which would have been bet out or check-raised stronger).

I don't see the villain making this kind of smallish reraise with anything other than the nuts. Since Hero bet 2.75xBB from 2nd position preflop, villain had to put him on AA-JJ's or AK-AQs (Stacks at the table were about the same so villain wouldn't think that hero was bullying). Therefore, he would know that the flop improved him and making such a small check-raise bluff would just be foolish.

With the small check-raise, the villain is offering Hero 5-1 odds which he knows will at least get called. My guess is he wants Hero to go all-in so he can show him his straight.

Hero should call and hope to get an A or K on turn. If not, check if he checks and fold any bet.

[SossMan]

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Hero should call and hope to get an A or K on turn. If not, check if he checks and fold any bet.

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YSSCKY

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Hero should call and hope to get an A or K on turn. If not, check if he checks and fold any bet.

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YSSCKY

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Rofl.

What is YSSCKY?

What do you think about flat calling here with the possibility of taking the hand away from them if a scare card comes on the turn -- for example, if BB has JJ and a Q or T comes, or if the BB has QT and the board pairs (whether or not it helps us).

The board is scary for us, but the BB knows this since QT is not among our likely EP raising hands. The minraise could just be a weak bluff trying to represent a made hand without putting too many chips at risk.

If we push we're only getting called by hands that beat us (we might as well have 72o except for having 4 outs to the nuts). If we just call we both give the BB a chance to bet again with a worse hand and give ourselves the chance to take the pot away from a better hand if a scare card comes off.

[SossMan]

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What is YSSCKY?

What do you think about flat calling here with the possibility of taking the hand away from them if a scare card comes on the turn -- for example, if BB has JJ and a Q or T comes, or if the BB has QT and the board pairs (whether or not it helps us).

The board is scary for us, but the BB knows this since QT is not among our likely EP raising hands. The minraise could just be a weak bluff trying to represent a made hand without putting too many chips at risk.

If we push we're only getting called by hands that beat us (we might as well have 72o except for having 4 outs to the nuts). If we just call we both give the BB a chance to bet again with a worse hand and give ourselves the chance to take the pot away from a better hand if a scare card comes off.

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I'm playing this hand with the assumption that were goin to the felt no matter what on the turn (unless we hit A/K and we want to make a smaller bet) so to postulate about him folding a hand on the turn that's beating us now doesn't really make sense.

oh, and if you don't know YSSCKY, then you need to go play around in OOT some more.

(stands for 'you should seriously consider killing yourself')

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I'm playing this hand with the assumption that were goin to the felt no matter what on the turn (unless we hit A/K and we want to make a smaller bet) so to postulate about him folding a hand on the turn that's beating us now doesn't really make sense.

oh, and if you don't know YSSCKY, then you need to go play around in OOT some more.

(stands for 'you should seriously consider killing yourself')

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Hah! Yeah, I came here for the poker talk, not the politics or OOT.

So your take is that we flopped a big enough hand that we either want to take all of our opponents chips or bust out of the tournament if our opponent happened to be lucky enough to trap us with AA, KK, JJ, or QT.

Fair enough.

[grandgnu]

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I am open to the option that a push may be best (I currently havent seen a good enough explanation).

This is basically you telling us a few unique situations where a push is correct.

You basically ignore any sort of likelihood of each of your stories happening, as well as any sort of magnitude of the results.

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Ok, at this point in the hand, we have 2,095 chips remaining. The pot now contains 1,500 chips. While I wasn't against flat-calling and hoping for our opponent to push the turn, us pushing can be good for the following reasons:

1. The 1500 in the pot is a significant amount compared to our remaining stack. Winning it now wouldn't be bad, compared with the small possibility (but still possible) that our opponent has a drawing hand that could still bust us out of the tournament should he hit.

2. If our opponent is on A/J or K/J, he may be willing to get all his money in now. A scare card on the turn may kill that action from him.

3. A push from us might make him think that we want him to fold, and thus he'll "disappoint" us by calling the push (with a hand like A/Q for instance)

4. Pushing gives us two ways to win. We can either take down a significant pot now, or our opponent can call our push with a hand we beat and we get even more money.

5. If our opponent has a hand like A/Q or A/10 suited, and we just flat call, the turn card may give him the right odds to call with a newly developed flush draw plus straight draw, plus top pair. I know it sounds like I'm doing the whole "monsters under the bed and in the closet" thing, but there's enough chips in the pot that I don't mind taking it down now. Although I'm certainly not against going all the way for the rest of my chips in this spot either.

Sometimes when you try and trap, you become trapped yourself. An example would be in my home game's Championship Event. We were 4-handed and I was on the button with Q/4 sooted! I raised, trying to steal the blinds. A player in the SB with pocket Aces opted to just call, hoping to trap. The flop was 4/4/10 and he didn't think I had a 4 and I got all his chips.

6. Let's say our opponent is on a hand like Q/J suited. Again, he's open-ended with a pair. Just smooth-calling might allow him to hit a flush draw, make his straight or hit trips and pull ahead.

I'm not against causing our opponent to make a mistake by calling with a hand we beat, but not charging him appropriately to outdraw us can also be a mistake on our part. If we just smooth-call, it isn't costing him anything more to outdraw our hand.

A minraise from an online player can mean anything. No reads at the table doesn't help with this, but I'm going to assume this is an internet donkey and that he's just trying a standard "click the raise button and he'll fold" line of thinking as if any raise will get me to laydown here.

Thinking that a PP would have raised preflop is assuming that villain plays like we do - and that just isn't the case most of the time. Ruling these hands out completely isn't something I'm doing yet, but I'm giving much lower probability to the paired hands and a much higher probability to A-x<K, KT+ which we are ahead of here. I don't want to give away that I have villain beat - I want the rest of his chips. If his raise was just for information, he most likely isn't calling an all-in bet on the flop. I'll let the turn card hit, hope for a blank and another lead out from villain. With a blank I'm pushing over the top.

With a scare card on the turn I have to step back and re-evaluate. Does villain truly have what I put him on? The good side is, if he doesn't have the straight or a draw at it the Q,J or T should scare him just as much as it does me and, possibly, induce him to check. Of course a check could also be an attempt at another check raise like he pulled on the flop. If that is the case and he does check it to me, I'll take the free card he's giving me and hope that my redraw hits on the river to bust him.

[fnurt]

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If villain has a9, what hands does he expect to be ahead of that would open EP?

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A8? KQ? JTs? Who the heck knows?

I need to come up with a catchy name for the fallacy of assuming your opponent plays like you, because this is about the 4th time I've had to point it out in this thread alone.

Yes, A9 is probably not ahead of any EP raising hand if EP plays "by the book," but in the real world, (1) people raise in EP with lots of things, and if you're a good player, odds are you do too, and (2) lots of players will call in the BB without even thinking what the range of an EP raiser might be.

Not every player knows to respect an EP raise, and even among those who do, respect means different things to different people. It's extremely easy to imagine a player calling with A9s in the BB because it looks pretty or whatever, and then when he flops top pair, saying to himself "gee, I wonder if it's good." That's not to say A9 is the only holding or even the most likely one, but you absolutely cannot conclude "he'd never think he was ahead of an EP raiser if he had A9," because you are making about 28423 unsupported assumptions about an unknown player.