TPTK scary board 50/100

[schwza]

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Turn - On the turn with my stack size I wasn't really sure that I wanted to create a big pot out of position on that board after villian calls the flop. While it's true that sometimes I will give up a free card that will beat me or allow villian to outplay me here I feel this is one of those situations where the chips you lose are a lot more valuable than those you win. To me the most likely scenario if I continued to play this hand fast was to win a small pot or lose a big one.

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i don't mind too much creating a biggish pot here. my plan is to fold to a turn raise, so it's not a lot of extra chips going in there (you're going to have to at least call one bet if you check). and then i want to check the river and call only a small bet for the same reason as before - there aren't any missed draws that want to bluff, and there aren't any worse hands that want to value bet. so while you are making the pot kind of big, you're avoiding the problem that it's going to put you in tough/expensive decisions down the road.

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River - While I will concede that I might lose a little value from KQ/KJ/AJ here, I gain value from the times villian has weaker holdings that were on a draw that he might bluff at me with (AT/KT/99/Ax).

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AT/KT got there on the river. i hadn't considered A9 before (oesd), and that is a reasonable hand that might bluff the river. i highly doubt a8 gets to the turn if it does get to the flop.

[Rizen]

Yeah, right or wrong I was just sharing what I was thinking during the hand. When I wrote that out I forgot the river hit a T so that does eliminate a lot of possible hands that might bluff who are suddenly betting for value.

If you bet this turn how much to you bet? At the time I really felt anything less than a 1000 chip bet would be too weak and would invite him to take the pot away from me on a semi-bluff a little more than I would like. If I were the villian and hero had just raised PF, c-bet flop, then made a weak turn bet I would give serious consideration to coming over the top with semi-bluff type holdings if I felt my FE was reasonable. At the time I felt I could control the pot a little better by checking, although with the benefit of hindsight and results I'm obviously second guessing that now.

-Rizen

[schwza]

ugh, now i'm reconsidering the bet. if you bet 1k, which i agree is the smallest i want to bet, villain only has 2.4k left after a call. if he pushes the turn, there's 1.5k+1k+1k in dead money and only a 2.4k bet, so we're getting better than 2:1, and we almost always have 4-6 outs if we're behind. if we need to win 30% of the time, and we suck out 15% when we're losing, i don't see how we could fold to a turn push. but i'm not too psyched about getting the chips in that way.

if we check the turn, what's the plan? say villain bets 1100. check/call T, check/fold blank river? we're still getting well over 2:1. check/call T, check/call river? hard to imagine a worse hand betting into us again on the river. check/fold turn? KQ/KJ/KT/AJ/AT all bet here sometimes.

how about c/r turn a-i? villain would be getting good enough odds that he can't really fold a lot of 1 pair + draw hands that he doesn't quite have odds to draw too. it would also reduce the problem of a hand like JT shutting down on the river if we hit (A, Q, K are all very scary to JT) but stacking us if we don't. similarly QT would not get to stack us if a Q hits but shut down down if a K/A hits. the downside is that the hands we really want to play against - AJ/AT - probably do fold to the c/r.

Initially I wrote I'd bet the pot and force him to basically go all-in. After looking at it more closely, I am stuck. I don't want him to see another card if he's on a draw, but he could also be holding 2 pair, or worse case he held A-10 and has a str8. I still lean towards betting the pot and forcing him to deal with that, but I'm going to watch the responses from players who actually know what they are doing, because I could really learn from this post.

[Rizen]

When I checked the turn one of the options I was considering was a CR all in depending on his bet size. On UB, if he would have hit the ever so convenient 'bet pot' button, I probably would have folded. That may be weak, but I don't really want to play this pot for all his chips with 0 FE, and I can't see him betting the pot then folding to a raise, and I don't see him betting that much then not shoving the rest in on the river (or calling if I put him all in on the river).

Had he made a 900-1100 bet, I would have been in a tough spot. Folding would certainly be weak, pushing over the top of him may not have any FE, and calling commits me to call a river bet when just about anything other than a 9 comes, but you're right in that I don't think he bets the turn AND river with much that I'm ahead of. KQ is about the only hand I can think of that might play that way.

If he had made a weakish bet (800 or less), I strongly consider coming over the top of him for all his chips because I think that would give me reasonable FE, but I'm not too ecstatic about playing this big of a pot here. To a certain extent I'm analyzing in hindsight though, because while I did consider the CR all in as an option, I wasn't putting near this much thought into it at the table given the time constraints.

-Rizen

Given the complexity of this hand I think you have to fall back on a plan that keeps it simple (after all the analysis over a couple of days there's still not an obvious conclusion): try to play a small pot but attack weakness. Check the turn and push all-in check raise if he weak bets the turn (representing AK), check the river with the plan to call any reasonable bet (he's likely to sell it to you here after the previous action since he has no reason to believe you'll pay off a big bet).

I think you played the hand well - I'd rather be kicking myself about some marginal value bet I could have gotten (maybe) on the river than doubling him up.

[schwza]

but do you want any FE? if you c/r a-i, you only want him to fold if he has a better hand (which won't happen) or if he has the odds to call and try to draw out on you.

if he bets 1k and you push, he needs to win the hand around 30%, or have about 13 outs, to have odds to call. the only way he has that is if he picked up a flush draw, which isn't too likely. KJ/T9, his best drawing hands, only have 9 outs, so you don't mind having no FE against that hand.

if he bets full pot of 1550, then there is 4650 in the pot and villain has to call 1810 more, so he needs to win the pot 22% to have odds, or about 9.5 outs. if he has KJ, you're indifferent in terms of cEV whether he calls or folds but would prefer not to gamble. if he has KQ (7 outs) or AJ (2 scoop, 2 chop), you don't mind having no FE.

this isn't like semi-bluffing all-in with a draw, where you always don't want to get called. it's also good sometimes if a hand that's drawing very thin feels PC'ed.

the more important consideration is what the bet size says about the strength of his hand. does a set often bet full pot where KJ only bets 1000? the other way around? i would guess (total guess, as i have not played much on ub) that AK tends to bet 1000, TT bets pot, AJ bets pot, and KJ bets 1000.

sometimes i wish i could take 24 hours on tough hands.

I concede - aggression makes little sense, check/call seems best (but I stand ready to concede that as well) and I concur that we should get a 24 hour bonus clock for these kinds of hands ;-)

[Rizen]

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but do you want any FE? if you c/r a-i, you only want him to fold if he has a better hand (which won't happen) or if he has the odds to call and try to draw out on you.

if he bets 1k and you push, he needs to win the hand around 30%, or have about 13 outs, to have odds to call. the only way he has that is if he picked up a flush draw, which isn't too likely. KJ/T9, his best drawing hands, only have 9 outs, so you don't mind having no FE against that hand.

if he bets full pot of 1550, then there is 4650 in the pot and villain has to call 1810 more, so he needs to win the pot 22% to have odds, or about 9.5 outs. if he has KJ, you're indifferent in terms of cEV whether he calls or folds but would prefer not to gamble. if he has KQ (7 outs) or AJ (2 scoop, 2 chop), you don't mind having no FE.

this isn't like semi-bluffing all-in with a draw, where you always don't want to get called. it's also good sometimes if a hand that's drawing very thin feels PC'ed.

the more important consideration is what the bet size says about the strength of his hand. does a set often bet full pot where KJ only bets 1000? the other way around? i would guess (total guess, as i have not played much on ub) that AK tends to bet 1000, TT bets pot, AJ bets pot, and KJ bets 1000.

sometimes i wish i could take 24 hours on tough hands.

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Interesting analyzation. I guess I'm lucky he checked behind. I dunno, the more we talk about it the more I think betting or CRing on the turn is kind of a wash. Either way you're hoping to get chips in the middle with the best hand, but your chips are all going in anyways if you're behind.

From all of the analysis so far it would seem that we just need to decide on the turn if we think we have the best hand or not, and if we do, do we want to go all the way with this hand?

After all the discussion, I think that if we decide we want to go all the way with this hand that betting out is better than CRing, because I think betting out makes it more likely that a hand behind you will commit themselves (since those behind you will often take a free card when you check). You also sometimes get him to call his draw on the turn then fold the river giving you a few more chips.

If you don't want to go all this way I think you need to check with the intent of calling any smallish bet (by smallish I mean 600 or less) for value (after all, you could be ahead, and you are probably drawing to 4-6 outs) or folding to any larger bet, and when he checks behind I think the hand is somewhat straightforward on the river depending on what card falls.

FWIW at this stage of the tournament with these stacks I still feel that in marginal situations such as this where you could easily lose a large chunk of your stack if you're behind you're better off preserving your chips than gambling. If the chip stacks were reversed I'm much more likely to get all in here, but given the particular situation, I like the way I played it after deeper analyzation.

-Rizen