Divorcing Results

[snakehead]

when you first told me about this hand, I thought she played it bad. but after seeing it in print, I'm thinking it is close. from her point of view, the raiser and the other players were more than capable of playing before the flop without an ace in their hands, so calling prefop with A8 can't be bad.

continuing with this line of thought, it is unlikely for there to be substantial action after the flop from anyone holding an ace-hi type of hand, so she is most likely drawing live to an ace or an 8. she is only in real trouble if she is drawing against AA or a flopped set. but she is most likely drawing against an overpair, so calling on the flop isn't bad, either.

the rest of the hand plays itself, and she used very good judgement in going for the check raise on the river. most of us would bet out here, but it is obvious that anyone with an overpair or a full house would bet.

[andyfox]

A jewl of a post, beautiful, poetic, lyrical, breathtaking. Bravo!

On first reading, I felt that this was a play made by someone stuck $700. Snakehead made good points about the play being not quite so bad. Of course, if a non-8 comes on the river we wouldn't be reading about this.

Coilean posted a while back about the importance of staying with a backdoor draw in a big pot. This strikes me as somewhat similar. It wasn't at all clear that she needed runner/runner to win, as Snake pointed out.

Brilliant check on the river.

Regards,
Andy

[skp]

I agree with Snakehead and Andy Fox, I that the flop decision to play is not totally out of the question particularly given the player descriptions.

There are 16 bets in the pot when Hero is asked to call two more. That's 8:1 assuming her 5 outs are good. Of course, she could be up against a set and requiring a miracle but I assume that it is not unusual for the PFR to smoke it on the flop with no pair when the bet comes from his right. If maniac knows that, his hand may be no better than say T9. That still leaves Hero needing to improve and hoping that PFR doesn't hit it again on the flop (which will make her flop coldcall worse...but see last paragraph below for more on this point).

Overall, it's probably a poor call but I wouldn't put it in the "how can you possibly call that?" category.

Sometimes, when you gamble as she did preflop, you can't get away from it postflop.

One side note: In some ways, it is almost better for Hero if PFR caps it on the flop rather than just calling the maniac's 3 bet. If PFR caps it, it will likely get checked to him on the turn and Hero will be closing the action on the turn if he bets and no one raises. Further, if he bets and no one raises, Hero can be fairly sure that she does have 5 outs and she clearly has the odds to call the turn bet. If PFR's bet on the turn is raised, she has an easy muck. I am assuming here of course that the turn is a blank and not an 8 as in the actual hand.

On the other hand, if PFR does not cap the flop, a lot of turn cards could leave Hero in a pickle particularly if maniac bets no matter what the turn card is (which he is prone to do after his flop strong-arming). Now, even though Hero may still have the odds to try for her 5 outer at that precise moment, her turn call would be very iffy as it could get raised behind her.

[Rick Nebiolo]

Andy,

Thanks for the complement regarding the writing. I've never written dialog before (other than a sentence or two) and decided to give it a whirl. I'd like to send it to John Cole for a critique. But he is probably sick of grading essays ;-).

You wrote: "In first reading, I felt that this was a play made by someone stuck $700. Snakehead made good points about the play being not quite so bad.'

Part of my concern was that I believe Hero really did call the extra two bets not thinking it was close. When ever I discuss poker with her, I try to identify the decisions that may be close. If you don't know when it is close, then you won't have as good an idea when it isn't close.

"Of course, if a non-8 comes on the river we wouldn't be reading about this."

That's true. As you can imagine and as you witnessed, most of her stories are "good beat" stories. Hero just loves the game and the competition.

"Coilean posted a while back about the importance of staying with a backdoor draw in a big pot. This strikes me as somewhat similar. It wasn't at all clear that she needed runner/runner to win, as Snake pointed out."

I hope to get a chance to reply to Snake and skp after a nap or tomorrow morning. But it looks like the drinks will be on me tonight [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img].

"Brilliant check on the river."

Yeah, I think Hero is getting the hang of the crushing checkraise for value.

Regards,

Rick

[Rick Nebiolo]

skp,

You wrote: ”I agree with Snakehead and Andy Fox, I that the flop decision to play is not totally out of the question particularly given the player descriptions.”

Now I’ve had my nap so I’m a bit dizzy but more feisty than when I answered Andy just before. I’m not sure I’m scoring your post as plus 1 for Hero.

“There are 16 bets in the pot when Hero is asked to call two more. That's 8:1 assuming her 5 outs are good.

8:1 is assuming Hero is only going to have to call two more bets on the flop. Hero is calling two bets cold immediately and likely to have to call one final raise on the installment plan after it is capped which should occur about 80% of the time. So her weighted odds to see the turn are more like 80% at 6:1 (18 to 3) and 20% at 7.5:1 (15 to 2) so let’s round off at about 6.5 to 1 (where are Coilean or BruceZ when you need them?). The odds against hitting six outs are 8.4 to 1. But six outs are not that clean most of the time. If you convert six outs to five outs things get worse for Hero.

”Of course, she could be up against a set and requiring a miracle but I assume that it is not unusual for the PFR to smoke it on the flop with no pair when the bet comes from his right. If maniac knows that, his hand may be no better than say T9. That still leaves Hero needing to improve and hoping that PFR doesn't hit it again on the flop (which will make her flop coldcall worse...but see last paragraph below for more on this point).

The Steamer PFR is going to raise Hero’s flop bet with the ace paints, some other paints, some overpairs, and the draws. The semi Maniac is usually going to three-bet with an overpair and maybe a decent nine-kicker type hand. The sets come into play maybe one fifth of the time (and maybe the Cold Caller could actually have a big hand too!).

Maybe later (can’t do it now, it’s already too hard to type while playing online) I’ll try to run her hand through a series of simulations against a range of opponent’s likely hands.

”Overall, it's probably a poor call but I wouldn't put it in the "how can you possibly call that?" category.”

Maybe I engaged in hyperbole. Score one for Hero. But it was probably a poor call (assuming the Snake is wrong). So score one for me for now. Call it a wash.

”Sometimes, when you gamble as she did preflop, you can't get away from it postflop.”

Change this to “Usually, when Hero gambles preflop, she can’t get away from it postflop” and you would be spot on ;-).

”One side note: In some ways, it is almost better for Hero if PFR caps it on the flop rather than just calling the maniac's 3 bet. If PFR caps it, it will likely get checked to him on the turn and Hero will be closing the action on the turn if he bets and no one raises.

Further, if he bets and no one raises, Hero can be fairly sure that she does have 5 outs and she clearly has the odds to call the turn bet. If PFR's bet on the turn is raised, she has an easy muck. I am assuming here of course that the turn is a blank and not an 8 as in the actual hand.”

The Steamer PFR did in fact cap it and I generally agree with your assessment regarding her turn action when she caches a blank. However, I’m not sure she has a call with that much of an overlay. I may try to work on this later.

”On the other hand, if PFR does not cap the flop, a lot of turn cards could leave Hero in a pickle particularly if maniac bets no matter what the turn card is (which he is prone to do after his flop strong-arming). Now, even though Hero may still have the odds to try for her 5 outer at that precise moment, her turn call would be very iffy as it could get raised behind her.

Agree. You just can’t call on any blank if you get bet through on the turn.

I’m hoping I can pick this up later. But getting interrupted by the online no limit tournament is driving me crazy as I type (not to mention Hero is a “back seat spell corrector as each word goes down” when I usually blast stuff out and fix later).

Ciao,

Rick

[adios]

Theoretical loss on this hand, no doubt about.