Hand of the day

Hand of the day - $5/$5 NLHE
Lesson: Understanding how specific cards dynamically alter equities
Difficulty: Moderate
Applicable: Fairly often
History: We know each other fairly well, he is a fairly tight player preflop, and plays pretty well, occasionally spews

Jonathan opens CO to 20 and I have Q7c on the button with $800 effective stacks. I 3bet to $70. The big blind cold calls, Jonathan calls. Flop is AQ7r. Checks to me and I bet 175. Jonathan check/calls. Turn J. He checks I bet 275 and he shoves for a minraise. I call. He has AJ and I lose.

Preflop: I'm facing a cutoff open, and I know he will significantly widen his raising range from this position. He will usually fold to a 3bet, and will occasionally call, making him tight passive in response to a 3bet. I think Q7c flops well enough to 3bet, he will usually be folding and occasionally I might hit a huge hand. Having the big blind cold call makes Jonathan significantly widen his calling range preflop.

Flop: pretty standard value bet not much to think about. If I get check raised, it would be pretty gross. I might have to fold.

Turn: this turn card smashes exactly one hand in his range. AJ. However I think that is a large portion of his c/c range as he might fold ATo and lower preflop, leaving him with only suited aces combos. Even if he has AT this turn hasn't dropped his equity by much because of the added straight draw. I think I should either bet/fold to a raise, or check behind and call a river bet if he checks, and valuebet if he checks. I feel like I played this turn poorly because this is one of the worst turn cards in the deck, yet I bet/called off. I was hoping he might have AK, but that hand would probably 4bet preflop meaning his entire jamming range has me beat on the turn. I also think my turn bet sizing was bad because I struggled really hard with folding two pair for a minraise all in.

Cliff notes, should've folded to turn minraise, should've checked back turn.

I'll see you across the felt.
Bryce

Another Hand

Hand of the day - $5/$10 NLHE at hustler

Lesson: Paying attention to stack sizes in order to maximize profitability. Also understanding that other good players are doing the same thing.
Difficulty: Easy
Applicable: Always
History: None with short stack, other than he plays almost everything. Zach and I obviously have a lot of history.

Rob opens for 35 in EP. I pick up KK on my first hand at the table after a long break. I look around and see these stacks remaining in the hand.
Rob has 2500.
I have 1500.
The short stack to my left has 200.
Zach has 2500

The big blind has 1000.

I decided to flat, thinking that the short stack will jam sometimes and reopen action. When he does, sometimes Rob or someone else will attempt to isolate and I will have the opportunity to win a huge pot.

The short stack flats, Zach raises to 100. Rob folds. Zach's 3bet here is quite small. He is making sure there is room to reopen action if the shortstack shoves, so he can isolate him. By raising to 100, he is applying a huge amount of pressure to my calling range. I don't know if the short stack is going to shove, but I know he isn't folding. If the shorty shoves even around 40% of the time, I can't call with any of my speculative hands preflop, because I would put in $100, then zach would reraise shutting me out. For the exact same reason, I should flat two kings here. I call. The short stack calls.

The flop is 4c 6c 5h.

Zach thinks then checks. I look at the shorty and see him grabbing the rest of his chips. I check to let him fire the rest of his stack and possible trap some money from Zach in the middle. The short stack bets $110 all in and Zach calls. I think it's unlikely for Zach to have hit the board with almost anything he 3bet with given he won't be light preflop. Therefore KK should still have crushing equity against his range. I raise to 500 to shut out equity from a hand like AQ, and to get value if he is getting tricky with an overpair.

Zach shoves. I lose to AA and not much else, so I call hoping he has QQ or less. I think he would play QQ identically to AA, so my call is pretty easy.

The BTN has T9c, Zach has 88 and I make a running full house and win.

I'll see you across the felt.
Bryce

Hand Lesson - Playing Middle Pair against the preflop raiser

I'm gonna start posting some strategy hands on my blog.

Hand of the day

Lesson: Valuebet Sizing

Difficulty: Low
Applicable: Often
History: None

$1/$2 No Limit Hold'em on Cake Poker.

Seville (6-Max) 11475 -- $1/$2 NL Hold'em -- 2011/09/19 - 03:08:03

Seat 3: tele***3 ($249.81 in chips) DEALER

Seat 8: itsa***8 ($147.24 in chips)

Seat 9: Leviathan101 ($200 in chips)

itsa***8: posts small blind $1

Leviathan101: posts big blind $2

Dealt to Leviathan101 [ Ts Ac ]

tele***3: raises to $6

itsa***8: folds

Leviathan101: calls $4

*** FLOP *** [Tc Jd 2d]

Leviathan101: checks

tele***3: checks

*** TURN *** [5s]

Leviathan101: bets $10

tele***3: calls $10

*** RIVER *** [Jh]

Leviathan101: bets $30

tele***3: calls $30

***SHOW DOWN***

Leviathan101: shows [Ts Ac]

tele***3: mucks

Leviathan101 wins $92 with Two Pairs Jacks and Tens

tele***3: mucks [Qh Ad]

Explanation:

Preflop: Facing a button open, you generally should not be folding ATo in the big blind. This hand is very far ahead of his raising range, and will be infrequently dominated allowing you to play for your fairly strongly when you flop top pair. You will sometimes have to consider playing Ace high unimproved on certain flops that are unlikely to have hit either player, such as a 773 flop. I prefer calling to 3betting preflop, because I think a reraise will likely fold out a lot of his dominated holdings like T8o, and A4o. Also we don't know yet how he responds to a 3bet making it more difficult to play correctly after the flop and in response to a 4bet.

Flop: We flop a medium strength holding. On this flop I think I am generally willing to get 1 to 2 bets throughout the course of the hand if nothing changes. If three bets go into this pot, I will likely be beaten. In order to prevent three bets from going into this pot, I will check and call a normal sized bet. If he does something unusual like bet extremely large, I may fold the flop. I will never check raise my hand, because I think that will overplaying my hand, and reducing my hands value to something close to a bluff. There is some merit to raising if you think he has a draw, but at the current point in the hand it is impossible to distinguish his exact holdings.

Turn: When he checks behind the flop, I think his most likely holding is a medium strength showdown hand (like 77) or a marginal draw he would prefer to take a free card to potentially make a strong hand (Like 79). I think he will usually bet his stronger draws and stronger pairs, meaning hands like Jx and KQ, K9 and flush draws. He may check a hand like AQ or AK which has both the qualities of a strong draw, and a medium showdown strength. My bet size is designed to extract a large amount of value on both the turn and good rivers. The current pot size is about $12.5 ($13 minus the rake), I bet $10, a largish bet designed to allow me to get additional value on the turn. I feel like when people check behind the flop with a showdown oriented hand, they are generally insensitive to the bet size. They will both call a large and small bet especially with no history, so bet larger. If I get raised, I'll deal with it when it comes, but I'm probably going to fold.

River: The Jack on the river is obviously a great card for me. It reduces the already low chance he has a Jack and he has less reason to believe I have a value hand. On this river card, I am going to bet large for value. I think if he has a showdown oriented hand, he will likely call a very large bet on the river. That said I don't want to overbet because I don't know how he will respond to an overbet. So I bet almost pot and get called by AQ. If I get raised on the river, I will have to evaluate, but I will likely fold, assuming he checked back a weak jack on the flop.

Bryce
I'll see you across the felt.

WSOP 2011

Been really unmotivated to blog, but I'm forcing myself to get this one out.

To sum it up, I did really well this year at the WSOP. I played 15 events and had 6 cashes, including a 3rd place finish. I cashed for over $200k. I didn't take home that much money, because I sold out a lot of action to my friends and family. I made them some money though, so that felt good.

The long story.

I showed up on June 1st, the night before the first open event, the $1500 Limit Omaha Hi/lo 8 or better event. I left in mid July.

I busted the Omaha 8 event, but made day 2 and made a small cash in the $1000 No limit hold'em 3 days later. I felt good about making an early cash, because last year I went 2 for 22 and wasn't looking to repeat that experience.

These are the results and notable things in each event.

$1500 Limit Omaha 8 or better - busted near end of day 1.

$1000 No limit hold'em - cashed for $2444 midway through day 2.

$1500 No limit hold'em shootout - We had a 10 handed table, and I got a tough table. It included Tom "Durrrr" Dwan, who was actually the worst player. He didn't seem focused. After I busted him, I got heads up versus another good player. We played a big reraised pot where he crippled my chip stack when we both flopped good. I finished 2nd for our table for $0

$1500 HORSE - I got an amazing table draw. Most of my table seemed almost clueless, but I ran really bad and ended up busting quickly. Probably the most frustrating event I played.

$1000 NLHE - busted near end of day 1, was card dead, happens.

$2500 8 game mix - I made day 2 of this event, but I made a few mistakes on day 1 and didn't have a lot of chips. Still this was a really fun event, I think I'll do better in it next year.

$2500 10 game mix - This was even more fun than the 8 game mix. I was doing pretty well, but I lost an enormous PLO pot where I turned a broadway wrap and the nut flush draw and he turned top two pair and we got it all in.

$3000 Pot Limit Omaha - This is my first cash since the early 1k No limit event. It's been 12 days and I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to have a repeat of the previous year. Fortunately I squeak into the money as a short stack and then end up busting not long after. I mincashed for $6077, after getting coolered by Joe Hachem. This is the first time we play this year.

$2500 HA (Half hold'em, Half Pot limit omaha) - I immediately make a solid cash in my next event and feel real good about it. I felt like I had a big edge over the field in this event. A lot of players seemed good at one game or the other but not both. I think PLO is my weaker game, but I still felt good about it. I cashed for $7555.

$2500 Razz - This event was really swingy for me. I met up with some razz specialist before and had fun playing chinese poker with them. They were booking big last longer bets, I turned them down. I ended up out lasting almost all of them! I still busted after going on a frustrating stretch of bricking off near the end of day 1. Razz is a pretty tilting game sometimes.

$2500 2-7 Triple draw lowball - This is my first of 3 top 18 finishes. I felt very good about my play throughout both days, and was pretty patient about waiting for the right spots for the most part. This is a really fun form of poker and I got really good at it over the past year. It paid off big for me in this event, even with a tough field. I ended up busting 17th, but I had a really big draw that bricked off and had I won that pot, I would've probably made the final table. $8075

$1500 PLO8 - This was the event I was looking forward too almost more than any other. I have gotten very very good at PLO8 and I was looking to prove it. We started with 4500 chips, and by the dinner break 6 hours in, I had around 40,000. That's absurd! And will probably never happen again to me. Anyways, I just dominated all my tables for two straight days, and then eventually lost 3 all in pots in a row with only 2 tables left to bust in 18th place. I got my first five digit score for $10,229.

$1000 NLHE - busted another 1k nlhe, nothing really notable to mention, other than I ran kinda bad.

$5000 PLO8 - I got a table draw with quite a few name pros, including Daniel Negreanu. That didn't mean anything to me, cause I was better at this game than all of them combined. This is simply a form of poker that most people rarely play, and experience is huge in this game. I brutalized my table for 10 straight hours on day 1 and finished with a large chip stack. I was well above average for the entire day. In day 2, my chip stack shot up quickly to be chip leader half way through and just held onto it with careful play. I ended the day 3rd in chips. In day 3, I made my first final table at the WSOP in 2 years and enter the final table 7th in chips. I got lucky with aces against aces and won to become chip leader. Just as soon as that happens, Phil Laak coolers me in a huge pot with a lucky flop, turn, and river. I still end up out lasting 6 out players to finish 3rd for $180,180. Huge cash, but I didn't have very much of my own action unfortunately.

$10,000 No limit Hold'em Main Event -

I ran very good day 1 and accumulated over 100k. I took a small hit at the end of the day to finish with around 91k.

Day 2 I was still well over 2x avg stack, and I took advantage of this by playing aggressively on a scared table. I accumulated more chips, but then made a few bad bluffs and go back down to around 85k. I then picked up a pair of kings and because of my aggressive table image, I got my entire stack in against AK. He hit an ace on the flop, and my main event was over.

I might add more stuff later but that sums it up.

I'll see you across the felt.
Bryce