When playing a session things can distract your focus from playing a hand correctly and cause you to mis-interpret villain's range, this causes mistakes. These distractions could be multiple hands occurring simultaneously when multi-tabling, being distracted by something away from the screen (someone talking to you, etc), or tilt.
So I'll take a look at one of these types of hands, this was from a session today where I quit directly after making this mistake. It's pretty non-standard so I'll explain the reasons for the way I played it afterwards.
^ Big Bang ~ To The Mountains
$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.com
Stacks:
| UTG | ($902.20) | ||
| Hero (UTG+1) | ($1209.90) | ||
| CO | ($979.50) | ||
| BTN | ($1409.20) | ||
| SB | ($156.00) | ||
| BB | ($501.40) |
Pre-flop: ($6, 6 players) Hero is UTG+1
1 fold, Hero raises to $8, 1 fold, BTN raises to $30, 2 folds, Hero calls $22
My minraise is a misclick, I meant to make my standard potsize open. Villain is a spewy 42/27 player who from his stats appears to 3bet wide. His BTN 3bet is like 9% which is pretty high.
Flop:
($66, 2 players)Hero checks, BTN bets $45, Hero raises to $115, BTN calls $70
The flop check/raise is a move I'm kind of playing around with, the idea behind it is that my hand does very well against villain's range but will likely be difficult to play on turn/river due to overcards and villain barreling a high percentage of the time. The idea is to bet pot and try to take it down right then which I think is gonna be profitable outright. There are downsides, like inflating the pot with a marginal hand, etc. But anyways, I'm going off on a tangent, on with the hand...
Turn:
($296, 2 players)Hero checks, BTN checks
River:
($296, 2 players)Hero checks, BTN bets $155, Hero raises to $455...
Going over the session in HM afterwards I could see I made an incorrect bluff on the river here. Normally I'd stop analysing the hand there, but this is one of those spots where I KNOW I've made the wrong play... I don't really learn anything from reviewing it. But here what I'm interested in is WHY I did it.
As with a lot of these spots the reason why I made the incorrect play is down to neglecting one hugely important rule. In the words of Selbst & Sensei, before we make any play we should first ask what villain's range is. It's fundemental to every single move in poker, and most important to think about when pulling bluffs and non-standard plays. We first ask ourselves what villain's range is, then we determine the best play versus that range. So why didn't I do that during the hand? ...
When villain calls my checkraise on the turn his range is now pretty polarised. Thing is when he calls my checkraise I get a tiny bit tilted, not much but just enough to throw my mental thought process off and affect my handreading. For a few seconds my mind gets filled with thoughts like... 'fuck he called', 'maybe that was a shit play', 'damnit, that pisses me off, now i'm in a tough spot', when none of that is beneficial to my situation.
What I want my mind to be doing is thinking 'ok, he called... so what is his range now?'. I want to eliminate any negative and unuseful thoughts from my conciousness. I didn't do that here, and when I got to the turn I had a 'fuzzy image' of what his range was because I didn't think about it clearly. I hadn't correctly taken into consideration the huge impact that calling the checkraise made to his range because I was a little tilted. If I don't have a solid perception of his range, then I can't play the rest of the hand correctly.
So what IS his range after the call? It's flush draws (8h9h+ and suited broadways) and TT+ (sometimes 99). There are 9-10 FD combinations and around 30 overpair combinations. He rarely has anything else really due to his 3betting range pre and the check/raise call.
So turn check/check is correct as I'm behind his range.
River completes the flush, he bets half pot. At the time my first thought is if I raise here then my line will strongly match a turned boat or rivered FD. He'd often think I'd check/raise flop with sets/FDs, I could check turn with those hands too then make a strong play on the river for value. So he'd almost always be up against at least a flush. Pretty solid thinking I reckon, but what part did I leave out? Villain's range!! His range is 'fuzzy' to me now, and I decide to just make the play because I feel that it's a good spot.
Without having a good idea of villain's range I can't determine how much he'll fold and therefor how profitable a bluff would be. If I had been clearly analysing his range after the flop I would realise that it was all flush draws and big pairs, obviously flushes are never folding... and noone ever folds overpairs. I could probably get TT to fold, but that's about it. So a bluff here is horrific.
For the results oriented amongst us, villain timed down and wound up calling with QQ.
8 comments:
nice post and analysis. unfortunately I recognise the sypmtoms
This hand ends for me on the flop. Regardless of villains range some situations are just shitty even when you likely have the best hand.
You made a min-raise by error pre but had outstanding implied odds to set mine his 3b given the stacks. Granted he 3-bets light so won't always pay off but the stacks are defo deep enough to counter that and, frankly, he's also a drooler.
This creates the next problem. On the flop we have an overpair, have missed our set, probably have the best hand, but are out of position against a moron with deep stacks. This, IMHO, is a spot to just check-fold and let him have it. Almost no good can come of donkbetting or check-raising and check-calling this guy is going to be so fucking difficult for the reasons you mentioned.
Poker, as well you know, is a consideration of many more factors than just hero's hand and there are also more factors than just hero's hand vs villains range. Your 88 is ahead to some degree of villains 3-betting range on the flop but the key factors are: villains unpredictability, the fact hero is out of position, the fact it can still be very expensive if villain bets all 3 streets (or even 2) and the fact we can't discount almost any card from hitting him if we move into check-call. These factors more than outweigh the fact our hand is slightly better than villains range. Thus you have an equity edge but you do not have an edge in the hand IMHO. (the 'hand' comprising hole cards, villains range, stacks, SPR's, position, image, villain tendencies etc, etc)
So, check-fold to any reasonable bet is the order of the day IMHO. You took on a very profitable set mine, didn't hit, so move on. If you played 1-2 tables at a time and really had diamond non-statistical reads on villains then you can play these sorts of spots regularly but IMHO playing 6+ tables you are best to skip over what will only be marginally +EV even if you play almost perfectly post-flop and get on with the next hand.
Finally, on that point: As I said, you have to play almost perfectly post-flop to maintain +EV lines with 88 in this spot. However, even small errors of judgement will result in highly -EV plays. Sod that.
P.S. It's also considerably less stressful to check-fold the flop. You admit yourself his play knocked you a little bit and stuff like that does stay with you for a few minutes.
Kenny (hopefully it'll not show up as 'John' this time!)
Point of the post really wasn't about the flop play. But out of intrest what %age of the time do you think he will fold to my flop check/raise given that his range is pretty wide?
timely post on the mental side...i've been playing at the same time as watching a lot of sport on television the last couple weeks. i think it has caused me to make some sloppy mistakes that i probably could have avoided otherwise.
decent strategy discussion breaking out on the flop. i don't think a checkraise is great here against a spewy player on this flop, unless he's just spewy preflop, but straightforward postflop. at least at 100nl and 200nl, i think there are a number of guys who i would play 88 here mainly for set value, but also to be able to show down somewhat cheaply...i think you have a lot of showdown value if he will give up after one barrel.
"Point of the post really wasn't about the flop play. But out of intrest what %age of the time do you think he will fold to my flop check/raise given that his range is pretty wide?"
Yeah, I realized that but commented nevertheless on getting involved :)
TBH, it's really hard to say what this guys range will actually be and what percentage he'll fold to the re-raise. The problem with these sorts of opponents IMHO is they are unpredictable and can do very odd and unpredictable things. Like he might just bluff raise back because he wants to be a hero and boss another big stack about or he might make a really poor call and hit something obscure or, or, or.
Good luck to you running any kind of in depth math exercise whereby you can first and foremost identify a 3-bet range for this opponent and then accurately identify a reasonable range that sticks around after being check-raised.
Today a similar fish flat called my raise (I had KK) then donkbet half-pot and called a sizeable raise on a 10104 flop, he then check called a 2/3rd pot bet on a rag turn and then called a small (1/5th pot) all in on the river with A8o. He had no draw, no pair, no nothing at any point. There is ZERO logic to his play. These guys can just drool. This unpredictability, a fairly weak holding and being oop are why I just don't care to worry about range, etc and just check-fold flop. I make it look reluctant though.....like I actually respect him a little :D
Cheers for the comments.
I don't really get the comment "I'd play this for set value". We don't look at postflop and go, well I called pre for set value so now I'll fold. We look at the situation and make what we think is the best play.
Here I thought check/raising was an intersting play in a spot where I expect villain to fold a lot. We'd expect him to mostly flat pre with 22-TT so the only strong hands he can likely have are JJ+. The rest of his range contains a TON of overcards hands or even weak pair hands I beat like 56/67, and some flush draws.
Because he's 3betting light a bunch here and 3betCbetting this board 100% I feel like I'll be able to fold out a LOT of his range.
Yes he's a spewy loose player, but I don't expect him to call me with bare overcards, or bluffraise with air. I think he'll fold the flop at least half the time, and I've got a couple of outs to hit my set when he calls too. I'd rather have a hand here like a gutter and BDFD or something where I have more outs, but still I think this situation is profitable. More profitable the check/folding.
"If you played 1-2 tables at a time and really had diamond non-statistical reads on villains then you can play these sorts of spots regularly but IMHO playing 6+ tables you are best to skip over what will only be marginally +EV even if you play almost perfectly post-flop and get on with the next hand."
I play 4 tables to develop my game, squeeze more EV and improve. So I kind of like these spots. I think to be able to beat higher games like 5/10 well these are a must.
"P.S. It's also considerably less stressful to check-fold the flop. You admit yourself his play knocked you a little bit and stuff like that does stay with you for a few minutes."
That's an interesting factor. However I think I prefer trying to work on eliminating the stress from these moves so I'm free to make them more, rather than avoiding them. However I think for someone grinding a ton of tables and not looking to move up higher then they'd be better avoided.
Also being OOP isn't a factor as we're stabbing at the flop. If he calls we're planning on shutting down unless we spike an 8.
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