Live hand for discussion (WSOP, Day 1a)

Sky_Dave

Here's a hand I watched Martins Adeniya analyse from Day 1a of the WSOP. If you have seen the video, please don't spoil the thread by posting what he and Villain has

The Hand

We are early at the WSOP Main Event, with blinds at 150/300/a25 and a stack of around 32k, which will be the effective stack size for this hand. The table has been playing pretty soft and we're chipping up via small pots.

Older gentleman (stack: 80k) opens EP to 650. Gets called in MP, Button and then it's on us in the SB. We have A-Js and call. BB calls and we go 5-way to a flop.

First question: how often do we 3bet A-J suited here?

Flop: A-J-7 rainbow.

We check, the BB checks and the EP opener bets 700 into 3500. MP calls, BTN calls, we make it 3700.

Second question: Is the bet size good?

BB folds, EP gives us a frustated look (as he has done earlier in the day after we won a couple of hands from him without showdown) and then makes it 8k.

MP folds, BTN folds, and we call.  The pot now stands at around 18k.

We check an offsuit 6 on the turn. 

Villain moves all in. We have around 23k left.

Third question: Do we call? What range of hands do we think Villain has if we're a) calling or b) folding?

Lambert180

I don't like 3betting AJs against an EP open from an 80yr old guy.

Raise size is good imo.

Blah, EP raise from old guy, then bet 1/5 pot and then 3bet a pot sized raise! If we call the flop raise I don't see how we can fold the turn, but I might anyway in this particular situation because it's the WSOP ME and I'm a low stakes fish. If it was like a £5 deepstack online I'd snap the turn, but if I played the ME now I'd obv be playing scared money

I haven't seen the hand online btw, but I'd think his most likely holding is AA, JJ or 77.

Bet you we're all supposed to think he's got a monster cos he's an 80 yr old guy raising in EP but he's prob got 72o

bbMike

First question: how often do we 3bet A-J suited here? 

Difficult for me because the for the 3-bet to be effective and reduce the field seeing the flop, it's going to have to be for about 10% of our stack when we know if we do get a call the pot is inflated and we're OOP likely trying to push around a larger stack. Don't mind a passive line therefore, although it's clear we lose value and it's harder to know where we are on any board that doesn't have a couple of hearts on.

Second question: Is the bet size good? 

Pretty much spot on for me. Presume the call to the 8k bet is to trap as the pot is now nearly as big as our stack, and the board is super dry, if so I'm not check folding to many turn cards!

Third question: Do we call? What range of hands do we think Villain has if we're a) calling or b) folding? 

Well, unless I'm misunderstanding the range is the same, it's just how we feel about our hand vs the range against our tournament life in the main event. We do have a good chance to chip up in the main event.. Range will depend on view of opponent. Think when we check we're hoping to call or move all-in over a small value bet, but could be that this is perceived as weak and the other guy has chips to splash around with. We have blockers to AA and JJ, 77 is possible as is QQ KK A7 A6. Whether the range is wider than that will be player dependent. I personally think we're ahead of the range and (sat at home drinking tea not having put $10k into a prize pool) would sigh and call, and probably be getting my coat. Off to find the hand on YouTube now!

jimb0d1

I mostly make a 3bet with my AJs and fold to a 4bet, because i dont want to play multiway oop.

As played I like the flop bet.

Never folding turn. AK-AJ? Frustrated KK? Interesting hand!

offshoot

Why would we ever fold? Hand plays out perfect for us and old guy seemingly does exactly what we want him to do when we raise the flop and turn is a sweet sweet blank and now we are gonna fold assuming he must have a set? Tikay must have loved playing in the ME.

Sky_Dave

In Response to Re: Live hand for discussion (WSOP, Day 1a):

Why would we ever fold? Hand plays out perfect for us and old guy seemingly does exactly what we want him to do when we raise the flop and turn is a sweet sweet blank and now we are gonna fold assuming he must have a set? Tikay must have loved playing in the ME.
Posted by offshoot

Haha! I can assure you it wasn't Tikay in this hand, just in case you wondered - 80k is around 270BBs and that's not Tikay's style

Some interesting comments on here so far. I don't think I would be folding the turn here.

F_Ivanovic

For those saying call, what range do we put villain on? Yes, we have a strong hand but it's all relative. There wasn't a whole lot put in the middle pre-flop and his actions suggest he is very strong. There's virtually no bluffing hands villain could have here because of the lack of any draws, so we have to assume his 3bet-flop range is all sets and all 2 pairs. (AJ and A7 - prob not many combos of A7 tho, only some A7s as doubt he is raisng A7o from EP)

If we give him that range then we're only 34.3%. Obviously once we call the flop bet we have to call the turn bet but our decision should be made on the flop. I mean if I had a read that said villain could potentially overvalue hands then I don't think we can fold.

BorinLoner

So our reads are that the guy is old and looks frustrated? Thorough. lol

Are we supposed to assume that the guy is tight? How has he got his stack up to 80k? What hands has he shown down and how did he play them? We must have noticed something about him, other than his advanced years and surly demeanour.

Anyway, we can 3-bet if we think we're getting better hands to fold or worse hands to call. Being oop, we want to know that anyone calling us would play face-up post-flop. We don't want to 3-bet if we can't take down pots with easy c-bets on the flop because we don't want to rely on hitting our hand. We also don't want to 3-bet if we're assuming that the old fellow is particularly tight in EP.

We're not 3-betting just to "find out where we are" and we need to know what we want to happen when we're called. We don't 3-bet here just hoping that the other players fold because then we're turning a decent hand into nothing but a bluff.


If we're not check-calling on the turn to allow him to bet weaker hands then we shouldn't have called the 3-bet on the flop. If we think our opponent is really tight, we probably shouldn't have raised the flop at all, as we risk him folding lots of hands we beat and we risk putting ourselves in a situation like this that we don't understand. If we don't know what we want to happen when we raise the flop, then we shouldn't raise the flop. Keep his range as wide as possible by calling his bet. I think, however, that we should have some idea of villain's ranges for calling or 3-betting our flop raise by now, so we should know what we want when it comes to us... but we haven't been given any of that information.

Assuming we do know what we want to happen when we raise and we do want to get it in against this guy, then what's the problem? Flat his 3-bet then check-call the turn. No brainer.

The question here isn't about whether we call the turn bet, it's about whether we raise-call the flop. In a vacuum, which this essentially is, flat the flop 3-bet and check-call the turn is standard. How tight do we have to think our opponent is to fold to the flop 3-bet and if he's that tight, why are we raising the flop?

DeucesLive

I think most of this depends on your mentality. The WSOP is about the only tournament where almost anyone is going to be playing with scared money- I mean, 10k is massive for anyone that's not super rich or at least semi-pro. It's also a once-per-year tournament. It's a lot easier said than done to get all your chips involved with anything that isn't the nuts at any stage, really.

So preflop, I guess a call with AJ isn't bad, if you get reraised you have to drop it, and any calls leave you getting highly committed to a hand that leaks chips easily.

On the flop, there's not a whole lot you could do differently. You have to raise with top 2, you can't fold to a single 3bet, but if you 4bet you're pretty much only getting money involved if you're behind. As it is, the call opens up the possibility of him bluffing.

On the turn, when he jams it, the board is SUPER dry. There's no real straight draws out there apart from a weirdly played 8-9, and no flush draws, so we can discount draws from his range. In our favour here is that he could be mildly tilted, thinking he's been had in prior hands. That raises possibilities of him overplaying AK/AQ/KK. 77/JJ/AA are also in his range, although of course you have big blockers to JJ/AA. I highly highly doubt he has 66. My best guess here is AK.

In all, I feel extremely confident we're ahead, and given a smaller buyin, I call this every day. In his spot, I would want to make the call. Could I though? I'm not sure I could, to be honest.... The risk of busting this tourney would probably be too much for me.

BorinLoner

In Response to Re: Live hand for discussion (WSOP, Day 1a):

For those saying call, what range do we put villain on? Yes, we have a strong hand but it's all relative. There wasn't a whole lot put in the middle pre-flop and his actions suggest he is very strong. There's virtually no bluffing hands villain could have here because of the lack of any draws, so we have to assume his 3bet-flop range is all sets and all 2 pairs. (AJ and A7 - prob not many combos of A7 tho, only some A7s as doubt he is raisng A7o from EP) If we give him that range then we're only 34.3%. Obviously once we call the flop bet we have to call the turn bet but our decision should be made on the flop. I mean if I had a read that said villain could potentially overvalue hands then I don't think we can fold.
Posted by F_Ivanovic

Why do we assume it's two pair or better, though? We didn't 3-bet pre-flop, so he's not going to put AA, JJ or AK in our range, so if he's holding AK or AQ and we've been pushing him around earlier, he might be thinking he's "protecting his hand" against us or "pushing back"... or one of those other things that people like to say to themselves.  

It's tough to say but we don't have reads here to suggest he's necessarily as strong as two-pair or better.

I think it's agreed that we can't call the flop 3-bet just to fold a blank turn. The questions are really a) what's his range for flatting our flop raise? b) What's his range for 3-betting our flop raise? c) What's his range for folding to our flop raise?

That's it. Answer those and the hand is easy. If he's not 3-betting the flop with AK against us, then calling the 3-bet is obviously bad. If he's not calling our flop raise with AK and a whole bunch of weaker hands, then raising the flop is bad.

I definitely wouldn't say that we MUST raise the flop, DeucesLive, as that is player dependent. We're not benefitting from the raise if it only means that our opponent continues with better hands and folds worse ones. We just don't know if that's the case.

DeucesLive

Yeah sorry, I normally double check what I type but I didn't this time. Absolutely you don't have to reraise, in fact trapping is very often a nice thing to do if you think they're continuing. But I think raising is generally a good play here for sure, top two is nice and it's not draw heavy, so you want to get some money involved IMO. 

BorinLoner

In Response to Re: Live hand for discussion (WSOP, Day 1a):

Yeah sorry, I normally double check what I type but I didn't this time. Absolutely you don't have to reraise, in fact trapping is very often a nice thing to do if you think they're continuing. But I think raising is generally a good play here for sure, top two is nice and it's not draw heavy, so you want to get some money involved IMO. 
Posted by DeucesLive

I agree that raising is probably best, readless. Without that word or "generally speaking" or "in a vacuum", it seemed you thought it was absolutely the only choice to raise. Sorry to pick up on it because I know how easy it is to make a little mistake that changes your meaning, when you're typing a lot.

However, the fact that the board is dry is an argument against raising because you know that chances are the opponent only continues with a relatively narrow range of reasonable made hands. If he could have draws that's more reason to get money involved, both because his range is wider and because we need to "charge his draws".

F_Ivanovic

In regards to raising the flop bet; the flop bet itself was so small that it may as well have been a min/no bet so our raise is in actual fact a standard bet. I'm pretty sure with top 2 on a dry flop you wouldn't want it all checked around. Anyone could be sitting there with a hand like T9/89/KQ and the turn could come and give them a straight.

Just because someone is b/f any hand that is worse doesn't inherintly make raising bad. We're raising for value/protection against all the other players in the hand as well, and if villain is raise/folding TPTK then we're going to be able to win a ton of money against him in other pots by bluffing him off the best hand.

It is strange though that we don't have any additional info on villain considering he has a stack of 80k. Stack sizes like that at this stage usually suggest that someone is willing to play hands though and get it in "lightly" so AK could easily be in his range. So based on that I think I'm calling but against a standard villain I still remain convinced that it has to be a fold (as proved by my calcs on how we fair against a reasonably assigned range)

rancid

lol at the  "I am so frustrated , so I'll raise"


cmon it's a fold unless you think old guy doesn't act

BorinLoner

There is going to be a problem if another player hits a straight on the turn because it's going to be fairly disguised. However, if we're flatting the flop bet because we're concerned that our hand might not be good enough to build the pot on the flop, why would we allow the pot to get out of hand on the turn or river? I don't think we should be too worried about that.

Admittedly I thought we were only 3-handed when the flop bet comes back to us but it's actually 4-handed plus the BB yet to act. That does make a raise preferable against those other players, but we still need to be thinking about the old chap's calling and 3-betting ranges, particularly as he's the EP raiser and he's c-bet multi-way. His range is looking tighter in light of that.

BorinLoner

In Response to Re: Live hand for discussion (WSOP, Day 1a):

lol at the  "I am so frustrated , so I'll raise" cmon it's a fold unless you think old guy doesn't act
Posted by rancid

True. lol

Sky_Dave

The lack of information on Villain is Martins' fault as he doesn't go into any more depth in his interview. To be honest, a lot of the time you'd get a hand recalled like this with something as cursory as "a nit" or "fishy". I often wonder to myself "Well, why is he a nit/fish? Give me details." Sadly we don't have them here, so it's something of a vacuum but one with a tiny bit of information.

Do agree there's something to be learned from his stack size though. If he'd got 80k by doubling up with AA and KK, I think most would mention it. I also think you'd recall someone getting lucky to earn them, so I think we assume the gent is somewhat active and not always super tight. That's what I'd take from it anyway.

F_Ivanovic

Unless I'm mistaken, it's still 5 handed on the flop. We're 4th to act with one left to act behind us.

BorinLoner

In Response to Re: Live hand for discussion (WSOP, Day 1a):

Unless I'm mistaken, it's still 5 handed on the flop. We're 4th to act with one left to act behind us.
Posted by F_Ivanovic

I've amended my last post for clarification. Ta.

rancid

So much text for a dumb hand -  what do we beat - AK/A7

villian opens ep, tiny bet/raises us - shoves turn

hero raises flop to bloat pot because hero must think villian has AK/AQ/Ax/KQ/K10/KJ
Can't raise flop to then fold

Seriously what is villian now raising us with and shoving turn -

AK/A7KQ - old man must be really frustrated !!!

gg nailed on AA or pro old man with KQ

Batkin88

Looks like a set or a well bluffed set.

I would shove the flop.