Wanted to share a hand from a live game this weekend to discuss how badly I played it.
Game - £250 £50k gtd 2 day event in Sheffield.
I was only planning on having 1 bullet so this was a freezeout in the purest terms.
Blinds 300/600
My stack roughly 42k.
Average stack 32k
I felt I was 1 of the stronger players on the table, and was in my comfort zone.
Mid position shoves for 11,400 , he had demonstrated tilt and loose tendencies, so put him on a wide range. I am on the button with 10s, sb has roughly 16-17k and bb has approximately 50k. SB was pretty tight and BB was a nice mature lady called Wendy who seems to get good live results despite her being someone you would always welcome on your cash table. Despite the description of the villain, she is not your typical mature lady who only plays the top 5% of her range.
Should my move always be a isolation shove here?
As played, I just call and the BB calls.
Flop is 984, with 2 hearts. The BB jams here, with no side pot. What range are you putting her on here?
Given how I had seen her accumulate her chips, I felt she could quite easily have a hand like A8 / A9 suited, although I was wary of her having Jacks.
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Comments
@mnolan8317
Personally, I attack this problem from a slightly different angle. I move all-in after the early position shove & hopefully that helps persuade Wendy to fold pre.
I always preferred to make things as simple as possible, & shoving pre achieves that, & probably saves us a lot of headaches post flop. And if she still calls, well no matter, as we were never folding 10-10 pre-flop & this is the correct hill to die on.
More importantly (as I rarely answer these sort of questions unless they are a 4 card variant), the real reason I'm replying is to give me an excuse to congratulate you on winning last night's Major, that's now three times you've won that. Super result, especially considering the strength of the field.
Well done.
Agree with @Tikay10 on this one - KISS strategy in a game that probably plays as a 10-25 quid online game in terms of player pool
Wendy can shove TJo, TJs, 2 broadway hearts, 89s, and also flat then shove the aforementioned AA/KK, think she jams JJ pre. She prob check jams 44/88/99 instead of just jamming but could also mix one these combos in. One thing u do know is this is never air and u are asking yourself why on earth did u flat pre.
Wp on the Major win @mnolan8317
However a smarter guy than me told me when i learnt to play in the 90s that once you have jammed then you have, 'no power or choice, and can only pray'
Some people will not fold when you jam whatever the situation because they fall in love with their hand, and sometimes it is better to select what to do after the flop.
I only play in small games now, and i do not care whether they call or not, but i think i would still jam with 10/10 in a big game (but i might fold to someone else jamming b4 me)
Now sure, as jammy says you can flat AA/KK to protect some of your range but i'm not sure those alone is enough protection. Whereas flatting everything does protect your range. Suppose you don't have TT as a flat, then BB can easily shove 88-99 knowing your range consists of too much stuff that will fold to a shove/be in fine shape against.
Now sure, this isn't a spot where you need to worry about GTO. But even then, I don't see a big need to want to jam TT and potentially get coolered. I think you can potentially get away from TT pre-flop if you know the BB is only jamming AK+ and JJ+ (idk, it might still be a call?) But when you jam you're definitely not getting away - moreover, you're not expecting opponent to make a mistake.
Whereas when we flat we invite them to potentially make a mistake - like as happened here. If you think they're calling pre with A8s/A9s then that's a mistake. If you think they're then jamming on this flop with those hands - again, another mistake and TT should be super happy to call.
You win money in poker by letting opponents make mistakes not by giving them easy decisions.
Either option pre seems fine to me. Given your read about BB, I would iso jam and avoid them doing something live fish do like call with QTs, AT-AQ, etc. They also do weird stuff like call with JJ, QQ and AK here.
I prob just fold flop given reads but don't see a call being bad. Whenever spots are close any you make the wrong call, it doesn't really matter. What's more important is avoiding huge blunders or repeated errors in common spots.