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Bumping Into Big Pairs. 2 Hands
BorinLoner
Member Posts: 3,863
I'm losing a little bit of faith in my MTT play. I think these are fine but could benefit from an independent view:
Hand 1: The UTG raiser has been extremely passive, limping in at almost every opportunity. When he makes this raise I decide to 3-bet to take control and fold to a 4-bet. The alternative seemed to be to check and hope to hit two-pair or better, or take a passive line with any one-pair. After he calls my raise, I think he's unlikely to have QQ, KK or AA so when I flop top-pair I think I'm up against a KJ, QJ or another AJ type hand. How's my logic here (Ignore that he actually had QQ). If I make it 200 pre-flop, how do you feel about folding for 1k more?
PlayerActionCardsAmountPotBalanceEBBERDON Small blind 20.00 20.00 3972.50 BorinLoner Big blind 40.00 60.00 2440.00 Your hole cards A J Ramora Raise 80.00 140.00 1130.00 Farmboy Fold Lee_Boy Fold ryan1976 Call 80.00 220.00 4237.50 EBBERDON Fold BorinLoner Raise 160.00 380.00 2280.00 Ramora Call 120.00 500.00 1010.00 ryan1976 Fold Flop 2 J 2 BorinLoner Bet 250.00 750.00 2030.00 Ramora Raise 500.00 1250.00 510.00 BorinLoner All-in 2030.00 3280.00 0.00 Ramora All-in 510.00 3790.00 0.00 BorinLoner Unmatched bet 1270.00 2520.00 1270.00 BorinLoner Show A J Ramora Show Q Q Turn 9 River 9 Ramora Win Two Pairs, Queens and 9s 2520.00 2520.00
The second hand is a little more straightforward:I'm in the Small Blind and the button has been opening a fair amount when folded to him. I decide to 3-bet here and figure that he needs to have a big hand to call and if he does, 9T isn't the worst hand to hold. That's alright, isn't it?
| Player | Action | Cards | Amount | Pot | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BorinLoner | Small blind | 150.00 | 150.00 | 7980.00 | |
| OCD_man | Big blind | 300.00 | 450.00 | 2635.00 | |
| Your hole cards |
| ||||
| chapperman | Fold | ||||
| StringerB | Fold | ||||
| FENECH18 | Fold | ||||
| gav77714 | Raise | 650.00 | 1100.00 | 4425.00 | |
| BorinLoner | All-in | 7980.00 | 9080.00 | 0.00 | |
| OCD_man | Fold | ||||
| gav77714 | All-in | 4425.00 | 13505.00 | 0.00 | |
| BorinLoner | Unmatched bet | 3055.00 | 10450.00 | 3055.00 | |
| BorinLoner | Show |
| |||
| gav77714 | Show |
| |||
| Flop | |||||
| |||||
| Turn | |||||
| |||||
| River | |||||
| |||||
| gav77714 | Win | Two Pairs, Aces and Kings | 10450.00 | 10450.00 | |
Comments
Hand number 2, I guess it's not the worst play in the world, and will work ALOT of the time (not when he has KK lol), but just seems like a bit of an unnecessary risk.
Can't argue with it not being necessary to shove with the 9T but I've got to do it sometime and I saw an opportunity. It has to be +EV, doesn't it?
You see, all this sounds rational but I'm not having great results at the moment. I'm not playing huge volume either but I just want to see if people think my logic is wrong or I'm just on a small blip of run-bad.
I think calling his raise is optimal here. We have a good hand and we're in position.
By raising we fold out all the weak ace rag hands etc that we're beating.
How do we like our hand when he 4 bets?
Such early stages in competition we just don't need to be going broke with tptk hands
Hand 2
Obviously hard without knowing table dynamics
Surely just a simple fold pre flop though?
We have 26 bb's and we're not under any pressure.
If we feel he's getting ool with button raising then we can make this 1750 for example and get the result we want when he passes.
We don't need to risk our tourney life in this position.
We all make these plays and clearly you're thinking about the game and say in hand 2 it's great when it comes off but the reality is we are only adding 1100 to our stack at the risk of busting and i don't think it can be a +ev play.
Sidenote, run better! walked into monsters!
hand 2. don't think it's worth shoving with your stack, findbetterspots.com
don't think it's a re steal stack
Over 100 hands:
He folds 80% of the time: I win 88000
He calls 10% of the time with overcards, so roughly 40/60: I lose 8050
He calls 10% of the time with an overpair, so roughly 20/80: I lose 28650
Expected Value: +51300
I'm not convinced I'm working that out correctly. My brain turns to mush at this hour. However, if those numbers are correct, the EV of the shove works out at +513 if he calls 20% of the time. Is it unrealistic to think he folds 8/10 times if he's opening alot?
If the numbers are 70/20/10 then the EV is +322.5. At 60/25/15 it's +29.
As I say, I make no guarantees about those numbers. They're simplified odds but as a guideline they're reasonable. If he needs to call more than 40% of the time for this to be -EV then surely this shove is +EV against a player with a wide stealing range.
If those numbers are wrong, somebody tell me. It wouldn't surprise me since I'm so tired I've done it five times and come up with three different answers, lol.
Bed time FTW.
EDIT: Revised the numbers a little to reflect the Small Blind already paid. Now I'm fairly sure they're correct, although they overlook the possiblities of races against underpairs and 30/70 shots against AT and 99.
Hand 2: Is a fold tbh, you are getting called by way too many hands that have you crushed and if any two called you arestill basically flipping. You can peel out of your stack aswell (although I think this is a fold pre) there are far better spots than this tbh, and you need to preserve your tournament life.
Hand 1; I agree that I can peel. The thing I didn't want to do was peel, hit a piece of my hand and then lose a bundle. By making this small 3-bet (though it's not actually a min-raise, it is pretty small) I felt that I'd be able to get away from the UTG raiser if he 4-bet and I didn't think he could afford to just call with those big pairs with a player to act behind him. Given that, I didn't see the need for a large 3-bet as I think I get the same answer for less. When he calls, yes I'll be out of position, but he's been folding to almost any c-bet on the flop. Obviously I was wrong about what he'd do with a big pair on this ocassion but generally speaking, doesn't that make sense?
On reflection I think it probably would be better to peel because of the player on the button. Any 3-bet I make that's called by the UTG player is likely to bring in the button. I was happy to play a flop against either of the two of them, though against both it's obviously much higher variance. I fancy a c-bet gets through enough to be profitable, even three-handed, but it's going to be fairly thin. I won't be able to fire a second street if I'm called so I'll be very vulnerable to being floated, too. Saying that a c-bet is likely to be profitable is also dependent on having accurate reads on the fellow UTG... which it turns out I didn't.
So I'm saying that I like my plan IF I have the correct reads on these two opponents and IF I can get the c-bet through enough of the time. I was probably really lucky to get it heads-up to the flop and then really unlucky to hit the Jack. On this flop I don't think it matters whether or not the button calls pre-flop, I'd still get the lot in. I couldn't put either of them on JJ or better so I'd just be looking at 22 beating me.
I could have folded pre-flop. Wish I'd done that, lol.
I'm not sure that Jac35 actually read the text in the original post: In the first hand I wasn't in position, I said I intended to fold to a 4-bet and hitting top-pair top kicker might as well have been the nuts given the opponents perceived range. I wasn't at risk in either hand.
The suggestion of making it 1750 pre-flop on hand 2 seems bad to me. I can't imagine making it 1750 with the intention of folding getting odds of 7125/3325; significantly better than 2/1. I think I might call, given those odds, and hope to see overcards or an underpair. Either way, making it 1750 seems bad: Raise-fold seems bad. Raise-call seems bad.
It's got to be shove or fold with these stacks.
Oops!
Yeah, you're right, i didn't look at the hand history properly on either one, Tired, excuse
Jut looking back now i still go with peeling hand one. You say it's all going in regardless when you see flop? I think this is just too aggressive early on. Hate getting it all in with one pair hands at these stages. We should only everr be getting called by better.
Hand 2 i didn't see other players stack, becomes even more of a fold
Basically, I was crushing his perceived range. As yet, nobody has said anything to convince me that I could or should have got away on this flop.
I do agree that I probably should have peeled pre-flop in this hand, though I don't think my line is necessarily bad. Just calling would have been better, though.
seriously by shoving do you really think your folding out what ? May aswell hold up a sign over your head saying you have nothing )
do we really have to be making these moves on SKY with no antes, holding a very playable stack.
do we need 3bb that badly, not sure I love the logic of all this - it only has to not work once for you to feel a bit stooopid )
but hey I am very passive and like to ladder, so..........meh
It's not that the 3.6BB are going to be hugely important but it is 14% of my stack, near enough. I only feel stupid about it not working if it stops working on a regular basis. If you're asking how often it gets through, I fancy it's probably around 7/10 or 8/10 times against this sort of player. It's not just +EV, it's pretty heavily +EV... and if it goes wrong I've got 10BB back.
I realise I'm making a robust defence of my play but I only want to be convinced I'm making mistakes if I actually am making mistakes. In the first hand, I'm happy to admit that I have. In the second, none of the arguments so far have convinced me. In fact I'm more certain than I was before that it's good. Which serves a purpose in itself, of course.
Don’t think it’s bad at all Borin, abso fine –
Very player/table dependant so if you feel it’s good versus this oppo then no problem ) If oppo is abusing position/btn then punish
Obviously more they open the wider they must be right until they have a hand, bad timing
In a vacuum, just hate the move :! Because surely you have to be making this move a lot right to make it worthwhile )
Is there really a point saying if we do this 100 times it’s +EV, how often are we doing this
Let’s face it Borin if your btn and you open a lot and someone shoves on you once in a blue moon how easy is it to either call or fold.
For the amounts of times they have opened uncontested, it’s totally +EV for them and the dynamic they have set up means your shoving is like Christmas when they have a hand.
I remain unconvinced it’s a move we can make repeatedly
You can do it repeatedly in the same tournament after you're moved as it's not hugely player dependent, really. You just need to know that players are stealing from the button alot, which in MTT's most players will be. It only takes two or three orbits to work out who are the guys you want to be 3-betting.
I'm not saying this is "standard" or that you should do this every time it's raised by the button to your Small Blind but it's going to be heavily profitable in the long-term to do it ocassionally. Of course, doing it with 9T allows you to get paid when you do it with AA because "you can't have it every time". You've just got to be aware of your image at the table, as well as your opponents ranges... and don't run into the top of their range because that will be bad.
EDIT: Are you doing eactly the same if you get dealt aces there??
But with oppo only having 18bb effective, does this change anything.
Well I think it does, because with 27bb your not in a postion where you need to be making these moves to gain chips.
Effectiviely we are using fold equity to make shoves like this profitbale, when we need to pick up the dead chips from a btn warrior. Makes it a bit more intresting to get called by AJ and still swim with 40%.
Do we prefer shoving in thse spots with <20bb or />20bb, where is the limit 50.60 bb and versus what effective stack.
Are we still making this move if btn has 40bb ?
Is it a betetr move if oppo is />20bb, makes our FE look good :S
Is it just a move we like doing versus shorties 15-20bb stacks, because we cover them :S
Do we have less FE versus shorties because they call wider than a 40bb stack.
As for what size stack I'd usually be 3-bet shoving with; I consider it around 15BB-25BB and only against stacks that can fold. This is the stack size that I stop looking for spots to open the betting. JT, KJ, KQ, 22-77, etc. are now hands that you can't afford to open with because bet-folding out of this stack loses you so much of your 3-bet fold equity. If you're on 25BB, when you open the betting then c-bet once, you lose a huge chunk of your 3-bet fold equity... So I stop considering these hands as playable, unless it's with a 3-bet.
Since you don't get many big hands, if you're looking mainly to be entering with a 3-bet, you're forced to do the same with your really big hands to balance your range. Though AA and KK can, as I said, be played a little more trickily under some circumstances, usually it's best to just 3-bet jam with those too... If you don't 3-bet with weaker hands, then whenever you do it you will be telegraphing that you have a big one.
Obviously there are exceptions; if there are weak players in the blinds, I'd be opening from late position, etc... but that's my general policy in MTT's when my stack hits this level. It's nicer to 3-bet 25BB if your opponent has opened to 3x but even with a 2x raise there's always going to be at least 3.5BB in there (14% of a 25BB stack). The other way to look at it is that if you get it through 4/5 times, you'll win 14BB without a showdown and still have your chance against those overs when you are called. Even without antes, it's still hugely profitable.
When it goes wrong you'll look silly but if you're picking your opponents well, it won't go wrong that often.