PAHWM 3 table $20 tournament (Pokerrr2 private group) (1 Viewer)

grebe

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This club is full of droolers, to be honest. I expect to either do well or take a horrible beat every time I play. I have done well mostly though. Hand in play here however is against one of the better players. He is very capable of bluffing, and plays pretty aggressive mostly.

Overall tournament is 27 buyins of $20 (no rebuys), and top 4 pay 40/30/20/10 percent. Good structure, it usually takes 3+ hours to finish.

I am mostly an unknown to these people, as it is my brother's poker group (somebody get referring to me as female throughout the whole tournement). Maybe 4 people know me as a decent player, and my style is very aggressive here (sometimes, it seems insanely aggressive....I like to steal blinds when the table tightens up). Villain may or may not realize how I play. I totally know how V plays though.

Off to the hand:
8 players left, blinds are 400/800. Table is playing tight passive

Villain: SB 26K stack
Hero: UTG chip leader with 33K with :kh: :qd:

*I think this is pretty standard. Off to flop:

Hero raises to 1600
folds around to BB
Villain calls out of BB

Flop: :8s::qh::4h:

V checks
Hero leads for 2K
V raises to 5.25K
Hero?
 
So, raise is pretty small here. HOWEVER, it's going to be very easy to get stacks in by the river. TPGK on a pretty good board. I think we can eliminate AQ....the most obvious nightmare hand for us. 2 pair seems possible but unlikely. No way he has QQ, KK or AA. That leaves worse Q's and flush draws, and a couple sets. I think a raise would probably be the best play here. We call.

Pot is now 16,100 (effective SPR about 1.5)

Turn card: :2c:

Villain leads for 7.5K

Hero?
 
With so many responses, we should just keep going!

This turn is a brick...nothing changes. We are either way ahead or way behind. We call

Pot is now 31K and change....SPR is out the window.

River: :jd:

Villain again leads for 8.8K (leaving behind 3K and change...odd size)

We made our decision on the turn. We call

Villain shows :th::8h: for middle pair and missed flush draw, and we scoop this pivotal hand.
 
Heh, not much of a morning crowd 'round here, eh?

Flop: No way I'm running away from a small raise with top pair, 2nd kicker unless I've got reason to suspect a super-nit. Doesn't fit what you said about him. Question is call or raise. PF raise didn't really narrow the range (not that that's a criticism) unless UTG min raise is taken REALLY seriously by villain. So, there's a lot more worse Q and flush draws then AQ and sets. Even with a pair of eights or fours, if it folded around to him, there's a decent chance he'd have raised preflop facing only one player. The case for calling, though, is to avoid bloating the plot with less than a monster. I lean raise, but call doesn't strike me as bonkers.

Turn: you're really deciding here whether to get it in or not. If you call this, there are lots of river cards where you'll have to make a crying call anyway. So, I'm inclined to raise and therefore jam. I don't hate your call, but have you already decided what to do if a heart, A ... hell potentially even a 9TJ show up?

River: as you said, decision already made. Weirdo bet size by villain makes me even more confident that he's not pulling a great line or anything, no coherent betting strategy ends with betting 8K of an 11K stack into a 31K pot.

Results: ok, so my plan didn't work out as well as yours.
 
Heh, not much of a morning crowd 'round here, eh?

Flop: No way I'm running away from a small raise with top pair, 2nd kicker unless I've got reason to suspect a super-nit. Doesn't fit what you said about him. Question is call or raise. PF raise didn't really narrow the range (not that that's a criticism) unless UTG min raise is taken REALLY seriously by villain. So, there's a lot more worse Q and flush draws then AQ and sets. Even with a pair of eights or fours, if it folded around to him, there's a decent chance he'd have raised preflop facing only one player. The case for calling, though, is to avoid bloating the plot with less than a monster. I lean raise, but call doesn't strike me as bonkers.

Turn: you're really deciding here whether to get it in or not. If you call this, there are lots of river cards where you'll have to make a crying call anyway. So, I'm inclined to raise and therefore jam. I don't hate your call, but have you already decided what to do if a heart, A ... hell potentially even a 9TJ show up?

River: as you said, decision already made. Weirdo bet size by villain makes me even more confident that he's not pulling a great line or anything, no coherent betting strategy ends with betting 8K of an 11K stack into a 31K pot.

Results: ok, so my plan didn't work out as well as yours.
This is how I played in the moment....against his exact holding. I am open to critques....and I think I missed a couple opportunities to take this hand down early (which is great with only 1 pair hands). I think looking back....eliminating all but sets....I like a raise on the flop targeting specifically flush draws. Turn should probably be a slam dunk shove from me as well. An ace river would have really sucked in the moment.
 
Hero: UTG chip leader with 33K with :kh: :qd:

*I think this is pretty standard. Off to flop:

Hero raises to 1600
folds around to BB
Villain calls out of BB
Pretty standard, it is a min raise UTG, so BB is probably defending pretty widely here.

Flop: :8s::qh::4h:

V checks
Hero leads for 2K
V raises to 5.25K
Hero?

I think I am going to 3-bet this here to 10K. If you are behind, you will be shown 88 or 44, maaaaybe Q8. But I think you can also get check raised by any queen and certainly villain can have any number of lesser queens.

Flatting is good too, but then I think you are committing to stationing this hand unless the runout gets awful.


So, raise is pretty small here. HOWEVER, it's going to be very easy to get stacks in by the river. TPGK on a pretty good board. I think we can eliminate AQ....the most obvious nightmare hand for us. 2 pair seems possible but unlikely. No way he has QQ, KK or AA. That leaves worse Q's and flush draws, and a couple sets. I think a raise would probably be the best play here. We call.

Oh so you were about the say that. Call is okay, but then you really are playing to station this because you are ahead of so much Qx.

Pot is now 16,100 (effective SPR about 1.5)

Turn card: :2c:

Villain leads for 7.5K

Hero?

I would either call or shove here. It really would inform me what I think villain would do with QJ here, if he's "good" enough to fold that, then the shove is terrible and you might as well continue the plan to station. Though there is something to be said for protection, there's 23K out there now and you and you can still move about 20K more effective in this pot. But I think at that price you are getting called by a flush draw anyway.


Pot is now 31K and change....SPR is out the window.

River: :jd:

Villain again leads for 8.8K (leaving behind 3K and change...odd size)

We made our decision on the turn. We call

I would not count this as a good river because now we are pretty much hoping villain has exactly QT or Q9. But I agree, you played this to station since the flop, you will beat the missed hearts enough, and you will still see the overvalued QT once in a while. I think you can call it here, but you're going to lose a fair bit :(.

Nice result, glad you stuck to it, the closest decision in this hand was the flop imo. Glad you collected on every street.
 
Glad you chimed in @JustinInMN

I agree with your thoughts. Happy it turned out well too!

Ended up cruising to take the whole thing down after this hand, never gave up the chip lead. This was the toughest spot I had the whole tournament.
 
The more I think about it the more I really like the line hero took in this hand, given the initial read that this player is aggressive.

You should call aggressive players more widely and go for marginal raises less often. I initially said I would have gone for a 3 bet on the flop, that would have been a marginal raise even though villain probably has enough lesser queens in range to call. However, even if KQ is "ahead" against a combo draw (pair+flush draw or straight draw + flush draw) hero is actually close to a coin flip. So calling just to see about a safer turn is okay.

This line does have risk and hero would have been on fumes if villain won the hand. But in a tournament you can't avoid risky spots forever and I think this was the line that had the most upside for hero, even if it has risk.
 

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