PAWM - casino low stakes tourney (1 Viewer)

[Legend5555]

Disagree 100% - bb should have a check raise range on this board bc it doesnt hit CO that hard. And QT is the absolute best semibluff to include because it has decent equity against the CO continue range, it blocks a lot of the CO bet/call range ( T9, JT, QJ) .Slam dunk check-raise.

I will give you that just because a player SHOULD xr doesn’t mean a player WOULD xr, and overly tight-passive players show up with that hand sometimes, but villain is just not giving off that vibe and he hasn’t shown down any hand to warrant that range adjustment

I'm not afraid of QT in any way given the sum total of all the action. It's for sure a less likely holding. If I had a hand like AJ in your spot with this action, I'd value bet river. I just don't think entirely discounting QT is appropriate when you are a called on the flop.

 

[Moxie Mike]

Disagree 100% - bb should have a check raise range on this board bc it doesnt hit CO that hard. And QT is the absolute best semibluff to include because it has decent equity against the CO continue range, it blocks a lot of the CO bet/call range ( T9, JT, QJ) .Slam dunk check-raise.

I'm not trying to get into an argument. C-raising on a semi-bluff isn't a bad line, but it could have consequences if it doesn't end the hand at that point. Bloating a pot out of position can be hazardous to your chip stack - in a cash game it's less of a big deal but in a tournament...

 

[Frogzilla]

Bloating a pot out of position can be hazardous to your chip stack

This we agree on. In fact I picked this hand for a couple reasons:

1) Being in position offered a huge advantage
If I think of the hand from villain's perspective, it was really tough. Villain is forced to defend Q4s from the big heads up. Villain flop bottom pair and really can't let it go for that price (this is a 100% cbet from a lot of players), and is hoping to be against 2 over-cards stabs which have 6 outs / 25% equity. Turn - same situation. range is way too wide to fold out the pair for the tiny turn bet, basically forced to call. Facing a 2/3 pot river bet on that board (I didn't have the hand to do it, but a lot of my range would) would have put villain is a really tough spot.

2) This drunk guy, with all his antics, played solid poker
Along the hand, I kept trying to think of what adjustments I could make to exploit this guy. The only thing I did was size down my blocker turn bet from 7000 to 5500, thinking that villain wouldn't do the math and realize how tiny it is. For the rest of my time in the tourney villain played amazingly sound tournament poker, and folks adjusting to a seemingly out-of-control drunk guy kept punting to him. When I min-cashed in 12th, villain was still hammered, having a cigarette and a coors lite as he stumbled outside the poker room, while his top 3 stack skipped a few hands. Surreal

 

[Moxie Mike]

This we agree on. In fact I picked this hand for a couple reasons:

1) If I think of the hand from villain's perspective, it was really tough.

I think the villian played this hand rather poorly. Defending an open from the C/O with Q4s is questionable at best, then he failed to recognize your obvious path to get to a free showdown. If he thought he was good on the flop, then he certainly still thinks he's good on the turn but instead gave you a free shot to hit your six-outer. And what's his plan if you fire 3rd barrel?

2) This drunk guy, with all his antics, played solid poker

Some people actually play better when they're not sober. Same with golf - after a couple beers you stop thinking so much and just let instinct and muscle memory take over. It's certainly not advisable - but it works for some players.

 

[MrCatPants]

Some people actually play better when they're not sober. Same with golf - after a couple beers you stop thinking so much and just let instinct and muscle memory take over. It's certainly not advisable - but it works for some players.

My almost best round ever I wasn't taking it too seriously, was drinking, and as the round materialized it became too good to ignore. Decided to continue my beer drinking in a measured fashion to maintain the same equilibrium and it *almost* worked. Was -3 through 6 when I decided on this plan, got to -4 through 14...then shot a 75.

I was a high single digit handicapper at the time, and so the 75 was still great, but man what could have been. If anything, I undershot my equilibirum point.

 

[Frogzilla]

I think the villian played this hand rather poorly. Defending an open from the C/O with Q4s is questionable at best, then he failed to recognize your obvious path to get to a free showdown. If he thought he was good on the flop, then he certainly still thinks he's good on the turn but instead gave you a free shot to hit your six-outer. And what's his plan if you fire 3rd barrel?

What do you think he should do differently? Preflop we can calculate that Q4 is a comfortable defend: Q4s has 38% raw equity against that CO range I posted earlier, and probably something close to 30% when you factor in the effects of being out of position (realize ~80% of the equity). The small 2.5x open and the antes means he only needs 2400/10600 (23%!!) to continue. This is why tourney BB ranges are usually really wide against BU especially but also CO and HJ opens. You probably should defend anything suited against the CO.

 

[Moxie Mike]

In the words of @DrStrange, fold preflop.

Preflop equity is worth considering - but this isn't a cash game. If this were earlier in the tournament, there's a greater case to be made for a loose call such as this but with 50 BBs it's not worth the probability that you will have to put more chips in the pot just to find out if you're good enough to win.

Being OOP sucks but might not not even the worst aspect of this.

There just aren't a lot of good flops for Q4s. If you get a piece of it on the flop you have to call down hoping you're good with either top pair/kicker problems or bottom pair... all while also hoping to not get outdrawn (if you were ever ahead at all).

In the unlikely event that you flop a flush draw (~11%) it's not to the nuts... which isn't a huge concern (like it is in Omaha) but should still be taken into consideration. Nothing worse than getting married to a made hand only to be unnecessarily coolered.

 

[Frogzilla]

My license plate is "FOLD PRE" so preaching to the choir there. But the math is that, if played competently postflop, the 2400 chip call makes about 800 chip profit (after factoring in the OOP tax). Folding is 0 chip profit.

For more evidence, here's a 40-50 blinds big blind defend range against a 2.2x button open, from a NLHE tournament coaching class. I couldn't find a cutoff one that wasn't behind a paywall. Sure you'd want to scale back a bit from this because the cutoff, but Q4 is hardly near the button defend margin. And I used 2.5x which also should shrink the range a bit. But look how wide this is:

Spoiler: BB vs. Button Defend range- Tourney