33 replies to this topic

[akashenk]

Right off the top I am willing to admit I made at least one mistake in this hand, but I'm trying to convince myself my final decision wasn't horrible. Any thoughts, including calling me the worst player ever, would be welcome.Background:1) On the bubble2) Started hand with 24BB. Avg stack probably about 16BB.3) In position agains villain.4) AJs in the holeA little more info:1) The villain was on a serious rush (4 double ups in the last 30 minutes) and now had more chips than me, the previous chip leader at the table).2) Two of his rush dubble ups were achieved by sucking out on me and playing some fairly questionable hands.3) A min cash was irrelevent and there were about 15 players to go through till real money could be won.The hand:1) Villain limps late and I raise 2.5BB w/ AJs.2) Villain Reraises to 10BB and I call3) Villian shoves all in ~20BB in the dark4) Flop is A, rag, rag rainbow.5) Villain starts giving speeches. I tank for an etermity and eventually call all in.6) Villain turns over AA and I bubble :(My Analysis:1) I really felt like there was no way the villain had a big Ace when he reraised preflop. First off, he had been raising with Ax all day (why would he all of a sudden limp late reraise when the blinds got so big?). I thought he had a pair and given the limp raise, could have any pair between 88 and AA. My call with AJ was probably what I regret most, as I was likely in a coin flip situation at best.2) The villain's shove in the dark and speeches screemed AA, so while I eventally called, his tactics weren't what did it. I pretty much put him on AA or KK at that point. It was a classic, I'm either dead or way ahead situation.I finally decided that, while he could have AA, the chances of me flopping top pair and him flopping top set were remote enough to push me towards believing he had KK.Additional thoughts:1) I didn't really care about bubbling. In fact, one of the things I considered was that a double up at that point would put me in good position to make a run at one of the top payouts while a fold after the flop would cause me to have to limp into the money and hope to win some races.2) LIke I said my main regret is the call pre-flop, where it was pretty unlikley that I was in any sort of dominating posiiton and could have easily been dominated (as the case turned out to be). I think the call was mostly a result of my annoyance with this particualr player and his recent run of good luck against me.3) While folding after the flop would certainly have been the safe play (especially if I were wrong about him not having AK or AQ), I'm trying to convince myself my all-in call wasn't the worst play ever. If I really cared about cashing, I would have folded and moved on to the next hand, but that wan't my primary concern.Any thoughts?

[TrueAce13]

loledit: your explanation regarding this hand is amazing. I love how in-depth you thought about villains range

[akashenk]

Thanks for the reply, Willard. I aim to amaze, though I'm not quite sure what you really think of my explanation. Given your post and profile info, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you aren't being sincere. But who knows, my reading skills haven't been 100% accurate recently.

[donk4life]

My goodness that's the easiest fold pre once he r/r you. #2 under the section of my analysis is just comical.

[answer20]

When a guy goes on a rush I always try to control my 'revenge' desire cuz he is very due to have a real hand in there sometime and a limp almost always signals trouble from these types. Although the raise was fairly standard and not really knowing how the suck-out hands were played out, it was probably not the best idea to call here with AJ, even suited AJ. You are either folding or shoving and probably folding in most cases.The dark bet and speeches are clasic tells and it would really take a gem of a guy to reverse tell you here especially after a couple of suck-outs ... he has to know you are going to try to get back at him. He has KK, QQ at worst and actually had better ... AA, AK or AQ. Tough to let him 'run' you over, but with no back-door options from this Flop .. it's a fold, even with top pair, and you move along just below average while trying to pick on someone else hope for a table break.I don't understand the rush to gain chips, you were looking at plenty of other opportunities to steal or have a better spot to work with ... I think the thought process you had is fine during the early stages of a tournament ... chip up or chip out ... but you are not going to win a tournament at the bubble tangling with another big stack.

[akashenk]

Willard (donk4life) I have stated that the pre-flop call was not good, though easy or hard did not play into it. I certainly didn't think I was ahead. I'm not sure what was comical about my post-flop analysis. There was basically one hand that I thought he could have that had me beat and it was very unlikely from a mathematical standpoint that he had that hand.Answer20, I wasn't so much in a rush to gain chips, but after the bad pre-flop call I was left in a position where basically any future play would require me to commit to go all in at some point in the future hand. In retrospect, an all-in pre flop would have been a better play, though the result would have been the same. Either way, once the flop came the situation was completly polarized. I basically felt I was either way ahead or way behind. I would have been absolutely shocked to see him turn over AQ or AK. While his line with AA was unconventional, it would have been borderline insane to do what he did with AK or AQ. The speeches etc might be a classic tell, but this was a fairly odd player making odd moves. I chose to ignore his behavior since he was capable of doing anything and focused on the math. It was just one of those situations where an unlikely occurence came back to bite me. Of course, this is an example of the sort of trouble you can get into when making a bad pre-flop call. If he had turned over KK, which was just as likely from a line of play standpoint and more likely from a mathematical standpoint, then I'd have a nice story about how a loose pre-flop call turned into a monster pot and a really big stack.

[TrueAce13]

man, donk4life always w/ great stuff!

[bat]

When he limped/rr pre I take him off of speculative hands and weaker ranges immediately (Especially with a rr of half your stack---insta fold there!!!) and put him on big pocket pairs and AK. Hell, I'm folding if he's holding napkins at that point if I'm just holding a weak drawing hand like A/broadway. Matter of fact he probably doesn't want to play AK oop anway so close to a bubble and would more than likely raise as opposed to limp in, so it's AA, KK and possibly queens at the very least that he or anyone would limp in with I would think. What was the one mistake you thought you made? I have to say it was playing AJ like its the nuts from the get go...which is a very horrible starting hand imo. Live and learn though!

[HighwayStar]

Don't call off half your stack preflop ....ever? You probably could with aces in some spots against mulitple willards idiots but that situation is extremely rare. Get it in or fold preflop with AJs. Postflop isn't interesting since you should never ever be in this spot.I think you should probably be folding preflop against 95%, possibly 99%+ of villains. Limp r/r for half of his stack is laughably strong.

[akashenk]

Thanks for the comments, Highwaystar. Just to be accurate, his pre-flop RR was for about 1/4 of his stack and my pre-flop call was for roughly 1/3 of my stack, though I suppose that doesn't make a tremendous amount of difference. I was certainly commiting too many chips with a fairly weak starting hand. I have to disagree with you, though regarding the post flop decision. I think that's a very interesting spot, regardless of how it was arrived at. If all this hand were about was whether or not I should have made the pre-flop call, then I wouldn't have posted about it, since that is fairly straightforward. Just because a fairly bad play led to a tough decision doesn't mean that tough decision insn't interesting.Thanks as well, bat. My obvious mistake was calling pre-flop, and I think everyone agrees. And once he performed his little show I was certain he had a big pair (AA or KK). I ruled out QQ for the most part since I thouight he would play that like AK and I was fairly certain he didn't have that. Of course, QQ is no different than KK in this situation, so it didn't really make a big difference in my thinking.I would like to get people's thoughts on the post-flop decision, since that is where I think this hand becomes interesting. If cashing really mattered, then the safe and prudent play would have been to fold post-flop and I wouldn't be posting it here. After all, sometimes it is wise to fold KK, or perhaps even AA pre-flop when on the bouble, depending on your situation, so the precarious position I found myself in certainly didn't warrant a call if cashing were paramount. But everyone seems to agree that the villain either had AA or KK in this situation. I had KK crushed, and was obviously dead to AA. Folding meant I was defintely still in the tournament, and who know what would happen, but I would be in a very weak position to finish in the top 3 or 4. And of course, folding may have also meant I was folding by far the best hand which would have been pretty awful in that spot. This is not to say you should never be willing to fold the best hand, but this particular spot would have been a very bad one to do so.As a little side commentary. I have obviously stated that cashing was irrelevant and this played a great dea into my decision. I do not want to make it seem like cashing is not good. Obviously making money as opposed to not making money is a good thing. However, I think cashing is a bit overrrated in modern MT live tournaments, which is pretty much what I play exclusively. The way that TDs have structured payouts (paying more than 10% of fields, really flattening out the tail end of the payouts and paying only ~1.5x buy-in for min-cashes) in order to appeal to casual players makes it so you really have to go deep from time to time in order to get the ROI from these tournaments. Having a tremendous cash rate, even something as large as 20% isn't going to get it done unless you have a number of top 1% or 2% finishes. In certain situations where the payout structure is very good, even for min-cashes, or if I haven't cahsed in a while, I will defineitly focus on cashing and play very conservatively on the bubble in order to accomplish that. If this particular example were such a case, I would never have made the post-flop call. But in this case, you really needed to finish in the top 3 or 4 in order to make good money and at the moment I felt that a double up or go home strategy, even on the bubble was worth the risk.

[donk4life]

You called off half your stack pre and then hit top pair on the flop, don't fold. The hand isn't any more interesting you Willard.

[akashenk]

donk4life... then why are you commenting? Surely you have better things to do with your time?

[HighwayStar]

According to your initial post, preflop around 10/30 = 1/3 of the villains stack went in and 10/24 = ~2/5 of your stack. If those fractions are lower then they have to be a lot lower to even consider seeing a flop with AJ, even then it probably isn't wise.Postflop just isn't interesting with these stacks. You're in a position you should never be in and you have top pair. Don't fold, bubble or no bubble. If you have a much much deeper stack then there would be more to it, but that would be a completely different hand.Also don't fold KK (or AA) on a bubble unless it's the most absurd chip stack/payout distribution ever, a satellite, or there is a cold 5 bet before you act.

[TrueAce13]

WHO IS WILLARD?!?!?

[PocketAcesA5]

Even though you said you weren't worried about the bubble. You did mention number one that you were on the bubble. Bubbling sucks and can be easily avoided especially in a turbo which is what this sounds like. Limp pre against the crazy insane guy. Obv he's going to go nuts anyway and he'll still probably go nuts post. So try and flop something great by limping and get him to hang himself or fold because at 16bb avg stack the bubble is popping in no time. Looks like a good spot to mirror really fast. Also if you elect to raise in posish, make it like 2.1-2.2x and fold to a 3bet. Esp for half your stack. Flip after the bubble if it is a flip.

[akashenk]

Highwaystar, the preflop call I made was for 7.5BB more, which is where I get the 1/3 of my stack call.TrueAce13... you are Willard, if pokerstars is accurate.

[TrueAce13]

this is a pretty easy fold PF. And if you do think he is weak, just jam PF. so it goes fold>>>>>>>>>>>>>>jam>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>callcalling is the worst option b/c what are you doing on bricked boards? are you just going to fold after putting such a large percentage of your stack in. Listen to what donk and highway say. They are really, really smart and good at poker

[donk4life]

I don't know about either of those in regards to me. Highway is both of those. I am however, a god damn Willard.

[donk4life]

akashenk, on 18 July 2012 - 05:16 AM, said:

donk4life... then why are you commenting? Surely you have better things to do with your time?

I'm commenting because you posted it. There's not much in the way of strat on this forum anymore so you have to take advantage of what's there.

[akashenk]

donk4life, I was having trouble understanding your post..."You called off half your stack pre and then hit top pair on the flop, don't fold. The hand isn't any more interesting you Willard."I think its because the word "Willard" is being thrown around in odd contexts.