Absent of reads on player...


PokerStars Game #4512444876: Tournament #22401729, Hold'em No Limit - Match Round II, Level IV (50/100) - 2006/04/03 - 21:10:04 (ET)
Table '22401729 1' 10-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: Jimmy Lobo (2620 in chips)
Seat 2: jjgoldy5 (1330 in chips)
Seat 3: avictor (1030 in chips)
Seat 4: harahan3 (2305 in chips)
Seat 5: Moles_Knows (1370 in chips)
Seat 6: cardsoup (1385 in chips)
Seat 7: kierand (1700 in chips)
Seat 8: Faraday (2070 in chips)
Seat 9: xtreme2004 (1190 in chips)
harahan3: posts small blind 50
Moles_Knows: posts big blind 100
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to jjgoldy5 [Ts Th]
cardsoup: folds
kierand: folds
Faraday: raises 200 to 300
xtreme2004: folds
Jimmy Lobo: folds
Hero....?

All-In.

i'd push as well. the payout structure could skew the decision a bit but i don't think im folding TT here.

Move in. Sucks he had a big hand.

Your M is 8 and unless it's some funky prize structure, you can't fold the 10's here.

Push

Is this one of the 10-15 dollar double shootouts or one of the 160 dollar ones? If the former, push, if the latter, fold.

I'm surprised at everyone saying push. You've got one of the better stacks raising from early-mid position, against a blind who is considerably shorter. I think that you have 0 fold equity since, with that many short stacks acting behind him, there's no way that villain is raising with a hand unless he's comfortable calling a push with it. I guess 88 or 99 are possible, but other than that its a coinflip or you're in a world of hurt against an overpair. If its a field of decent players (and the final table of a DS usually is decent) this becomes a pretty easy fold short of a read on villain.

I don't know the payout structure, but I don't think pushing here is a very good play. I don't think we have very much fold equity in this situation, nor do we have first-in vigorish. We still have a bit of room to play with here, so I would fold.

Thanks all.

I folded the hand... my line of thinking was AK/AQ and im flipping, AA-JJ im screwed, and I cant see him raising with anything else really from EP 9 handed.

Of course I was completely card dead the rest of the tournament.

You should be happy if you're on the good end of a coinflip at this point in the tournament with your stack. And you could be way ahead. You could also be way behind, but that's why it's called gambling, no?

I'm glad you were card dead the rest of the tournament, because it should make you realize you should have stuck it in here.

This is the most retarded thing that I've read today. Congratulations!

I second that motion...

Hahaha.

I don't see what situation is going to come up better than this one. If you're flipping you're flipping, we need chips. Also, I don't think we have 0 fold equity.

Villain will be left with these calculations after we move in assuming the button and blinds fold.

1780 in the pot, 1030 to call, roughly 1.7:1 on his money. If Villain calls and loses this hand, he will be left with 740 in chips, he may pick a better spot if he has something like AJ or AQ.

Use your own argument for the villain in this hand, and you will see that he is not folding to our push. There IS 0 fold equity here. Constantly flipping coins near the end of a tournament is a terrible way to play IMO. A flip here or there is usually required, but this is neither the here, nor the there...

Our fold equity isn't 0. It's on the low end, but it isn't 0.

I re-checked the stacks - I thought it was another short-stack from EP. Tis a larger stack at this table from EP, so we MAY have some fold equity...

hahah, insert foot into mouth, repeat.

j/k

Fold to a 200 chip raise?!?! How about a smooth call and see what happens on the flop. Leaves plenty of margin to fold and, if you hit your set, you're laughing.

FYP, boy i've been spending too much time in general.

I realise hitting a set is 1:8, but it's called gambling. You never know when that set's going to come up. I hit two in a row the other day, consecutive hands. Other times, i won't hit one for what seems an eternity. It's not like you can tick off 7 hands and then count on the next hand to pop you a set.

This is a POKER forum, not a gambling forum...I play poker.

this is a raise or fold problem. calling here is by far the worst choice. gambling on this hand would be sticking it in pre-flop.

Heh...gotcha! I wasn't advocating the call, really. What I was saying was, Why hasn't anyone mentioned that as an option? Clearly, it's the greater of three evils: All-in, fold, call, in that order. Do you concur?

I think no one really mentioned it because everyone already knew it was the worst option.

I see...I'm looking forward to playing some of you guys, if only to see:
a) What a rookie I am;
If some of you play the game anywhere near as good as you talk it.

Actually, that's part of the beauty of this forum. You post here long enough and you'll start playing like you post. I'll often be in the middle of a hand and about to do something impulsive and then stop and say "wait, this is more complex, what would I tell someone to do if this was posted in tourney strat?" Or after a hand I'll be like "Copernicus would have played it another way - I wonder which is better". It really helps your game.

^^^ I completely agree, as that's what's happening with me, but it just seems silly to assume that "everyone" will pick up on the obvious. Trust me, I can be somewhat clueless, so it helps when ALL the options are check-listed and, as in the call option, summarily dismissed. Not to mention an option begs the question: What if...Which is what I was getting at.

FYP.

I never intended to sound insulting Mercury. In the post that I responded to, you sounded as if you yourself also believed that calling was the worst option. And seeing as no one even appeared to truly consider calling, I assumed it was because we had all agreed it was the worst option.

No hard feelings hopefully, Mercury.

Course not, Swifty, none taken, just wanted to clarify :-)

Thanks for all the great feedback...

Reading and posting hands on this forum has definitely contributed a lot to my improvement as a player...

Now if I could only get out of this card deadnessssssss

In a way ahead or way behind situation you keep the pot small or get out...pushing is the worst option because you only get called by better hands so you are laying huge odds to let him make what for him will be an easier decision than you have.

I am unclear, are you advocating a fold here as our number one option? Also, I fail to see how calling here is a better line than pushing.

If you push you are either in a coinflip or are a 4-1 dog. If you just call and push on the flop, you may have some fold equity against overcards that missed and that might have even continuation bet. If you are going to go all the way with this hand, calling preflop gives villain the chance to fold on the flop or get his money in bad.

No, I wouldnt fold, call and see how things develop.

Therrinn's stop and go is better than pushing pre-flop, though theres a lot of play left in the tourney, so I dont think im committed to seeing this one all the way to the river yet.

I don't get it, we're acting 2nd after the flop, our opponent is probably going to cb and be commited to our all-in no matter what the flop is...

If youre talking about therrinn's stop and go, villain may or may not cb, and even if he does he isnt pot committed. As I said, I dont like a stop and go much here, and one of the main reasons is being second to act, as you point out.

I dont understand why you are so committed to pushing with TT and a stack that isnt desperate. You have position, If overcard(s) flop you can get out of the hand with a playable stack.

My thinking here was that at least 1 overcard is going to flop most of the time, and that if our opponent is the type of guy who's going to continuation bet AQ on a flop like K 9 5 and we're going to fold to that, then it would have been better to push preflop to avoid the situation where an overcard flops, he doesn't have that overcard but he pushes us out of the pot anyways. We lose almost 1/4 our stack when this happens.

If we have some kind of read that the opponent bets less when he misses the flop and continuation bets, or checks when he misses, I like just calling. But let's face it, most people have read a book or watched some TV and their continuation betting even when they miss, most of the time.

So let him cb when he misses. You dont have to win every hand that you are ahead in to win a tournament. No overcards flop 35% of the time when he has 2 overcards and you can hammer him. 8.5% of the time he cbs and you hit your set and you can hammer him.

The remaining 56.5% of the time there are overcards and you dont have a set, it doesnt actually hit him (and you are bluffed out) just about half the time. So if you commit to playing when no overcards hit or you hit your set, and folding the rest of the time, you are being bluffed out on less than 1/3 of all flop...if he cb's every time. There will also be some hands with one overcard where he doesnt cb, no matter what he's seen or read, and your "bluff out risk" drops below 25%. I can live with that.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the stop and go I described either, I just offered it as an alternative to the preflop jam that everyone seemed to be advocating.

I think both calling and folding are defensible options. The bottom line is that we have a marginal hand (Yes, TT is marginal) facing an EP raise from someone who has no motivation to be stealing, and we have little or no fold equity.

I thought the main reason we weren't jamming is because we're going to be beat or racing. If no overcards come, we're surely going all in on the flop, so we really don't gain anything by calling if he has a bigger pair than us, the money would still be going in. The big advantage I see is not letting the guy see 5 cards with AQ or AK before he makes the decision. I think I may begin to like fold more and more, even though I highly doubt I do that at the table. therrinn has a good point about him not needing to steal and being EP.

I'm not sure what you mean in the bolded part.

The reason I dont jam preflop in this situation is because TT is a mediocre holding that I dont mind folding to overcards on the flop, unless I hit the set.

Yes, if no overcards flop the plan is to push then.

I dont like folding pre-flop though. We are still ahead of all but JJ-AA and we dont have a huge stack that we can wait for perfect situations. We have a playable hand on over 40% of the flops, too much to abandon without looking at imo.

I'm just wondering, how do I figure out stuff like the chance of 1 or more overcards flopping against pocket 10s? I fiddled with PokerStove some but I don't think you can do it with PokerStove. I'm not so good at figuring these things out mathematically either, so I am wondering if there is some program I don't know about or if you could let me know the math how to do those types of calculations.