I don’t understand how you think @puggywug has a “great” chance of being behind here. He blocks all but five sets (AsAc, JsJh, JcJh, JsJc, and 6s6c), and all but six combinations of AJ (2 black aces * 3 non-diamond jacks). That’s a mere eleven combinations. As for flush draws… well, you’re a 2-to-1 favorite against them if they don’t have a broadway draw, and a 59-41 favorite if they do. That’s a pretty hefty advantage.
Meanwhile, if I were in V’s shoes UTG with a heavy stack advantage and relatively timid opponents, I’m probably min-raise opening about 40%-50% of my hands. I’ll c-bet half-pot on this board with all of my aces, most if not all of my jacks, all flush draws (including backdoor), and many of my pocket pairs. If I’m feeling frisky, I’ll add in my gutshot broadways too. That’s probably somewhere on the order of 250 combinations, though feel free to correct my math if you count differently.
@puggywug was way ahead of most of V’s range on the flop. You can’t afford to play scared of the small handful of monsters in the closet when you’re dominating him, or fear getting the chips in the middle when you’re a huge favorite to win the hand. If you really can’t handle losing 1/3 of the pots where you’re a 2:1 favorite, poker shouldn’t be your hobby.
Finally, with these SnGs, you shouldn’t be too timid around the bubble. Payout structures are relatively flat, with about 4.3 buy-ins for the top prize, 2.6 buy-ins for second, and 1.7 buy-ins for third. Particularly if you’re going to be playing a lot of these - and Puggy does! - there isn’t a huge gap between any two neighboring leaderboard spots in any given tournament once 5/9 players have been knocked out already.
Meh. I win games. I still say that if you look at the situation as a one-off, sure you could probably be fairly safe shoving preflop here. If you do it several times, each time becomes more likely that you will run into a monster, or a desperate small stack who will call, and then it’s often a coin flip that you eliminate them or they cripple you. I’m not afraid to shove – it’s a part of my game. But I am cautious about it, more than I am reckless, and it seems to suit my playing style well. Admittedly for this hand I might have survived by shoving pre or on the flop, rather than too late as I did.
Yeah, he’s the opposite of the blinky/twitchy hall-monitor type He’s a force on the high-roller circuit.
Great channel but I think their piece on the cheating accusation was weak. They used some pretty basic hands as “proof” he is playing it straight. Meh. I have no idea if he is cheating or not. Sadly, it is pretty well established that cheating is rampant in online poker today. Because there is so much money involved, people are finding ways to use software while playing that is supposed to be prohibited. No one has figured out a way to counter this behavior yet.
IMO, online poker will need to have another revolution in order to remain healthy in the long term. I’m a huge fan of banning HUD’s and having anonymous tables, at a minimum. How to deal with the issue of cheating beyond that is something the entire community needs to address. Players need to be confident that they are putting their own talents in competition with other humans, not with bots or solvers.
Puggy,
My apologies, yet again I saw someone say “tourny” and thought MTT… this was a SnG ??? ohh geeze… It matters if that chipleader likes to play for flushes. Everything that happened untill it was 4way matters… ( that readers don’t know about )
As just 1 hand with no other info… I fold your hand preflop 98% of the time, the other 2% I shove All-In…
Sassy
He’s a force on the high-roller circuit.