Hands from my Deep Run

Replay Poker Hand Review
1

I promise that I’m not going to do this with every tournament that I’m in but this was by far the toughest competition that I’ve faced on Replay so far so I had to play totally differently than I’m used to. I knew that going in.

Three factors got me to the cash. First, I had great cards. I had a run of great cards early to build a stack. Then also in the late going when I was in shove/fold mode I got lots of jammable hands, considerably more than one could normally expect. Second, there were no antes, which allowed me to wait for prime pockets between wins. I was well aware of no antes before we started. Third, I played pretty well. Certainly not perfect by any means, but I was prepared, focused and disciplined and paid attention to the stacks.

Of course I had a couple of runouts that REALLY went my way - like call the cops kinda stuff.

To the hands.

Hand 1

QJs in the big. 1 Villain 2x opens (standard raise given the stacks), folds around to me. I flat for heads-up. 6A3 rainbow, I don’t like the A but we’ll see how it goes. I check. Villain bets 2x min for almost half-pot. I’m not giving up yet and call. Turn is 9 for 2 hearts. Feels bricky to me. Villain min bets. I call. River bricks a non-heart 4. Since he opened, he doesn’t have 75 or 52. He either has an A or he’s been bluffing. I jam and he folds.

Was I being too risky with the A on the board? I think a big factor helping me was that I was very inactive up to this point, largely due to weak hole cards so when I shoved this I was probably taken more seriously. In retro, I don’t have him on 3x or 6x here. Maybe he had pocket 88 or maybe just air with KT or QT or something?

Hand 2

99 on the button. 1 limper from the +1. I open 3x and the blinds fold. Villain calls heads-up. Flop 3Q6 rainbow. Villain checks and I check back. Turn is 5 for 2 hearts. Not afraid of 74 or 42 here and he shouldn’t be either since I opened 3x. He checks, I min bet for a feeler. He calls. Non-heart K on the river. He checks and my 99 has enough showdown value to just check this and prevent a check-raise with KK or AK. My 99 beats his 77.

He just limped in too wide from early.

Hand 3

Hooks on the small. UtG and button limp. I open 2x due to having everyone way outstacked here. BB folds and I get 2 calls. Flop is 73T 2 spades. I have the overpair, backdoor straight and one of my Js is spades. We check around 2 streets with a (non-spade) K on the turn. River is a rather bricky 8 but it does bring in J9 which I did not see at the time (bad error for me), although I block it hard. I min bet and get jammed by UtG. Button folds. I call because I cover her something like 4x over and she shows me KQo which I sorta expected as it’s well within UtG range. Her original limp was only due to her stack size, otherwise she would have opened strong.

Two questions. First, Should I have sized up pre or was it a good idea to try to bring value with JJ here? Second, should I have bothered with that river bet? That not withstanding, I do think the call is good as much as I hate paying off small stacks.

Hand 4

I have QTo in the CO. Action folds around and I open 2.5x. BB calls, heads-up. Flop is 848. Taking the advice from the other thread saying that paired flops are a strong bluff, I jam it (I have him ouststacked about 4x). Also bear in mind that this is the same Villain who limped early with 77 not long previously. He calls with an 8 and I’m screwed even before he turns quads.

I’m not questioning the advice and I know that this is effectively a bad beat, but is there anything here that says it’s a bad time to try this?

Hand 5

UtG 5-handed and I jam TT. Everyone folds.

Was this too risky?

Hand 6

The other side of the coin. QJo in the small. I get jammed by the button and lay it right down. I think this was a good fold. I had him covered but not by a ton. QJ not quite. At the very least I want a K here.

Thoughts?

Hand 7

JJ on the button (I was on a run of such great cards!) 5-handed folds to me. I flat because of the stacks and that I’m only up against the blinds. BB calls. I flop a J and check. Villain checks back. Turn is a 4. I overbet just in case she has a 7 or a 3 but I don’t want to jam and felt, so I use about half of my stack (leaving something decent behind). Villain lays down.

Do you like my bet size here? Obviously it worked but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was a good play. I second guessed myself at the time but looking back maybe it was good after all. I’m really not sure. If she would have jammed overtop I would have folded.

Hand 8

KJs on the small. Chip leader jams from the button. I call. KQo has me dominated. He turns a pair of queens and I river a straight with a 9.

This is the hand that got me back into the game and I reached deep into the luck sack for it.

Hand 9

99 UtG and I just shove. Chip leader calls with T8o and we whiff it down. I take it.

This one saved my butt too. I probably would not have played it in a full ring. Too many potential callers.

Hand 10

There’s a whole lot of shove/fold from here on out. I won a lot of them (I guess all since I survived) and I’m not going to show them all, the analysis is the same. This time it’s QJo and I get called by 99. I flop a J and take it.

Lucky lucky me.

Hand 11

T8o on the big and I flat for a 3-way. Flop is J2K 2-spades so I have a backdoor straight and backdoor flush with my 8s. We check around. Turn is 9 making me open-ended. I get jammed by BT and chip leader in small mucks. I’m tempted to call, and tank hard over it. By this point I have gone way farther than I could have dreamed but now I’m determined to cash as high as possible. I’m not felting here. I fold.

Disregarding my pure survival decision, do I have the equity to call this? I guess I have 8 outs.

Hand 12

I flat call with AQ and flop 89J with 2 diamonds. I’m in position heads-up. Villain checks. I go all-in. He calls with T7, a made straight. I need KT. KJ is close but not enough. I cash 5th.

I wasn’t thinking of him having a straight (yes I knew the board was straightable and flushable). I just had 2 overcards (including an A) in shove/fold time. I guess I should have just gone all-in pre but I thought that I could actually play a hand here with something rather primo.

44k back from 20k entry. (disco dances) : D

3 Likes
2

Congrats and welcome to the league! :smiley:

Hand 1
You’re gonna have to start explaining some of these continues. Just because they don’t always have it doesn’t mean we get to call with anything.

Why is QJs calling any bet at all on A63 w/1 spade? We have a backdoor flush draw, and that’s it. This is one of the worst flops for our hand, and we have one of the weakest hands we can have on this flop. We have Ax, Kx, 66, 33, and medium pairs like 77-99 in range. Just check-fold QJs.

If you have reason to suspect villain is cbetting way too often, you can check-raise I guess. But calling seems pretty bad. And you also called a bet on the turn! What are we chasing, a Q or J? We’re probably more likely to LOSE the hand if those cards come (looks like Villain had something like KQ/KJ to me).

I still don’t understand some of these hands where you seem to act like you’ve been holding a mid-pocket the whole time, calling bets across multiple streets, but actually you just have unpaired face cards that won’t even win a high-card showdown. If you think villains are weak and you can just take it away on the river with a bluff, fine—but there are lots of better combos to do that with.

Maybe I’m wrong and this is a badass GTO bluff for some reason, but it feels pretty out of line to me for QJs to even get to the river on this runout.

I do like that you leveraged your tight image against a suspiciously weak line from Villain (the turn sizing screams “please fold, I have nothing but don’t want to give up”).

1 Like
3

Lmk if it’s discouraging that I’m just starting with the ones where I see a mistake :wink: I’ll shout out some good ones too in a minute =-P

Hand 3
I think this is one of your worst ones yet tbh :confused:

Gotta watch STACK SIZE when blinds are big and stacks are generally shallow!

Your opponents in this hand begin the action with about 5bb each. On 5bb JJ is an eyes-closed, 100% frequency shove. There’s nothing else to do. That’s the analysis; you’re too short effective to do anything else. Shove pre or mistake.

As played, cool, we got two callers and somehow spiked an overpair with JJ. SHOVE. THE. FLOP. How is this ever a check? Do you WANT someone to hit an overcard for free? Baby Jesus is crying! You made Baby Jesus Cry!! :joy:

No reason to start betting on the river; just check-call or check-fold. Once you bet and get raised all in, it’s a pretty trivial fold. Anything you beat is likely to just call and try to get to showdown without putting their whole stack at risk. I guess we’re beating some airballs but that’s pretty frisky by Villain; far more likely we are just up against a K.

Overall, this hand is kind of textbook bad tournament poker:
-raise enough preflop to keep villains in with pretty much anything, but get no actual range-defining effects from the raise
-check when ahead
-call when behind

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4

Hand 4
This is not as bad as it looks. You’re extremely unlucky to run into an 8, which should hardly be represented at all in Villain’s range. Villain had 5bb when the hand started and chose to call a 2.5x open from CO rather than playing shove/fold. This is not a good play from Villain with pretty much any 2 cards.

That said, Villain’s choosing to continue with a flat instead of a shove should TERRIFY you. Villain is repping a very strong hand, which is the only remotely logical holding that plays this way with their tournament life on the line. Giving up any preflop fold equity and taking a flop, out of position, with over half your stack already in the middle should probably only be AA/KK.

Regardless of this specific configuration though, I want to clarify—paired boards generally favor the preflop aggressor which justifies a SMALL cbet (1/4-1/2 pot at most). We should not just be default shoving paired boards vs. a check in-flow as the PFR.

5

No no, lemme have it. Give it to me straight, doc. I can definitely take it.

1 Like
6

Hand 5

10/10, this is textbook. Well played!

On 6bb, we will be dead or near-dead after another orbit if we don’t win a pot. We are in shove/fold mode with 100% of our range. Five-handed, TT is a pure shove. 99, 88, 77 as well I imagine. Not sure we can fold any pair until probably 44 or somewhere around there, and even then it might still be a pure jam. We just don’t have a big enough stack to make it more likely that we’ll pick up a higher EV spot before blinding out or dwindling to a smaller stack that wins fewer chips when it does get called and hold up.

Probably a hand as weak as QTo is worth a jam here at some frequency. It’s getting close to desperate times for sure, and we only have to get through 4 players.

7

Hand 6

10/10, easy fold. You’re not even last to act, and Excaliburns covers you both!

8

Hand 7

Let’s talk winning tournament mindset.

When we look down at a premium, it’s tempting to start thinking “how can I sucker them in?” This is not the most profitable approach. Instead we want to be thinking, “how can I get the most value?”

We’d love to just jam right now with JJ, and in fact, this is probably the best option. We only have about 8bb, and 3 stacks are much bigger, so there’s no need to be subtle. The optimal strategy here is to just shove any hand you want to play preflop until you double up; once you’re on 15bb+ you can consider just opening for 2-3x (depending on your frequency - 2x for more frequent opens, 3x for a tighter opening range) instead of jamming all of your range.

Even up to the highest buy-ins, many Replay MTT regs still refuse to play shove/fold at any stack depth. This gives us a HUGE advantage at the ICM stages of the tournament if we are using the shove/fold strategy and others are not.

Shove/fold is the best option below 10bb because:
-winning the blinds is a significant increase relative to our stack
-we still have enough chips to get meaningful fold equity from a shove (but soon we will not)
-we avoid facing difficult spots on tricky runouts; we will never lose EV by incorrectly folding on a scary flop if we’re just all-in pre
-when we get called and win, we get a full double, significantly increasing our chances to win the tournament (which should always be the goal)
-any other strategy struggles to net enough chipEV to make up for the impending Death By Blinds

The last reason is really the clincher. That’s why solver has us playing shove/fold until we get well above 10bb.

–

As played - if you want to slowplay top set, you have to accept that there will be a runout and not start seeing monsters under the bed. Bet size should be small to get all sorts of combos to call; there are many pair and pair+straight draw hands available that are in terrible shape against top set, but will be happy to pay 1-2bb. Why size up and make life easy for that part of Villain’s range?

As a general rule, if you bet for value and think “if they come over the top, I am going to snap fold,” then something went wrong—either you shouldn’t have bet in the first place, or you bet too big, or you’re overestimating the strength represented by Villain’s raise.

Here, we are happy to call a jam by Villain. We’re at the absolute top of our range (how often are YOU going to show up here with 78 or 73?) and there is pretty much only one hand that beats us. This is probably never a fold, unless we’re like 3,000bb deep.

9

Hand 11
Might not even want to call the minbet on the turn. Fold is def the right play here. Zick is repping a very strong hand by shoving over 2 opponents, one of whom covers him.

Sometimes we’ll be drawing dead, and the rest of the time, at most 15-20% equity for our tournament life. Good fold.

Hand 12
You have 2bb, there is no play but shove pre. Can’t fold post regardless so the flop action/board texture doesn’t matter.

If you had 8bb the play would still be 100% shove pre. Same for 6bb, or 12bb.
If you wake up with any kind of premium for your position, at less than 15bb, do not think. Do not try to have a strategy. JUST SHOVE.

You will do far better with this approach than any other fancy play, I promise you :smiley:

The only exception is 9-handed from UTG or UTG+1, then you can mix in some folds. For example depending on stacks and payout structure, at a final table from UTG off 13bb stack you might sometimes fold and sometimes shove AQo or TT. But I’m mostly shoving either of those hands off a stack that short, certainly off 8bb, regardless of the payout situation.

Somewhere around 15-20bb you can start just opening those hands 2-2.5x, but you probably still have to call most of the time if someone goes over the top preflop.

10

Hand #1

This spot is just gross. Your hand is too good to fold pre, too good to bluff jam, not good enough to value jam. I guess you could consider clicking it back, especially if you’re going to float that wide on the flop, but really call is you only option.
100bb deep, with a bdfd, bdsd and 2 overs to the middle card, you’d be likely be overfolding if you let this go facing 1/3 pot. You’re facing nearly 1/2 pot though, and you have less than 15bb back. It sucks, but you’ve just got to let this go.
On the turn, you have close to zero equity, so even though the bet is tiny, if you call it has to be with the intention of jamming the river. The brick 4 is one of the best cards you could have hoped for, so the jam here is mandatory.

Hand #2

This is an all-in pre. The raise is ok, but jam is better.

Hand #3

This is an all-in pre. Jam here is basically mandatory.

Hand #4

This is an all-in pre. The big blind is now down to 4bb and is going to have to call extremely wide.

Hand #5

This is an all-in pre. Jam here is mandatory - well done.

Hand #6

Easy fold - well done

Hand #7

This is an all-in pre. Jam here is mandatory.
Note that if you’ve been jamming the earlier hands like you’re supposed to, this isn’t going to look insanely strong, and you’ll get called by many hands far worse than JJ.

I think you get the picture from here.

Congrats on making the money on your first time in this field!

11

Yup, he’s a villain, I know this guy and many players complain about his 10-7 lucky cards.

1 Like
12

that mrzick guy wouldn’t know poker if it bit him in the—wait, am I saying this stuff out loud?

1 Like
13

Just curious-how did you come up with your name, i like it:)

14

Hand #1

Preflop is OK. Postflop, he has a lot of range advantage, because you shove your best aces like AA, AK, AQ, AJ, maybe AT and all the suited. Now i open Equilab to check the equity, i know you cant do mathematic in game but to know etc. Normally he cbet range because of range advantage. . He bet 800, the pot is 1800 so you need to have enough good hand 30% of the time, but you have only 29% equity, so you need to fold flop normally.

I would give my opinion for the other hand later

15

Anyone want to fill him in?

16

@napkin_holder well-played tourney, it was played in my Nordic Warriors private league, I was there, I watched you as I do to all newcomers, to see how they fare against the Warriors, you did great, when I said to you in the game chat “congratulations for making it this far” I meant it, I didn’t expect you to do well in the arena amidst some heavily armed warriors, but you did not disappoint.
Final table Warrior games can be tough, when you have one brutal exploitative player with a PHD, a silicon tech guy, and other meat eating types surrounding you, it is a true test. Also remember warriors are not playing for the payout chips, low entry 20k fee is just there for your ROI stats, warriors are about glory, a quarter long race to see who is best consistently. I hope you return to the arena, to show your abilities and advance your skillset.

17

NP-just curiously lost interest in it now:)