Every game I’ve played today, basically like this one. I get all the chips, then I give them to the small stack in exchange for absolutely nothing, after having them dead to rights, then getting coolered 8-12 times in a row.
LOL. He wasn’t going to call your river bet unless he could beat top pair or a two pairs of jack/ten,so what was the point? You could have saved yourself 350 chips.
A lot of times people with any pair will go all in in these games.
Same old. Nobody has any business calling this raise, and I’m the one who suffers.
As soon as I raise 2400 and get 2 calls, I’m expecting it to be bad news for top pair, nut kicker, but I didn’t expect to be beaten by the suck-out river. Why I didn’t expect that, I have no idea.
And yet again. 2 pair into monster set.
Less than 5 minutes later my next game ruined.
@puggywug - you have to understand the nature of the beast. People play horribly and sometimes it works out for them. I can’t even begin to tell you the level of lead-paint eating cretin-calls I’ve had made against me tonight. I’ve lost way more than my share against 2-8 outers in the past few days. Who cares? If I’m running below EV now, I’ll run above it some other time. So will you.
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This is how 4/5ths of my nights go, though. How can it be +EV to make good decisions and fold garbage hands when I lose 80% of the games I play? Hell half of the big pots I’ve won were when I said “I give up” and just started shoving junk until someone called and I could get off the table, but nooooo I have to make a stupid straight or trips. Just about every big pot I play for I end up getting crushed, rivered, and coolered.
Flop a fool house, turn quads, oops you folded pre. Well who plays 95s?
And then, you know, crap like this happens.
And you can’t even semi-bluff a dead cat without hitting flopped nut monster haaaands.
LOL - sometimes poker is a nasty game. Early in a SnG tonight I get pocket jacks and isolate with a 6x raise over 2 limps. I get 3 calls. I flop top set on a 49J flop with 2 hearts (I have none). I c-bet 66% pot to charge draws and get 1 call. Turn is a river Q and I get shoved on. Zero chances in hell I’m folding a set there. Guy had called with T8o and nailed his straight. River doesn’t help me and I’m out.
No idea how or why T8o is a call preflop. He’s looking at 6 clean outs on the flop and getting the wrong price by a large margin. Every decision I made in the hand was EV+ but I lost. That’s running below EV and its fine. It happens. Its not fun at the moment but there’s nothing we can do about the way the cards fall. Let me play JJ vs T8o all day long every day and I’ll clean up. Play the hand once and things happen. Sometimes we won’t like those things. Care about the decisions, not the results.
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And then you flop two pair, improve to a full house on the turn, an even better full house on the river, and know you’re beat by the bestest full house of them all, a literal solid packed mansion of jacks. Every hand you’re dealt you can be sure is counterfeit or coolered.
Final hand of the day - down to the final 3 and the SB min raises into my BB. I have AJo and this guy is opening any 2 cards. I rip it in for 18BB and he calls, with 7/3o. Of course he makes 2 pair. LOL. Bad result for me but any time I can get it in as a 2:1 favorite, I’m thrilled.
Stay calm and carry on puggy
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On a happy note, I just took 2nd place in End of the Road, winning 1.5M chips, which offsets my massive slide in Astral League all day Friday.
I played very well in this game, and had a couple of great hands, including a set 888s that allowed me to bust two players and take the lead, which I did not relinquish until final table.
I was mostly ahead at the final table, one player would occasionally take a slight lead over me at times, and then I’d get it back. We got heads up and then I just had a bad string of hands, and there was nowhere to hide, and I couldn’t get him. He ended up busting me flush over nut straight. It was a paired board and I figured I’d get beat by a full house or quad Aces anyway, and since I actually took chips out of this tournament I’m trying not to feel bad about it. Of course, I was 4-to-the-flush myself, and had the Th, so a river heart would have given me the pot.
Well, any 9,5, or 10 beats you on the river, so obviously you will not always win.
And it continues.
Poker today: 3-seat SNG, 3rd. 1 hand, KK, I opened to 4BB, got called, bet 120 on the flop, got called, went all in on the turn, got called, V rivers a flush with 75 hearts and no draw to speak of on the flop.
I obviously didn’t pay any attention to board texture, but by the time I was on the Turn I knew I was going to lose the hand, so I just threw the rest in so I could try again.
But it’s just amazing that a player will call a 4BB raise with 75s, and then chase the draw with middle pair. This is why you go all-in with garbage hands like K K, because so often the draws won’t fill, and then you clean up from the idiot who thought 75 was a good hand to call 1/4 of your stack with, and that middle pair, 3 hearts was a good hand to chase with.
Except, you know, not when it’s me, obviously. But in theory.
And just to show it’s not a fluke, here’s me throwing away another 100k tournament with the lead 5-up on KK. KK is dumpster trash, and if you don’t hit a set with it and the table doesn’t collapse when you pot at it on the flop, you should just fold to no pressure on the turn, because there’s no equity and if you check they’ll just all-in back at you anyway.
I’ve looked over a few hands from this thread and there are 2 common themes:
- People are playing garbage and hoping to hit hands
- You are not adjusting to the table or to the flop texture
In the hand with KK, on 5h 7c 8h multiway it is likely a pure check. When is the last time you isolated with 77,88, 8/7s, T9s, or 9xs or 6xs? I’m going to assume you don’t do that often or at all, though you probably should if you want an range that is harder to play against. Therefore you connected in no meaningful way with that flop. All you have are 4 combos of nut flush draws (if you are raising as low as ATs) and overcards/overpairs. You had a massive range advantage preflop but once that middle-card coordinated flop came, KK is really marginal. Its a situation where you should be looking to pot control and get to showdown more often than not.
Also, as a rule of thumb, size down your bets in very multiway pots and protect your range more by checking a lot more. You just aren’t going to have enough equity in your range to justify bombing it into 4 players except in rare circumstances (where you don’t want to bomb it anyway). When you are heads-up or 3-way you can bet frequently for a small size when you have the range advantage. In the same scenario you can bet frequently and large with the range and nut advantage. Same scenario - when you have the nut advantage only you can bet a large size but infrequently. Multiway all those advantages are reduced significantly so small sizings and checks are incorporated more.
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Thanks, those are good suggestions.
My thinking is if I raise big, and get calls, and the board comes in low, I’m in good shape IF my villain’s range to call that open is similar to mine. Eg, if they called with a high Ace, this board is terrible for them, and I have a pair, I’m probably good. I’m not expecting anyone’s range to connect with this flop who would actually call that raise. Obviously, I’m wrong about that about 80% of the time and this is why I lose so frequently.
To adjust, I could open larger preflop, but this would be bad for a number of reasons: 1) I’d just fold the table and claim the blinds, and extract minimal value out of premium hands; 2) I’d be telegraphing my premium hands, and not disguising them making both my premium hands and my playable value hands more vulnerable to exploit; 3) when I bet big it breeds AA and puts additional Aces on the board, guaranteed.
Of course, if they’re playing middle pairs, they may have hit a set with this board, and then I’m behind. That’s the risk you run, and I do routinely see players hold onto hands as low as 33 in the face of 10+BB raises, and nail their set a lot of the time. So, I expect that, and when that’s what happens, I can handle it. It’s when players call with no hand made and sustain several streets of “you should really fold if you don’t have something by now” sized bets that they call anyway, and then hit way more regularly than the odds calculator tells you to expect. That infuriates me.
I don’t expect that many straight draws to be here (which is my problem, evidently) and to fold when they are. Of course they don’t, why would they. I price these people to fold, forgetting that the chips have no value, they call, they hit anyway.
About the bet sizing, a lot of what I see in SNG play is that if you don’t make a “respectable” bet, then the better players will raise you, often enough that you’re pretty sure they’re doing it whether they have anything or not. So to defend against this, you have to bet bigger, and/or bet weaker with stronger hands so that you can induce raises and then call or re-raise them. But then, if you make a too-big bet, people will just call you because they don’t believe you could have a hand that good. About 70% of the time (in my hands) they call and fill their ridiculous hand.
Clearly, I do need to re-think my bet sizing, and probably my situational betting some more. Mainly, I guess I just need to count on the showdown value of my hands prevailing more, not bluff so much, just let go of hands when I raise, get called, and miss, more of the time, not try to finish hands on the flop/turn by bluffing or semi-bluffing them, and when I’m not bluffing them, allow them to run out so that I can extract more value on more streets.
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This is why strengthening your checking range is so important. The last thing you want to have happen is to be blown off your equity by being raised when you have a decent hand, like KK or AhJh in this case. Its a disaster when you have to fold hands like that so just x/c to reasonable action more often. Even still, with a lot of aggression on a coordinated flop like this one (say you x and v1 bets and v2 jams), fold your KK and move on.
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I’ve definitely started incorporating mid-pairs and mid-connectors into my open range, particularly after I’ve established my table presence by winning hands w/o showdown and showing things like AK or QQ. It gives me more options at the flop, depending on the texture.
If I come in with T9s, and the flop is K85, my c-bet might be construed as top pair based on my apparent range. In reality, I’m drawing to a straight or, if I’m lucky, a flush or straight flush. Even if I don’t get the draw, I can still try to bluff an A or K on the flop.
I’ve noticed my wins w/o showdowns have started to increase considerably this way. It’s probably one of the more important things I’ve done to improve recently.
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