MekonKing,
I drilled deeper into this. I went back to where you were rebalanced onto this table. Prior to this hand, of the last 10 hands, only 2 someone raised preflop. Its no wonder our hand in question was played so passively. The M.O. of the table seem’d to be, limp the flop and if you miss, then fold. It also means that there was some level of restlessness at the table.
Now that I have some context, lets try this again… shall we :
As usuall the table was fine with 4 ppl limp’n the flop. When SB check’d the flop, BB prolly figured if noone had a 2, any bet here might take the pot down now. When all 3 ppl flatcall’d 400, that shudda been huge red flag. It was for BB, when +1 shoved the turn he folded.
The chipleader SB checks the turn when the Q hits. WHY ? … +1 needs to bet here or fold, especially when BB didn’t c-bet the turn. They cannot allow another overcard to hit the board, and are hoping noone has a 2 or a Q. When Mekon calls +1’s shove, SB must know they are behind and fold, they didn’t. To me this is a case of Cant-fold-itis. SB is have’n a hard time laying down thier hand, we’ve all been there, you’re too married to your hand to fold like you should.
SB was obviously kinda worried because they only thro out a 850 bet on the river. So when Mekon raises, no way should they be calling another 3k… but they do. Its emotional for them to have a hard time folding thier hand.
Since I did go back hands, it was the table’s passivity that caused this travisty. Everyone was trying to be the cat not the mouse. Most hands were bet/raise & take it, it was unusual to have ppl betting and noone folding. Its ok for the SB to hang with the shortstack, but not with MekonKing… deff not bet out on the river.
My 1st post in this thread was sooooooo right.
This doesn’t happen often and certainly not on this table. When players are playing too tight collectively, its only a matter of time until ppl become restless and squeezed by the blinds enuff that mistakes start to occur… as they did in this hand.
Its also no wonder mainly Ring players will say this hand was horribly played. I’d LMAO if this was a ring table. It was less badly played as a hand in a MTT.
Sassy
It’s very common in tournament play for things to get very passive, as the blinds increase, and especially around bubble time. It’s still better to open with good hand, but sometimes limping is safer. If opening makes you committed and you can bust outside of the money, limping may be a way to see a flop for a price you can still dump the hand if the board texture is a disaster for you, but play on if you hit. I think that if you want to win the tournament, though, more aggression will usually serve you better, but that may mean finishing out of the chips more than if you are more cautious.
When there is postflop play among equally skilled opponents, position will dictate how much equity you will realize from your hand. For example, A LJ open vs a BB call with effective stacks over 75BB. If LJ opens ATo and is called by the BB, LJ will over-realize his equity (125%+) vs BB’s entire range. If we reverse the situation and have BB flat calling with ATo, he will only realize 57% of his equity vs LJ’s entire range. Same hand, different positions.
We can repeat this over and over with any 2 hands and see the same pattern. I used ATo because people tend to play that hand and think its very powerful. In position as the preflop aggressor, yes it can be. OOP as the defender, no it isn’t.
Another way position matters is when facing static vs dynamic boards. On a static board like AA7 rainbow, OOP will realize more of his equity than on a dynamic board such as 987 2-tone. It is far harder to realize your equity from OOP when relative hand strengths will change dramatically on future streets than it is from IP.
I can see where you would find an exploit against this player if he is opening all dry aces and calling 3-bets/shoves with them. If these are the types of things you are noticing, then I can see where the available exploits are large enough for you to crush the player pool by simply pushing equity.
Concerning the final call by ttier1, I think the pot odds on the river at the end there were very attractive, he had a very good hand, and you just don’t have that much time in a tournament to always wait for sure things. I suspect he also felt pot committed, and I have to consider the final call reasonable, unless he had strong reason to believe you’d never bluff in that situation. Obviously, with your tournament life at stake with the bet, especially given the good pot odds, the bet seems strongly to represent value, but I still think the call is hard to fault.
Tournaments in my mind mostly demand adoption of a short stack strategy, except at the beginnings of longer format events. Especially in that context, the failure of TT and AQ to raise preflop seems bad. In a deep stack cash game… fine, make some weird plays now and then. But here, with antes thrown in, we’re pretty much in classic short stack territory, and limping just doesn’t work in these spots in short stack play, for either of these hands, both because of positional considerations, and the nature of how both play (they play better heads up than multi-way). You might say TT is a great hand multi way… if stacks are deep, you can make that argument, but not here.
With all due respect, I have to disagree with your analysis. It seems to be based on the concept of if you make several bad decisions then 1 more can’t be all that wrong. On the river (assuming it got that far), AQ is not a very good hand, regardless of price. The call is a pure punt. I’m working from memory because I can’t bear to watch the actual hand again. If I remember correctly, there was a MP limp, the BTN limped behind and SB completed so 4 ways to the flop. Flop is 226, SB checks, BB leads, MP shoves and BTN calls. At that point SB with AQs is done with the hand, period. There is no turn or river decision because he never sees them.
Lets break it down by position on the flop, where people’s actions could make some sense. AQ’s equity vs those hands will be given in parentheses. Remember, he is making decisions against the combined ranges of the other 3 players. As the numbers below will show, he should have almost zero equity vs the combined ranges that produced a lead, shove and call. Its a trivial fold on the flop facing those actions.
BB - The BB has 100% of possible combos, which yields a massive amount of 2x and 6x combos that AQ is in terrible shape against. BB has 126 TP (22%), 83 trips (0.7%), 1 quad (0.0%) and 9 FH (0.6%).
MP - if he’s limping hands as strong as TT, I think its safe to say he has 66-99 as well. He can also have A6s, A2s, 6/5s, 7/6s at some frequency. I’m guessing on this but I think its at least reasonable. That yields 8 TP which AQ has 20% equity against, 24 overpairs (24%), 1 trip (0.5%) and 3 FH (0.7%). The raise over BB’s lead is saying that he has better than TP.
BTN - Mekon shows up with Q2o so we can range him as also having A2 and K2 combos. Lets toss in J2 as well. We can also throw in a bunch of 6x combos, since they would be ranked as superior to Q2o. BTN would have 63 TP (20%) and 28 trips (0.6%), along with some overpairs (24%). After a lead and a shove, Mekon shouldn’t ever have anything less than trips to call with.
When the action goes x, BB lead, MP jam and BTN c, there is no reason on earth for AQ to continue any farther. He is virtually dead to the combined ranges that continued in this manner. Therefore, if we can allow for the limp preflop, that is as far as the hand should have progressed, given the actions of the other players. Anything past the flop is compounding one error on top of another. He was never priced in to see another card vs his equity. If he somehow got to the river, the concept of pot commitment multiway doesn’t work when there are no cards left to see. There are zero natural bluffs on this board, especially multiway with 1 player already all-in.
As to whether TT plays well multiway in deep stacked cash games (150BB+) - not really, if you are playing competent opponents. You just aren’t going to get paid off big unless you get in a set over set situation and there are spots where you will be on the receiving end of that as well. AQs plays better multiway deep stacked (AQo better HU). Hands that make the effective nuts are always better multiway and hands that struggle to improve past 1-pair are best HU.
Totally agree with your comments on short-stacked play. You don’t expect to see these hands limped in on short stacks with antes in play. Undervaluing and under representing hands preflop seems to be a thing here. Then people overvalue these same hands postflop. Its just terrible poker.
Nice analysis. I’d note that I’m only arguing about his final call, and if he has the odds at that point that he needs to continue. I’m in full agreement that his plays on prior streets seem like absurdly bad investments (well, perhaps the flop call, while massively sub-optimal, isn’t strictly speaking a bad investment).
On TT, I agree that in deeper stacked games in this position TT is still better played with a raise. I was mostly just intending to convey (and I don’t think what was written worked to convey that) that there do seem to be moderately competent players that seem to believe playing this like a small pair is viable with deeper stacks. I’ve even heard the same argument made with JJ. I’m not sure I’ve ever limped with TT (or JJ) in my life from middle position, at any stack depth, lol. There’s probably an exception somewhere… perhaps as a trap against someone wildly aggro where you can count on a raise 90% of the time or more, and you are planning on a 3bet. But it is interesting what a fine line there is here. I’d certainly consider limping behind in middle position with 77 or even 88.
I think your last comment is great. “Undervaluing and under representing hands preflop seems to be a thing here. Then people overvalue these same hands postflop.”
Thanks. The point is that he doesn’t have the odds to call anything postflop, especially on the river. If there was a single value hand Mekon could have that ttier is ahead of, then there’s a conversation to be had about possible bluffing combos. Each street builds on the last one. I struggle to come up with a situation where ttier is ahead of the bottom of Mekon’s continuing range on the flop, forget about his river value range. If the bottom of Mekon’s continue range was trips on the flop, then his value range is entirely FH’s on the river.
I’m not trying to be argumentative here, just running the numbers. While I give Mekon a hard time now and then, he is not incompetent. For that reason, I can’t give him any hands worse than trips on the flop. If we stretch it to include some 6xs with a backdoor draw and 77 (I think he raises 88+), those hands don’t get past the turn. IMO, he reaches the river with trips, at the very worst.
I honestly cannot come up with any ranges of hands that would justify ttier putting a single additional chip into the pot postflop. If I’m being extremely generous, I could give him 10% equity vs Mekons continue range on the flop and 5% on the turn. As there is no side pot yet, ttier has to have the proper odds vs all 3 ranges and he just doesn’t. At best, for every 100 chips he puts in, he has 40 chips of equity (on the flop, 4 ways). I’m happy to look at potential ranges you would assign that could justify his decision though. Good discussion and I always appreciate having them.
Everyone has made “entitlement calls” before. I think that is what this was. I don’t think he actually believed he was ever going to be good when he called.
I guess I love the way you are thinking about this, and think it is a wonderful model for others, but I think your sense of frequency distributions may work better with professional level players than with the sample we are looking at here. Given that sample, I think I’d have been inclined to make the same call at the end, if I found myself teleported to that seat to make the river decision, perhaps having watched as a spectator most prior action. I also would have expected to lose my money, but with the pot odds offered, that’s ok.
Deciding that no bluffs make sense is not the same as reaching 0% for the actual frequency. Myself, I’d think at least 10% of the bets from MekonKing are bluffs here. It may well be that he would never bluff there, but not being very familiar with his frequencies on different streets and when he likes to bluff, I’d default to assuming that there are some small number of bluffs in his range. I also often see people not seeming to understand how strong a hand they are representing with their bets. Mekon specifically seems too strong for that, but in terms of understanding what other bets on prior streets mean, I think ranges are often wider than we assume during armchair analysis.
But I think your approach to deciding on the merits of each decision is first rate, and it then boils down to differing opinions about what each player’s range really looks like at each point in time.
Thanks again. The different reads and range assumptions are why this game is so wonderfully complex. Different people can interpret the exact same data differently and therefore respond differently in-game. We aren’t robots and the person who makes the best assumptions about his opponents will come out on top. You and I will experience different parts of the game tree based on the assumptions we make at every decision point - there is no “correct” answer vs human opponents.
LOL - I just wish the preflop decisions would have made more sense. Open TT, fold around to AQs who 3-bets and there are no more decisions to be made. Maybe the players wanted us to have something to discuss?
i agree in general. cant believe this hand is still being discussed tho. The hand made no sense pre flop true. Why would we look for sense on flop, turn or river? I honestly couldn’t even try to guess what the players were thinking with 1010 or AQ on any street, especially based on pre flop except not much.
very small fields coupled with horrible structures
I know this is an old thread, but would you (or anyone) mind saying more about this? My poker experience is limited, but the MTTs here feel like a ratrace because everyone is trying to outrun the blinds. Coupled with players who call and raise anything, it’s just constant chaos.
That’s exactly what it is. Tournaments on Replay consistently get to the FT with average stacks being sub 20 bb’s and no room for skilled play, or very little anyway(there is some skill to playing 20 bb stacks.) It’s rather silly too considering how wild the earliest levels of Replay’s tournaments can get with the bust outs coming fast and furious.
The best tournaments on Replay are the red 15K buy ins that have 5K starting stacks, 10 minute levels and the blinds are like
10/20
15/30
20/40
30/60
50/100 ante 10
75/150 ante 15 and after first break or an hour of play
100/200 ante 20
these tournaments consistently get decent (for Replay) fields of 80-100+ and almost always go through second break.
Hey there’s quite a few good to very good players sharing in these forums… stick around and have fun in the strategy and hh (hand history) discussions. Don’t hesitate to ask questions if you have any.
