Highly unfortunate hand I had while taking a shot at the 250K/500K tables, where the river improved me to a full house and the other player to a straight flush. Quite a fun and interesting hand.
For what it’s worth I think 24s is usually a bit loose from the button but I think unranked probably did it because the third player was quite tight. He was also playing with all of his chips so he’d be more likely to get scared off easily.
That was very unfortunate, and I think by most standards, 4-2s is considered loose from any position, yes.
What a river!
Did you think about 3-betting A9o instead of calling from the SB with it? 3 handed, vs an opening range you identified as really wide I think a 3-bet is better than a flat. I wouldn’t think about this even 6-handed but with 3 players and someone opening probably 65% on the BTN, I’d prefer a raise rather than a call. The hand is probably over preflop or at the very most on the flop if you c-bet. Scooping a 4.5BB pot without seeing a flop is a great result here IMO.
Not that one though. EDIT: Yeah, my bad, it is a bit loose being 60 bb’s effective.
definitely still a 3! vs BTN 6 handed
ranky is probably opening more like 80%-85% of his BTN’s here.
One thousand percent agree. 3! all day here and win on the flop. He’s probably folding to 3!'s a lot being that they’re playing 60 bb’s deep.
vs BTN open, yes. I mean vs UTG open 6-handed (Lojack)
Certainly close. I think it would definitely be a reasonable strategy to only 3-Bet or fold in this situation. Potentially playing out of position against 2 players after calling would of course be a situation where I will vastly under realise my equity.
With that said, I think A9o is a particularly decent candidate for calling because by 3-Betting I will push him off hands which are worse than mine while he will continue with all the stronger hands. As well as this, if I do hit top pair rag kicker or middle pair on the flop then it will be quite difficult to realise my equity against his now stronger range. I also think that he is fairly likely to play back against my 3-Bet and either call or 4-Bet because he is likely to perceive me as a weaker player and want to see a flop. I would marginally rather play a more polarised range against his loose range and 3-Bet hands like 65s or 54s as bluffs where I will actually fold him off better hands.
I don’t think there’s much in it though. Obviously A9o is miles ahead of his range so either strategy will undoubtably be profitable.
Nice analysis. Thanks. I appreciate when people take the time to discuss their thoughts. Just 2 more cents from me - I didn’t notice until @dayman mentioned it but if you were 60BB effective, I’d like a 3-bet even more. Get that SPR down to something manageable. I wouldn’t want to play too many pots with someone like @unranked out of position with a capped range and a high SPR. Its going to be a miserable time of it for most people who take that approach. I’ve watched him play and he has a definite postflop edge over most players here. If I had to sit with him, I’d want to take away as much of his edge as possible. I’d either want position or an uncapped range OOP with a low SPR. I would have no other way to make it even a decent fight.
I have to say that I admire you for taking him on. Not many live to tell the tale 
^^THIS^^ and I mean all of it.
rookie question. i’m surprised to see someone at this level, betting on a runner runner hand, with an unhelpful pair on the board. the pot odds (as i understand them) didn’t look that great. was it a fold equality thing. i expect this sort of thing from the lower levels i play, but this leaves me wondering, how did unranked get all those chips?
I’ll take a shot at it @waidus.
The thing is this, they are playing short handed. 3 handed the blinds come around too fast to be folding and waiting to make hands. You don’t strong hands enough to do that. You only flop a pair a little over 1/3 of the flops and 1/3 of those will be bottom pair.
So, if you don’t have time to wait for good hands when you’re paying 750K in blinds every 3 hands, how do you deal with that? Quite simply you’re going to have to manufacture hands and find ways to win pots to stay ahead of the game. This dynamic is going to place a ton of emphasis on position. I believe in a FR 9 handed game position is the best weapon you can take to battle, this is only magnified as you get shorter handed.
Aggression is the only way to win. You can simply not wait and play fit or fold poker while your opponents steel all your blinds. You would be telegraphing your hand strength and make life very easy on your opponents. Remember your opponents are paying the same blinds you are.
Unranked is probably and should be opening 100% of his buttons. That position is too important and powerful to give up. Even more so when he is a clear favorite vs these players. No offense to you op.
So the HH goes…
Pre flop. Ranky opens 4h2h on the BTN to 1.5M this is completely standard here. MattyBall calls 1M and Ptali folds. Matty should be 3! here vs Ranky opening range, A9 is a very strong hand and Ranky is going to have to fold a bunch. Not sure what Ptali is folding but it seems like a mistake getting 7:1 on a call and closing action but meh.
On the flop… (3.5M pot) 9d3h9s I like Matty’s decision to x this flop allowing ranky to continue with his aggression. This is a good flop for ranky to close to 100% range bet and there aren’t any flush draws to worry about. This flop is going to miss Matty most of the time and if he’s folding too much i.e. A high or any connectivity to this board then ranky c-bet is auto profiting. That being said this is one of the better flops for ranky to continue on having back door straight and flush draws means there are a lot of turn cards that can come out that give him barrelling opportunities, any heart, any A, 5, 4, 2 and even some other broadways like K’s and Q’s are good cards to rep. Ranky down bets to 1M and Matty calls. The 1M down bet gives ranky a great price on his bluffs and allows him to bluff a lot more of his range. Matty needs to be calling 78% of the time to keep ranky from auto profit so if he folds more than 22% then ranky auto profits.
On the turn… (5.5M pot) 9d3h9s 5h I like Matty’s x again, let ranky continue with his bluffs. This is not only a good card for ranky to continue with, it is the nut card. He turns open ended str8 flush draw. Tons of equity with this card and a must bet. He goes with 2M and now is a good time for Matty to spring the trap. He x/r to 6.8M and ranky calls. I prefer a slightly bigger raise to set up PSB on the river but this is fine, we’ll just have a small ob.Now ranky has two str8 flush outs and can probably expect most of his str8 and flush outs to be good most of the time. We’ll give him 80% of those as sometimes he will be up against a full house or a bigger flush draw. 9 hearts, 3 non heart A’s and 3 non heart 6’s = 15 outs. 15*.8=12. 12 outs with 1 card to come is about 24% equity with 4h2h. Okay, so we have 24% equity as ranky, lets see about pot odds. 5.5M he bets 2M and gets x/r to 6.8M. He needs to call 4.8M to win 5.5+2+6.8= 14.3M… 4.3/(14.3+4.8)= 22.5% pot odds. We see he needs 24% so this would be a -EV call by ranky, except Matty has 22.5M behind left in his stack. ranky should have a reasonable expectation of getting at least some if not all of that if he makes his hand. These are called implied odds. We’ll say Matty pays off 22.5 just 50% of the time and folds the rest. 22.5*.5= 11.25M. Now lets calculate that into his pot odds. 4.3/(14.3+4.3+11.25)= 14%. We need 14% equity in this pot to have a profitable call here and we know we have 24% so more than enough to make the call.
On the river… plays it self, Matty can’t get away. I do like his shove though so as not to allow ranky to check back his straights and smaller flushes
I did not proof read this… tl;dr lol. If I made any errors I’m sure @love2eattacos or @1Warlock can correct me. I’m coming off 18 hour day in the hot ass sun so I wouldn’t bet surprised. Any questions @waidus just ask.
Cheers
wow. i’m sitting here looking at the night sky, then dayman brings out the telescope. like most explanatory posts, i’ll end up reading this several times, but i was able to see what you’re saying, first time through. thanks for bringing me in. i’m already rethinking some of my ‘end table’ strategies, and ramping up my efforts to count outs faster.