We’re 3 up, I’m doing OK with the #2 stack, but the chip leader is dominating everyone with more than 12000 chips over me. I am dealt AA, on the button no less, and raise it up. The big stack shoves, as they’ve been doing to intimidate the smaller stacks, and it’s been working, but it’s about to ruin their day. The small stack calls, to my surprise, and I of course call. Everyone’s all in.
We flip up. Chip leader has 33, Small stack has ATo. I have the two black Aces.
Flop gives 33 a set of 3s
The middle three cards give me a flush draw to the nut spades flush.
The river gives 33 a full house, 3s full of 9s, and knocks everyone off the table.
If not for that, I win the hand and we’re even up stacks for a nice HU battle. As it is, I finish 2nd.
I’m pretty used to the “any two suited, river flush trolls” by now – they’re easy for me to detect and avoid – but that 94o was just plain awful. This is the epitome of Bingo!™. I might understand some limp bingo with that garbage from the BTN, but not with 3 raisers in front. This is kind of play just so disrespectful to the game and other players who actually try to play a solid game. It’s really hard to watch.
Good grief, is it too much to ask the players here to have a little self-respect and try to improve?
How many better preflop hands do you think there are? I know people say they hate playing JJ but I’ll take it as many times as you care to deal it to me. You’d make a fortune if this was the only hand you were ever dealt. Don’t get all spazy with it and don’t play it passively either. Play it as part of your premium range, not as a medium pocket pair.
I get folds from everything except better hands, like QQ+ (most of the time) and I’m boned. No need to cold-shove with stacks this deep. As I said above, I bet to a size that allows me to fold if I see 5-bets and shoves after I act. Its a great heads-up hand in position, especially with a low SPR. It stinks in a multiway fiesta of silliness.
@puggywug - LOL, yes I was sure I wanted to do this. Its not an all the time play but in this spot, it was deliberate and based on what I think are valid assumptions. The 1st is that I know the initial raiser and all his min-raise is doing is claiming he has 2 somewhat interesting cards, but not a monster (other than sometimes AA). Its an old-school thing. He could have anything from 6/5s to 99 to Axs. Its a capped ~35% range. The 3-bettor should have a much stronger range and it is uncapped at this point. Most of the raising range is going to be strong aces, along with a bunch of suited Broadways, like KQs. He also has TT+. Against that entire range, I have a very strong hand. It isn’t one I want to play multiway with a capped range so I want to isolate the 3-bettor. The size I chose should have been big enough to dissuade garbage from entering the pot and leave the 3-bettor with the choice to flat or shove. Now, that initial raiser could 5-bet, which would mean AA and I can fold with a decent stack remaining. If the 3-bettor flats, then I’m great against his range and I’m in position. If he shoves, its a close call for me but I probably fold instead of being in at best a coin flip situation.
The string of calls was absurd. I have to assume it was a mixture of Ax, Broadways and some pocket pairs, none of which should have been in the hand but there it was. No one shoved so I capped everyone at QQ. Could someone be getting tricky with AA? Sure but the pot was already so bloated that I’d think he would just go for the shove. It would be coming on any flop anyway so why wait? Its a risk but that’s part of the game.
The flop was about as good as it gets for JJ without actually hitting a set. If you look at the size of the pot relative to the remaining stacks, any overpair is going to be all-in at some point. The goofy min-bet thing from IR was functionally a check. I know people like to think they can freeze the action with these bets but they should just be ignored for the most part. So, I put out a bet but didn’t shove. If I’m shoved on by more than I player, I may still fold but probably not. Shoved on by 1 player is just fine by me. If he has QQ, good for him but I want to see it. As it stood, I needed to be right less than 25% of the time to make the call after 9/4 guy shoved. It was 1300-something to win 5900. No chance I’m folding an overpair with those odds.
In another game, I 3-bet with QQ after an UTG open. The BB shoved 40+BB over and then was snap called by the initial raiser. I folded my 7.5BB investment without a 2nd thought, even though it was a stronger hand in absolute terms than JJ was. Sure enough, the BB had AA and the UTG had AKs. I went on to cash in that game instead of going out right then and there.
You’ve seen how I play these games. Its not like people who are playing for leaderboards do. A 9th place finish is the exact same thing to me as a 4th place one. In fact, the 9th place finish is just a more efficient use of my time than the 4th place one was. I want to win these games and I play them like I play cash SnG’s online. They aren’t meant to be marathons that last 120 hands. These things should be over in 60-75 hands, including HU play. They are won with well placed aggression, not passivity (except here).
That was a lot of comment for a single hand but I’m happy to explain why I did what I did. I am not playing JJ for set value in a turbo game, ever. I may fold it preflop sometimes and I may 4-bet it others. Except when 50BB+ deep, its rarely a flat call for me. Sometimes yes but not as often as its a 3-bet, especially with the crazy-weak and silly ranges people are playing in these games here.
I would like to submit my all time greatest hand, from last night. I had been having zero good fortune, and my stack was sinking when I was dealt 6 5o in the small blind and thought it was worth a limp. A furious bidding war took place ending with four stacks all-in, and another stack half-in then folding.
My logic for calling was that I needed to double up to stay active in the tournament as I had less than 10BB, that the pot odds were great, and that if everyone had Ace type hands, they might be blocking each other.
As it turned out, no one should have been all-in preflop. The hands were turned over, the cards rained down, and I was getting up and walking away when I noticed that I appeared to have won a mountain of chips and quadrupled my stack.
You lose goodnight, he loses still has share of chip lead
You chased 6 outs, he had 222244AAA 9 outs
He called your preflop immediately
On the turn he raised to double the pot. He was drawing AA, trips or a straight but ended up only needing the pair he held. You had no clue what he had, should have folded on the turn. Did 555 ever occur to you?
Actually he had two pair and a stack 3X yours. Might be he read your tendency to bluff. He also had 4 outs to a boat. I am sure you play well but on this occasion you got caught with your pants down.
Earlier in the same game, he called me all-in when I hit a flush, with him holding AA and a draw to the nut flush, which missed. I thought he might be more cautious, but instead paid him right back.
Fact is that in a cash game it is unlikely either one of you would have played or bet the hand the same. It is what it is, free poker, you get the quality of play you pay for. But when you go to the cash tables you may regret what you wished for.
JJ is a good starting hand, for sure, but it is very vulnerable.
In poker the best hand preflop is not always the best hand on the flop, the best hand on the flop is not always the best hand on the turn, and the best hand on the turn is not always the best hand on the river.
If people knew this, there would be a lot less unhappiness in the world.
Off this site you can find posts on “rip-off” sites where people are complaining that they have lost all their play chips on RP due to rigged hands! These people need to have their bottoms smacked and be sent to bed early.
However, I would love to know how the ‘random’ deck shuffles actually work. There are an almost infinite number of possible shuffles of 52 cards, but for a poker site, you would probably only need, say 10,000 decks to make it seem like it was random–and no one would ever notice if the same decks came up again unless the deal was remarkable. Or perhaps you would need 100,000 decks.
For example, with the Royal Flush I posted yesterday, it would be possible to see if that deal had ever occurred before on the site, as there are records of all the Royal Flushes and you could search for the best hand of every player on the site. I would hope not.
It seems to me that for a table with 9 seats, you could save a lot of computing as you only need a virtual deck of 23 cards, and I assume that once those 23 cards have been assigned their positions in the deck, then the outcome is predetermined before the flop is dealt and the order of the remaining 29 cards is irrelevant. So you could first randomly pick any 23 cards, then shuffle them.
I don’t think the deals are fixed, but it amazes me how often something that seems remarkable will happen, for example on one hand two red queens are dealt on the flop, and on the very next hand I am dealt those same two red queens as my hole cards.
I’m late reg in an MTT, first hand I’m dealt 96o in the BB and get to limp in to see the flop, A26 for middle pair. I sustain a small bet from a player who I read likely has an Ace, but not a very high one.
The turn is a 9, giving me 9966A, and I figure I’m out ahead, and bet pot, but get called.
The river, another 2, would give Mr. Ace two pair, better than mine, and so I give up the hand, calling a min bet to verify that I have been beaten by Better Two Pair.
Quick exit for me in this tourney, I’m dealt AJ and bet it, three barrel to the river and am beat by 88 which hasn’t improved from the flop. People will just call with anything, it doesn’t matter. Gwentative is a good player, but you see this all the time, no one ever wants to fold anything. I do this, I get murdered. I am apparently the ONLY player in the entire site who bluffs unmade high card hands. I am a terrible player, and everyone knows it. Bluffs have zero credibility, and no one cares because the chips are fiction anyway. Yet, when I DO make a hand and bet, nobody ever calls. Thus making it ridiculous. The outcome is always the least favorable for me, regardless of what I hold, regardless of what I do with it.
So I decided, screw this, and shove 64, make a two pair hand that actually stands up, and manage to double up to 710.
Not to worry, there’s always someone to call you when you shove a tiny stack on 2nd pair.
So to sum up my experience:
Any time someone else shoves, they @##$ing have it.
Any time I shove, I will get beat in the most ridiculous, improbable way possible.
No one ever respects an all-in from me. Of course not on a small stack, but never on a big stack either. It’s always everyone’s big chance to double their chips or knock me out, and there is no resisting it.
The rest of the table can see my cards, see my screen, see my webcam, and the reflection in my glasses.
I see “remarkable” stuff all the time. I don’t know what to make of it. The human brain is hardwired to notice patterns and coincidences. Still, you see some awfully suspicious things sometimes. Getting AA two hands back to back, or one player gets it then the player next to them gets it next hand. Or seeing the same two cards in the flop that you had in your hand previously, or vice versa. Or seeing the cards you needed on the board in the hand after the one you needed them on. Or “Off by one” full houses where your cards could turn into a boat on the flop if you subtracted a rank from one card and added it to the other.
Mostly I just think it’s my mind effing with me, and try not to think about there being some kind of predterminism or voodoo or, worst of all, the deck being influenced by my actions.
I don’t see why they would have any performance advantage by having a “pre-shuffled” set of zillions of decks that they just randomly pick from to see which pre-determined sequence of cards you get. They either randomly select one of a trillion preshuffled desks, or they randomly shuffle, so they’re not saving calls to random() either way. And a trillion preshuffled decks would take up scads of space. Might as well just honestly shuffle one deck every time as needed.
