The Jersey Worm (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bobby_the_worm) wrote,@ 2008-04-16 04:09:00 |
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Scared money is dead money
Okay, slight delay here between the end of this session and the blog post about it, but I jotted down a few notes when things were still fresh, so I'll do what I can. For the executive summary, I can say that this session basically paralleled the last one and it was another big loss. Not as big, but still big. This week's been bad for the old bankroll. But, as I have a bankroll at all, I'm not too bummed about it.
Much like last time, I don't think I was ever up this session. However, because the results of this session and the last one are so similar, I'm going to get more mileage out of contrasting them rather than seeing how they were alike. In this session, unlike the last, I actually got hands that held up, which was a nice change of pace. On the downside, I got zero (successful) bluffing done, but more on that later. I made a very concerted effort to tighten the hell up pre-flop this session. What's interesting to me is that keeping that in the front of my mind pointed something out to me: I was running cold. Like, super-cold. I was getting so few decent starters it was scary. Granted, my range for starters was extremely narrow this session, but even with that, my hole cards were just garbage hand after garbage hand. So it's nice in that my decisions were kept on the easy side, but it makes for a damn boring night. (At one point, I actually was clocking it, since I had so little going on. In my first five hours, I took down two pots. Yikes.)
Plus, just to up the coldness factor, I could not connect with a flop for shit. I decided that's probably where most of my losses come from. Unnecessary pre-flop looseness is one thing, but warranted pre-flop looseness with missed flops is something else. The former can be corrected with better play, while the latter just involves riding out a bad streak. So that accounted for a lot of bleed-off. Probably the second-biggest sinkhole from this session was my handling of mediocre holdings post-flop which I had to spend money on to figure out I was beat. It's basically probe bets and shit like that, and I'm not sad about it in the sense that I think it's anything that needs correcting. It's just...noteworthy as a way I can lose money besides losing at showdown.
An example? Sure. In this one pot, I held pocket nines and limped in MP after a few other limpers. The guy behind me pops it, I think to like $12. I believe we ended up five-way to the flop. (By the way, it was just that kind of table. Standard pre-flop raise was actually a bit higher than usual...like $12 to $17...but that shit would routinely get five or six callers. It was crazy. Shows you just how much missing the flop can cost you in a game like that, though.) Anyway. So we see something like a two-suited, 7-high flop. A guy in front of me bets $20 into a pot of like $60. Now...remember the pre-flop raiser is behind me. I figure I've got a decent chance of being good here, so I raise it to $60. (In hindsight, this was too small -- something else I have to work on.) The idea here is I'm trying to figure out where I'm at. I figure this move blows the PFR off the hand if he's got AK or the like. I also figure an overpair will pop me, so I can jet from that, too. Anyway, the pre-flop raiser behind me pauses for a bit. Then he flat calls. This move is soooo strange for this guy, it's terrifying. He's really pretty solid post-flop, so I figure he's gotta have a monster to smooth call in that spot. Turns out I don't care, actually, since when I made the raise I already know I'm done if I encounter pretty much any action. But it further turned out that my decision was made even easier. It folds around, and then an EP guy check-raises all-in for like a billion dollars. Yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess my hand is garbage at this point. :) The initial flop bettor thinks on it a little while, then finally calls all-in. I insta-fold. PFR behind me insta-calls. What the hell?! Anyway, this is what the deal was: Initial flop bettor had flopped two pair. PFR behind me had pocket deuces (nice pre-flop raise there) and had flopped a set. The check-raise-all-in guy had flopped a combo draw. Here's the even wackier part: all-in guy turns a straight, then rivers a straight flush! Insane. Straight flush and he got to stack two people with it. Crazy times.
Anyway. The point was that I had a few hands like that...hands I put money in the pot with, but it became clear I was beat, and so I had to get out. Again, I don't find anything wrong with that from a tactical standpoint. The question for play adjustment becomes: can I find out where I am for cheaper? The answer is almost certainly yes. One solution probably involves checking instead of betting. ;) But from the standpoint of an overall playing style choice, I'd rather be on the aggressive end of things than not, so I don't mind putting a few bucks in a pot to find out if I'm beat. The important thing is to act on the information I get. :) I feel I do all right in those spots, though, so...whatever. Just gotta take the hits as they come, really.
Another noteworthy facet of this session: I got pocket aces four times! Wow. Even more remarkable, though...they all held up! I find this highly unusual. :) Mostly I didn't get much action on them, though, but believe me, I am perfectly fine with that. Plus it's what I expected, since I had (quite obviously to the others) been playing tight all night. One hand I think was just standard...took it down on an uninteresting flop. Two of the times were scary: One flop of QQT and one flop of KKx. Any resistance on those boards, and I know I'm toast. Thankfully I took 'em down with flop bets, though. The only real payoff hand was toward the end of the night, when I was a little short-stacked. (I'll get back to that short-stacked thing, too, a bit later on.) It folded around to a guy in early-middle who opened it with a raise to $12. It folds around and another guy, new-ish to the table, re-raises to like $35, I think. It folds around to me in the small blind, and I look down at the pocket rockets. I've got something like $150 behind, so I know if I make a decent raise, I'm committing to the pot anyway, so I just jam it in. Initial raiser laughs and folds with mock indignity. Turns out he was trying to win a bounty and had open-raised with The Hammer, seven-deuce. ;) The re-raiser insta-calls. I have aces, he has kings. Frankly, I was running so bad that I was still holding my breath the whole time the board was coming out, even when the flop came three diamonds and I was holding the ace of diamonds. ;) Running queens completed the boards, and I doubled. It was probably my biggest win for the night, honestly.
Ah...the aside about being short-stacked. I am almost never short-stacked. With a max buy-in of $300 at these 1/2 games, I generally reload when I get down to $200 or so. Some opinions dissent, but I share the view that a big stack is an important tool in NLHE, and I aim to be able to use it whenever I can. I have preset conditions for when I don't, though, and this happened to be one of those times. Basically...under certain circumstances, I play without reloading to practice playing short-stacked. I figure this is a good tournament skill to learn. Plus...I don't know, sometimes it just behooves you to practice different things, you know? :) Broadly speaking, it doesn't really make sense to purposefully make yourself short-stacked, though, and this hand is a perfect example of why. I mean look at that hand: AA vs. KK, and the aces held. If I had been fully loaded, that hand would have been twice as profitable for me than it was. Oh, well, though, you do what you can. That's basically the risk you take when you leave yourself short-stacked. Just gotta live with it.
Anyway. So, yeah, except for all those aces, I ran pretty cold. :) Another indicator: I even ran cold on phantom hands. :) You know those hands where you fold pre-flop, but then the board comes out and you would have been holding the nuts? Yeah...I didn't have any of those. ;) My hands were garbage both in and out of the muck. :) So, really, there's just nothing you can do about that. Well, except bluff. And this was not the table for that. I could not pull off a bluff for shit. I think I tried, like, twice, and that shit wasn't happening. One thing was...like half the table was sitting on monster stacks. Let me tell you, when you sit down with $300 and you're facing a lineup where five of your opponents are sitting on between $1,000 and $3,000, you're going to have a tough time of it. Plus these guys were fearless. I didn't even have to waste much of my own money to figure that out; I just had to watch them play. So, yeah, this was not a table for bluffing, my friends. Not at all. So when you can't bluff, you need cards. And when you can't bluff and you don't get cards...well, you sit there and lose. :) That's all there is to it, really, sometimes. And this was one of those times. :)
Heh...one funny footnote to the phantom hands thing. Remember those two pots I won in the first five hours? One of them was because I semi-bluffed a gutshot on the flop, and then actually spiked it on the turn. (I got two callers on the turn, but sadly no river action. These people were weird, man.) Anyway, I made a special mental note to myself after that hand, which went something like, "Remember, this means nothing. Don't go crazy chasing gutshots." Of course, two gutshot draws I folded on the flop ended up hitting on the turn and would have held up nicely. C'est la vie.
So, overall, I was running pretty cold and playing pretty gunshy, and that combination just does not make for a winning night. Not a lot else I can take from this. There are two specific hands I want to go over, though. One was a poor river call, and one was a gigantic blunder on my part, which I will probably present as a "What would you do?" question at the end.
I can't remember the specifics of the pre-flop betting on the first hand, unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure the pot was like $30 or so going to the flop. I called a modest raise from the BB with KcJc. The flop came 876 with two clubs and a diamond. Not too shabby! I checked it, being BB I generally would go for a check-raise in this spot, especially against a pre-flop raiser. It checked all the way around, though, but the turn improved me with the king of diamonds. So the flop now is 876K, two clubs, two diamonds, and I have KJ of clubs. I bet out $15. The guy behind me calls, and everyone else folds, so we're heads-up to the river. It comes an offsuit 9. Not a great card. I check, and the guy behind me bets $25. The wheels start turning.
Board 876K9 with no flush.
Right away, I don't put him on a ten. This was the same guy from the story above with the set of deuces, the one I know is pretty solid post-flop, and I don't think he's calling for a gutshot in that spot, especially with the pot so small and with such bad odds. I realize that a 5 is a possibility...maybe pocket fives? (Oh, just for the record, he could have had anything pre-flop. He had a crazy wide range of hands for pre-flop play.) If he didn't have a 5, I really couldn't figure out what he'd be betting there; I really didn't see him betting a king in that spot; it just wasn't his thing. So, generally, when I can't figure out what someone might be betting, I start to wonder if they're bluffing. He could have a busted draw, just like me. He also might just be taking advantage of the river being a scare card (because it put a four-straight on board). Also my turn bet after a checked flop, followed by a river check, looks pretty bluffy from his point of view...maybe he thinks I don't have a king? In the end, I figured chances were pretty high that he was bluffing, and I was just frustrated at having so many hands that night that I had to abandon, so I decided it was time for a loose river call. I made the call, and he did, indeed, have the 5 for the low end of the straight. Well, at least I was right that he didn't have the ten. :P (Specifically, he had Qd5d: flopped the low end of an open-ender and turned a flush draw.)
When's all said and done, I probably shouldn't have made that call. It really did seem like a good time for a bluff from him...but I really didn't (and still don't) know if he was the type to make a bluff like that. Really, though...what could I beat? By making that call, I basically need him to be holding either a weaker king or total air. (Or a pair lower than king, but I count that as air on that board.) He doesn't call the turn with air, though, so really the only thing that I could beat is a busted draw. $25 to win $85...that's 3.4 to 1, so I have to win like 23% of the time to make that a +EV call. Staring at that percentage...I can't honestly say I give him a bluff there 23% of the time. I should have let that one go. What's sad, though, is that I didn't know it.
My reasoning was deeply flawed on several fronts. Let's start with the king. Yes, I win if he holds a weaker king. Kind of. Look at that board again. I can only beat a kicker of 4, 3, or 2! I chop with a jack, and then any kicker above 4 beats me! T and 5 make straights, 6 through 9 make two pair, and anything higher outkicks me! So much for hoping he has a king! Secondly, yes, I could beat a lower pair, but that board is just screaming for someone to be holding a low two-pair. Yeah, I would have expected more flop or turn action if the two-pair was flopped, but even if the river didn't make a straight, any gapper with a 9 that caught a piece of the flop just outdrew me. Thirdly, and most importantly, there is no reason he couldn't have a ten. I discounted the ten early in my thought process based on the idea that this guy wouldn't have called for a gutshot draw in that spot. I still stand by that rationale. But he could have easily had a ten with something else. Ten in a club flush draw, ten in a diamond flush draw, and any gapper with a ten that caught some of the flop (like T8 or something). The point is that while a bare ten may not have called just for the chance to hit a 9, there's a lot of other hands that would call that do hold a ten. So with this new information, I have to put his range much wider. On the side the beats me, we've got a king that beats me, any of various two pair arrangements (that actually make sense, unlike a lot of other two-pair arrangements), plus a four-straight on board! On the weaker end, we've got K4 or lower, or a busted draw. 3.4 to 1? Yeah...should have folded.
What would you do?
The last hand I'll put up for review, I'll leave as an open question and I'll come back to it next time. The setup is 1/2 NLHE. The table is all loose pre-flop, considered unbluffable post-flop, and about half composed of monstrously giant stacks. You've got about $250.
You're in the big blind. The guy to your left, UTG, opens for a standard-ish raise of $12. A whole bunch of people cold-call, as is the norm at this table. There are five people in when it comes around to you in the BB. You're closing the action, so you elect to call after squeezing 9s7s and getting better than 6 to 1 on your money.
The flop comes 976 with two hearts and a club. You've flopped top two, but on a sick, coordinated board. The pre-flop raiser is pretty tight; he's only raised with (and shown down) strong holdings, and you're sure he'll bet the flop, so you decide to check, going for the check-raise. You check, and, as expected, UTG, the pre-flop raiser, bets.
Unexpectedly, he goes all-in. You failed to notice that he was short-stacked, and only had about $60 behind after he raised pre-flop. So he jams for his $60 into a pot of about $70. You're mentally expecting a lot of folds and cursing his lack of money when something else unexpected happens. It folds around to a guy in middle position who goes all-in for approximately eight million dollars. (That is, he has you covered. By a lot.) Predictably, everyone else folds, even the other guys behind this guy who also have eight-million dollar stacks. Action is to you. You go in the tank.
Flop: 976 with two hearts and a club.
UTG holding: Almost certainly a big pocket pair.
Monster stack holding: ???
You holding: 97 of spades for top two.
Decision: Call for the rest of your stack (about $240) to win $370 (assuming you beat the all-in UTG, else you're getting even money on the side pot)?
What would you do?
Okay, slight delay here between the end of this session and the blog post about it, but I jotted down a few notes when things were still fresh, so I'll do what I can. For the executive summary, I can say that this session basically paralleled the last one and it was another big loss. Not as big, but still big. This week's been bad for the old bankroll. But, as I have a bankroll at all, I'm not too bummed about it.
Much like last time, I don't think I was ever up this session. However, because the results of this session and the last one are so similar, I'm going to get more mileage out of contrasting them rather than seeing how they were alike. In this session, unlike the last, I actually got hands that held up, which was a nice change of pace. On the downside, I got zero (successful) bluffing done, but more on that later. I made a very concerted effort to tighten the hell up pre-flop this session. What's interesting to me is that keeping that in the front of my mind pointed something out to me: I was running cold. Like, super-cold. I was getting so few decent starters it was scary. Granted, my range for starters was extremely narrow this session, but even with that, my hole cards were just garbage hand after garbage hand. So it's nice in that my decisions were kept on the easy side, but it makes for a damn boring night. (At one point, I actually was clocking it, since I had so little going on. In my first five hours, I took down two pots. Yikes.)
Plus, just to up the coldness factor, I could not connect with a flop for shit. I decided that's probably where most of my losses come from. Unnecessary pre-flop looseness is one thing, but warranted pre-flop looseness with missed flops is something else. The former can be corrected with better play, while the latter just involves riding out a bad streak. So that accounted for a lot of bleed-off. Probably the second-biggest sinkhole from this session was my handling of mediocre holdings post-flop which I had to spend money on to figure out I was beat. It's basically probe bets and shit like that, and I'm not sad about it in the sense that I think it's anything that needs correcting. It's just...noteworthy as a way I can lose money besides losing at showdown.
An example? Sure. In this one pot, I held pocket nines and limped in MP after a few other limpers. The guy behind me pops it, I think to like $12. I believe we ended up five-way to the flop. (By the way, it was just that kind of table. Standard pre-flop raise was actually a bit higher than usual...like $12 to $17...but that shit would routinely get five or six callers. It was crazy. Shows you just how much missing the flop can cost you in a game like that, though.) Anyway. So we see something like a two-suited, 7-high flop. A guy in front of me bets $20 into a pot of like $60. Now...remember the pre-flop raiser is behind me. I figure I've got a decent chance of being good here, so I raise it to $60. (In hindsight, this was too small -- something else I have to work on.) The idea here is I'm trying to figure out where I'm at. I figure this move blows the PFR off the hand if he's got AK or the like. I also figure an overpair will pop me, so I can jet from that, too. Anyway, the pre-flop raiser behind me pauses for a bit. Then he flat calls. This move is soooo strange for this guy, it's terrifying. He's really pretty solid post-flop, so I figure he's gotta have a monster to smooth call in that spot. Turns out I don't care, actually, since when I made the raise I already know I'm done if I encounter pretty much any action. But it further turned out that my decision was made even easier. It folds around, and then an EP guy check-raises all-in for like a billion dollars. Yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess my hand is garbage at this point. :) The initial flop bettor thinks on it a little while, then finally calls all-in. I insta-fold. PFR behind me insta-calls. What the hell?! Anyway, this is what the deal was: Initial flop bettor had flopped two pair. PFR behind me had pocket deuces (nice pre-flop raise there) and had flopped a set. The check-raise-all-in guy had flopped a combo draw. Here's the even wackier part: all-in guy turns a straight, then rivers a straight flush! Insane. Straight flush and he got to stack two people with it. Crazy times.
Anyway. The point was that I had a few hands like that...hands I put money in the pot with, but it became clear I was beat, and so I had to get out. Again, I don't find anything wrong with that from a tactical standpoint. The question for play adjustment becomes: can I find out where I am for cheaper? The answer is almost certainly yes. One solution probably involves checking instead of betting. ;) But from the standpoint of an overall playing style choice, I'd rather be on the aggressive end of things than not, so I don't mind putting a few bucks in a pot to find out if I'm beat. The important thing is to act on the information I get. :) I feel I do all right in those spots, though, so...whatever. Just gotta take the hits as they come, really.
Another noteworthy facet of this session: I got pocket aces four times! Wow. Even more remarkable, though...they all held up! I find this highly unusual. :) Mostly I didn't get much action on them, though, but believe me, I am perfectly fine with that. Plus it's what I expected, since I had (quite obviously to the others) been playing tight all night. One hand I think was just standard...took it down on an uninteresting flop. Two of the times were scary: One flop of QQT and one flop of KKx. Any resistance on those boards, and I know I'm toast. Thankfully I took 'em down with flop bets, though. The only real payoff hand was toward the end of the night, when I was a little short-stacked. (I'll get back to that short-stacked thing, too, a bit later on.) It folded around to a guy in early-middle who opened it with a raise to $12. It folds around and another guy, new-ish to the table, re-raises to like $35, I think. It folds around to me in the small blind, and I look down at the pocket rockets. I've got something like $150 behind, so I know if I make a decent raise, I'm committing to the pot anyway, so I just jam it in. Initial raiser laughs and folds with mock indignity. Turns out he was trying to win a bounty and had open-raised with The Hammer, seven-deuce. ;) The re-raiser insta-calls. I have aces, he has kings. Frankly, I was running so bad that I was still holding my breath the whole time the board was coming out, even when the flop came three diamonds and I was holding the ace of diamonds. ;) Running queens completed the boards, and I doubled. It was probably my biggest win for the night, honestly.
Ah...the aside about being short-stacked. I am almost never short-stacked. With a max buy-in of $300 at these 1/2 games, I generally reload when I get down to $200 or so. Some opinions dissent, but I share the view that a big stack is an important tool in NLHE, and I aim to be able to use it whenever I can. I have preset conditions for when I don't, though, and this happened to be one of those times. Basically...under certain circumstances, I play without reloading to practice playing short-stacked. I figure this is a good tournament skill to learn. Plus...I don't know, sometimes it just behooves you to practice different things, you know? :) Broadly speaking, it doesn't really make sense to purposefully make yourself short-stacked, though, and this hand is a perfect example of why. I mean look at that hand: AA vs. KK, and the aces held. If I had been fully loaded, that hand would have been twice as profitable for me than it was. Oh, well, though, you do what you can. That's basically the risk you take when you leave yourself short-stacked. Just gotta live with it.
Anyway. So, yeah, except for all those aces, I ran pretty cold. :) Another indicator: I even ran cold on phantom hands. :) You know those hands where you fold pre-flop, but then the board comes out and you would have been holding the nuts? Yeah...I didn't have any of those. ;) My hands were garbage both in and out of the muck. :) So, really, there's just nothing you can do about that. Well, except bluff. And this was not the table for that. I could not pull off a bluff for shit. I think I tried, like, twice, and that shit wasn't happening. One thing was...like half the table was sitting on monster stacks. Let me tell you, when you sit down with $300 and you're facing a lineup where five of your opponents are sitting on between $1,000 and $3,000, you're going to have a tough time of it. Plus these guys were fearless. I didn't even have to waste much of my own money to figure that out; I just had to watch them play. So, yeah, this was not a table for bluffing, my friends. Not at all. So when you can't bluff, you need cards. And when you can't bluff and you don't get cards...well, you sit there and lose. :) That's all there is to it, really, sometimes. And this was one of those times. :)
Heh...one funny footnote to the phantom hands thing. Remember those two pots I won in the first five hours? One of them was because I semi-bluffed a gutshot on the flop, and then actually spiked it on the turn. (I got two callers on the turn, but sadly no river action. These people were weird, man.) Anyway, I made a special mental note to myself after that hand, which went something like, "Remember, this means nothing. Don't go crazy chasing gutshots." Of course, two gutshot draws I folded on the flop ended up hitting on the turn and would have held up nicely. C'est la vie.
So, overall, I was running pretty cold and playing pretty gunshy, and that combination just does not make for a winning night. Not a lot else I can take from this. There are two specific hands I want to go over, though. One was a poor river call, and one was a gigantic blunder on my part, which I will probably present as a "What would you do?" question at the end.
I can't remember the specifics of the pre-flop betting on the first hand, unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure the pot was like $30 or so going to the flop. I called a modest raise from the BB with KcJc. The flop came 876 with two clubs and a diamond. Not too shabby! I checked it, being BB I generally would go for a check-raise in this spot, especially against a pre-flop raiser. It checked all the way around, though, but the turn improved me with the king of diamonds. So the flop now is 876K, two clubs, two diamonds, and I have KJ of clubs. I bet out $15. The guy behind me calls, and everyone else folds, so we're heads-up to the river. It comes an offsuit 9. Not a great card. I check, and the guy behind me bets $25. The wheels start turning.
Board 876K9 with no flush.
Right away, I don't put him on a ten. This was the same guy from the story above with the set of deuces, the one I know is pretty solid post-flop, and I don't think he's calling for a gutshot in that spot, especially with the pot so small and with such bad odds. I realize that a 5 is a possibility...maybe pocket fives? (Oh, just for the record, he could have had anything pre-flop. He had a crazy wide range of hands for pre-flop play.) If he didn't have a 5, I really couldn't figure out what he'd be betting there; I really didn't see him betting a king in that spot; it just wasn't his thing. So, generally, when I can't figure out what someone might be betting, I start to wonder if they're bluffing. He could have a busted draw, just like me. He also might just be taking advantage of the river being a scare card (because it put a four-straight on board). Also my turn bet after a checked flop, followed by a river check, looks pretty bluffy from his point of view...maybe he thinks I don't have a king? In the end, I figured chances were pretty high that he was bluffing, and I was just frustrated at having so many hands that night that I had to abandon, so I decided it was time for a loose river call. I made the call, and he did, indeed, have the 5 for the low end of the straight. Well, at least I was right that he didn't have the ten. :P (Specifically, he had Qd5d: flopped the low end of an open-ender and turned a flush draw.)
When's all said and done, I probably shouldn't have made that call. It really did seem like a good time for a bluff from him...but I really didn't (and still don't) know if he was the type to make a bluff like that. Really, though...what could I beat? By making that call, I basically need him to be holding either a weaker king or total air. (Or a pair lower than king, but I count that as air on that board.) He doesn't call the turn with air, though, so really the only thing that I could beat is a busted draw. $25 to win $85...that's 3.4 to 1, so I have to win like 23% of the time to make that a +EV call. Staring at that percentage...I can't honestly say I give him a bluff there 23% of the time. I should have let that one go. What's sad, though, is that I didn't know it.
My reasoning was deeply flawed on several fronts. Let's start with the king. Yes, I win if he holds a weaker king. Kind of. Look at that board again. I can only beat a kicker of 4, 3, or 2! I chop with a jack, and then any kicker above 4 beats me! T and 5 make straights, 6 through 9 make two pair, and anything higher outkicks me! So much for hoping he has a king! Secondly, yes, I could beat a lower pair, but that board is just screaming for someone to be holding a low two-pair. Yeah, I would have expected more flop or turn action if the two-pair was flopped, but even if the river didn't make a straight, any gapper with a 9 that caught a piece of the flop just outdrew me. Thirdly, and most importantly, there is no reason he couldn't have a ten. I discounted the ten early in my thought process based on the idea that this guy wouldn't have called for a gutshot draw in that spot. I still stand by that rationale. But he could have easily had a ten with something else. Ten in a club flush draw, ten in a diamond flush draw, and any gapper with a ten that caught some of the flop (like T8 or something). The point is that while a bare ten may not have called just for the chance to hit a 9, there's a lot of other hands that would call that do hold a ten. So with this new information, I have to put his range much wider. On the side the beats me, we've got a king that beats me, any of various two pair arrangements (that actually make sense, unlike a lot of other two-pair arrangements), plus a four-straight on board! On the weaker end, we've got K4 or lower, or a busted draw. 3.4 to 1? Yeah...should have folded.
What would you do?
The last hand I'll put up for review, I'll leave as an open question and I'll come back to it next time. The setup is 1/2 NLHE. The table is all loose pre-flop, considered unbluffable post-flop, and about half composed of monstrously giant stacks. You've got about $250.
You're in the big blind. The guy to your left, UTG, opens for a standard-ish raise of $12. A whole bunch of people cold-call, as is the norm at this table. There are five people in when it comes around to you in the BB. You're closing the action, so you elect to call after squeezing 9s7s and getting better than 6 to 1 on your money.
The flop comes 976 with two hearts and a club. You've flopped top two, but on a sick, coordinated board. The pre-flop raiser is pretty tight; he's only raised with (and shown down) strong holdings, and you're sure he'll bet the flop, so you decide to check, going for the check-raise. You check, and, as expected, UTG, the pre-flop raiser, bets.
Unexpectedly, he goes all-in. You failed to notice that he was short-stacked, and only had about $60 behind after he raised pre-flop. So he jams for his $60 into a pot of about $70. You're mentally expecting a lot of folds and cursing his lack of money when something else unexpected happens. It folds around to a guy in middle position who goes all-in for approximately eight million dollars. (That is, he has you covered. By a lot.) Predictably, everyone else folds, even the other guys behind this guy who also have eight-million dollar stacks. Action is to you. You go in the tank.
Flop: 976 with two hearts and a club.
UTG holding: Almost certainly a big pocket pair.
Monster stack holding: ???
You holding: 97 of spades for top two.
Decision: Call for the rest of your stack (about $240) to win $370 (assuming you beat the all-in UTG, else you're getting even money on the side pot)?
What would you do?
