It’s level one of a small-field, $555 MTT at the local card room. The field will be extremely soft, re-entries are allowed for the first two hours, and including re-entries there will likely be fewer than 75 total entries.
Hero’s table is currently four handed with six stacks getting blinded off. Blinds are 25/50, and everyone has roughly 30K. In his first hands at the table, Villain has already made clear that he is prepared to get all-in any time that he likes the way the flop. He has more than once bet something like six times the size of the pot and then shown top pair with a weak kicker after everyone folds, and it sure seems like he was ready to take those hands to the felt.
His pre-flop play is also poor, with raises out of proportion to the size of the pot, but post-flop is where he really seems ready to blow up.
The other two players currently at the table are loose and passive, rarely raising pre-flop but playing lots of hands and chasing lots of stuff post-flop (though not against the overbetting fiend, they just roll their eyes and fold when he does his thing. You can expect roughly the same from any other players who show up to claim one of the dead stacks at the table.
How would your play at this table differ from your usual game? What adaptations would you make to take full advantage of the huge mistakes this guy is prepared to make?
Post your thoughts and comments here. I leave for Montreal on Friday to play the WCOOP, so I may or may not post my response on Friday, but it will be around then.
you didnt say whether he has a propensity to 3bet us pre flop but regardless, I think we can play extremely exploitative on this table, firstly raising preflop with a range weighted towards 88+ and J10+ since these are the hands which will hold the most equity facing his betting overbetting range, we want hands with TP potential rather than small suited connectors or suited Ax as we want to be dominating his betting range.
obviously i feel we should be stacking off much wider v this opponent, and potentially just overshoving over one of his overbets with a range of TPGK+ and probably would like to have a limping range with small suited connectors and small pairs and suited aces since we are likely to go multiway and play much better postflop, plus we have very little fold equity on flops and turns on this table so we arent losing as much by forgoing the opportunity to cbet by limping. however if villain is constantly raising larger than we would pre flop, but would only flat a raise, then raising with these hands is preferable.
but mainly we just have to be willing to get it in lighter v him.
eg on a Q27 board i would feel pretty happy jamming KQ over his over bet and expecting to get called.
I think our range for stacking off is a function of how likely villain is going to get stacked by someone else. on this table it seems somewhat unlikely so we can have a slightly stronger GII range and wait for slightly more equity.
In the unlikely case that we flop a strong draw when he overbets, given stack depth there is a stronger argument for flatting than raising since we have no fold equity and can likely give up if we miss and get him to put chips in with no equity on later streets.
Was thinking what this means for his other ranges, we can probably bluff raise his non overbets more often as they are probably capped. We can bluff catch wider where he underbets 3 streets, ie MPTK becomes a viable bluff catching possibility since it beats a large portion of his capped ‘value’ range.
what Im still unsure on is preflop, with someone making this many mistakes post relative to pre getting into as many posflop scenarios with reasonable preflop equity seems really important. from the blinds this will mean defending wider. but from the with villain still left to act I think limp/calling the bottom will probably be better, he will still 3bet the top of his range regardless of whether we limp or raise, but allows him to take the betting lead with a wider range which is good given his huge mistakes and sizing tells which leads us to good bluff catching and bluff raising opportunities.
(a) Habitually slowplay big pairs before the flop to keep him from not going broke with a worse one-pair hand.
(b) Play any connecting hand >= 65o before the flop in position. It’s hard to make a straight, but not _that_ hard. (Also, he’s allowed to miss the flop, and you’re allowed to make other hands that aren’t straights.)
(c) Lots of these guys will call just about anything but slow down betting-wise on the turn. Be prepared to call the flop with hands that you wouldn’t normally call 6x pot with (mostly good-but-not-great top pairs). Of course, also be willing to get stacks in much weaker than usual at this depth (e.g., with some of the better top pairs).
(d) Stare at him every time he looks at his hand. Does it look like he’s squeezing the second card? It could easily be that the first one was a big one. This matters more than usual if you’re trying to decide whether to play QJ for stacks on J44.
(e) Be ready to minraise the flop (or similar). A lot of these guys won’t be thinking about future streets, and a good way to get the money in by the river is to make a small raise of their huge flop bets. After that first overbet, you can often get the whole stack in and it’ll almost feel like limit poker to him (it’s a tournament, so you can often just raise one big chip, then bet one or two big chips on the turn…).
There’s more to say here, but I have to run… cool situation to think about. Also brings back some funny memories.
I’m a relative novice but I think trying to answer this could be helpful to me at least so here goes:
Preflop: You don’t indicate if we can him to be open-raising lighter than usual but, if I’ve only seen a few hands from the guy and he’s playing this recklessly, I assume he’s making those huge bets pre-flop with weaker hands. So I’m looking to 3bet or shove on him preflop with 55+, AT+, K9+, Q9+, J8+. I think I shove the low and mid pocket pairs, expect to outkick him if the high-card hands hit. I don’t know how connectors work into this strategy but I figure that if he’s overbetting the pot by this much, he’s seriously cutting down my odds to call on the flop with draws and my implied odds if I hit on later streets. I’m looking for hands that are made on the flop without needing more help as I don’t get the feeling from your description that we’ve typically got as much fold equity against this guy as we typically would against a solid player.
Flop: If he’s willing to play big pots with top pair no kicker, then I’m happy stacking off with any top pair I get on the flop. I feel like given his overaggression, the most important place to exploit his playstyle is preflop since his betting makes early showdowns more likely. I’m treating anything better than TPGK as absolute nuts against him. Out of position, I’m check-folding my missed hands, check-shoving top pair hands, and check-calling with the intention of getting him to put in all his money himself my two pairs and better.
Turn/River: If we reach this point, I expect I’m either pot-committed or we’ve both missed completely and I check through complete misses, river-bet middle pairs where my low card hit the board and I think he might call a small value bet with bottom pair or midpair and worse kicker.
This is my first time trying to think these things through in such depth so any advice or holes in my logic others find, please let me know.
Just realized that it made no sense for me to say that best place to exploit is preflop since the given conditions of this player are that he makes more mistakes on the flop and later.
I’m wondering how the dead money from the absent players and the weak money from the passive ones still at the table influences the calculus in this situation.
Also, I forgot to mention all suited aces and most suited kings in my preflop hand range.
Hey Adam, I thought I should point out that we are currently 600bb effective which makes any 3bet shove preflop is roughly is at least 100x pot shove
Ah, yeah I hadn’t paid attention to that. In light of that thing that I quite obviously missed (thank you for pointing it out), I think I’d set mine with the low pocket pairs rather than 3-betting in anticipation of getting an overbet into a set.
There are a couple ways to go at it imo..,
1. Resort to tighter play, be patient and stack him. If someone else beats u to it so be it. It’s a soft field to begin with so your edge is over the field more so than one particular player, who’s gonna increase your variance anyway by you getting involved in large pots with marginal hands. The other guys at this table have already been identified as loose and passive. So if they chip up from him it’s not all that bad for you. Your still deep. 600 bigs vs 1200 bigs. Does it really make a difference at this stage?
2. Play as if you’re only 50 bigs deep or so. Pretend the blinds are at 300/600 so when he makes huge bets pre you can still get involved and outplay him post. Observe him carefully. Last thing you want is for him to switch gears on you and you come to find out it was all a setup. Is he really a fish or pretending to be one?? If he really is a complete donk, put him to the test with the midddle-to-top of your range and be willing to stack of lighter than you otherwise might. Also, be sure to iso!
I would try to see some flops with a lot of speculative hands and slow play post flop. I would wait for him to catch a piece of the board and let him do his thing.
What do you mean by “speculative hand”? What would you do in order to “see some flops” with these hands?
Preflop: if possible, drive the other players out by openraising bigger (to 5 or 6 bb) or raising fairly big when they limp. Your target will probably be insensitive to your bet/raise sizes. If the other players are insensitive to preflop raise sizing too, get back to normal raises and limp in a lot, never folding to his preflop raises, but folding most hands to preflop aggression from the other players.
I’d be willing to play all suited (gapped) connectors, pairs, Ace-x and broadway hands. If I know I’ll be heads up with him, I’d also call with unsuited connectors and suited hands with one broadway card. We’re deep enough to invest in seeing many flops.
In heads-up pots, you can drive him out of the pot a lot if he hits nothing and you can continue with Top pair-good kicker or better hands when he shows aggression. I would just call off his bets with one pair hands and try to reraise with better.
I would play my draws passively, raising them when he shows interest in the pot bears the risk of getting blown out of the pot, and if we hit our draw we can potentially get his stack.
If I’m reading the OP correctly this guy has bombed the flop a couple of times with TPNK, and we somehow draw the conclusion that it “sure seems like” he was willing to felt these hands. Does the OP have more details about why this seems to be the case. I know many players who will overbet pot on the flop (especially when drawy) with a vulnerable hand, but this does not mean they are ready to stack off for 600 big blinds.
I’m not trying to fight the hypothetical, and I agree that against a villain who really is ready to dump 600bb with one pair we would need to make massive adjustments to play virtually every pot with him (because there is so much money to be had). I just think that a very important part of this question is how much confidence we can put into the reads we have so far, and thus how much we should be deviating from our normal strategy in a very soft field.
The first thing I do when trying to exploit opponents is make sure I understand *why* the mistakes they are making are mistakes. This usually points us to a reasonable starting point.
Him bombing flop with weak holdings is a mistake because A) he doesn’t get value from our marginal hands, and B) he makes our range much stronger, putting him in terrible shape when we continue.
Obviously we’re trying to set up good flop situations, so I make it a priority to keep him in the hand as often is possible. I slowplay AJo preflop if I can keep him in. I think it should be our number one priority to get as many favorable flop spots against this villain as possible, even if it means limp/calling when he’s in the blinds, or other semi-weak plays.
Also – given the read and the fact that it is a re-entry tournament, I would assume I have much less fold equity postflop than I usually would. So I would avoid the weaker suited/connected cards in favor of more short-stack hands like K9 or QT. It seems that most of our value is going to come from situations where we have villain dominated, because if we wait to long for bingo flops with stuff like 65s, someone else will bust him (not to mention, against a ‘whale’ like this, are we really fist pumping getting it in with a monster draw in a 55/45 situation?)
This reminds me of one of the recent podcasts where you mentioned a so-called ‘fish’ making a big fold against you – so I might try to act a little frustrated/impatient against this villain, just to give him an extra reason to convince himself to get it in against us. Based on his approach, he seems more likely to believe that we are ‘making a stand’ or ‘sick of being bullied’ or whatever if we give him reason to think that way.