I got the WCOOP off to a decent start today, ultimately busting Event 1 ($109 full ring NLHE) and Event 3 ($215 Sunday Million replacement) on coin flips and min-cashing Event 2 ($215 6-handed). Early in Event 2 I made a pretty nitty river fold that I think is interesting and worthy of some discussion.
PokerStars – $200+$15|60/120 Ante 15 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com
Hero (BTN): 75.23 BB
SB: 93.64 BB
BB: 70.51 BB
UTG: 120.21 BB
UTG+1: 95.52 BB
MP: 49.17 BB
MP+1: 135.2 BB
MP+2: 110.58 BB
CO: 72.73 BB
9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB
Pre Flop: (pot: 2.63 BB) Hero has Tc 9c
fold, fold, fold, MP+1 raises to 2 BB, fold, CO calls 2 BB, Hero calls 2 BB, fold, fold
Flop : (8.63 BB, 3 players) 9h Qd Td
MP+1 bets 4.5 BB, CO calls 4.5 BB, Hero calls 4.5 BB
Turn : (22.13 BB, 3 players) Th
MP+1 checks, CO checks, Hero bets 7.4 BB, MP+1 calls 7.4 BB, fold
River : (36.93 BB, 2 players) Jd
MP+1 checks, Hero bets 15.37 BB, MP+1 raises to 121.18 BB and is all-in, fold
MP+1 wins 67.66 BB
Villain covers me by a good deal, so I’m actually getting about 2:1 on a call, which makes folding a two-card full house pretty questionable. Here are the arguments for folding:
1. Although it’s a full house, it’s far from the nuts, and most if not all better hands are plausibly in Villain’s range.
2. Villain doesn’t seem bad enough to shove worse for value, except MAYBE 99, of which there is one combo.
3. It’s awfully tough for Villain to get to the river with air, so he has to be turning a pair into a bluff, presumably with the intention of folding me off of a straight or flush. Not a lot of randoms in the Sunday Million are capable of that.
4. It’s early in a huge WCOOP tournament, and this is for all of my chips. Folding a small edge is correct here.
Arguments for calling:
1. This is damn close to the top of my range. Not raising pre-flop or on the flop takes a lot of full houses out of my range. My hand probably looks more like a straight or flush that got there than it does a full house.
2. The T in my hand blocks a lot of the hands I’m worried about. This is a much easier fold with 99.
3. Villain probably bets better hands on the turn at least sometimes.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts.
1.
The key read here is that he’s not bad enough to shove worse for value. Since that’s the case, I think you might have to fold and I don’t think people fold enough in these spots. Easy to say on here… in game, wow, that’s crazy tough.
Argument #3 for calling seems a sound one, but every time I think something like that, I soon end up remembering how people play weird 😉
Is raising the flop ever acceptable here, or are we just too deep and want to see the turn and see what action it brings?
I definitely wouldn’t feel good about getting it in on the flop, but I do think some worse hands will 3-bet. Guess I’d rather underrep than overrep.
I think this is a pretty clear fold. I don’t think its close and I don’t think points 1-3 in arguments for calling make it seem closer.
What do you think about betting larger OTT? I assume most of MP’s calling range OTT is QJ-AQ, KK, and AA, and a random in a large tournament isn’t folding those hands for 12BBs, is she?
Fair point. This may be a case of me worrying a bit too much about balance rather than taking my own advice about value targeting.
Your propably right, but what about his overbet on the river.
You say your hand loocks licke straight or flush. I he puts you on this kind of hand, and he is a good player, wouldnt it be more logic to make a smaller reraise? Just to get a call? Licke 2 x your bet.
I wouldn’t call it an overbet, it’s about a pot-sized raise (he had me covered by a lot, so you can’t go by the amount that he bet). If he can beat T9 here I don’t think there’s any reason for him to raise less than this, a lot of people will have trouble folding a flush let alone a full house.
Folding and blogging about it opens up meta-game for the rest of WCOOP, so I hope it pays off.
:>)
As played I agree with Gareth; it’s hard to find fault with the fold. However, considering #1 and #3 from your arguments for folding, combined with all of your arguments for calling, the river bet is clearly incorrect. Of course it’s easy to say that after we are forced to bet-fold, but Villain offers a free showdown, we’re not folding out better with a ~ 40% pot bet, and we only get calls from a narrow range of worse combos that he is not willing to CR-bluff with. Check behind and move on.
I play very little online and very few tournaments so possibly my perspective is off.
This seems an uncommon line for a competent villain to take with a full house.
It would be essentially a slow play line. It’s seems more often competent players take value lines
with big hands, especially when stacks are deep. Hero’s turn bet is small and the Jd otr is potentially
an action killing card as hero is checking back a lot of hands that villain could get value from there.
And taking a check,check,ship line looks really really strong, in a big tournament aren’t a lot of competent players
making some big lay downs in this spot? Why not click it back? The idea is that villain believes hero has a big hand
but has a bigger one himself so why not get value? With villains line all tens,all straights, all flushes, and smaller full houses become
bluff catchers! Villain is losing a lot of value with this line.
All that being said I would expect villain to turn up with a fair amount of JT, JJ, 89d.
To me this feels like a creative and daring villain turning a hand like AdQx into a bluff or a somewhat
unsophisticated villain who just binked something very nutty on the river.
Which hands that I bet on the turn do you think are checking back the river for fear of straights/flushes? Whatever those hands are, they aren’t calling a river bet either. I agree that check-calling a boat on the turn is a little uncommon (though not necessarily bad), but after doing that I think check-raising the river is a lot better than betting.
there are 3 possible SFs here … there are 3 combos of JJ, there is 1 combos of JTs, QT… QQ… there are a massive number of combos villain can have when cross referened with the rarity of the line they took
Agree.
If I am villain here I am donking the river for a pot sized bet a lot.
I think the line villain takes looks/ is extreme strength and loses a ton of value against all but the worst players.
I agree, I don’t see villain check raising the nuts here as much as he would bet out as we have shown interest on the turn but not a huge amount.
Andrew what do you do if villain bets 1/2 to full pot on the river. Are you ever raising? It seems if you are willing to fold you are probably never raising if he donks. Since we aren’t raising or calling a reshove shouldn’t we be betting a lot larger on the river? I tend to think if I get reshoved on and plan on folding I should be betting larger to get more value from hands that will call. The half pot bet seems like you were trying to induce and got caught off guard when he dumped on you.
With this hand I’d jam over a river bet, but I want to emphasize that a lot more of my range consists of draws that get there on the river. As such, I think this is a very good spot for Villain to check-raise the river big hands.
You think villain can have QT? Check/calling the turn with that seems very weird, to me. For a made FH on the river I’d assume QQ/JT/JJ, but then I’d worry a lot about the nut flush shoving.
What is weirder, villain doing something to get to the river with a hand that beats us, or villain check-shoving the river with a worse hand. I think the latter is more unusual.
I think you gave up a lot of value by betting so small on the turn. Pretty big mistake IMO
Thanks. FWIW my thinking is that I don’t want to fold out draws, and also that my hand is going to look like a draw so I can get a bigger bet out of made hands by bombling blank rivers.
After sitting on the hand for a few hours I think it’s a pretty clear fold. So props to AB for doing in 15 seconds what took me 5 hours.
What I have trouble with is the idea that villain is on the one hand good enough to not value bet with worse or unintentionally
turn a hand worse than ours into a bluf,(a hand like Ad9d being one candidate) and on the other hand be bad enough to play a
REALLY big hand on a board with a lot of potential other big hands for so little value. If
this villain had a straight flush, which seems likely, they really misplayed this one.
Thanks for an interesting hand.
So little value? He took a line that got three bets and a raise for his entire stack into the pot. Yeah, it looks strong, but it’s hard to put that many bets into the pot without looking strong. I guarantee you there are a lot of people who don’t fold flushes in my shoes, let alone a full house.