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Tommy Angelo returns to the podcast to discuss his new book, Painless Poker, as well as his writing process, his daily meditation practice, his new goals, and his sordid past.
In our strategy segment, we discuss why it matters how the money goes in, and what to do with a straight facing a big shove when the river pairs the board.
We encourage you to buy Painless Poker and Tommy’s other books directly from him, in order to get your free autograph and e-books. If you do buy from Amazon, though, please use our affiliate link.
Tommy previously appeared on Episode 2, Episode 29, and Episode 192.
Timestamps
0:30 Hello & Welcome & Strategy
35:31 Interview: Tommy Angelo
Strategy
Playing $0.25/$0.50 NLHE online. Villain has starting stack of $53.40, I have $43.69
Villain opens on the button to $1.10 (his standard open). I call in the BB with 8s8d
Pot is $2.45. Flop – 7d 6h 9c
I checked, he bet $2.50. I called.
Turn was 10h. I check he checks.
River was 6d. I bet $3.69 into $7.45 and then he shoves for $49.80 and has me covered.
In the strategy hand Nate points out that both players can have all the sets. That may be true but it’s worth mentioning that the calling player always has fewer combos total than the opening player, so the 9 possible combos of sets make up a larger proportion of BB’s range. It evens up a bit if we think BB would raise 99, but probably not entirely.
I’ve done more war-gaming with tournament ranges for shorter stacks, but I tend to find that as you run down the percentiles in both the ranges (on a given board, not this one specifically), you usually find that the opening player runs out of sets earlier but his overpairs compensate for this. They tend to hit top-pair at about the same percentiles but the opening player can often have TPTK with the calling player not having it at all – then the other difference tends to be at the bottom with the pre-flop raiser having more total air. So the advantage of the initiative isn’t being either ‘stronger’ or ‘uncapped’ on the flop as is commonly thought (generally both players are pretty uncapped), it’s more about the upper-middle part of the range. Tournament calling ranges are pretty tight though so maybe it only applies to my games.