Quiz discussion

Fuel55 no doubt scared all my loyal readers away from this quiz with his early, concise, unarguably correct answers. Go read the comments for those, or stick around for the long versions below. Anyhow, he wins a chocolate fish for his efforts, which he can pick up next time he's in Dunedin.

Q1 Early, blinds 15/30. On the button you(2500) have Q♦Q♠. Surprisingly, all fold to you. You bet 90, and the SB(1300) and BB(2500) both call. Flop is 8♠5♦2♠. Both blinds check and you bet 150 into the 270 pot. The SB calls, and the BB folds. Pot is now 570. Turn is 8♣. The SB checks. What's your plan?

At the table I put in a bet of 480 to the 570 pot. The SB went all in. I folded.

Discussion An elementary error in pot management. This tip came a day too late. What hands can the SB hold for the call of the continuation bet? He must either have an eight (e.g. A8 suited, 98 suited etc.), or a big draw (flush plus OESD or gutshot). Sure it's not much fun to be giving a free card to the latter but I think that discretion is the better part of valour here. If one must bet, then something like 1/3 pot, i.e. 200 seems more sensible (good draws will be getting correct odds to chase, but marginal ones won't). This is a repeated leak in my game (failing to keep pots small with decent but not monster hands) and I hope that by repeatedly drawing attention to it, I'll eventually get it plugged. In other words, check the turn, and call (most) river bets.

Q2 Somewhat later, blinds 200/400/25. On the button again you(4200) have K♦8♥. All fold to you. The SB has 17,000, and the BB has only 200 chips remaining after posting. Do you make a move? If so, what?

At the table I raised to 1200, the BB called (oops!) and the SB went all in. The flop contained a king, so I pushed over the BB's check, he folded, and I won both the main and side pots.

Discussion I don't think there's anything terribly wrong with a simple fold here. K8, aka "the shrew", is hardly the nuts after all. On the other hand, it is 56% against a single random hand, so if we could get heads up with the BB, we'd be happy about that. Having decided to act, should we go all in or make a normal raise? Obviously, I decided that with this particular stack size the former looked stronger than the latter -- Fuel55 suggests all in instead. I don't think there's a "right" answer here.


Q3 Still 200/400/25. In the cutoff, you(6200) have 8♦8♣. All fold to you (what kind of micro MTT is this?) and you bet 1200. Only the BB(10,000) calls. Flop is A♦Q♥4♦. The BB checks. What do you do? For bonus points: what would you have done over a 2/3 pot sized bet?

At the table I bet 1800 into the 2800 pot, and the BB folded.


Discussion Fuel55 raises the possibility of going all in ab initio. I must confess that I hadn't really considered that, but it would certainly eliminate this annoying sort of postflop problem. Still, in the problem at hand, since I would never be comfortable calling any bet from the BB, it seemed that there were only two ways I might win the pot: checking down to the river and winning a showdown, or putting in a bet now and getting a fold. The former seemed a bit unlikely, while the latter might well work, both against hands that I was currently ahead of, and conceivably a few that I wasn't. This time it was successful.

Mistaken identity

Waffles recently had a post concerning good vs. bad calls. The comments got a bit heated, prompting a follow up but I found the general topic intriguing.

So, I'll add further fuel to the anecdotal fire with a couple of hands from last night.

Exhibit A

A single table, non-turbo, sit and go. There were three bustouts very early but since then just general circulation of chips. Al has 2200 chips and the remaining stack sizes (in thousands) are approximately: 1, 1, 2, 3, 4.3. Blinds are 50/100. Al is UTG+1 and is dealt A2o. He chooses to limp (we won't discuss that decision at this time). The button, one of the short stacks, who has been playing tight, pushes and the blinds fold. Call or fold?

Exhibit B

A freeroll for entry chips to another freeroll. About 150 of 7000 entrants remain, and 27 will be rewarded. Bert, on the button, has a slightly above average stack of 25BB. A MP player min-raises, and Bert, holding AQs raises to 6BB. All fold back to the MP position who, having Bert covered, pushes. Call or fold?

Discussion

Al's decision. How desperate is the button? How good is Al's hand against his range? Call is 900 into a 1250 pot so from a pure chip equity standpoint Al should want to be winning a little more than 40% of the time. But, other factors are also important. If Al loses then he's a short stack with the blinds approaching. If Al wins, he's only a big medium stack, and the game is still not on the bubble. A genuinely tough spot. I think that discretion is the better part of valour here -- the pot is small enough that folding doesn't improve the button's position all that much, and Al's loss is a mere slap on the wrist for a questionable limp.

Bert's decision In the abstract, a clear cut fold. MP's betting screams of AA, KK, maybe AK or QQ, double maybe JJ. Against almost all of this range Bert is crushed. But, knowing all this he calls, happily. Why? The English premier league highlight show has just started. Bert has little interest in continuing the freeroll with a less than average stack, but is prepared to split his attention if he doubles up. As expected MP shows KK, no ace appears, and Bert can watch the highlight show in peace.

Names notwithstanding, Al was someone else (I was button, and won the hand with 67s hitting a straight and a pair -- the pair would have been good enough). I was, of course, Bert.

Could do better

With tributes from fellow bloggers already pouring in, and more no doubt to come, I'm confident that the majority of the Western world knows of Iakaris's brilliant run through to fourth place in the FTOPS event last night. Fuel55 has given a great final table summary, and no doubt the man himself will tell us more when time permits. So, I'm going to pick nits.

"How dare you sully this great achievement with your carping cavils!" I can hear the cry already. "What right do you, who has never placed so highly in such an event, have to draw breath and utter criticism?". Hey, let's call a spade a spade, I've never even entered an event of this level. But then, I've spent the last two decades criticising the work of people who, within a year or so of graduation, will, by the standard of annual income if nothing else, be my superiors, so I'm hardly likely to let that stop me am I? Besides, the unexamined life is not worth living, right? "Aha", you say "Socrates was talking about self-examination." Well, who's picking nits now?

Ok, with that ponderous introduction out of the way, let me describe the hand of which I speak. The money bubble had already burst, but the final table was a long way away. The blinds were at 2000/4000 and our hero was in the small blind with AA. UTG, who had been crippled a few hands earlier, went all in for 2700, and all folded to our hero. His stack covered the BB slightly, and was (details a bit fuzzy here), about 30K at this point. Our hero made a pot sized bet (14.7K), the BB folded, and the AA held up against the random Qx held by UTG.

So, my issue is that, once our hero calls, all extra money is going into a 2 way side pot (which starts at 2600), and not a 3 way pot. The usual worries about getting heads up with aces don't apply to any great extent, as any money in the side pot is heads up, and the goal of the game should be to get BB to put as much extra money into the pot as possible. The pot sized bet for almost half our hero's stack, particularly given his tight image at the table, shows a willingness to take this hand to the felt, and will fold all but the most premium of hands from the BB. I think that a smaller bet is called for, and for me the choice is close between a straight call and a min raise.

The straight call is risky in that the BB might check and get three immediate free cards. Not so good. Taking AA into a pot against two random hands as opposed to one sacrifices about 12% equity -- the main pot is 8100 here, so let's say that a straight call represents a "charge" of 1K to attempt to reap greater rewards. On the other hand, the BB might take a straight call as a show of, at best, moderate strength, and realise that if he can push our hero out of the hand, then BB gets to play the pot against UTG for free (winning the 2600 side pot, and then playing the main pot of 8100 of which he has contributed 1/3). So, a call might induce a bet, in which case our hero would be delighted to raise.

The min raise might look like a donkey-steal, and get called or raised. Or BB might, correctly, fold. If BB could see our cards, no call is correct, regardless of his cards, except with AA (d'uh), the odds simply aren't good enough.

Finally, let's reconsider the pot sized bet. I think there's a place for it too -- if our hero had been showing lots of preflop aggression (whether because of a run of cards, or simply because of aggression) then a pot sized bet might be just the thing to induce a "no more pushing me around" call. However, I don't think that this particular dynamic applied.

Aside from all the witty repartee in the chat box, another aspect of the game last night that I found amusing was Eric Molinas (edawg....), our hero's ATM, constantly reminding the table how near the money bubble they were. Think that was an attempt to make people tighten up, so that some blinds could be stolen? Cynic!