Darkened Poker

High Stakes Poker Season 5 Episode 12

First Daniel Nagreanu was got stacked and started playing scared.  Now it seems like Phil Laak has taken over that role.  He has been folding heads up with mid pair when he should re-raise and he decided to bet 50k pre-flop with AA instead of playing the hand post flop.

The first great hand was Metzer calling 800 with A 8, Elezra raising to 1,600 with K T and Menieri re-raises to 9600 with 6 4.  Metzer with the best hand folds and Elezra with what is now the best hand calls.

Think this was just either a bad read or bad move on Menieri’s part, he most likely read Elezra’s min raise for weakness but re-raising him with a bad hand like that is not smart.  Elezra is not know for laying hands down once he has money in the pot, its like Menieri has not watch even a single episode of this show.  This would have been a good play against a non pro, but is bad against someone as aggressive as Elezra.  Elezra quickly makes a good call, not sure if it is because he read Menieri for making a squeeze play or he just does not lay hands down against aggressive players.

Flop: 6 10 4

Elezra check, Menieri bets 14k into a 22k pot and Elezra thinks for awhile and just calls.  This suprised me quite a bit, I expected Elezra to check to someone as aggressive as Menieri so he could check raise him.  There is not a lot of value in calling re-raises, hitting a vulnerable hand and then just calling a bet so you can be drawn out on the turn.  He must have picked up a tell of strength and just want to call on the flop to see if Menieri bet again on the turn.  Again this would have been a good play against a newb, but was a bad play against someone as aggressive as Menieri.  It is very unlikely he would not fire two shells so calling now is wasted money as he is unlikely to learn anything new on the turn.

Turn:  A

Menieri thinks and then bets 37k into a 50k pot.  Elezra thinks for awhile then folds, this was a good fold at this point as there was really nothing he could beat.  If Menieri had a big ace like he was representing pre-flop then Elezra was now beat.  One of the last hands that he could beat just got there so folding is the only option.

Very oddly played by both parties but it worked out for Menieri.

HIGH STAKES POKER SEASON 5 Episode 6 Part 2

This was a interesting hand because it was a massive 900k pot plus after all the money was in Barry Greenstien said he thought that was the hand that Tom Dwan had.  But if that was what he put him on then Barry really misplayed the hand so I have to think he was just saying that for TV.

First Eastgate raised to 3500 with AK and then Barry G ( 600k ) re-raised to 15k with AA at which point Tom Dwan ( 450k ) calls with KQ and Eastgate calls to see the flop.

Flop:  4 2 Q ( 45k pot )

Dwan bets 28.7k, Eastgate folds and Barry G raises to 100k.  If he put Dwan on the flush draw then maybe it is best not to let him name his own price for the draw.    That is the more aggressive way to play it which is Barry’s style.  If he put him on a Q then why re-raise and move him off the hand, let him bet his money away.   Given that Tom just called pre-flop he could also be holding small pair and Barry is re-raising a set.

2 cases he is behind – 1 case he is ahead, i really thing a smooth call would have been a lot better here.

Even if he put him on a flush another way would be to just call, wait for a safe card on the turn and then since he is in position he can really put pressure on the turn.  Since they are both deep stacked he needs to be concerned about building a really big pot with only an over pair.  I have been stacked more times than I can remember by betting hard trying to drive the flush draws out, only to find out I was way behind.

Dwan thinks for awhile and then re-raises against to 244k.  I really do not like this raise as it now has him which has totally pot committed him and in a coin toss for all his chips.  He knows he is not good right now and has 11 outs, but he just put himself in a position were all the money will be going in now or on the turn if a Spade does not fall so he will be racing for his entire stack.  The only thing this bet does it let Barry know this hand is for all his chips, but given there is 245k in the pot there is no way Barry can fold.

Now Barry G has a bit of an issue, this hand is too good to fold and not good enough that you want to be all in on the flop.  But what can he do.

• Just calling is pretty bad, if the Spade comes on the turn are you really going to fold a 750k pot for another 150k more.  That would be a monster lay down and people would suddenly have phantom outs against you.
• If he calls and pushes on the turn when no spade comes Tom Dwan will be getting the right odds to call anyway.
• Re-raising is also just bad, the draw wants to get all the money in with two cards to come and the made hand want to get to the turn and then apply really bad odds.

Barry chooses to push and re-raises to 436k putting Tom Dwan all in.  He has to call and they agree to run it once which is also Barry style.  Given that is was a 50-50 draw and for such a massive pot I think Barry would want to run it more than once but he does not.

Turn: Q
River: 7

Tom pulled down a nice 919k pot.  Although that was classic Barry style of making big pots, I really think he should have just smooth called and let Tom bet again on the turn.  He could have then got away from the hand when the next Q dropped or at least lost the min instead of his whole stack.  Also not sure why Tom Durr wanted to it all in with the draw, there was easier ways to make money at that table.

So people have been writing and talking on TV about how aggressive you have to be in tournament poker to make it to the final table and go for the win.  Well all their talking has finally worked, everyone down to even the newbs at the lower limit tournaments are super aggressive and pushing in with any draw and pure air.  So now I have been experimenting with making it deep in most tournaments by doing nothing more that picking off potential bluffs.

It goes back to my theory that the best way to make money in poker is do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.  If the mass majority of bets are now bluffs or semi-bluffs, I should call if I could possibly have the best hand and I have no other read to make me believe they are otherwise tight players.

It worked pretty well, most of the hands ended up like this example where you could check almost any hand and someone would move all in and you could pick up the pot with as little as Ace high.  In fact this was one of the few hands the guy moving in had more than 6 outs.  The most common pushes were with mid and small connectors on complete miss flops.

Poker Stars $3.00+$0.30 No Limit Hold’em Tournament – t100/t200 Blinds – 9 players

UTG+2: t6785 M = 22.62

Hero (SB): t2380 M = 7.93

Pre Flop: (t300) Hero is SB with A T

2 folds, UTG+2 calls t200, 3 folds, BTN calls t200, Hero raises to t1000, 1 fold, UTG+2 calls t800, 1 fold

Flop: (t2400) 8 J 8 (2 players)

Hero checks, UTG+2 bets t1400, Hero calls t1380 all in

Turn: (t5160) 4 (2 players – 1 is all in)

River: (t5160) 2 (2 players – 1 is all in)

UTG+2 showed T 9

Hero showed A T and won (5160)

In this tournament I made it to 97th out of 2300 people with the vast majority of my chips being acquired by picking off bluffs.  Sadly the one time I did pick up a KK and got it all in against 88′s he hit a set and ended my experiment.  That’s poker.  I know a couple of tournaments is by no means statistically significant, but it is just something to keep in mind and maybe try out yourself.

♣♥♦

Some how I have been listening to Poker Face by Lady GaGa for quite some time but had not seen the music video.  It is worth checking out.

Newb players tend to vastly overplay any big Ace hand and will often go all in pre-flop with it or call big value bets all the way to the river hoping to hit an Ace at some point.  So when you are holding really big hands and get the impression that you are up against some big Ace hands you have 2 choices on how to play to give them the greatest chance of stacking off.

Here is some numbers I use based off my experience:

• Roughly 50% of the time newbs will go all in pre-flop with AK-AJ if there is a good size pot built up
• Roughly 30% of newbs will call 1/3 pot size bets on flop and turn with air hoping to hit Ace later on

I played this hand and afterward I was not sure if I played it right…

Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold’em – 8 players
BB: $0.97
Hero (UTG+1): $3.06
MP2: $5.10

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is UTG+1 with A A

1 fold, Hero raises to $0.08, 1 fold, MP2 calls $0.08, 1 fold, BTN calls $0.08, 1 fold,

BB raises to $0.20, Hero calls $0.12, MP2 raises to $0.90, 1 fold,

BB raises to $0.97 all in, Hero raises to $3, MP2 folds

Flop: ($2.93) 9 2 6 (2 players – 1 is all in)

Turn: ($2.93) 4 (2 players – 1 is all in)

River: ($2.93) 2 (2 players – 1 is all in)

What was interesting about the hand was after MP2 decides to switch from just calling bets pre-flop to raising it up to .90 I put him on AK / AQ and thought he would go all in with me.  In this case there was 5$ in the pot and it cost him 2$ more to call so I thought I was giving him good odds even a newb could understand but he folded.  After the hand was over he claimed he folded AT which would have been the last Ace in the deck as BB hand A J.

Should I have just called the BB’s all in and then tried to bet on flop and turn to make more money???

All in pre-flop:

To simplify it lets assume that I have read the hand right and he does have a big Ace hand!

50% of the time he folds and I am left heads up for 94% win of 3$ pot EV = 2.82

50% of the time he calls and I am 3 way against dominated hands 88% win of 7$ pot EV = 2

Combined EV = 2.41

Bleed to river:

To simplify I assume that if he does beat you he does not re-raise you of it he does you fold!

15% of the time he will hit other card on flop and call all the way down.  EV = 2.156

85% of the time he will not hit

• 30% of the time he will call both flop and turn anyways
  • 12% of the time he will hit something between flop and river and call a final bet  EV = 2.156
  • 88% of the time he will fold on the river  EV = 2.27
• 70% of the time he will fold   EV = 2.82

Combined EV = 2.57

Well the numbers have spoken, I should have played it the other way, but the difference is very slight and not really worth worrying about.  Now if the newb in question has tendencies like being willing to call more than 1/3 pot size bets with nothing or is willing to go “all in” on the river with only top pair then “bleeding to the river” becomes the clear winner.