Friday 1 May 2009

Hard hands

Here's a tough spot. I'm never sure what to do here.

PokerStars Game #27681257571: Tournament #160049003, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level III (25/50) - 2009/04/30 21:54:37 ET
Table '160049003 1' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 2: Paodie2k9 (2245 in chips)
Seat 3: Chefurchill (3335 in chips)
Seat 4: hooks200 (2055 in chips)
Seat 5: LukeSimpson (1335 in chips)
Seat 6: AAPokerTech (1660 in chips)
Seat 7: MAFFIP (1525 in chips)
Seat 8: FR Vessant (1345 in chips)
MAFFIP: posts small blind 25
FR Vessant: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FR Vessant [Kc Ah]
Paodie2k9: folds
Chefurchill: folds
hooks200: raises 200 to 250

This guy has been semiloose but has only raised 4%. This is an odd raise. It's way too big.

So what range do we put him on? The 4% is only over 29 hands, but it implies he is not raising very wide. The odd raise size implies the bottom end of his range (doesn't want a call): this is common for a fish.

Thing is though, I can't be sure he has AQ/AJ in his range. I assume that if he does, he will call with both, which is great for me. But I think he might be tight enough to fold at least AJ. Say he's raising 99+/AQ, I'm not in great shape, and if he doesn't have AQo in there, I'm crushed.

I don't want to flatcall. It's a big chunk of my stack and I'll miss most flops. In position, it might be better. OOP, it's going to be grim too often.

LukeSimpson: folds
AAPokerTech: folds
MAFFIP: folds
FR Vessant: raises 1095 to 1345 and is all-in

So I shove. I dunno though. Looking back at it, I think I can find a fold against this player.

hooks200: calls 1095

I'm not going to say what he had or what happened. None of that changes my analysis.


***

Compare it with this hand:

PokerStars Game #27681860811: Tournament #160049336, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level V (75/150) - 2009/04/30 22:15:49 ET
Table '160049336 1' 9-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: STYLING-ACES (2230 in chips)
Seat 2: chiptacor (3435 in chips)
Seat 4: Vsemenov (6245 in chips)
Seat 8: FR Vessant (1590 in chips)
Vsemenov: posts small blind 75
FR Vessant: posts big blind 150
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FR Vessant [Ah Jh]
STYLING-ACES: folds
chiptacor: raises 300 to 450

This guy has been quite active. My stats have just switched to fourhanded, so I don't know what he played earlier but I seem to recall he was loose. Not raising too much. So I think he has a wider range than the other guy, but still fairly tight because this kind of fish limps a lot of middling hands rather than pop them up.

I also have a worse hand. However, this is a good shove. I have 10BB and I'm playing against guys I can expect to call loose. Styling-Aces is a dreadful fish who I know will call shoves way too wide. I'm fourth. I need to find spots to put my stack in. I'd prefer to be openshoving this, but I figure that I should have the best hand a lot of the time, and I'm not too shabby vs most pairs. I do not think folding is an option here, even though I doubt I have any fold equity. That's a good thing though, because AT/A9 at least, and KQ/KJ are going to be in his range here.

Vsemenov has timed out while disconnected
Vsemenov: folds
FR Vessant: raises 1140 to 1590 and is all-in
chiptacor: calls 1140

Again, it doesn't matter what he had. Both players had hands that were within the ranges I expected for them, but that doesn't tell me anything much.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, you're pretty bad at Poker. Why is it you have a blog?

Dr Zen said...

You don't have to be good at poker to have a blog, son.

Dr Zen said...

Feel free to explain what was bad about either play, btw, or more importantly, my thinking. I mean, if you can. It's easy to drive by and shit talk, a lot harder to be constructive.