CPT T.O.C. Hand
Situation: You are playing in the Canadian Poker Tour "Tournament of Champions." The Skill Level 6 tournament includes WPT champions Steve Paul-Ambrose and Soren Turkewitsch, along with some Americans such as online superstar "dpeters17."
Your hand: :as :8s
Action: With blinds at 25/25 and an above-average stack of 11,000 chips, you limp in early position. Four other players limp in.
Flop: :ac :3s :6h. It is checked to you, and you bet 125. Only the big blind calls.
Turn: :ad. BB checks.
Question 1: Do you check or bet?
Action: You ask the BB how many chips he has left, and he is the shortest stack with only 5,400. You bet 400 and BB calls, with only one 5K chip left.
River: :4h. BB checks.
Question 2: Your read on the BB is that he may have the case Ace with a mediocre kicker like yours. Do you check, bet or go all-in?
Your hand: :as :8s
Action: With blinds at 25/25 and an above-average stack of 11,000 chips, you limp in early position. Four other players limp in.
Flop: :ac :3s :6h. It is checked to you, and you bet 125. Only the big blind calls.
Turn: :ad. BB checks.
Question 1: Do you check or bet?
Action: You ask the BB how many chips he has left, and he is the shortest stack with only 5,400. You bet 400 and BB calls, with only one 5K chip left.
River: :4h. BB checks.
Question 2: Your read on the BB is that he may have the case Ace with a mediocre kicker like yours. Do you check, bet or go all-in?
Comments
Your mistake on this hand was limping in with A8.
stp
IF you believe your read is correct......check. I mean you're only beating 3 hands right? An Ace with a 2,3 and a 7. You're gonna get called by any other hand with an Ace with all of them beating you (except a chop with an 8 ). If he has no ace you're not getting paid off anyway. Although I know that I'd have pushed the river and lost all my chips. Even if your read is incorrect and he was chasing some kind of str8 draw with 4-5 or 2-4 (which your betting gave improper odds on the turn to chase) he's not calling your bet. I'd put this under hindsight is 20/20. So what was the outcome?
The only reason to go all-in would be if you know he has a weaker ace than you and that he won't be able to get away from it. I wouldn't shove here without a boat.
/g2
Without reads I'd try a suck bet of 1/3 to 1/4 of the pot to get some value.
But.
If you think he doesn't have an A.....
He lost almost half his 10K stack in the first orbit in a couple of donkey plays?
This guy might not be around in the next orbit.
This makes me think he may call a big value bet. So I'd bet as much as I think he would call without an A. Say about 2/3 to full pot or more.
If you think he has an A....
Your kicker sucks. It beats a 2, 5 or 7. Yuck!
Your hand is basically a bluff catcher against someone without an Ace.
Do you have fold equity vs A9+??
Nah! not likely against this donkey. So forget bluffing a better hand.
Just call if you think he has an A. Value bet if you don't think he has an A.
Looking at the bettting I don't think he has a better A. I think I would have heard about it on the turn or the River. Not many donks have the ice in their veins to check/call top trips to the river.
But I wasn't there and I suspect if the hero's read is that he has an A, you should check here.
When you bet the flop, you are betting into 4 players, so it should be clear you are not likely bluffing, unless you have an uber fish image. Not likely. BB has to know this and when he calls, he has to have a hand. Now, it is early and the stacks are still big relative to the pot so he could have something as weak as a gutshot or he could have something huge like a set and be slowplaying it.
What range of hands don't raise PF and call the flop? Ax (x<J, could be 3 or 6), 33, 66, 54, maybe 52 or 54 chasing the gutshot for implied odds? Possibly some kind of 6 or 3 on the flop or maybe some kind of mid pair 77-99 if he doesn't put you on an A. I doubt that he slowplays 63 here.
How many of these hands smooth call the turn? He doesn't have the odds to chase the gutshot at this point. I'm down to some A, 33, 63 and possibly 54 or a mid-pair. How many of these are you ahead of that will call you on the river? Not many - the 3 weaker Aces mentioned earlier. You've shown strength all along so he could well be slowplaying you here.
In the BB, I would never fold A9+ since you didn't raise preflop. How could I put you on AT or better? Besides, what kind of donkey would limp in with A-rag in EP? Just check it down.
After watching him make the call on the turn and check on the river, my read was one of weakness, i.e., he was unlikely to have a full house. I opted to go all-in, thinking at the time that it would put maximum pressure on him to avoid being the first player out of the tournament and to fold anything but a full house, including A8+.
This was a blunder. I won't bother showing my EV estimates, but I should have made a small value bet, e.g., $200-$400. I forgot the principle that if I am last to act and might be beaten, my bets should tend to be smaller than they would be if I were fairly sure that I had the best hand. Checking would also have been better than going all-in.
Anyway, villain expressed worry about being out first, fidgeted for awhile, could not get himself to fold and eventually called. I turned up A8 and he turned up A9!
After my -ev play, I was banished to another table, sandwiched between David Peters, Steve Paul-Ambrose and another shark. Two out of the four players in our corner of the table would eventually make it to the final five. I later built my stack back up to over 8,000, but I would not be one of them. :fish:
EV = 0.6 * 0.5 * $800 + 0.2 * (-$800) = +$80
while a $300 bet that will always get called (except by the 20% of nothing hands) will have an
EV = 0.6 * $300 + 0.2 * (-$300) = +$120.
1) You blocker bet so he just calls with an ace on the river like you and he both did.
2) You check the river to induce a bluff from any hand that feels like it cannot win without betting.
3) You control the pot size on the turn when a bad player smooth calls a flop bet on a board like that and then lose less equity on the river.
4) IMO EV math is so useless in this situation just because of the long run.
5) You aren't value betting the river if you have an inkling that your hand is no good. This is a blocker for sure.
6) You never ever shove here unless you're unbeatable or totally out on a limb bluffing(ie not having trips obv)
Flop+Turn is fine
River, you overbet it where you're folding almost all hands that would call (ie middle pairs 77-99 who think they're good). Only 4 Ax (A2, A4, A5, A7) Combos lose to you (and a good player can fold those Ax because 5000 chips is a lot of player @ 25/25 level). The 800 bet will get called just as much as a 200 bet (where the 200 bet may sometimes get CR Bluffed upon because somebody with a 45 will want to get tricky) and I'm not sure you'll be willing to call it. You also put your player on a much smaller range than a typical live player.