July 12, 2012
Main Event HH Review
Hey Guys -
Having trouble sleeping again, so thought that typing out some HH's I've played so far in the main event would help speed up the process, and hopefully ignite some good discussion. I'll post some HH's and my thoughts about the players, and you guys tell me what your line would be, or where I messed up.
Day 1:
Blinds: 100/200 no ante
I open to 450 with 6d7d from the hijack. BTN calls.
Flop (1200): Ad7x3d
I cb 675, BTN quickly makes it 2k. I call.
Turn (5200) 9d
I check. BTN quickly and confidently makes it 3.5k. I have 27k behind and he covers. So here's where I think our options can diverge. Is check/raising better than check/calling? If we check/call, do we lead blank rivers, or look to c/c again? Reads are obviously important. Villain is middle aged donk from SoCal, and has been built up a reasonable stack by getting hit in the face with the deck. He's also open limped with TT and KK from EP. I also saw him raise a cb on a Js4x2s flop with TT earlier in the level.
I personally think check/calling and leading the river is the best option. From my experience, these types of players are unlikely to raise cb's with draws (even KQdd usually peels), so his flop raise and turn betting range is heavily weighted towards made hands. While check/raising could theoretically maximize our value, I think he will get away from naked Ax hands if I c/r, and will only call the c/r with a set or 2pr.. But if I call the turn and look to c/c the river, I'll miss value from these same hands (he'll almost always check back his entire range here unless he makes a flush), so it's important to lead the river imo to extract the most value.
Results: I called the turn. River was Qx and it checked thru (mistake). He showed A9 and I won a decent pot early on.
Blinds: 100/200 no ante
Hijack limps, SB completes and I check my option in the BB holding 97s.
Flop (600) 778r
SB checks, I check, HJ who was extremely passive preflop but somewhat aggressive postflop bets 1k... I call. Here's a c/r or lead could be debated, but I settled on a c/c for a copule of reasons. First, you want the opponents to improve to one pair hands that will call one or two streets of betting. If I lead the flop the only result will be folds a high % of the time, and since it's a rainbow flop, there's even fewer draws that can peel me. Additionally, I'm less concerned about giving SD's free cards because the 9 fills me up anyway. Additionally, physically the HJ appeared weak, so I wanted him to continue barreling.
Turn: (2600) 2x
Villain bets 2k. I call. Same reasoning as above. He looks weak, and although I was confident with my read, a passive opponent is still firing bombs at me on a paired board, so there's a potential that my trips are no good here some % of the time.
River: (6600) 9x (OH HELLLLO)
This part is up for debate. Do we lead or c/r? Effective stacks are ~30k. In the hand I felt c/r'ing was best. I still believe most players will bet naked 9x here, and if he just made a straight he will obviously value bet it. Any spot where opponents will vb thinly we must c/r the nuts. And although our hand isn't the "nuts", it should essentially be treated as such here imo. Although against this particular opponent, if i c/r and he jammed I would probably fold.
Results: Villain bets 5k, I c/r to 17.5k and he calls with 56 and I win another nice pot early on.
Day 2:
Blinds are 300/600/75
UTG player is a younger player from the UK and seems somewhat fishy, but it's only been a couple of orbits so difficult to tell. As this hand is being dealt, he mentions that "nobody has limped at our table so far, which is odd to him because there were tons of limped pots at his previous table".
UTG limps for 600, and I raise to 1850 from MP2 holding Ac3c. UTG calls.
Flop (4975): Tc5x4c
UTG check/calls 3400
Turn (11,775): Qx
UTG quickly leads for 3600 with 30k behind. I cover. What's our best line here? I'm not going to post results for this one until afterwards, because I think there are many options, and I would like to hear some opinions here before I reveal what I did.
Blinds: 300/600/75
I open UTG to 1450 with AcAd and get called by the HJ and the BTN, both of whom I cover.
Flop (5925): Js8x3s
I cb 3800 and only the btn calls. Not a ton of info on the btn other than he's been relatively straight forward so far. When I googled him before the day began, I saw that he went deep in the main three years ago, but otherwise no notable scores since then. Probably a recreational player that plays the main event and some other big tourneys each year.
Turn (13,525): Kx
I cb 8900, and after some hesitation he makes the call.
River (31,325): As
Villain has ~55k back and we cover. What's our best plan on this river? Again, I want to hear your thoughts about villain's likely range, and what we should do.
Anyhow, I think that's all I have for now. At dinner break on day 2 I had 140k which felt like a mountain at the time, but unfortunately didn't win a hand after dinner break and my stack has been reduced to 72k. Think the average is around 90k so I'm still doing ok, but will definitely need to make up some ground on day 3, which begins in 10 hours, so I should probably get some sleep! Thanks to everyone for reading the blog. Feel free to follow some updates tomorrow @jbeauprez, and good luck to anyone else that's in it!
John
3 Comments:
SchFerreira posted on July 12, 2012 at 16:48 PM
Hand 1:
Calling turn then leading river does seem to work best against the weaker part of his range, since if a donk raised flop with a strong Ax, he might fold to the turn x/r but wont fold to the river donk but I don't like that line for a bunch of reasons:
a) I don't think he has a one pair hand that often, compared to sets and 2p, against which x/r turn is by far the most profitable play since he may just be unable to let go A3/A7/77/33, especially if you only go half pot-ish, or maybe less, on the river.
b) A diamond can come, meaning you can't value bet river and miss value from his strong made hands.
Hand 2, you played fine although I might lead flop anyways.
Hand 3, if you want to reduce variance due to the BI/softness of the field/etc., then call I guess, but I think the most +EV line (and what I would do) is to take the fast lane, raise turn and ship river since his small turn donk just screams weakness. I mean, how often is he calling down with less than a Q?
Hand 4 is tricky. I would probably bet 16k or maybe smaller, angrily fold to a shove and then tilt. I don't think checking is that great since he's checking back river alot on this scary of a card, hell some fish check back KJ here. Also betting more than 20k doesn't make much sense since he's just going to fold all one pair hands, and sets/2p I'd expect to raise at some point. Once you bet, definitely fold to any raise though.
Now that I think about, you could bet big-ish since you're mostly targeting the part of his range your coolering (AJ and KJ).
shuttle posted on July 13, 2012 at 12:25 PM
hand 1: I'm thinking checkraising here is good on the turn, you can fold to a 3bet also. Plan would be to bet fold rivers. If you do check call I think leading river is ok.
hand 2: check raise larger, I think he is calling a mostly inelastic range so you get more by making it bigger.
hand 3: I think I'd call, don't really want to have to raise fold here a turn raise I think would need to be followed up by a big river barrel in a lot of cases if you did decide to do that.
hand 4: buttons range looks somewhat capped. I think checking isn't good because there's a significant part of his range that's not flushes and I think if you check he gets to bet all of those and put you in a shitty spot. Unless you have a great read on how often he bluffs the river when you check you probably have to check fold.
I'd bet smallish to target his Jx hands and set the price vs small flushes. Would definitely be folding to a raise as I think his raising range is almost entirely flushes. Note that when many live players raise river it's super polarized, but in this case he has very little air that gets there so his river range for raising is super nutted.
shuttle posted on July 13, 2012 at 12:26 PM
oh one key point about hand 4 is that we can't just go bigger because theres a point where we lose an insurmountable amount of value to the flushes in his range.
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