As part of the Ask SplitSuit a question series, a bunch of people asked hand history questions and this one actually came privately via Facebook. Rhys prefaces the hand by saying:
โHi James! Iโve been religiously watching your videos and found all of them fantastic for rounding out my game. Until now, Iโve never had a situation where I couldnโt look back and go, โAhh, I messed up here or I could have played better here.โ But this one kind of stumped me.โ
Before we jump into the hand, Rhys, I just want to say two quick things. One, Iโm glad youโre enjoying the videos and hopefully youโll enjoy this one, too.
Two is that itโs awesome that youโre doing the work off the table, going back, studying hands, looking at situations and actually reviewing your lines very objectively. Thatโs excellent, excellent work, everyone watching this should be doing the exact same thing, just want to give you props for doing that.
With all that said, letโs look at the spot itself.
This is at 5 no limit on Full Tilt, so thereโs an open limp from seat three, Hero obviously decides to attack it, totally happy with the size, totally happy with the hand selection, get called by seat eight, get called by the limper, go three-way to it, and end up flopping the nuts, which always makes life really, really easy. Check, donk bet from seat three, and Hero decides to call.
Okay, my general rule of thumb is not to slow play. I just find that players, especially in limits like these, tend to make such massive, massive errors that you can just play really aggressively, play your big hands quickly, and make a lot more money.
Itโs just one of those where if we think about what kind of hand seat three is going to be donk betting here, Iโm expecting itโs going to be like some draws, maybe like 9X or 8X is trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Maybe the occasional bit of error, but ultimately from someone who open-limped and then limped called pre-flop and then decides to donk, I assume they link their hand to some extent.
Exactly how much they like their hand, Iโm not sure, but I assume that something like top pair is going to make a lot of mistakes, something like the naked king of spades is going to make a lot of mistakes. Iโd really like to raise and start getting a lot of value in right this moment.
I donโt think that call is necessary terrible, I just really like raising because if you think about it, if you call, thereโs going to be a lot of turned cards that donโt necessarily allow seat three to make huge mistakes. What if itโs the queen and this person has the naked king of spades? Are they going to make huge errors? Maybe, maybe not. If they have something like 8X though and the queen peels off, are they going to make a lot of errors? Eh, I donโt really think theyโre going to make as many mistakes at that point.
Because of that, I just raise right this moment and see how much this person wants to make a big pot. Again, this could be like my last easy chance to get value from like 9X. Thereโs going to be a lot of turn cards that peel off that also 9X doesnโt want to take very far, be it a spade, be it an over-card, whatever it is.
Because of that, Iโd like to see a raise here up to something like 1.50. I donโt hate the call, especially if you think that seat eight is kind of fishy and you could call, induce their call, and then go forward. Other than that, at least consider a raise in a situation like this.
Seat eight folds, go to the turn, which is eight/jack, he checks, and Hero decides to bet.
Okay, I feel like I say this in way too many of my videos, but unfortunately Iโm going to have to say it again. I assume that seat three probably isnโt very good. Open limp pre-flop, limp called, donk the flop, not necessarily things, at least all of those things that a good player would do in a particular hand.
Because of that, I assume theyโre not particularly good, which means I donโt need to give them 5:1 to make an incorrect call. I could give them 3:1, I could give them maybe 2:1. I could give them a much worse price and theyโll still make a lot of mistakes. I donโt think we need to go to 45 cents here to induce 9X or the naked king of spades to make a mistake. I think we could fire this out for 1.25 and get the same amount of mistakes at a pretty high frequency.
Now, maybe we donโt always get action from 8X or 9X and whatever, that again, goes back to why we shouldโve considered or much more heavily done it, raise that flop.
As we got here, just bet larger. Betting is great, obviously we want to be doing that, but weโre leaving so much money on the table and giving good prices to things like two pair, weird sets, whatever. Iโm not super worried about those kind of things, Iโm more worried about missing value from draws that draw incorrectly or a single pair that this is really our last chance to make value from before, God forbid again, the fiver pulls off a four to a straight or four flush or whatever and now all of a sudden we make no money ever.
Again, larger here for sure, get called, board pairs on the eight, on the river, check, Hero decides to bet (but too small).
Stop leaving money on the table with my premium video on poker aggression and making overbets.
Now, youโre not going to get action a ton of the time, because if he has something like the naked king of spades or naked queen of spades, youโre never getting action here. Itโs not like we can bet 95 cents and induce a check raise. We have no raise and I think that seat three is capable of making that light.
Because of that, I think this just needs to be something closer to two bucks and recognizing that youโre not going to get action a ton of the time, but also recognizing that we left a lot of money on the table on previous streaks.
In this actual hand, we actually end up getting check-raise by seat three, who leaves themselves a whopping 9 cents back. Hero decides to get after it, go for the whole thing, and I donโt really even want to talk too much about this, because it shouldnโt happen. There shouldโve been so much more money in the pot by the time we got to this river that if seat three did improve on something like nine/eight or pocket fours or pocket eights and blink quads, whatever it isโgood for him. I mean, the issue is that we gave them a great price on the turn, that we let him off at the price that he wanted to dictate on the flop, and ultimately I just think we left some money on the table. Again, there were baby flushes that wouldโve continued, there were second-best everything that wouldโve continued had we just put more money in earlier in the hand.
In this exact situation, unfortunately we do end up running into the boat, but whatever, again, results donโt really matter all that much. What matters is that the line we took was best.I think the line we took here definitely needed some work, if nothing else, the bet sizes needed a lot of work.
Again, the turn bet needs to be so, so, so much larger. As played, the river bet needs to be so, so, so much larger. Weโre just leaving money on the table by taking this kind of line.
This is one of those where again, I think it all heavily boils back to the flop, a flop raise (Learn “How To Abuse Pre-Flop Limpers”) makes a tremendous amount of sense, I really wouldโve liked to have seen one right there, but as played, bet sizing is going to be the name of the game on the turn at river.
