Here is an article and quick video on a hand review sent in by Cristian playing an online MTT. The blinds are 25 and 50, there is an open limp from early position 2 and Hero decides to attack with 125 . I like the fact that we’re raising here, I just wish that our size were a little bit larger.
I think anyone who open limps, especially from an early position, is usually going to be a pretty bad player and because of that, I think king/queen is going to perform super, super well, even more so because we have the button. So I’d really like to see this raise maybe something in like the 175 to even 250 ballpark, I think would be a lot better than just 125.
We end up getting one caller, not shocking. Go here, he checks, Hero decides to c-bet and ends up getting check min raised to 350.
So real quick, I actually want to just back two quick ticks, because I think a lot of players would default continuation bet here when checked, too, but what I want to talk about real quick is just understanding how this texture hits a normal limp call range. ASSAQ Video “Is Open Limping Ever A Good Play?”
Again, I normally assume that someone who is going to limp call is not going to be a very good player, which means I usually assume they’re going to have hands that’s going to smash this board, whether that’s five/four suited, pocket sixes, nine/eight, whatever it is, I think there’s a lot of stuff that’s hitting this texture. Unless you think he has a lot of stuff like say ace/ten or ace/jack that’s going to limp call pre and then check fold now, I think this is the kind of spot where you’re not generating a ton of folds right at this moment and I also think it’s going to be difficult to get folds later down the line.
Yes, I think there’s some implied odds when you do improve to a king or queen on the turn or river, of course, and obviously when you improve to something like jack/ten, that’s great, but I don’t think that’s going to happen a lot of the time, obviously, and then the other element is I just don’t think there’s a lot of upside here. I think he’s going to continue calling you down with single pairs a decent chunk of the time, because bad players love single pairs and they get really sticky with them and I’m not going to get shocked when that happens.
So because of that, I don’t think this is really the greatest spot in the world to continuation bet. I don’t hate checking behind here, unless you think, again, that he’s going to be doing at least some percentage of check folding here. I just think you’re getting action here way too often and the betting isn’t necessarily the greatest thing in the world.
As played, we do end up facing the check min raise and at this point, we’re just getting such a sick price, almost 5:1, as a default, I’m going to call as well. I just generally don’t fold against check min raises. Because of that, especially when I have position plus over cards plus some equity, plus of course I assume skill, I’m just going to call here and play poker from there.
So once Hero calls, ends up seeing an eight of clubs in the turn, faces a bet for 600, and Hero decides to call and Hero says,“I picked up a flush draw, so now I decide to call.”
One thing I want to just talk about real quick is thinking ahead. At this point we’re getting 2.7:1 on a call, that’s all well and good, we’re probably going to have some semblance of equity obviously, but I want to talk about our improvement cards on the river.
We improve by catching a club, well, that’s all well and good, but are we really ever going to make any money? I don’t think we’re going to make a ton. I mean, is he really going to like check call with two pair on the river if the river is a fourth club? I don’t think so. I think we could end spewing on some rivers, I think there’s a possibility that our king and our queen are not always good, of course, and because of that, I think this is a little bit ugly.
Now, we could pull out Equilab to proof this and actually, let’s do that for a quick second. We plug in our hand, we plug in the board, plug in the turn and let’s assign MP arrange.
Now mind you, in real time, you won’t have the time to actually do this, but let’s just run with it for a moment so we can just take a quick look.
Let’s give him sets when he takes that line on the flop, that makes sense. Let’s give him things like ten/nine, nine/eight, ace/nine, I think those make sense, maybe ace/nine over there. Let’s do a quick suit selection and give him some, made flushes and stuff like that. I’m just going to throw in a lot of this.
All these combos won’t be included, like he can’t have queen/jack of clubs, because we have the queen of clubs in our hand. I’m going to give him all the realistic not flushes, those make sense. Let’s give him things like four/three of it, that definitely makes sense, and I don’t know, let’s just start with that for the time being.
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So give those in clubs, okay, eval it. Notice that we only have 18% equity. Given the math, we need a minimum 27 to continue. Unless you think he’s erring here a large chunk of the time, or you think there’s a lot of implied odds, I actually don’t think this is particularly good.
Again, I’m not really in the business of folding draws very often, but when you’re drawing to a four flush on board, you want to be very, very careful. I think a lot of players overestimate how often they’re really going to get paid. As your draw card gets lower and lower, it becomes harder and harder to really make a lot of money the times that you’re drawing.
If you have specific assumptions, okay, maybe this could be okay, but I think as a pure default, I’d actually kind of fold here. Again, I just don’t think we’re really going to make a lot of money, so this is kind of a bad card, kind of a bad action on said card. I would just say forget it and fold here, but Hero does decide to call, ends up seeing an ace on the river. He checks and Hero decides to bomb and he does this trying to steal the pot.
After Hero bombs, he ends up getting it snapped off by seven/five of spades and here comes the caps lock and the question. He says:
“He called with seven/five of spades. Yes, he called with a pair of fives. What did I do wrong here? Any thoughts about this? Thanks.”
Going back to the river spot real quick, I do have a couple thoughts. In this situation, one thing I would ask is why are we bombing the river? Now yes, I understand you’re trying to steal the pot, you’re trying to pick it up, that’s all well and good. But first and foremost, we don’t think EP2 is a great player, right? Which means probably not a lot of reason to think that he’s going to fold things that he views as strong.
Obviously seven/five suited is very weak, and that’s fine, but if we’re playing against a bad opponent, again, someone who would open limp from early position, we really can’t be too shocked that he’s going to get really sticky with single pairs, because well, bad players are bad. That’s why we’re allowed to just print value against them, but it’s very difficult to bluff them, case in point.
Another thing is that, okay, I like the fact that you’re being creative. I like the fact that you’re thinking, “Okay, maybe if I over-bet it, I can generate a fold, whereas if I were to bet say, 1,600, he wouldn’t fold 5X for sure.” Well, that’s fine, but do we need to risk the full stack? Or could we say go to like 3,500 and try to generate those folds? Again, does adding the extra couple of grand to the equation really generate any extra folds? I’d say probably not. I’d say that’s just simply a situation where you’re going to lose more the times you’re behind and it doesn’t really do anything extra for you, it doesn’t generate any extra folds.
Again, this is kind of a situation where I think pre-flop could’ve been played better with a larger size. I think the flop could’ve been played better by just checking and saying forget it. I think that the turn could’ve been played better by just folding. Again, I don’t think we’re getting a great price, it’s a really bad card for us. There’s going to be a lot of times we’re either drawing dead or again, not going to be super profitable for us.
That’s just the way that I would view this situation. As played on the river, I just think that the bomb is very unnecessary. I don’t think it really does anything for us, just loses us extra.
Again, I don’t mind that you’re being creative and trying to come up with some ways to fold a single pair type hand, I just don’t think that this is the spot nor the person that we want to be running this kind of play, really not shocked when we ended up getting looked up by something that of course beats us and of course that we’re pitching off a very, very, very large stack in early stages of a tournament. Cristian, thanks for the great hand.
