tournament hand
L's abroad, so I default to LHE. sigh. from yesterday's Oaks LHE tournament, about 30 remain from starting 100-ish. blinds are 200/400, limits 400/800. I have 4k, MP is probably the tourney chipleader with about 8k, button has 3k, SB about 4k.
UTG+1 limps, button limps, SB completes, I check As9d in the BB.
some reads: I didn't know UTG+1 at all, but I knew the button and SB well. The button limped about 1/3 of his hands PF, almost never raising, but read hands well postflop and value bet well. Passive with draws, and stayed with them too long. The SB is one of a type completely unique to Oaks and the Yay: obese, bearded, ponytailed 60-year-old man in a motorized wheelchair. He has what John Ritter, in Bad Santa, described as "sausage fingers," and actually cannot easily move his chips or pick up his cards: his arms are too short and his girth too formidable. Of course, he wears Birkenstocks. Comic Bookstore Guy with MS. I sat on his left for a while once and had to stack his chips after each pot. The Lord's Work, but anyway... to the point, Comic Bookstore Guy is extremely aggressive and will bluff anytime he senses weakness, but mostly backs down when played back at if he truly has air. Likes to take stabs at pots he thinks no one's interested in. I was also new to the table.
Anyway, flop (t1,600): Jc 9h 3c.
SB bets, and since I believe, as above, he'll auto-bet an unraised pot on a steal, I raise, UTG+1 3-bets, button and SB fold.
This is almost what HOH would call an inflection point situation. I have 2,800 remaining, and with the BB at 400, my L if I fold is exactly 7. (A quick note: L is my own coinage, it refers to the ratio of stack size:BB, and an L of 7 means you have exactly enough chips to raise PF and bet each street postflop. I have a longer post on L in draft form; I'm working on it. An L of 7, I think, corresponds roughly to an M of 10-12, and means you can exert maximum pressure on an opponent or extract maximum value from a good hand, but you can't get too frisky. Still, an L of 7 is good at this stage of the tourney (final 3 tables)).
But let's think about UTG+1's hand ranges for a minute. I thought he was either a) value-raising a J, or b) semi-bluffing a draw. Late LHE tourney play is tight, so an UTG+1 limp with AJ-JT would be feasible, as would a limp with a suited connector like KQc or Axc. The pot when it got back to me contained 4,000 and it was 400 to call, which would drop me to 2,400, an L of 6, and still decent. I felt that I had 5 outs against a jack (I was fading AJ a little), and so taking 10-1 while only 8.5-1 against improving to two pair or trips on the turn was at least a call.
So I called. Turn (4,400) Jc 9h 3c 6c.
This was a bad card, as the club draw got there and the Ac might no longer be an out if I was behind. I thought about betting and folding to a raise, but that would have dropped me to 1,600, an L of 4, which is crippling. (Think about what an L of 4 means... A preflop raise commits 1/2 your stack, so you're pretty much in push-fold mode. An L of 6 means you can try a steal-raise, fail, and still have some fold equity down the line.) So I prepared to check-fold, which I did when UTG+1 bet.
He showed Qc Td, which frustrated me. I had the semi-bluff read right on the flop, I just got the draw wrong. More frustrating was the fact that, over the next orbit, UTG+1 showed he was super-aggressive with his stack, which I wish I hand known when I played this hand; I would have weighted the semi-bluff component of his flop play more heavily. Most frustrating, QT didn't really enter my mind. It seemed like too weak for a UTG+1 limp.
From his standpoint, he played it well. The 3-bet got it HU, and my turn check screamed for another bet when he turned the flush draw. He probably had the same read on the SB I did, and re-isolated on me.
This was a tricky OOP hand and I think I played it OK aside from folding the winner, but I've posted it because I believe it raises a lot of interesting endgame stack-size issues I've been trying to articulate. Let me know what you think.
UTG+1 limps, button limps, SB completes, I check As9d in the BB.
some reads: I didn't know UTG+1 at all, but I knew the button and SB well. The button limped about 1/3 of his hands PF, almost never raising, but read hands well postflop and value bet well. Passive with draws, and stayed with them too long. The SB is one of a type completely unique to Oaks and the Yay: obese, bearded, ponytailed 60-year-old man in a motorized wheelchair. He has what John Ritter, in Bad Santa, described as "sausage fingers," and actually cannot easily move his chips or pick up his cards: his arms are too short and his girth too formidable. Of course, he wears Birkenstocks. Comic Bookstore Guy with MS. I sat on his left for a while once and had to stack his chips after each pot. The Lord's Work, but anyway... to the point, Comic Bookstore Guy is extremely aggressive and will bluff anytime he senses weakness, but mostly backs down when played back at if he truly has air. Likes to take stabs at pots he thinks no one's interested in. I was also new to the table.
Anyway, flop (t1,600): Jc 9h 3c.
SB bets, and since I believe, as above, he'll auto-bet an unraised pot on a steal, I raise, UTG+1 3-bets, button and SB fold.
This is almost what HOH would call an inflection point situation. I have 2,800 remaining, and with the BB at 400, my L if I fold is exactly 7. (A quick note: L is my own coinage, it refers to the ratio of stack size:BB, and an L of 7 means you have exactly enough chips to raise PF and bet each street postflop. I have a longer post on L in draft form; I'm working on it. An L of 7, I think, corresponds roughly to an M of 10-12, and means you can exert maximum pressure on an opponent or extract maximum value from a good hand, but you can't get too frisky. Still, an L of 7 is good at this stage of the tourney (final 3 tables)).
But let's think about UTG+1's hand ranges for a minute. I thought he was either a) value-raising a J, or b) semi-bluffing a draw. Late LHE tourney play is tight, so an UTG+1 limp with AJ-JT would be feasible, as would a limp with a suited connector like KQc or Axc. The pot when it got back to me contained 4,000 and it was 400 to call, which would drop me to 2,400, an L of 6, and still decent. I felt that I had 5 outs against a jack (I was fading AJ a little), and so taking 10-1 while only 8.5-1 against improving to two pair or trips on the turn was at least a call.
So I called. Turn (4,400) Jc 9h 3c 6c.
This was a bad card, as the club draw got there and the Ac might no longer be an out if I was behind. I thought about betting and folding to a raise, but that would have dropped me to 1,600, an L of 4, which is crippling. (Think about what an L of 4 means... A preflop raise commits 1/2 your stack, so you're pretty much in push-fold mode. An L of 6 means you can try a steal-raise, fail, and still have some fold equity down the line.) So I prepared to check-fold, which I did when UTG+1 bet.
He showed Qc Td, which frustrated me. I had the semi-bluff read right on the flop, I just got the draw wrong. More frustrating was the fact that, over the next orbit, UTG+1 showed he was super-aggressive with his stack, which I wish I hand known when I played this hand; I would have weighted the semi-bluff component of his flop play more heavily. Most frustrating, QT didn't really enter my mind. It seemed like too weak for a UTG+1 limp.
From his standpoint, he played it well. The 3-bet got it HU, and my turn check screamed for another bet when he turned the flush draw. He probably had the same read on the SB I did, and re-isolated on me.
This was a tricky OOP hand and I think I played it OK aside from folding the winner, but I've posted it because I believe it raises a lot of interesting endgame stack-size issues I've been trying to articulate. Let me know what you think.
posted by Daniel Habib at 5:16 PM
3 comments
